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Honest answer about ATI for an Nvidia guy please

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Lord Vader

Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
I've never had good luck with ATI stuff. Either the cards have underperformed or the drivers have been a mess.

I'm building a new machine and price/performance ratio the ATI seems like the better choice.

My question is, are there still all sorts of weird and wonky driver issues with ATI stuff?

Are they as good at physics and CUDA as the Nvidia stuff?

The cards I'm comparing fwiw are the GTX 560 and the Radeon 6870
 
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As far as drivers, there are occasional problems with both camps, so non issue there.

ATI cards do not run PhysX, only Nvidia's will.

Make sure you are looking at the 560ti as I believe the 6870 will handily beat a regular 560.
 
Drivers are equally messy on both sides, don't worry about that.

PhysX and CUDA are nvidia proprietary things, nvidia doesn't allow anybody else to run them.
That said, ATI cards are excellent at calculating physics stuff, it just has to be a different engine (Havok is the most common). PhysX isn't actually special at all these days.
 
Good balanced points from Bobnova and Earthdog.

Essentially it goes something like this:
560 - 6870 - 560 Ti - 6950 - 570.

Just buy whatever you can, really.
 
560Ti 448 Core is right in between the 6950 and the 570.

560Ti 448 - 570 - 6970 - 580 - 590 - 6990 - 7970

I didn't include the 448 core 560 Ti as it's really just a GTX 570, with a very similar price to boot (in the UK it costs about the same as a 570 as well).
 
The cards I'm comparing fwiw are the GTX 560 and the Radeon 6870

I'm a non-denominational GPU guy. I have both, love both, and believe those two companies make each other great.

Among several others, I have an XFX 6850 and MSI Hawk 460GTX, both max clocked, and if I swap them in the same machine on the same game you cannot tell a difference. Zero.

That said, between those two quoted I'd go with the 6870 solely based on price. 6870s are pretty easy to find around 140
 
CUDA is nvidia's proprietary thing, opencl is the AMD equivalent.

I thought OpenCL is the opensource expansion of the OpenGL standard for GP compute tasks, which can by physics or whatever you progran to use it????

I got my 6870 to replace a GTX460 recently as I was getting shocking artifacting in Battlefield 3 and it was driving me nuts. With the AMD 6870 on the other hand I found that I had to do a custom install of the drivers and leave out ATI Catalyst. There was a reg hack posted on here earlier this week which allowed it to run as it requires .Net4 Framework, however I found it would occasionally freeze running games. Just install the bare drivers and leave out the management rubbish, you don't need it anyway.
 
OpenCL is a direct competitor with CUDA, but OpenCL is open source, so nvidia can use it a well as AMD and anybody else who wants to.
 
There was a reg hack posted on here earlier this week which allowed it to run as it requires .Net4 Framework, however I found it would occasionally freeze running games. Just install the bare drivers and leave out the management rubbish, you don't need it anyway.

Said hack can be found here-->http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=695707 ;)

OP:
Why don't you wait for the affordable 7xxx series of AMD GPUs to roll out before making a purchase? You will either find the card you need or the 6xxx cards will drop in price. Either way it is a win for you.
 
Why don't you wait for the affordable 7xxx series of AMD GPUs to roll out before making a purchase? You will either find the card you need or the 6xxx cards will drop in price. Either way it is a win for you.

A much better idea. If you can wait a little longer its worthwhile. Get more for your $
 
I didn't want to reply, but i had to because of some people.

1: 6870 handily beats a 560?. Please! Go ahead and show how HANDILY it does that. Fanboy indeed.

2: PhysX isn't special at all. Really?. How high are you? Along came games like Batman and then people like YOU vote it the GAME OF THE YEAR!.

3: Nvidia drivers bad?. FFS! Lets see this year. I had no issue. 0, NOLLA!. The only issue i saw was some people having issues with their 560Ti' BIOS. THAT'S IT!. No driver issues what-so-ever and i saw plenty of angry AMD fans who were bashing the called Catalyst.
 
I didn't want to reply, but i had to because of some people.

1: 6870 handily beats a 560?. Please! Go ahead and show how HANDILY it does that. Fanboy indeed.

I don't really care about overall performance anymore. But the cheapest 6870 is $20 cheaper than the cheapest 560 on Newegg. You want to talk about fanboyism... Had you read the thread, you would know it's not about absolute power. Oh and ATI/AMD has that crown too. You read about the 7970 lately?

2: PhysX isn't special at all. Really?. How high are you? Along came games like Batman and then people like YOU vote it the GAME OF THE YEAR!.

I now know one title that utilizes PhysX processing. I'd like to see a bit more research before you proclaim PhysX as the end-all-be-all to physics processing. Oh, and I didn't vote for GOTY, but if I had though, it wouldn't have been Batman...

3: Nvidia drivers bad?. FFS! Lets see this year. I had no issue. 0, NOLLA!. The only issue i saw was some people having issues with their 560Ti' BIOS. THAT'S IT!. No driver issues what-so-ever and i saw plenty of angry AMD fans who were bashing the called Catalyst.

