Which Graphic Card

[Zenskas]

I have to read that but I can't believe it; ATI makes better drivers than nVidia does and lot's of us will confirm that. The 8400GS can't pull HD content either. Either way, any pick he will made between a 2400pro or 8400GS would be a huge improvement over the GMA900 he has now .

EDIT: That guy is clearly still green behind the ears when it comes to computer technology although he is buying parts for 10 years now. Believe me, nVidia isn't even coming close to ATI when it´s about stability of drivers. The noise that a card makes does not depend on the maker of the GPU but on how cheap a video card builder wants' to ship his product and there can be found a lot of flavors of video cards with way better coolers than the stock ATI design, also the nVidia stock cooler is noisy as hell. I would not care less if it's noisy or not when I'm playing a game with my speakers dusting off or with my headphones on. By the way, ATI cards use less juice then nVidia cards, that as a side note.

Actually the 8400GS has Purevideo 2 while some of the older 8800 series cards do not. You can watch HD videos with an 8400GS but yeah bot the nvidia and the ATI card are heaps better than what he has, and are cheap too. BTW the guy who owns tweak guides is one of THE most un-biased people I have seen on the net...he closed his own forum because he didn't have time to moderate it when it was becoming biased so he could devote more time to writing tweak guides for games. Oh yeah if you have ever heard one of the popular geforce 8/9800's, 8/9600's or GTX series cards, then you will know the stock cooler is very quiet. My 9600GT is silent in 2D. No noise. But the 8400GS is not going to make any noise anyway cause it ain't going to be making much heat with a TDP of 40W

And how come the GTX 285 only has a TDP of 183W yet an even slower radeon HD 4890 has a TDP of 190W??? And a GTX 295 has a TDP of 289W but a slower radeon HD 4870 X2 uses 290W??? Weird huh? Look: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware...ggtx295/14.html

ATI makes better drivers than nVidia

QFT.

I just got rid of a GeForce 8xxx series card, and it ALWAYS sucked HARD. No matter which drivers are used. Even onboard ATI 3200 (780G) is WORLDS better.

With nvidia, expect this almost daily:

And those every couple weeks:

BTW, it also TOTALLY sucked for HD. Much higher CPU load than both ATI card types I got... Their claims of off-loading to the GPU are borderline fraudulent (IMO). Their video decoding assist's never actually worked, using any OS (XP x86, Vista x86, Vista x64 or Win7 x64)/any vers of drivers/any H.264 codec combination. Nevermind some video quality issues in PowerDVD (severe red blotching -- again, using any drivers, any video renderer, etc). Overall, it's been utter crap since day one. Quite possibly the worst video card I've ever had.

I moved to a nice Radeon and all the problems are solved! I wish I had never even bothered. No more nvidia garbage ever again, unless they're the very last manufacturer left and I have no choice at all. nvidia is also very well known for very poor drivers for other devices. I wouldn't want of a GTX 295 even if it was free.

LOL funny that I have never seen those errors in my life. Or with three other PC's I built with nvidia graphics cards. But when I build a PC with an ATI card (x1650 pro) it is the one that stuff up thanks to driver issues and needed a re-install. You may have got a bad card and so may have I, BUT tell that to 64.72% of people that own nvidia cards using steam vs the 27.25% that use ATI cards with steam. Look for yourself: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

I'm just saying I like nvidia and the majority of people in this world can back me up. However it's like anything...if you have some bad experiences with one brand, the other brand looks so much better.

And also the 8400GS is more powerful for gaming than the 2400 PRO.

http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-2848-vie...-benchmark.html

http://cybersurge.org/2007/06/09/ati-2400-...gs-in-3dmark06/

Although it does depend on the game though but generally the 8400 GS is preferred.

Edited April 17, 2009 by Zenskas

[puntoMX]

ATI has it's UVD, it should perform a bit better than nVidia´s PureVideo but that could be a bit of personal taste. The TDP says nothing about real life power consumption, this is why it's called Thermal Design power and not Typical Power Consumption (Min., Max., and Avg.), so please don't get mixed up on those terms . Although the 8400GS has a TDP of 40W, most video card producers use cheap cooling solutions to ship the card as cheap as possible. I must say that both ATI and nVidia stock coolers are not quiet at all, no matter the model number.

It's not surprising that most people still use ore nVidia cards today as they didn't upgrade the last year or so, when you look at real sales numbers you will see that ATI and nVidia don't differ much, besides that, most video card producers now also ship ATI based cards while before ATI was left for dead by many brands.

