ATI Radeon or NVidia?

I’m having trouble deciding between these two cards. I’ve heard good and bad things about both of them. The Radeon appears to be the most powerful, but is also freaking expensive. The NVidia cards are much more affordable, but also seem to be less powerful. Anyone have any suggestions?

I’m pretty sure ATI is the better choice.

ATI.

Although i dont own it, i’ve seen the benchmark tests that show its much better than the current GeForces.

ATI ofcourse.

ATI Radeon, but I’m biased. I’ve always said ATI, mostly because the first GeForce card I had wasn’t compatible with my mainboard. And because I like all the ports on ATI cards.

If you look at raw force, it’s still ATI Radeon. Add price, and it becomes a little more of a competition. There are lots and lots of hardware tests out there, search on Google, and read them.

I’m going to say ATI, but then again, most people are biased when they talk about computer hardware. I suggest checking out Tom’s Hardware for information on computer parts. That site is absolutely amazing for comparing specs.

www.tomshardware.com give us all the answers we need.

The GeForce cards have lost ground to the ATIs as of late, so most people will say that ATI is the way to go right now. I think the industry is swinging their way, although it is very volatile.

You can probably find a 9600 at a very reasonable price somewhere, especially if there’s a sale.

You can find a 9600 for ~$150. Good deal. Last I saw, they were giving away copies of Half Life 2 when you buy a 9600.

Also, it’s important to know that not all video cards are made the same. While ATI and Nvidia manufacture the chipsets for their graphics cards, they don’t actually manufacture the cards themselves.

Instead, they sell the chipsets to manufacturers who in turn build the cards. Unfortuntately, some of these manufacturers use low quality parts in the construction of their cards, which keeps costs low, but sorta tricks consumers. Low price GeForce cards, for example, can be extremely suspect in quality. Some of them can be 20-30% slower than GeForce cards in the same line that cost just $20-40 more. Make sure you find reviews for any graphics card you’re considering buying before you buy it.

make sure you have an AGP port

Yea, green mage is right. If you see a card from a company that looks iffy, but is less expensive than one from a well known company, i’d go with the more expensive/well known card.

Being low on cash, i usually have to buy hardware from cheap companies, and i know from experience that they can ruin a good product with shoddy parts.

either probably, it’s most likely better than the POS that I have in my comp.

here’s the rundown… NVidea sells their chipsets and you have to watch for price/quality relationship. ATI does not however there are ontly two companies that produce ati cards at this time, ATI and sapphire, However buth cards are made by sapphire right now anyway and the sapphire cards are cheaper (tho they are the exact same card) so you’re better off with the sapphire for ATI. as for the debate between the two i like ATI, they’re stable, use hardware decoding as opposed to nvidea’s software decode. And ATI has much better 2d rendering (very important tho nvidea fanboys will say different).
In the end i say get a sapphire 9600 (pro and non-pro are the same cards just get the tweaking utility at rage3d.com and unlock the bios) it’s the best bang for your buck…although people like me get the 9700 for 150 canadian…gotta love having connections.