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Choosing a video card (GF vs. Radeon)

I have spent some time researching what video card to get. I have finally selected an nVidia card and an ATI card, which have similar specs and prices. The trouble I am having is deciding which one is better. After trying forever to find direct comparisons online with benchmarks, I've noticed most review sites can't agree on which has the higher 3DMark score.

So, here are the two cards I have picked:

- GeForce 7950 GT 512MB
- Radeon X1900 XT 512MB

I'm really not interested in completely changing my choices unless you can provide me with a compelling reason to do so. Also note I want to keep the price of the card around $300. I will stretch to $320-330 if there is a good enough reason.

I am simply trying to decide which card is better for the price. Also note, I am not actually going to be buying this card soon. This is merely for practical research purposes.

Any help is appreciated.

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I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
Unintended Theory | Cacrew v4

Get the GeForce if you're going for gaming on a single screen

Get the Radeon if you're going dual screen VGA

gforce goes good with amd.
ati with pentium or celeron.
i only use agp ati cards.

even if youre not a gamer look on the box of the newest higher end games and see what they recommend for best preformance. look on the box of high end gaphics programs as well like 3d max or auto-cad.

Myself, I'd go with the Geforce. I've had much better experience with NVidia vs ATI. But I'll freely admit that its been quite a long while since I last owned or even overclocked an ATI card. Over 12 months at least... I just have a lot more experience with NVidia than ATI for some reason, so I'm probably biased.

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I've only really used ATi cards for the last couple of years, and barring the driver problems that was a bit of an issue 4 years ago (when the first radeons came out), I find them to be really good cards, also, as a side note, we (aka, my family) do use a geforce card in one of our gaming rigs, and it's a noisy bugger and runs just a bit warmer than our equivilant ATi card, with both running the same brand of aftermarket cooler.

But to be fair, there's not alot in it, and ignore lexy for saying they match with cpu's, they dont.

Yeah, ignore everything what lexy says, because recommended cards on the box are also just another way to rake in affiliation money.

One thing for sure: Dual screen = no NVidia, whatever anyone tells you. Their technology for dual VGA for example is just years behind. It evens performs worse than the s3.

NVidia tends to be louder too indeed, but gets a little extra performance for it on average. If noise is an option this might be another point

Every ATi card I've had has had a major driver issue.
They tend to be below par with textures and sometimes hang when rendering...
On the other hand, they've been great with lighting (but that's about the only upside I see).

I'd go with the GeForce because my experience with the card I have now has been more than favorable (so far). It doesn't hang or clip, textures are smoother, and I haven't had a driver problem as of yet.

Jasmine

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The thing is though there will be a dx10 card out in november/december for around 280 dollars that will beat the performance of both of those. So why not just wait.

I went with the GeForce for now. It seems to have a better overall performance.

Originally posted by chris5050:

The thing is though there will be a dx10 card out in november/december for around 280 dollars that will beat the performance of both of those. So why not just wait.

I'll probably list that when it comes out.

Basically what I do is I have a simple spreadsheet setup with all the components listed of a brand new high-end custom gaming machine / workstation. Every so often I go through this list of products and upgrade them, update the prices, etc. The reason I do this is so WHEN I have the money to actually buy myself a new computer, I already know exactly what I am getting and how much it will cost me.

The idea is to make the spreadsheet based on what is available now, as if I was going to buy this machine now. So when new products come out that are cheaper and better, than I will update my list.

___________________

I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.
Unintended Theory | Cacrew v4

hahaha...thanks guys!