NVIDIA or ATI???

CDsDontBurn

I'm starting to piece together a machine for my sister, and i'm trying to decide on three different video cards. A 7900GS, 7900GT, and an ATI 1900GT. The price difference between the two NVIDIA cards is what has me deciding which card I want to get her. I'm not sure if my wallet loves her enough to get the more expensive yet better perfoming of the two. That is my dilema there.

However, the ATI card I know is intended to compete with the 7900GS, and in many instances it out performs it. Currently it is on sale for $173.99, which is only a few dollars more than the 7900GS. That makes me lean toward that card as it would the card right in the middle of the two as far as performance goes. Regularly, the x1900GT card is at $200, which is right smack in the middle of the two NVIDIA cards, which for me is a good price point as far as performance goes.

Other things that may have a deciding factor in the purchase is if i want to be dealing with the CCC or the new NVIDIA control panel. IMO, I'll take the new NVIDIA control panel over the CCC any day as it does not consume 100Mb (extremely over exaggerated i know) of system RAM.

Any opinions on the matter would be greatful .

Arklon

Or, you could get the X1950 Pro. Best bang for the buck right now.

As for CCC... just get modded drivers and ATI Tray Tools.

fobis

does your sister play a ton of games or something to really need that nice of a video card????

CDsDontBurn

Yes she does.

She just bought Guild Wars, and she wants to play UT2K4, BF2, HL2, Doom 3, and Black & White 2 are some of the games i can think of off the top of my head that she wants to play. I'm sure there are other games, and i'm sure there will be games that will be coming out that will spark her interest.

fobis

wow. haha.
i'm more of an nvidia guy myself, so i'll say go for the 7900GT and use DHzer0point drivers.
but... that ATi card does sound like a good deal, so i guess if she doesn't mind you overclocking it, you could be cheap and get that and overclock it.

CDsDontBurn

well, that's one of my issues i'm having right now. originally i was going to get just the 7900GS, but then somebody told me that the x1900GT was better than the 7900GS, but then i started thinking about the 7900GT. The price difference between the 7900GS and 7900GT is ~$55, and the x1900GT is right in the middle of the two price wise. I myself prefer NVIDIA as well, but honestly, I'll go for whoever has the better product at the better price point. That being the case, if my only two options were the 7900GS and the x1900GT, i'd pick the x1900GT. But, i'm in the position where i can afford the 7900GT, but my thing about that is that i'm not sure if i want to spend that kind of money on a card for my sister,

fobis

but isn't the performance jump between a 7900GS and a 7900GT pretty big?

Tipstaff

Truthfully, all 3 are about the same in performance, with the 7900GT and X1900GT bouncing back and forth in performance. Just depends on the game, the rez, and the features being run. I have to agree with Arklon though. The X1950 would be the better choice over the X1900GT, and in most cases faster than all 3.

However, do yourself a favour, and don't buy the HIS X1950 Pro cards. I'm finding they are clocked way too high, and keep crashing. If you do get one stick with cards clocked no higher than 600mhz. If I had to do it all over again I'd go with the Powercolor card (which has an AC Acelero slapped on it), or the Gigabtye one (which has a Zalman cooler). Not to say I don't like these ones, that it takes some tweaking to get them balanced.

ET3D

How old is she? Can I date her?

Regarding the card, I tend to lean towards ATI, and I figure that in the long run the ATI will be better. ATI has a general purpose API for the X1x00, while NVIDIA only has one for the 8800, so if physics (or other game calculations) transitions more to the GPU, that'd likely make a difference. I have a feeling that'd also be true for future graphics, but less to back it up with.

CDsDontBurn

@ Fobis: yes, the performance difference is quite a big one. the 7900GS has 20 pipes, 500/1380 speeds, while the 7900GT has 24 pipes and 500/1500 speeds. quite a significant difference there.

@ Tipstaff: The settings she'll be playing games at will be 1280x1024 @ 60Hz as that is the maximum settings her LCD can run at monitor wise. I'm sure she'll want to have some AA/AF turned up as the card she'll have will be able to support it in basically any game out right now. Performance wise, where does the x1950pro sit at? For the price, i would assume it's not better than than the 7900GT ?

@ ET3D: she's 17, and you can if you don't mind me shaperoning (sp?) you guys everywhere. But you can only date her if you've filled out my "date my sister questionare" and on top of that, SHE still has the final say after a successful interview with me .

Regarding the cards, i'm not biased toward either. I'm just looking at who can give me the best performance at the price range i'm in. I can afford the 7900GT, but i'm not sure if i want to spend that much money on it for my sister. Another thing that has me concerned is how will the AMD take over of ATI affect any future support of ATI cards?

Tipstaff

Anandtech did a pretty good review of the card, which you can read right HERE, where they compared it to a whole slew of cards (the review shows the X1950 Pro compared with 10 other cards + their SLI/Crossfire setups). Although all the tests were done in 1600x1200 you can sort of make out how the card does at 1280x1024 (which is also the same rez my monitor runs at too).

