ATI or Nvidia
 

My Alienware computer has had an ATI Radeon 8500 256 in it for 5 or 6 years now. I have been running it overclocked since the day I installed it, and it is finally giving out. The hard part is finding a decent AGP card. So here are my two choices I have been looking at.

Nvidia
FRYS.com*|*EVGA

ATI
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1203815723741

Thoughts?

ATI
personal prefference..

a second hand one could be a better option. ATI X800 AGP works well.

Do NOT buy Nvidia. We've got a bunch of Nvidia stuff in the house on several computers, all of which have had a slew of problems.

I would have to disagree.

I been running Nvidia for years on my personal computer without any issues. Also my college ran Nvidia on the 150+ computers without a problem. Now my current company runs them in all the 50 workstation/gaming stations and on the 20 game testing computers.

HD2400 for $109??????

i just bought a HD4830 for $89 shipped. plus there's a $15 mail in rebate.


Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100265HDMI Radeon HD 4830 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

duh you're looking for an agp. n/m.

i might have something used sitting around. i have at least 4 cards in a drawer.

You'll be fine either way. Back in the day ATI has some weaksauce drivers, but AFAIK, things are up to par. Lol, AGP.

My Vote is for Nvidia. Ever since I got an Nvidia after exclusively using ATI forever I never looked back.

My vote:
Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100228L Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X HDCP Ready Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

but then you post a Radeon?

Yeaaaaaaaaa. So.

I'm just saying, Nvidia is the bomb but if you need something ancient then right now that Radeon card is the fastest out there in AGP.

Crap I would need a new power supply to run that card :(

rofl. i hacked off one of my connectors because my cpu doesn't have the old style power :P

still kicking, lots of left for dead.

No you dont. It comes with a conversion plug.

Another vote for ATI. I have always run ATI cards and have never had problems. I am about to build another gaming machine and was thinking I would go Intel and nVidia this time around since I have used only AMD and ATI on my last few machines. Just thinking though, I have never had any problems with either, so why change. Only down side to ATI is the crossfire motherboards are harder to find than SLI's. The AGP will really hold you back though. A ton of PCIe cards out there with really high specs for really low cost.

The first question should be, "which O/S ?"; next, "what brand do your preferred games recommend?"...

- L

I like Nvidia simply because they have much better Linux drivers.

Every time I build a computer I check pricewatch.com for whoever has the best deals on parts. It looks like you have several more options if you want them.
AGP 512mb Video Cards on Pricewatch

And those are just the AGP 512's.

I'm running ATI without incident. It is hard to love a video card, but easy to hate one.

Win 3.11 :laugh:







Win XP SP3, 90% of my games all say Nvidia on them. UT even has a Nvidia intro on there game.

What's the computer for?

You say you've overclocked the previous card, so I can only assume gaming.

What kind of motherboard do you have? If you're still on AGP, does this mean you are still also on IDE?

As far as card manufacturers go, I've had both Nvidia and ATI, and they have both worked flawlessly (except for RMAing an old 7800gtx like 3 times, but it was XFX's fault, not Nvidia). The drivers, however, can be a bitch. This goes for both of them.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.downloads...rash-chart.jpg

Even on our computers running XP we get mad graphics issues from time to time. So many unaddressed problems with nvidia cards that have yet to be fixed.

This computer is now my wife's gaming machine. It is an Alienware Hive Mind, with an Asus P4 running 1.8 processor clocked to 2.2. 6 Cooling fans 2 gigs of mem, AGP and IDE with 180 gigs of hard drive in raid configuration.

My PC is mindless drone HP dual quad core intel.

Win 3.11 - On AlienWare... I might have believed Coleco...

With XP and the nVidia call outs on your apps, I'd stay with nVidia. :2cents:

- L

This graph was correct for the first six months Vista was on the streets. Then both MS and nVidia published the updated drivers (that should have been initially released) and resolved most of the nVidia/Vista issues.

I have found a number of the video card issues were not so much driver issues, but instead conflicting JREs between the card and other apps on the host. (ie: HD, large screen vs older runtime display requirements from a security event manager.)

Oh, and before "bias" is called, I don't give a damn what hardware/software combination is used, provided it meets the customer's requirements. I prefer to understand why something doesn't work instead of just bitching because it doesn't...

- L

nvidia all the way. i might be mistaken the best agp card on the market is ati not sure witch model but i will always be a nvidia fan boy

nvidia all the way, but seriously if your using a AGP card your a lost cause from the start. lol

I just bought a Sapphire ATI 4870 Toxic Edition 1GB gpu today for my new computer I'm building. I'll let you know how it goes! :jerkit: Too bad you are stuck to AGP