ex-ATI owner, why I went with the 6800 Ultra

J

jonesad

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 23, 2004
Messages
185
Hello All,
I just thought I would throw this in for anyone debating which next card purchase they might make. Basically, I was an ATI supporter through the last 2 generations and have always liked their cards a little better. Well, with Doom 3 on the way, I knew it was time to get a card to replace my 9800 XT 128meg. Well, initialliy I was sure I would get the X800XT so I started looking for it. This card was nowhere to be found. So then, I started reviewing benchmarks closley and I found that Nvidia may have closed the gap in performance (finally, since the Geforce TI4200 days). So, long story short, the Doom 3 benchmark came out, and that was it...I had made my choice. I'm sure that these cards will be neck in neck, with the X800 series winning in Half Life 2. But as far as availability and having the best performer in Doom 3...I had to order my 6800 Ultra. It will be interesting to be in Nvidia's camp now...guess I'll test the waters and if I don't like it, I'll get an X800XT when the "really" become available.
 
the deal is even tho ATI wins hl2, hl2 doesnt need the power that doom 3 does.. so once you get to the newest generation cards the fact that ati is better makes no difference. As far as availability goes and such Nvida probably is the best choice right now.
 
ahhh, who cares, just buy whatever is better, no need to state that your an ex-ATI owner or a ex-Nvidia owner, i really could careless, i just buy wtf ever i think is best at the time, i have no love for any company by name, just product a good product and i will buy it.
 
I had the last two gen ati cards also,but i have NEVER liked ati.I pretty much had to talk myself into giving ati another chance after i had waisted money on the original first gen radeon.people either seem to forget how bad ati drivers used to be,or they just werent born in that era.Im not an nvidia fan,but over the years nvidia has proven to be more reliable.I admit ati wooped nvidia last two gens,but ati's track record is worse.
 
ny555soul said:
I had the last two gen ati cards also,but i have NEVER liked ati.I pretty much had to talk myself into giving ati another chance after i had waisted money on the original first gen radeon.people either seem to forget how bad ati drivers used to be,or they just werent born in that era.Im not an nvidia fan,but over the years nvidia has proven to be more reliable.I admit ati wooped nvidia last two gens,but ati's track record is worse.
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true, i have an 9800 pro and the drivers are bs.. pain in the butt to setup dual monitors. It seems as thought ATI cards get confussed with which monitor is which.
 
I had a simular problem,i wasnt doing dual monitors,but i had a monitor that had vga,and dvi.For some reason the 9700 would not detect the dvi connector by itself.I had to hook up both vga,and dvi,and when i got into windows i had to select the dvi portion.It was weird,and i never did fix it.But that is just one of many reasons i really dont like ati.Another reason i dont like ati,is that back in the day,when the original radeon was out,ati didnt support dx 6,I waited months before they emailed me a beta version driver that supported dx 6 and even still that card ran like @$$.
mjz_5 said:
true, i have an 9800 pro and the drivers are bs.. pain in the butt to setup dual monitors. It seems as thought ATI cards get confussed with which monitor is which.
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My opinion: buy the best bang for your buck. So there.
My experience started with an ati rage chip with 2mb cache ON the motherboard. My first 3d was with that and the original voodoo 1 addon/pass thru card (14 fps 640x480 quake 2...) Even then the quality of the ati was better than my friend's Riva.
My first experience with nvidia was a great one - upgraded to a cel 333/LX chipset/Mx300 and the original TNT card (quake 2 suddenly could be done in 1024x768...) I went on to buy the original geforce, then a geforce 2 gts - that had enough umph for a long time, that I didnt upgrade until my motherboard crapped out on me (last time I think I'll buy an ECS) The biostar board I now have doesnt support that Guillemont/hercules Gf 2 gts, or I would prolly still run it. I then upgraded to a 9600 ati. Hmm, the visual quality was better and the frame rates are good. And it was cheap. At present the ati 9800pro seems to still be the best bang for buck in the field.
Now I look at the present vid cards and see the new x800 and 6800 series. At this time, it seems the 6800 series is showing to be a better choice. I'll wait and see what happens when Half Life 2 pops up to see which performs best. NOTE: ever since nvidia bought 3dfx and got their proprietary GL driver software, they have had a blatant advantage to the other manufacturers with the games that rely on GL. I doubt they ever will loose that advantage. In the past nvidia did better in GL and ati did better in Direct X. Will that change? Perhaps with this new series of cards, but the "victor" cannot be called quite yet. Personally I hope that ATI,Nvidia, and hopefully other manufacturers continue to be competitive with each other. As long as that is the case, the customer will be the winner, as the prices will not be as high (tho 500 for a vid card is a big chunk of change) and the eye candy will be grand. (Compare the vid card chip vs. a cpu. Considering that they are nearly equal in complexity, one can see why a vid card manufacturer wishes he/she could ask for the price of a high end cpu.)
 
