# ATI or nVidia

## seppe

Ok,

I posted this topic before, but I'm still not sure which one to chose. The situation is like this: I'm going to buy a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop in a few weeks and I can chose between these two cards

1.  ATI Radeon Mobile 9600 (128Mb)

2.  nVidia GeForce FX 5200 (64Mb)

The laptop will run Gentoo and Windows XP as well (I have to learn .NET at school). I would like to chose for the ATI card because it's the second best mobile graphic card you can find today (the best card is the Radeon Mobile 9700), but I heard that ATI's Linux driver don't even support 3D acceleration and that ATI's drivers totally suck under linux!

"ok, I go for the nVidia card' I thought, but then I read awful stories about people with that 5200 FX card whose glxgears scores are below 1000 and that it even performs worse then the MX-440 series (which I have currenlty at my desktop system).

Well, I really don't know which one to chose, so tell me ... which one would you chose?

(sorry for my crappy english)

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## HydroSan

nVidia's drivers are far supirior to ATI's drivers. Full OpenGL support, frequently updated and full support for both XFree and XOrg (which are the same thing, really), and many other things that ATI simply doesn't have.

For support, nVidia rocks. ATI has mostly always been faster, especially these days, but their driver support is shite.

I have an FX5200 in my other Gentoo box. It can run UT2004 at 1024x768 easily.

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## Imek

I'm with HydroSan, if you plan to run Linux, don't get an ATI card. Loads of people have problems with the drivers, especially in ut2004 recently. However, getting a 5200 might not be so wise in the long run. If you can, I recommend you get something a step or two up like the 5600 or even a 5900, it'll pay off in the long run. However, the 5200 isn't that bad. I have an mx440 for now, but I'm getting an fx5900 very soon. The mx440 gets about 2300 on glxgears, runs ut2004 fine on medium (towards low on big maps) detail and 1024 res.

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## stservers

I'll agree as well, I have an nvidia FX5200, a nvidia FX5900, and an ATI 9600, and the nvidia cards are far supierior in linux as far as support and drivers go.

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## ewan.paton

there are a fair few of these threads and the result is always nvidia drivers win by miles, unfortunatly the ati card is better{1} in terms of features and preformance but who cares i have 2 atis and cant get either to work. 

the best analogy is you have the choice of a ford or a bmw without an engine, if ati get round to sending you an engine great but the ford works almost as well with no risk 

{1} bear in mind you arent compairing similar chips, a 9600 is typicaly aimed at the fx5700 range

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## seppe

I know, but I can only chose between those 2 cards. I would go for the ATI, because it performs MUCH better than the nVidia card .... on Windows.

And because that laptop will run Windows XP as well, it's a difficult choice.

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## mallchin

I am having the same choice here and have come to the same conclusions. I have an nVidia 4800 that is still up to the job of running UT2004 in full detail but not as at higher resolutions as say, a 5950 Ultra, but I'm wondering if it's *really* worth the upgrade...

Can anyone verify the speed between the 4800 and any of the 5xxx range?

Also, what is this new Ati killer on the cards?

Edit:

Just read a review on nVidia's new 6800, I want one  :Twisted Evil:  Too expensive though...

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## ewan.paton

 *mallchin wrote:*   

> I am having the same choice here and have come to the same conclusions. I have an nVidia 4800 that is still up to the job of running UT2004 in full detail but not as at higher resolutions as say, a 5950 Ultra, but I'm wondering if it's *really* worth the upgrade...
> 
> Can anyone verify the speed between the 4800 and any of the 5xxx range?
> 
> Also, what is this new Ati killer on the cards?

 

my local pc shop still sells 4800s at a premium over many of the 5***  series because ti was faster quieter and better than anything below a 5700. most acnowlage that the 5*** was pretty pants compaired to ati for features if not speed. 

as to upgreading for god sake wait, the 6*** is almost out and it is fecking awsome with lots of cool toys like hardware mpeg4 encoding etc if nothing else all cards below it will drop in price

oh and if anyone reading me criticise the 5*** series thinks i recomend ati i dont, a slower chip that works is better than a fast one which doesnt have drivers

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## mallchin

 *ewan.paton wrote:*   

>  *mallchin wrote:*   I am having the same choice here and have come to the same conclusions. I have an nVidia 4800 that is still up to the job of running UT2004 in full detail but not as at higher resolutions as say, a 5950 Ultra, but I'm wondering if it's *really* worth the upgrade...
> 
> Can anyone verify the speed between the 4800 and any of the 5xxx range?
> 
> Also, what is this new Ati killer on the cards? 
> ...

 

Thanks for the advice, well thought out.

I bought my 4800 at a premium (silly me) just before the 5xxx range was released, and felt rather hard done by as it wasn't king of the herd for very long, but, having read this post I feel quite happy...

The card has lasted me a long time and still gives excellent performance, and skipping the 5xxx series means I get good use out of it and get to jump straight into the 6xxx Ati killers...

