Radeon vs NVidia : the truth against Radeon

New to the forum. Hello.

Listening to all the people around I started to think that Radeon 9600/9700 is a much better 3D solution than NVidia, in particular than the 440 Go. And I was looking for a Radeon laptop until yesterday when I tried the 440Go and Radeon 9600 side by side in OpenGL application. WOW! To my surpize, the tasks that made P4-3.4G/R9600 and Athlon 64 3400+/Radeon 9600 dead slow, were still fast on the Athlon 64 3200+/Nvidia 440Go laptop. The Nevida 5700 card was no comparison to 9600 - many times faster.

Looks like that NVidia bashing that I constantly see in the interenet almost made me buy the wong laptop for my 3D applications! Now I am NVidia convert again.

The lesson being: Radeon maybe good at games. But it really fails to compete with NVidia when professional 3D programs are used (e.g. molecular viewers w/OpenGL), where even NVidia4 440 Go 64MB outperforms the Radeon 9600 128MB...

 

So are you saying that the Radeons are better for the gaming users then?

Or are the Nvidia's also beating them out?

Tell it like it is...NOT how it should be

 

the Geforce 4 Go 440 is a Horrid GPU for Gaming purposes and the 9600 Wipes the floor with the 440, ATI will develope better Open GL support in time. Nvidia has always been better in this Area. I can run Doom 3 at acceptable levels with my 9600 128mb and the Newest Omega drivers. no OC on the GPU.

Specs: HP 5280

3.2Ghz P4
1GB PC2700 ram
80GB HD
Redeon 9600 128mb

 

Funny post. Try out any graphics with Direct3D and you will see which card really rocks! nVidia cards are designed to support OpenGL and Radeon is oriented towards the support of Direct3D. Maybe you wanna say that Direct3D is unprofessional? [ ][ ][ ] So, the bottom line - if you are going to play OpenGL games (Doom 3) you nVidia card will do it better, if you want a Direct 3D game like Half Life 2, then Radeon is way better.

 

Yeah, BTW, go install omega drivers http://www.omegadrivers.net/ for your ATI card (no need to OC it). But before doing it, run different benchmarks. Then after installation of o-drivers run the same benchmarks again and WOW the results are so different! Why is that? [ ] If your Radeon 9600 is still worse than 440Go, man, you have some hardware problems then.[ ]

 

Exactly. Radeon is better for games. No Radeon is better for OpenGL than recent Geforces, no question. As I mentioned, I am using molecular visualization packages and not games. GeForce IS BETTER for those. Not only it is faster, it doesn't flicker through frames when you rotate molecules, unlike Radeon 9x00, that show you how they re-drwas frames .

My point is - the hype about Radeon is created by gamers. Those who need high-end 3D for other needs, must keep open mind and look at both GPUs before selecting which one is better!!

 

I guess the general reference would be:

Anything DirectX/3D related = get an ATI
Anything OpenGL related = get an NVidia/ATI

That's why whenever someone asks "What notebook should I get?", everyone usually asks "What will you be using the notebook for?". That's so if you're going to be playing games mainly, then obviously they're gonna recommend a card for DirectX/3D, like the ATI 9x00 series. But if you say that you're going to be doing nothing by 3D modelling, CAD or anything OpenGL based, then the only suggestion should obviously an OpenGL based card, like the NVidia or ATI FireGL series. Since the FireGL is designed for CAD/OpenGL, and not much so for gaming, this would/should be one of the GPU's suggested.

Most people looking at the Compaq AMD64 w/440 Go, usually say they will use it for internet, office apps, gaming, wtching DVD's, playing MP3's. Well, with those uses, the ATI would be the better choice.

I guess the main lesson here is, be more specific on the requirements/uses of the notebook when asking for suggestions. That way, they will get a more acurate recommendation on the right unit.

-Vb-

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Wyrm

 

To: alekkh.

Are you sure that you need ATI or nVidia card if you are not going to play games? If you are talking about 3D modelling and CAD applications then it is a little bit different realm. ATI/nVidia cards are for gamers mostly. I do not know a lot in that area but I have heard people suggesting Matrox cards for 3D design, something like:
http://shopmatrox.com/usa/products/datasheet.asp?ID=439
or
http://shopmatrox.com/usa/products/datasheet.asp?ID=401
As far as I remember they can also support multiple monitors which may be important for you as well. Some of maxtors cards are focused on OpenGL but I do not remember which ones. This is some general info about there 3D design cards:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/archive_story/may2003/3dws.cfm
I believe 99.9% of people need a video card for games and movies - that is completely different story, that is why we are talking about ATI/nVidia only. This may be not what you want. Also, I do not think that you need such functionality on a laptop. Usually 3D workstations are far from being mobile (several 20" monitors are not easy to move around with you). Maybe you need a powerful workstation rather than a laptop then?