Need Video Card advice !!

[BLitzKrieG0187]

I am tring to decide whether or not I should get the new Geforce 3 Titanium 500, or the Radeon 8500 card in the near future. I like both of these cards because they are developed by major manufacturers and have plenty of good software tweaks for both Radeon and Nvidia cards. Right now, I am running a 32mb DDR 4xAGP Geforce 2 GTS card with the new XP 21 drivers. I like this card so far, especially after I used cool bits to tweak the clock frequency and core frequency up a tad, well actually a total of 121 Mhz with the core/clock frequency evened out. Anyways, both of these developers are the best video card developers in my opinion. When I look at the Radeon 8500 card, I see a nice 64mb DDR vid card at 250/275Mhz. When I look at the GeForce 3 Titanium 500, I see a nice 64mb DDR vid card at 240/500Mhz. My predicament is not the money part, I am not a rich boy, I will be willing to pay as much as I have to for new technology like this. My predicament is like this: By doing a little research, I have come to this conclusion........... The ATI Radeon 8500 vid card is superior to the GeForce 3 Ti 500 in terms of technology such as pixel shading, cleaner visuals, and all their truform technology. Technology is very impt., but the Geforce 3 Ti 500 has the raw power to push the numbers and obviously faster delivery of bandwidth and graphics. So should I go with state-of-the-art technology at a reasonably fast speed, or should I go with raw power with pretty advanced technology ?? If only the Radeon 8500 vid card had the core/clock frequency that the GeForce 3 Ti 500 has, then, I would definitely be going with the Radeon. Any opinions ??

[Kingslayer]

Put the benchmarks and the bias aside and look at it from a reasonable point of view and the choice becomes pretty clear.

Look at the price. ATI wins there hands down.

Look at the performance. Some say nVidia wins, some say the new Radeon does. I think it's too early to tell, but they are pretty close. We'll call it a tie.

Look at the longetivity. The ATI is designed for stuff that isn't even out yet. But so is the Gforce. However the Gforce is already a few months old, and in computer years, it's going to be obsolete sooner, and replaced sooner, than the Radeon. I would say the Radeon has the slight advantadge.

Also look at the performance of the add-on and bonuses of the card. In 2D the Radeon wins again. DVD...there isn't anyone out there that has better DVD support than ATI. TV in and OUT. I think the GForce has better picture quality than the Radeon in this area.

Look at support. Everyone says that ATI has horrible drivers. This is usually coming from someone who hasn't owned one in 3 years, but they do have that history. nVidia puts out new drivers every other week. I personally think this has got to be the biggest pain in the ass ever, but I will give them credit, they almost always offer a performance gain in them. Advantadge: nVidia.

Overclockability. While the GForce is a great overclocker, it's also a heat monster. People are watercooling them. Radeons can overclock decent and do it with a cheap little Blorb. The GForce3 will probably surpass the ATI in total GPU/Memory speed. But you do it at a heat price. Winner: I would say that the nVidia is the winner here except for that nasty heat. You're probably going to lose a PCI slot cooling that OC'd nVidia. I'm going to be fair and call this one a tie.

In the end, the nVidia is going to offer the best performance in the long run. But FPS isn't everything. And do you think that little extra gain, those 20 or so FPS are really worth $100 minimum extra?

If you want a good performer all around and at an affordable price, then the Radeon is the way to go. I think the picture quality is better and the color is more vibrant, but what do I know I'm color blind.

Put all these together and decide on your own. You can draw a pretty good conclusion on either card. If you want screaming FPS and don't care about the cost, get the GForce. If you want value, good performance, and great add-ons, get the Radeon.

Now for my personal opinion.....nVidia sucks.

This is my personal opinion has nothing to do with the comparison of these two cards. It is solely based on the fact that nVidia couldn't out perform 3DFX so instead of playing fair they bought them out and killed them off. This is chicken****.

[Cisco Kid]

Price to performance the ATI Radeon 8500 is it !!! $203 US how can you beat that from Dell if the pricew special is still on. Better 2d video and clarity/quality overall.

Cisco Kid:D

[Ritteri&Bubbles]

No way. THe Radeon compares similiarly with a Geforce 3(regular)with older Nvidia drivers. But Nvidia has always been/will always be 100% superior in sofware driver support. Nobody knows how to get more performance out of a card than the developers at Nvidia. Plus "Vibrancy" of colors as stated above vary from brand to brand with Nvidia Gforce cards. Also In this day EVERY Video card has great DVD/2D support, this shouldnt even be an issue.

Longevity issue, even though the "Gforce 3" is a few months old, the hardware between both cards is very similiar, and considering the Radeon is a newer card, there are still too many areas where it is still not as good(triangle fill rate/multi texture fill rate etc.), and now the new Ti500 is out which IS superior to the Radeon in terms of plain hardware.

But as I put it in another post, it doesnt matter how much horsepower your card is packing if it cant get it effectively to the pavement. And this is where Nvidia wins no questions asked. A bit more money, but worth it. And after using the Radeon 8500 with their current drivers, this card is showing me that a regular Geforce3 with 21.83 drivers is the better card on many games at 32bit color, and 1600x1200 res. There is a noticeable difference.