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Nividia or ATI
- Thread starter jcvmf214
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If you do 3D work, if you need 1.5GB of dedicated GPU RAM, if you're a professional at anything graphically intensive.
Don't knock it if you can't afford it. Don't knock others for needing something you find superfluous.
Don't knock it if you can't afford it. Don't knock others for needing something you find superfluous.
Why would somebody ever want a computer in the first place? We survived a few dozen thousand years without them....
I prefer Nvidia because they kick the crap out of ATI every year. And ATI always lies about how fast their new cards are going to be.
ATI says their latest card is going to be the fastest every year right. Then they come out and they are not as fast as the current Nvidia card; which by the way is about to be updated within a month or so from the ATI release. So essentially ATI's cards are **** every year and not worth the price of a new card because technically they are about as good as last years card compared to nvidia.
ATI says their latest card is going to be the fastest every year right. Then they come out and they are not as fast as the current Nvidia card; which by the way is about to be updated within a month or so from the ATI release. So essentially ATI's cards are **** every year and not worth the price of a new card because technically they are about as good as last years card compared to nvidia.
i don't understand the question - "which company do you prefer"?
it doesn't matter does it? You buy the best card you can afford at the time. Whether it is made by ATI or nVidia is irrelevant? If the current best card is made by ATI you buy an ATI card?
If you mean which is the better card the MP offers at the moment, again it shouldn't come down to which 'brand' you prefer - if you need V. HIGH end 3D graphics then you get the Quadro.
Personally i've been using Maya, Final Cut, Motion and Livetype in the last few days and i've got the ATI 2600 and i haven't noticed anything that has made me think, i wish i had the nVidia or the Quadro.
Don't all be too quick to jump on the 8800 card - the 2600 is a good card. Look at what you need to do (I don't want to play games, and have found in the past to have some graphics anomalies with an nvidia card)
As long as the card supports all the latest OpenGL standards and runs cool and quick thats all i care about.
Remember a lot of the tasks you might associate with the graphics card (rendering for example) get offloaded to the CPU (though some software is starting to utilize the GPU) so with 4/8 cores the Power of the PC is more important than the power of the Graphics card.
it doesn't matter does it? You buy the best card you can afford at the time. Whether it is made by ATI or nVidia is irrelevant? If the current best card is made by ATI you buy an ATI card?
If you mean which is the better card the MP offers at the moment, again it shouldn't come down to which 'brand' you prefer - if you need V. HIGH end 3D graphics then you get the Quadro.
Personally i've been using Maya, Final Cut, Motion and Livetype in the last few days and i've got the ATI 2600 and i haven't noticed anything that has made me think, i wish i had the nVidia or the Quadro.
Don't all be too quick to jump on the 8800 card - the 2600 is a good card. Look at what you need to do (I don't want to play games, and have found in the past to have some graphics anomalies with an nvidia card)
As long as the card supports all the latest OpenGL standards and runs cool and quick thats all i care about.
Remember a lot of the tasks you might associate with the graphics card (rendering for example) get offloaded to the CPU (though some software is starting to utilize the GPU) so with 4/8 cores the Power of the PC is more important than the power of the Graphics card.
You misunderstand. when I saw the type of card it was my eyes lit up. I would love to have something like that. I would never knock someone for needing something like that. Especially if they are going to make money with it.
in fact I would admire them for that.
I am new to mac in general and plan on a mac pro with the lower nvidia chip card that they offer.
I noticed when I read some of the specs comparing the ati card that is offered in the imac as compared to the nvidia card offered in the mac pro and I chose the mac pro based off my prior experience with nvida. I have been very pleased with nvida for many years and I dont think I would change
So for casual gaming and watching videos with enough ram on board the card. what is the best all around card in their list
I love how even when apple limits your choices to three cards, we can still have a discussion about them.
The stock ATI should be fine for most things. If you plan on doing something graphically intensive (gaming in windows, working with prof. video apps), then maybe the nvidia 8800 is for you.
I see no reason to get the quadro for normal computer use--it is almost exclusively for specific graphics applications--I'm assuming you'd know if you use these things, if you don't, then you don't.
All that said, if you think you do more than "light" gaming, I'd get the 8800.
The stock ATI should be fine for most things. If you plan on doing something graphically intensive (gaming in windows, working with prof. video apps), then maybe the nvidia 8800 is for you.
I see no reason to get the quadro for normal computer use--it is almost exclusively for specific graphics applications--I'm assuming you'd know if you use these things, if you don't, then you don't.
All that said, if you think you do more than "light" gaming, I'd get the 8800.