I have not only used, but I currently own both brands and have no issues with drivers from either. It has already been shown that driver support from either brand is a moot point.
 
Why don't you wait for the affordable 7xxx series of AMD GPUs to roll out before making a purchase? You will either find the card you need or the 6xxx cards will drop in price. Either way it is a win for you.

Being a severe cheapskate I third this idea! The 7970 is already out, so you're probably looking at a decent price break on 69xx cards in a month or so, and 68xx prices will dive.
 
I didn't want to reply, but i had to because of some people.

1: 6870 handily beats a 560?. Please! Go ahead and show how HANDILY it does that. Fanboy indeed.

2: PhysX isn't special at all. Really?. How high are you? Along came games like Batman and then people like YOU vote it the GAME OF THE YEAR!.

3: Nvidia drivers bad?. FFS! Lets see this year. I had no issue. 0, NOLLA!. The only issue i saw was some people having issues with their 560Ti' BIOS. THAT'S IT!. No driver issues what-so-ever and i saw plenty of angry AMD fans who were bashing the called Catalyst.

Chill dude, you're the only person to get upset on here so far or advote one brand over another, so your comment sounds a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

I don't care what brand someone buys. My last two cards were nVidia, my current is AMD. I've had issues with both brands. As for the current AMD drivers they're fine. The Catalyst software on the other hand is a complete bucket of ****e. The easy work-around? Don't install Catalyst (or AMD Vision, whatever they're now calling it), just the drivers. Works perfectly without it.

EDIT: Just checked, the component that gives me grief is AMD Vision Engine Control Centre. Install everything and leave that bit out and you're fine.
 
From sig: "2x Delta PFC1212DE-PWM 253CFM fans"

Most awesome cooling mod ever. You could cool a thermite fire with that. Doesn't it sound like a B52 though?
 
I said to hell with nvidia a while ago when I caught the driver using a bit over a gigabyte of ram. I call that an issue, personally.

I have messed around with physx, there is absolutely nothing involved in it that could not be simulated quite nicely on an AMD card, or even a sufficiently powerful CPU. My bet is that Nvidia pays companies to use physx.
 
From sig: "2x Delta PFC1212DE-PWM 253CFM fans"

Most awesome cooling mod ever. You could cool a thermite fire with that. Doesn't it sound like a B52 though?

Lol, maybe. They are a little noisy though this is my main/gaming rig so I'm wearing a headset whenever its in use. The fans minimal speed is 1,550RPMs at which they're not really that much noisier than stock. They're PWM controlled so the controller built into the H100 base plate can control them just fine. I keep it on the lowest performance setting as even at minimal RPMS these fans are pushing 70CFM..... The stock H100 fans top out at 90CFM so it works out quite well.

If you're interested you can get them here: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/140567023940

They draw power straight from your PSU so they won't blow your mainboard headers. One connector for fan speed control, another for power. :attn:

Not necessarily the best, there are guys on here with 300CFM Sanyo Denki fans :D

I said to hell with nvidia a while ago when I caught the driver using a bit over a gigabyte of ram. I call that an issue, personally.

I have messed around with physx, there is absolutely nothing involved in it that could not be simulated quite nicely on an AMD card, or even a sufficiently powerful CPU. My bet is that Nvidia pays companies to use physx.


The driver for my old GTX460 was doing that.... Didn't really worry me though. I've 8GB RAM and I'm yet to see more than 3GB used in the system tops. The artifacting in BF3 was the thing I couldn't handle, so I switched.

Likewise, I'm using a 32" TV for my computer screen. I learned after buying that the listed max res is not the same as the screens native res. If you want a telly to look good as a computer screen you use the native res, which is significantly lower than you'd normally use. I prefer it though, I can actually see who's shooting me now.... Almost any card will run a TV at native res set to Ultra detail in BF3.
 
From a performance standpoint, i have no comments, as i haven't been on the GPU scene recently.

That being said, my 4850 has given me ZERO trouble with anything. No driver issues, no temperature issues, nothing. Still going strong today, and i could go out and pick up used a 4870 and drop it in in Crossfire if i needed a bit more performance.

Recently built an Nvidia computer. It already had a GTX 460 in it, so i figured "Might as well reuse it, and grab another 460 and run them in SLI." Ordered another 460, same brand, same memory, everything. Drop it in, go looking for the SLI tab... not there. Why? Nvidia silently added a V2 to the GTX 460. ONLY difference in the memory bandwidth, but they can't be SLId. No mention of this ANYWHERE on the box or the site.

Now, these are both with older hardware... i've always been a red guy, but i've used perfectly good computers with Nvidia GPUs... i say keep an eye out for a good deal, and grab whatever you find. Both sides have driver issues, performance is all over the place on both sides (I think AMD is a bit more power efficient though), and size isn't really an issue. I vote grab the first card that'll do what you want for a good deal :)
 
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