Those benchmarks are from 2007 when I must say ATI wasn't top notch when it came to drivers. Today it's a complete different story and if I had a 2400pro lying around I would have made the benchmarks in DX9 (XP/Vista) and DX10 (Vista) just to show you that in DX10 ATI for sure slaps nvidia around, and in DX9 games it will look more even than the 20% difference in performance (nVidia over ATI) that shows in 2007.

[CoffeeFiend]

LOL funny that I have never seen those errors in my life.

Of course you haven't, you're running XP. XP just BSODs instead, and it does that just fine with nvidia drivers.

tell that to 64.72% of people that own nvidia cards using steam vs the 27.25% that use ATI cards with steam

Steam user base isn't really reflective of the larger picture. Besides, most of these people likely bought whatever card had more frames per second per dollar more than anything. And I don't think it's relevant anyways, that's like saying "tell the millions of people at McDonalds that food elsewhere is better" (all the lemmings are doing it, must be good!)

the majority of people in this world can back me up

I don't think so.

First, nvidia doesn't quite sell anywhere near 2/3 of the cards on the market, Intel is the biggest seller (also, not everyone's a gamer, and buys cards to play games). And I'd say a very large number of typical users have experienced their fair share of BSODs due to nvidia (mind you, they just tend to say "Windows sucks!" then). It's very well documented everywhere, even people like Mark Russinovich have devoted blog entries to crashes due to nvidia drivers. And I've seen nvidia driver updates break LOTS of things (like Vista's photo screensaver or remote desktop). And most of the more knowledgeable members on this forum all seem to admit to nvidia's poor driver quality (e.g. puntoMX, cluberti, jcarle, Zxian and so on). I don't really see anything backing you up anywhere (besides the one delusional guy who happens to have bought some vid cards before -- just like everybody else)

[Zenskas]

ATI has it's UVD, it should perform a bit better than nVidia´s PureVideo but that could be a bit of personal taste. The TDP says nothing about real life power consumption, this is why it's called Thermal Design power and not Typical Power Consumption (Min., Max., and Avg.), so please don't get mixed up on those terms . Although the 8400GS has a TDP of 40W, most video card producers use cheap cooling solutions to ship the card as cheap as possible. I must say that both ATI and nVidia stock coolers are not quiet at all, no matter the model number.

It's not surprising that most people still use ore nVidia cards today as they didn't upgrade the last year or so, when you look at real sales numbers you will see that ATI and nVidia don't differ much, besides that, most video card producers now also ship ATI based cards while before ATI was left for dead by many brands.

Those benchmarks are from 2007 when I must say ATI wasn't top notch when it came to drivers. Today it's a complete different story and if I had a 2400pro lying around I would have made the benchmarks in DX9 (XP/Vista) and DX10 (Vista) just to show you that in DX10 ATI for sure slaps nvidia around, and in DX9 games it will look more even than the 20% difference in performance (nVidia over ATI) that shows in 2007.

Yeah ATI do have UVD and that along with purevideo are fairly similar anyway. (I personally would watch HD videos on a TV with a blu-ray disk player though rather than on a computer)

But in tests here: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware...ggtx295/14.html (if you read my post) you will see that the nvidia GTX 295 beats the radeon 4850x2 and 4870x2 for power consumption even though it is a faster card (or even look here: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item...43&page=12) . And yes the stock coolers on nvidia cards are quiet actually: http://techreport.com/articles.x/13479/7 where the geforce 8800's beat an ATI card in performance, power consumption, and noise. "This may be the quietest single-slot cooler we've ever tested (save for the passive ones), and it doesn't grow audibly louder under load." (I thought you said no matter what model they are loud ) Here is the 7800GTX stock cooler: http://www.behardware.com/articles/574-6/n...e-7800-gtx.html Nice and quiet!

And I doubt an 8400GS is going to be making much noise anyway. There are a lot out there that are passively cooled so it does not matter!

But yeah I am not desperately trying to make the OP buy nvidia, as I would buy either of them anyway over what he has because they would be so much better in every area!

LOL funny that I have never seen those errors in my life.

Of course you haven't, you're running XP. XP just BSODs instead, and it does that just fine with nvidia drivers.

tell that to 64.72% of people that own nvidia cards using steam vs the 27.25% that use ATI cards with steam

Steam user base isn't really reflective of the larger picture. Besides, most of these people likely bought whatever card had more frames per second per dollar more than anything. And I don't think it's relevant anyways, that's like saying "tell the millions of people at McDonalds that food elsewhere is better" (all the lemmings are doing it, must be good!)

the majority of people in this world can back me up

I don't think so.