Its nice to dream about though.. I have my gaming distributed between the consoles and my future mac pro . so that should cover everything.
the quadro has been shown to be worse for speedy applications like gaming - the quadro is very good at showing graphics *accurately* but no so hot at showing loads of frames a second, every second for hours on end.
This is where the 8800 takes over, it is great for displaying fast moving graphics, but is not as technically accurate as the quadro cards - which when you're displaying 60fps on a game, it doesn't matter too much if you drop one or two frames every few seconds as long as the card keeps driving out triangles. (I might be wrong, but i think the quadro has error correction of some sort, where it will try to go and correct any mistake it has made - hence slowing the whole task down)
You can pick up the base spec quadro from nVidia for about the same price as the 8800 (i think its the Quadro FX500 or something) which if you're doing intensive, accurate graphic work (Autocad or something) it's a nice budget option that should give better performance than the 8800
The 8800 is the card all the gamers are raving about at the moment (though for Crysis you sort of need the 8800GTX or Ultra for best performance) and if you're thinking about doing any gaming at all, i'd say go for this.
The 2600XT is good all round card, that probably leans towards accuracy rather than speed. which makes it perfect for most mac users (who on the whole are not gamers) - it's perfect for 2D design (Photos, Graphic design etc) and it's not too shabby at all for video/motion graphics work as i've been finding.
Summary:
2600XT - Basic needs, 2D work, great entry level card for 70% of users
8800GT - Gaming, Video - fast moving, but not necessarily pixel accurate tasks, suitable for about 25% of users
Quadro - ultra high end 3D, such as architecture/motion graphics - anything that needs to be pinpoint accurate, probably suitable for 5% of users, though i'd guess only 0.1% would actually buy it!
This is where the 8800 takes over, it is great for displaying fast moving graphics, but is not as technically accurate as the quadro cards - which when you're displaying 60fps on a game, it doesn't matter too much if you drop one or two frames every few seconds as long as the card keeps driving out triangles. (I might be wrong, but i think the quadro has error correction of some sort, where it will try to go and correct any mistake it has made - hence slowing the whole task down)
You can pick up the base spec quadro from nVidia for about the same price as the 8800 (i think its the Quadro FX500 or something) which if you're doing intensive, accurate graphic work (Autocad or something) it's a nice budget option that should give better performance than the 8800
The 8800 is the card all the gamers are raving about at the moment (though for Crysis you sort of need the 8800GTX or Ultra for best performance) and if you're thinking about doing any gaming at all, i'd say go for this.
The 2600XT is good all round card, that probably leans towards accuracy rather than speed. which makes it perfect for most mac users (who on the whole are not gamers) - it's perfect for 2D design (Photos, Graphic design etc) and it's not too shabby at all for video/motion graphics work as i've been finding.
Summary:
2600XT - Basic needs, 2D work, great entry level card for 70% of users
8800GT - Gaming, Video - fast moving, but not necessarily pixel accurate tasks, suitable for about 25% of users
Quadro - ultra high end 3D, such as architecture/motion graphics - anything that needs to be pinpoint accurate, probably suitable for 5% of users, though i'd guess only 0.1% would actually buy it!
fluidedge, you've implied that the 8800 can be less accurate than the 2600. I don't know much about graphics card technology, but is there any truth to this? Does the 8800 really have any drawbacks compared to the 2600 in regards to performance of any kind?
no i wouldn't say so - i'd say in terms of accuracy they're probably as good as each other (not that i have an 'accuracy scale' to hand 
- don't get too hung up on what i said about accuracy, we're talking errors like backface culling, camera clipping etc rather than "errors" in the usual sense like windows not resizing, font errors etc) - The 8800 is most certainly a 'better' card than the 2600, which is not to say the 2600 is a bad card by any means. It's just that nVidia seem to have hit the bullseye with the 8800.
To be honest, it has got the stage with cards now that they're all pretty good. They can all drive 2 30" monitors at full resolution and can certainly crunch out millions of triangles a second.
The benefits only come when you push cards to the extreme, high fps gaming or huge, multi-million polygon models in CAD/3D.
Like i said, most users surfing the web, doing office tasks and fairly intensive photo work (colour correction, filters etc) and most other 2D tasks, will see no noticeable benefit from the 8800 put it that way.
- don't get too hung up on what i said about accuracy, we're talking errors like backface culling, camera clipping etc rather than "errors" in the usual sense like windows not resizing, font errors etc) - The 8800 is most certainly a 'better' card than the 2600, which is not to say the 2600 is a bad card by any means. It's just that nVidia seem to have hit the bullseye with the 8800.To be honest, it has got the stage with cards now that they're all pretty good. They can all drive 2 30" monitors at full resolution and can certainly crunch out millions of triangles a second.
The benefits only come when you push cards to the extreme, high fps gaming or huge, multi-million polygon models in CAD/3D.