What I've noticed, and what the Anandtech article shows, is that with no Anti-Aliasing or Anisotropic Filtering turned on the X1950 Pro is pretty much in line with the other 3 cards we've been discussing; sometimes ahead, sometimes behind. However, as soon as you turn on AA/AF the X1950 Pro is ahead of the others almost all the time on a card vs card basis.

jp306

I've been shopping for a card for my brother and I went with a XFX 7900GS XXX 600/1600. It set me back $215 shipped($195 after rebate) from newegg. I could of got the GT(about the same price) or the 1950pro cheaper, but He plays games at 1024x768 or at most 1280x1024 and the XFX 7900GS XXX 600/1600 is faster than a stock GT. Power Consumption was also a reason I went with the GS, cause I didn't want to get him a new PSU too. As you can see from the link the GT and GS are very close in performance at the same speeds and after adding 150mhz to the core and almost 200mhz to the ram the GS is better IMO.

http://www.3davenue.com/1688.html


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150209

CDsDontBurn

@ Tipstaff: Great review! I think that you just made me decide what to get . Now, does Sapphire make the x1950pro card? Oh well, i'll look into that one myself, if not, i'll get the Gigabyte one. I didn't know the x1950pro had so much umph! In many of the tests there, i was surprised how much better the card was even over the 7900GT.

@jp306: I saw the review you put up, but the problem i have w/factory overclocked cards, is that they're still overclocked. overclocking generally leads to greatly decreased life span. I see that all the time at work. The only reason why the 7900GS card you picked up can perform on par w/the 7900GT is because of the higher clock speeds. If you were to OC the 7900GT by the same amount of Mhz, the 7900GT would still come out ahead.

Edit:
I just saw NewEgg, and they don't have any cards by Sapphire . The two cheapest ones are by Powercolor, $199, and by Gigabyte, $205, currently out of stock. It also appears that there is a BBA x1950pro, but that one goes for $269 (before rebate). I'm not sure wheather or not i like the AC cooler on the Powercolor, and the Zalman looks a bit bulky on the Gigabyte model. I much rather like the old style AC coolers found on the x800 series ATI and 6x00/7x00 series NVIDIA cards

Judas

IMO ATI... i'm still unhappy even with the 8800 series nvidia cards... i me they perform beyond reasonably faster..... but i still find the ati card produces the overall better image.

Reguardless:

Here do this:


Install ATI drivers and CCC

restart and load up CCC

Uncheck Hot Key Poller and then uncheck Show SysTray icon.

Which in turn should result in a single CLI.exe in the startup process (leave it there as removing it will disable auto 3D clocks resulting also in low performance, this applies to xt for overdrive and non XT cards without overdrive but still use a hidden 3D clocks vs 2D clocks settings)

Anyways, result should be 2 CLI.exe instances both peaking @ 20mb but after startup is fully finished, about 3mb each resulting in ~> 40mb combined startup and 7ish mb completed)

CLI.exe is quite efficient now, and moreso yet when .net 3.0 is fully utilized. Fast as hell, takes about 2 seconds for CCC to show up if it's never been loaded before.

CDsDontBurn

So where do i find this "hot key poller" at?

Judas

Imageshack is down apparently and i can't use the message boards Upload/attachment features

odd

jp306

Yes OCing does shorten the lifespan of a card, but XFX Cards have a "Double Lifetime Warranty" so if or when it fails you would get a replacement card. The XFX 7900GS XXX card is faster than most GT's not on par with them, but of course if you where able to OC a GT to about the same speeds it would be faster. But there are no guaranties when it comes to OCing unless it is factory overclocked. That said you could get an open box standard 7900GT with a standard newegg and manufacturer warranty for around $200.

CDsDontBurn

the NVIDIA based card i'd get will be an EVGA card. AFAIK, the "double liftetime warranty" policy of XFX means that the original buyer of the card has the warranty, and if you were to sell it off to somebody, the warranty would transfer over to the next buyer. At least that's how it works to my understanding. EVGA's warranty does not transfer over to the next owner, but they do have a lifetime warranty as well.....provided that you are the original buyer of the EVGA card.

my point is, if i'm going NVIDIA, i'll be buying EVGA.

@ Judas: thanks for the screenie .

The_Neon_Cowboy

what about a used X1900XT? or simular?

IamLakota

Best Buy has the 7900GS for 149.00 this week,you could get 2 for SLI CDs.

CDsDontBurn

i already picked up the MoBo. It's an MSI NEO-4 nForce 4 chipset board. I'm going to my friend's house to use his PCI-E gfx card to get the board to post. I already have everything, but the gfx card. I've been thinking about it still, but ATM, i'm thinking i'm going to go w/the Power Color x1950Pro. But a quick check on new egg, and they have raised the price of the card 20 bux. not sure if i want to go w/that card anymore. also checking for the x1950pro series cards, i saw that sapphire had one there on newegg. i'm thinking of that one now, but it's out of stock ATM. it's cool for now, but i hope it's listed when i go to buy the card.