First, nvidia doesn't quite sell anywhere near 2/3 of the cards on the market, Intel is the biggest seller (also, not everyone's a gamer, and buys cards to play games). And I'd say a very large number of typical users have experienced their fair share of BSODs due to nvidia (mind you, they just tend to say "Windows sucks!" then). It's very well documented everywhere, even people like Mark Russinovich have devoted blog entries to crashes due to nvidia drivers. And I've seen nvidia driver updates break LOTS of things (like Vista's photo screensaver or remote desktop). And most of the more knowledgeable members on this forum all seem to admit to nvidia's poor driver quality (e.g. puntoMX, cluberti, jcarle, Zxian and so on). I don't really see anything backing you up anywhere.

Funny that, haven't seen a BSOD once yet in the 6 months I have had the PC in my sig with a 9600GT. Haven't even seen a BSOD with another PC I have had for many years with Win XP and a geforce 4 mx 440. Dunno if it is just my luck or something, but the cards are very stable even while overclocking 10-15% (and the geforce 4 only has passive cooling in a PC with only one fan in total!)

Yeah it may only be Steam, but how many people that love graphics cards to death use Steam? How many gamers that slog their PC's to LAN parties and have a great night with their graphics cards and don't have any problems? On that note I have a small group of gamer friends (who don't know that much about computers) but in all of us there is two 6600GT's, one 7600GS, one 8600GT, one 9600GT (mine-gee the mid range nvidia cards are popular!), and only one ATI (a radeon 9200SE). These guys don't even know much about computers but they come along to a LAN party, play PC games all night and don't have any errors thanks to nvidia drivers, even though they do it once every two weeks (for about 4 months) They don't even have the latest drivers! The only problems they get are network issues and mouse problems

Im sure if you search around you will find plenty of people that don't liike ATI's drivers too. And nvidia has pretty good linux drivers as well. (although ATI are getting better: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=18017&page=1 )

Have you seen Supersize me? Yeah Mcdonalds is bad. People love the taste of it but in the end it is bad for them. How is that relevant anyway? LOL I hate mcdonalds sorry

The author of tweak guides is backing me up! He lives for tweak guides (literally, it is his income) and makes hardly any money but is very dedicated to writing guides in a very un-biased way(he has both nvidia and ati driver tweak guides, which are updated constantly). He started the site in 2004 and has been buying graphics cards for a very long time. If he thought nvidia was bad, he wouldn't keep buying them (with his last three cards being a 7800, 8800, and now GTX 285) and he is obviously very knowledgeable (he gets "around 700,000 unique visitors and 3 million page views a month on average"). He is a very devoted person. Read his FAQ page if you don't believe me: http://www.tweakguides.com/FAQ.html

And if all of this gets un-noticed from you then go looking for some hardcore nvidia fanboys who will just keep telling you nvidia is wonderful

Edited April 18, 2009 by Zenskas

[puntoMX]

[Most 8400GS board come with a small 40mm fan with almost no body of ALU. If you OC a nVidia card all I can say that you need to be careful if you OC the shaders separately; out of sync walking core and shader will give you a lot of problems and thus also the blue screens. If you try a card of the 2600/36x0/46x0/47x0/48x0/49x0 series you will see that all works way smoother on Vista and Win7, I still have to see a nVidia card that perform better, so not only FPS, than a ATI card . Also you need to compare the cards that are sold at this moment, so you need to compare a 49xx series card with the latest nVidia cards. Sure nvidia cards perform better at stock speed as they already go over their standard specs, thus they are really less stable. I must say that I sold a lot of 9600GT cards as they were the best pick back when they were released, but after that card I´ve found not much good from nVidia (stopped selling them also for the time being). It's also not for nothing that nVidia needed to rename their cards to make the crowd by the "latest" nVidia card while it was just a renamed version. note that I don´t have anything against nVidia cards besides their sloppy marketing, bad drivers and over the specs releases. By the way, Zxian from our MSFN team hated the ATI CCC too for a long time but he can´t stop to talk about the ATI card and it's drivers now .

I can't say much about the author of tweak guides, and it could be that he tries to speak in simple English to explain it to the crowd while the more knowledgeable ones place question marks about his writing, but he still needs to work on his knowledge (So do I, I don't know much about other OSes then the ones from Microsoft).

By the way, what happened to the OP?

