I am in the market for a new desktop system and can't decide on the graphics card? What are your experiences? What would you recommend? ATI or nVidia?

The difference between the two isn't earth-shattering. They perform similarly enough that you should base your decision on other things, such as fan noise, size, etc. These are premium cards, and you'll be paying a premium price for them.

I have an ATI Radeon on my office computer (cost reasons) and is fine for general activities. My home system is nVidia GeForce 4 (ASUS EN6600GTX/Silencer 256MB) and with the current mainboard and CPU it performs extremely well. Have been running some of the top computer intensive games at full resolution (1280x1024( and features maxed out and not a glitch with it. At the time it was the best I could afford and prices have since dropped so you could go for the Nvidia 4 GeForce 6800 series.

Forgot to mention, the Silencer version that I have has no fans and uses a large rotatable (finned) heat sink so is totally quiet and no heat problems with it.

Edited August 6, 200619 yr by tywais

From what I've read the 7950 has the edge right now

The 7950 is already SLI on the one card so if you were to get a 2nd 7950 then you'd have a dual SLI (equivalent of 4 cards!)

One thing to beware of is that the top of the line cards are by far the biggest power drains in your PC. Both Nvidia & ATI cards routinely draw 100w each. So having 2 of these in a PC means 200w so get the best PSU you can get

The next graphics card from these companies may well be external cards with external PSUs!!

I'd go for Nividia. Only because that is all i have ever used and have never had a problem.

Edited August 6, 200619 yr by Jockstar

You'd probably have to go with a 500W or better PSU from a reputable maker (Enermax, etc) for these top of the line cards.

Tywais didn't mention exactly *what* ATI Radeon he was using, and there is a huge difference between generations and chips.

I have an ATI and have no problems with it. I currently see no real advantage to going for either brand, based on the brand itself.

You'd probably have to go with a 500W or better PSU from a reputable maker (Enermax, etc) for these top of the line cards.

Tywais didn't mention exactly *what* ATI Radeon he was using, and there is a huge difference between generations and chips.

The ATI Radeon I have for the office is a X550 256MB (VGA, DVI) for about 2,300B. I don't need cutting edge for the office but reasonable performance for some large photoshop editing and program development including electronic design and simulation. Budget constraints limited me here.

However for my home, the 6600GTX cost me about 8000B which was my budget limit at the time and as I mentioned before, handles everything I have thrown at it.

Also, I chose NVIDIA this time due to reviews. If the reviews reflected ATI as top for the purpose I use it for I would have gone ATI. So as Firefox says, either will perform well for most purposes. If you do go for the top end, multi-GPU (SLI) etc, a good brand power supply is crucial.

In my case I have a Cooler Master True Power 450W supply but the Enermax is also good.

You can see my construction here: Construction Steps

hi'

N'Vidia all the way since years, they always have a good advance upon Ati,

and for Linux it's the same

so far the latest N'Vidia card this 7950 is the best on the market, and no need to use sli, it has a dual core already, surely fast enough

francois

I'd choose nVidia as well. They have an excellent history of driver maintenance. Better than ATI's.

Just my two satangs.

--Lannig

I would also vote for nVidia, and I used to be a big ATI fanboy. As previously mentioned, nVidia's drivers are more robust, get updated more frequently, etc. (Linux is another big reason I migrated over). ATI DOES have better image quality, especially with their filtering techniques, but I've seen to many issues in regards to getting their stuff working. Perhaps with AMD buying them, the quality will go up, since I have nothing against their hardware.