mjz_5 said:
true, i have an 9800 pro and the drivers are bs.. pain in the butt to setup dual monitors. It seems as thought ATI cards get confussed with which monitor is which.
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Huh I have a 9700pro and dual monitors going, and it was a BREEZE to set it up...hell I even have my 32inch TV hooked up Svideo too. Just gotta be smarter then the advanced options :p

DASHlT
 
HvyMtl said:
NOTE: ever since nvidia bought 3dfx and got their proprietary GL driver software, they have had a blatant advantage to the other manufacturers with the games that rely on GL. I doubt they ever will loose that advantage. In the past nvidia did better in GL and ati did better in Direct X. Will that change?
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Umm...NO.

3dfx's proprietary gl driver was called Glide...a different API than OpenGL...and Nvidia's OpenGL driver has nothing to do with that...the only advantage Nvidia has is that ATi hasn't put any effort into thier OpenGL drivers in years and it basically sucks...they are now completely rewriting it (because they know it sucks) so it could get better...but like I said, it's already been years, so who knows...
 
DASHlT said:
Huh I have a 9700pro and dual monitors going, and it was a BREEZE to set it up...hell I even have my 32inch TV hooked up Svideo too. Just gotta be smarter then the advanced options :p

DASHlT
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well, i got it to work, but to much messing around.. you shouldn't have to work for your video card, it should work for you!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I was a die hard 3dfx'er untill I went for drivers one day and got blown away with the news. Heck I still have a voodoo5500 hidden away, want to mess with its T-buffer as soon as I know how. (Hey I thought the T-buffer was cool...)

Heh, only prog that ive ever seen that used the T-buffer was an old q3test reverend from beyond3d hacked up to enable motion blur.

(hears a voice whisper, what the crap is this guy talking about)
 
i used hydravision to set up dual monitors with the 9000 im testing...its easy to setup but no where near the features of nview. id take nview anyday.
 
KoDt said:
the deal is even tho ATI wins hl2, hl2 doesnt need the power that doom 3 does.. so once you get to the newest generation cards the fact that ati is better makes no difference. As far as availability goes and such Nvida probably is the best choice right now.
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There is NO solid evidence of this anywhere that ATI wins HL2. There is an alpha floating around showing the X800 PE and 6800U @ same FPS @ 1600x1200. that's all there is to go by for now.
 
DASHlT said:
Huh I have a 9700pro and dual monitors going, and it was a BREEZE to set it up...hell I even have my 32inch TV hooked up Svideo too. Just gotta be smarter then the advanced options :p

DASHlT
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Yeah I agree...the ATI drivers made it so easy to set up dual monitoring...plus the drivers themselves are great...I personally have not used the 3rd party ones like the Omega's or DNA's...but then I have never had a problem with the ATI official releases...admittidly I am still on the 4.6's at the mo...
 
Just be glad you got 1 of the 2 fastest cards out :)

(At the performance that these cards are showing, I don't think you'd be able to REALLY tell a diffrerence between an XTPE or an Ultra.)
 
Smart choice, it seems the 6800 series is the best bang for the buck with the best performance/price/features ratio this gen.
 
ATI's drivers I have always hated.

NVidias drivers have always been rock solid.

I have had 3 ati cards, and 3 nvidia cards.
 
your all buying the wrong card, wait a 3 more months and get a 512mb version of these. carmack plainly states you must have a 512mb card to play doom3 in ultra settings.
 
Shane said:
your all buying the wrong card, wait a 3 more months and get a 512mb version of these. carmack plainly states you must have a 512mb card to play doom3 in ultra settings.
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The only difference between ultra and super high is not using texture compression...which hardly makes a visual difference...if you're waiting for 512meg cards you're going to be waiting a long time for a very expensive card that you won't use the full potential of for atleast 6 months to a year...unless you just wanna disable texture compression altogether for the fun of it...
 
I also just bought an nVIDIA card after a long hiatus since the GF4 Ti-4200 days. The card I bought is a BFG 6800GT and I must say it's a sweet card.

Unless ATi cleans up their OpenGL driver issues, I think nVIDIA will reign in all those games that will be based off the Doom 3 engine.
 
Nexx said:
ahhh, who cares, just buy whatever is better, no need to state that your an ex-ATI owner or a ex-Nvidia owner, i really could careless,
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well you obviously do somewhat care because you took the time to post in his thread.

also, the last time I checked, it isnt against the rules to post your opinion about a video card on this forum which is actually what the thread starter did. he posted his opinion and nothing more so let the man be...
 
probabely both but who knows nothing has been announced. They probabely wont be until next year. You can hardly find these new cards in stores or online (memory shortage I hear). So u really think they are going to slap 512 on in 3 months. Maybe for over 1K, the good news is the price of the 256 cards will drop, thats when Ill buy
 
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