[Zenskas]

The GTX 285 really is very stable and runs a lot cooler than the ATI 48xx series does. With the 4890 they had to ramp up the default fan speed, which in turn lead to more noise, just to get it from reaching 90C under heavy load! If nvidia are really running the cards out of spec then how come you can buy this: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?...Series%20Family Thats a pretty big overclock compared to the GTX 280 which ran at 602Mhz core. So if the GTX 280 ran at that, and from evga you can get a rebranded GTX 280 (285) and get that much of an overclock on the core and memory then how unstable would it be? It has a 702Mhz core (default is 648Mhz), 2646Mhz memory (default is 2484Mhz) and a 1584Mhz shader clock (default is 1476Mhz) Now if evga can go and sell that on the street with a warranty it must be a very stable card at stock clocks. I have seen plenty of 8400GS cards with no fan, you just got to pick the one with the best heatsink and there you go, no noise!

Yeah my 9600 GT is sweet! A slightly cut down 8800GT which is also a very popular card. Right now nvidias drivers are very good. I do not know if the 17x.xx series of drivers were good as I got the 180.48 drivers which came out just after I built the PC in my sig. Now I have the 182.50 drivers and they are rock solid. I have tons of games and graphically intensive apps on my PC and the drivers have not been at fault at all so far.

Author of tweak guides does get into more advanced stuff. If you read his tweak guides it has advanced tweaking sections (config file editing etc) so that the people who are more comfortable with their PC's can follow them.

Got no idea what happened to the OP, but I hope after all this he doesn't come along and say he went out and bought a Voodoo

Edited April 18, 2009 by Zenskas

[puntoMX]

The "GeForce GTX 285 FTW w/ EVGA Backplate" card has a higher voltage for the GPU and RAM so they sell you an already OCed and overvolted products. ASUS will release a HD4890 soon with a non stock cooler and I'm not surprised that it will beat even the GTX285 10%+ OC. The stock GTX285 is on par with a 5% OCed HD4890 any way.

Note that the HD4890 has a street price of 250USD and the GTX285 340USD witch in my eyes is still a huge price difference as for 90USD you can get a REAL quiet cooler like the Accelero twin turbo for less than 40USD. Still 50 bucks in your pocket .

[Zenskas]

Yes but the 4890 is louder than the 4850/70, still only runs as cool under load and hotter at idle as a quieter GTX 285 and is not as generally fast as a GTX 285. It would be better to compare it to a GTX 275 instead. Really, right now ati beats nvidia in value but nvidia beat ati in raw power. You gotta remember, the tables are always being turned. Nvidia have been in it pretty good though, as they also have Quadro FX, CUDA, Physx, 3D Vision, SLI (which came out before crossfire), ntune, telsla, good linux drivers, nicer looking website (hey, it all helps!), Purevideo, heck they even have an nvidia LAN party! And some pretty neat ads too (Geforce FX joke, nvidia priceless-look on youtube)

Now, my favorite color is actually red, I have bought ATI cards before, my 9600GT has a red PCB and red plastic cover so it could be mistook for an ATI card, my motherboard has three graphics card slots but only supports crossfire and not SLI so if I had some more cash to spend on video cards I probably would buy two ATI cards and run crossfire. At least I am not 'all for ATI' like coffeefiend seems to be:

"I moved to a nice Radeon and all the problems are solved! I wish I had never even bothered. No more nvidia garbage ever again, unless they're the very last manufacturer left and I have no choice at all. nvidia is also very well known for very poor drivers for other devices. I wouldn't want of a GTX 295 even if it was free."

Now I would definitely take a HD 4870 X2 for free no problems! Even a 3870X2 And put it in my PC. And install ATI drivers. And probably really like it cause it was free I'm not saying ATI are garbage either. Just that if you analyzed them both very closely, you could pick heaps of bad things from both companies. I like nvidia a little better though as they seem more popular, have a better naming system (ATI went from 7500's and 9700's etc to x800's and x1500's etc now HD 3000's etc) have the extra things in their drivers like Physx which is more used than Havok, and also have a large range of professional products plus the other things I said earlier in my post. If nvidia was garbage, there would be many people who use telsla and quadro products that would be very angry, quickly

I wish the OP would turn up and tell us what he is planning to do That would help a lot

EDIT: BTW punto is that blueorb 2 cooler good? Quiet? I want something better than the stock cooler so I can OC past 3Ghz

Edited April 18, 2009 by Zenskas

[CoffeeFiend]

At least I am not 'all for ATI' like coffeefiend seems to be

I value system stability, that's all. Nothing nvidia at any price will make me sacrifice stability by using it, no matter how fast or shiny it is. Not until they learn to make decent drivers anyhow. You can try to say their drivers are stable all you want (ditto for that one odd guy who backs you up), but LOTS of us know otherwise. I will sooner seek other alternatives, even including onboard Intel video (which is about a trillion more times stable than anything has to offer IMO).