I think I'll wait until the 6xxx series is out and there have been some good comparative reviews to see which one is best and make my killing (hehe); Probably in time for Half-Life 2  :Twisted Evil: 

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## thepi

hmm seems that there are many nvidia otakus out here  :Smile: 

anyway, i can't agree that ati cards don't run under linux. nvidia is just ~2 years ahead on driver development, but ati's support seems to improve.

i have a radeon9000m in my acer tm800, works like a charm. i'm using xfree-drm tho (same speed as ati-binary). ut2004 on the other hand has graphical fragments on my system, didn't find out yet how to fix it. but it's the first game to have such problems, never had any with enemy territory etc.

so my hint would be to take the ati card, esp. if you dual boot anyway. face it, many games run under windows still, and unless you don't intend to use them under wine, the ati card is the better choice. if not, i'd still go with ati. despite the many bug reports the situation is improving, and you  still have the choice between xfree-drm & ati-binary.

edit: hmm according to some other posts the xfree drivers don't work (yet) for cards >9000

hth,

 pi~

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## HydroSan

 *thepi wrote:*   

> hmm seems that there are many nvidia otakus out here 

 

I have a good reason for switching to nVidia. Actually, three. 

I used to love ATI. ATI was my friend and saviour. I loved all of their products.

Until something happened.

I got a Radeon9000 Pro. It corrupted and died within three months. My 1-year warranty was voided. Apparently, if a product dies on you during warantee, your product is voided.   :Evil or Very Mad:  Strike one.

They replaced it with another 9000. It died in six months, aside from the fact the performance was shitty. Strike two. So I lost $200.

The third was when I bought a 9600Pro. OpenGL did not work on it, no matter how much I hacked the drivers. I lost another $200.

So, I said, "Well shit. ... Hey, all of my friends are recommending nVidia. I should try it." So I got an nVidia GeForceFX 5600 256MB Edition. Perfect performance, and not a single game crash yet.

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## mallchin

 *HydroSan wrote:*   

>  *thepi wrote:*   hmm seems that there are many nvidia otakus out here  
> 
> I have a good reason for switching to nVidia. Actually, three. 
> 
> I used to love ATI. ATI was my friend and saviour. I loved all of their products.
> ...

 

In the UK Ati would be obliged to replace the product during the first year if it develops a fault, irrispective of the extent (dead or not) by law. You guys don't have this?

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## jkcunningham

Well, just for the sake of defending ATI which seems to be getting slammed pretty good here, I have four gentoo machines with nVidia and ATI cards - one Radeon 8000, and three different cards with nVidia chipsets. None of them were particularly troublesome to set up, and the ATI outperforms all the nVidia cards. The ATI was actually a little easier to set up with the new 2.6.5 kernel than an nVidia card was (I only have 2.6.5 going on two of those four machines). The support can be built into the kernel and it didn't give me any problems at all. There's a thread on doing the ATI install with a 2.6.5 kernel somewhere in these forums if you look. 

I think my nVidia cards are all in the GeForce MX200/400 series, if that's relevant. 

I'd consider either viable. 

-Jeff

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## GenKreton

Not only do nvidia drivers beat the pants off ATI i acquired 2 systems around the same time, my ati card (32 mb bugger) died a few months ago but my ti4200 is still running, and its running utk4 at 1600x1200 normal and high gfx settings perfectly. Nvidias, in my experience, just last.

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## dkaplowitz

You might have a case for ATI if you were using it for Windows only. And if you were doing that, I'd say "eeeeeeuuw!"

I've heard lots of nightmare stories about nVidia drivers too, but for the most part they seem a lot more Linux/BSD friendly than ATI drivers. (What a weird, poorly documented PITA time I had getting my Radeon Mobility to work with Gentoo!) At least nVidia seems to acknowledge Linux/BSD exist and tries to provide current drivers and patch bugs in them. ATI didn't seem to mention much about the OSes on their site.

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## justanothergentoofanatic

Odd...I've used Matrox, ATI, and nVidia drivers and have never encountered a problem with any of them. They all seem to work equally well. I guess YMMV.

Durability and warranty service are going to depend on the invdividual reseller you purchase the card from, not the chipset manufacturer.

-Mike

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## Valen

There seems to be a cross over point for the ATI cards at 9000.  I have 2 ATI cards (actually 3, but I doubt you're interested in hearing about a 4meg Rage Pro), an All-In-Wonder Radeon and a 9500 Pro.

I have been really happy with the AIW, TV works, GL also performing as expected.  The 9500 is a different story, I was pretty happy when ATI released drivers.  I finally got the setup right after two days (both glxgears and flglxgears were looking good), as soon as I tried to run anything useful on the card I was greeted by an application crash and a flood of errors dmesg.

I've moved the 9500 card to a computer that doesn't need anything fancy, graphics wise, and replaced it with a 5200 FX.  It hasn't been entirely problem free (had some trouble with dual display), but for the most part the problems are solvable and the drivers are quite good as nearly everyone else has mentioned.

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