Like i said, most users surfing the web, doing office tasks and fairly intensive photo work (colour correction, filters etc) and most other 2D tasks, will see no noticeable benefit from the 8800 put it that way.
I used to be a fan of ATI fan for years, but when the time came last year to build a new PC, I planned on getting the 2900XT. Just to be smart, I checked out the 8800 series from Nvidia. The current 8800 line-up beats almost everything ATI has out now. The only thing that can beat the 8800 Ultra is the 3870 X2, which actually has TWO GPU's on the PCB. Two 8800GT's beat it in SLI by a wide margin, which means that the 9800GX2 (Essentially 2 8800GT's taped together) will destroy it.
Nvidia > ATI
As far as the Mac Pro options, the 8800GT is the only card to consider (Unless you do things that the high end card can do). For $200 more, you can rest easy knowing that any game you pick up to burn a weekend will play VERY well.
In my opinion, if you're thinking about buying a computer thats base configuration is $2300, you owe it to yourself to spend the extra $200.
Nvidia > ATI
As far as the Mac Pro options, the 8800GT is the only card to consider (Unless you do things that the high end card can do). For $200 more, you can rest easy knowing that any game you pick up to burn a weekend will play VERY well.
In my opinion, if you're thinking about buying a computer thats base configuration is $2300, you owe it to yourself to spend the extra $200.
My first card was a Nvidia Ti 200 which ran Maya 4 really well while I was a university, then I was convinced by the ATI 9500 Pro.
Bad move, subsequently I had a string of ATI cards including 3 versions of the 9800 Pro XT. I found the drivers to be the main problem as they were inconsistant. ATI would update them what seemed like every 2 weeks and you weren't sure how different programs would be effected. Some would work well with new drivers and others wouldn't. They just weren't that stable.
Consequently I have swapped back to Nvidia (6800 XT) although not for long, the days of the PC are numbered. It's a shiny Mac Pro for me with the 8800 powering the beast!
Bad move, subsequently I had a string of ATI cards including 3 versions of the 9800 Pro XT. I found the drivers to be the main problem as they were inconsistant. ATI would update them what seemed like every 2 weeks and you weren't sure how different programs would be effected. Some would work well with new drivers and others wouldn't. They just weren't that stable.
Consequently I have swapped back to Nvidia (6800 XT) although not for long, the days of the PC are numbered. It's a shiny Mac Pro for me with the 8800 powering the beast!
If somebody would know if either of them would support 12/16-bit rendering in Color. But nobody seems to have a clue...
I don't believe so. My 7300GT can handle 8-bit & floating point (32-bit). It used to be that only 1900XT supported 10/12/16-bit, so I'd guess that it's driver issue.
I concurr. I have been a dell user for years. I am liberating myself from the pc market. most of my pc needs revolve around gaming , internet use and foremost an ever growing itunes library and dvd watching
thats quite a sweeping statement! "PCs days are numbered"
It all comes down to the OS; to be blunt, Vista is a failure - mostly due to bad marketing rather than bad engineering, as such i hear MS are accelerating development on Windows 7. If that has the features they promise, it could knock Mac OS X sideways. Some of those features would be the sort of thing apple would offer in Mac OS 11 rather than 10.6 (look them up!)
I'm a convert (2003) and am happy to stay with Apple OS through thick and thin (i've forgotten how to use much of XP!!), but if Windows 7 is a good OS, then the PC world will be very happy and have no reason to go Mac.
Anyway, back to Graphics Cards! I've seen anomalies in maya with NVidia cards (very small and rare mind), i know someone who swears by FireGL cards due to their superior OpenGL 2.0 implementation but Apple doesn't offer FireGL - they must have a deal with nVidia to only offer quadro cards
It all comes down to the OS; to be blunt, Vista is a failure - mostly due to bad marketing rather than bad engineering, as such i hear MS are accelerating development on Windows 7. If that has the features they promise, it could knock Mac OS X sideways. Some of those features would be the sort of thing apple would offer in Mac OS 11 rather than 10.6 (look them up!)
I'm a convert (2003) and am happy to stay with Apple OS through thick and thin (i've forgotten how to use much of XP!!), but if Windows 7 is a good OS, then the PC world will be very happy and have no reason to go Mac.
Anyway, back to Graphics Cards! I've seen anomalies in maya with NVidia cards (very small and rare mind), i know someone who swears by FireGL cards due to their superior OpenGL 2.0 implementation but Apple doesn't offer FireGL - they must have a deal with nVidia to only offer quadro cards
I refuse to go to vista. I do plan on running xp on this machine as well for the gaming potential. And this was one of the many reasons that swayed me towards the mac.