BTW, most of the things on your list of "advantages" hardly are e.g. purevideo is a joke (it was half the reason I bought that nvidia card in the first place), and not the good kind! If anything, it very much belongs on the "cons" list (higher CPU usage than AVIVO and quality issues too, like improper handling of 1080i with 3:2 pulldown + very simple bob-deinterlace instead of the motion adaptative -- assuming you even manage to get purevideo to work!)

As for the OP, I don't think he'll bother coming back, so we've all been wasting our time

Edit:

"EDIT: BTW purevideo ain't that bad: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html...W50aHVzaWFzdA== "

Says a 3 year old article which doesn't reflect today's reality. Purevideo is worse than bad.

Also, if you think nvidia drivers are stable, than clearly you've only used XP (not Vista, much less Vista x64 -- and I don't see their drivers getting any better with Win7 either).

Dig around all you want to find the odd guy that supports your viewpoint (and more outdated articles), but tons of us know it's just NOT how things are. I'm quite frankly fed up to even discuss this, and I'm not going to bother anymore. nvidia makes decent hardware, but their drivers make it not worth the hassle. They're quite possibly the most troublesome of the bunch these days (much like everybody else around here knows). Feel free to claim they're actually usable (just like saying water isn't wet) all you want...

[Zenskas]

Yes but I have never had any issues with my drivers. Or any of my LAN gamer friends who have nvidia drivers and play all night. Or anyone else I personally know actually. And you have only said purevideo is not an advantage. Not 'most' of the things on my list. What else is bad? Physx can't be either is CUDA, 3D Vision, Quadro FX, SLI etc. And like I said, I would still use ATI if I wanted crossfire or got a free 4870X2

EDIT: BTW purevideo ain't that bad: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html...W50aHVzaWFzdA==

"The Bottom Line

Keep in mind these are Beta drivers and NVIDIA is working day and night to chase the bugs out. That said, the ForeWare v92.91 Beta driver and included PureVideo HD technology (To be released on 9/14/06 at nZone.) were extremely stable for me on all the systems we tested it on. There is fine tuning that needs to be done, but that is to be expected with Beta software. The HD DVD movie experience that I had on my PC was stellar and will actually make you wonder, “Just how much more detail do I want to see in Don Cheadle’s face?” "

Hmm, these were old beta drivers on a geforce 7 and purevideo works "extremely stable for me on all the systems we tested it on".

Or here: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2798&p=4

Where they took another early look and found CPU usage dropped by around 20% with beta drivers and an old geforce 7 with purevideo 1.

EDIT 2: Looking around I can see ATI drivers are not as great as you make them out to be:

http://forums.techgage.com/showthread.php?t=4500

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3501&p=10

"In spite of the potential advantages offered by the Radeon 4870 X2, we have qualms about recommending it based on our experiences since October with the introduction of Core i7 and X58 and the multitude of software titles that were released. Driver support just isn't what it needs to be to really get behind an AMD single card dual-GPU solution right now. The issue is less about what's out now and more about support for titles as they come out and fast responses to issues (which AMD can't provide). The 8.12 hotfix (that is listed as only necessary with 4850 CrossFire) actually has improved stability and performance on all the single and dual setups we've tested on Core i7. We haven't finished putting it through its paces, but so far this one is a real step in the right direction. Unfortunately it will be months before we see this hotfix rolled into a WHQL driver. We definitely recommend this hotfix at least to anyone using AMD hardware on Vista x64 with a Core i7 platform."

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/...-gtx-285-1gb/17

"At that price, it’s hard to beat but one has to remember that driver support is what feeds that card’s success – in games where the Radeon HD 4870 X2 scales poorly, so will the Radeon HD 4850 X2. And what concerns us more about the card is how long it has taken to get official driver support from AMD – a two month leadtime doesn’t exactly fill us with confidence for the future when new games are released."

Edited April 19, 2009 by Zenskas

[puntoMX]

EDIT: BTW punto is that blueorb 2 cooler good? Quiet? I want something better than the stock cooler so I can OC past 3Ghz

There are better but it's the best solid ALU (core CU) that ever has been made for the retail market as far as I know. I prefer coolers that blow over the motherboard to cool the voltage regulators and north bridge too... Living in Mexico doesn´t help when you like to buy the best products .

Till Monday, then we continue the "fight".

[rickytheanuj]

Thank you all of you guys for suggestions.. yes.gif