GTX 295 vs Radeon 5870

[Schmide]

Originally posted by: toyota
IMO ATI has way more problems with new release games than Nvidia. Red Faction Guerrilla and Resident Evil 5 certainly come to mind. I personally got fed up with ATI last year because I waited for months for a couple of different issues to get resolved. Nvidia is far from perfect but I at least can play every game I know of right when it comes out.

that being said I would still recommend the 5870 over the gtx295. the 5870 is a much better investment for gaming than the gtx295.

You're applying last year to this year? NVidia may be playable if you can deal with the stutter often associated with it. (Warhammer, Champions Online, etc) I don't think they ever fixed the g80 ut2004 xp light creation stutter.

My spin on nVidia drivers vs ATI drivers. NVidia is more likely to add support for certain features/cards in their driver releases but their new drivers often cause problems with older cards. ATI is less likely to add support for certain features in older cards but they're less likely to break the older cards. It's a risky vs conservative approach.

 

[dguy6789]

I've not once had a problem playing any game new or old in 10 years with ATI or Nvidia cards.

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: Schmide

Originally posted by: toyota
IMO ATI has way more problems with new release games than Nvidia. Red Faction Guerrilla and Resident Evil 5 certainly come to mind. I personally got fed up with ATI last year because I waited for months for a couple of different issues to get resolved. Nvidia is far from perfect but I at least can play every game I know of right when it comes out.

that being said I would still recommend the 5870 over the gtx295. the 5870 is a much better investment for gaming than the gtx295.

You're applying last year to this year? NVidia may be playable if you can deal with the stutter often associated with it. (Warhammer, Champions Online, etc) I don't think they ever fixed the g80 ut2004 xp light creation stutter.

My spin on nVidia drivers vs ATI drivers. NVidia is more likely to add support for certain features/cards in their driver releases but their new drivers often cause problems with older cards. ATI is less likely to add support for certain features in older cards but they're less likely to break the older cards. It's a risky vs conservative approach.

what?? I used personally ATI last year but clearly they have issues with some current games. I even listed two of them so your comment make no sense. anyway I dont play those games you listed or I would probably have a different opinion. going by the games I play ATI seems to have much more probs with newly released games than ATI.

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I've not once had a problem playing any game new or old in 10 years with ATI or Nvidia cards.

of course you havent. I bet you have not even had a cold in 10 years either. get real because of all the games and drivers over a 10 year period there would have been at least a couple of issues at some point.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I've not once had a problem playing any game new or old in 10 years with ATI or Nvidia cards.

of course you havent. I bet you have not even had a cold in 10 years either. get real because of all the games and drivers over a 10 year period there would have been at least a couple of issues at some point.

We don't need to turn this thread into a driver war debate,personally as I have already stated ATi drivers are fine in general just like Nvidia's,I would not be using an ATI card if I had issues with drivers,obviously nobody here can say any driver is perfect for every game out there since its virtually impossible to test every game out there with all Nvidia or ATi drivers.

We can all point the finger at odd game or driver glitch on BOTH SIDES but the main point is in general ATI and Nvidia are equal IMHO driver wise.

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I've not once had a problem playing any game new or old in 10 years with ATI or Nvidia cards.

of course you havent. I bet you have not even had a cold in 10 years either. get real because of all the games and drivers over a 10 year period there would have been at least a couple of issues at some point.

We don't need to turn this thread into a driver war debate,personally as I have already stated ATi drivers are fine in general just like Nvidia's,I would not been using ATI card if I had issues with drivers,obviously nobody here can say any driver is perfect for every game out there since its virtually impossible to test every game out there with all Nvidia or ATi drivers.

We can all point the finger at odd game or driver glitch on BOTH SIDES but the main point is in general ATI and Nvidia are equal IMHO driver wise.

well that was point to him because both sides have had issues and always will. him claiming to have never had one single issue with either companys cards over 10 years is ludicrous.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I've not once had a problem playing any game new or old in 10 years with ATI or Nvidia cards.

of course you havent. I bet you have not even had a cold in 10 years either. get real because of all the games and drivers over a 10 year period there would have been at least a couple of issues at some point.

We don't need to turn this thread into a driver war debate,personally as I have already stated ATi drivers are fine in general just like Nvidia's,I would not been using ATI card if I had issues with drivers,obviously nobody here can say any driver is perfect for every game out there since its virtually impossible to test every game out there with all Nvidia or ATi drivers.

We can all point the finger at odd game or driver glitch on BOTH SIDES but the main point is in general ATI and Nvidia are equal IMHO driver wise.

well that was point to him because both sides have had issues and always will. him claiming to have never had one single issue with either companys cards over 10 years is ludicrous.

I'm more compelled to say someone who has problems consistently with either company is merely not capable yet of using a computer properly. Same thing with problems with Windows itself that people like to blame on it. Malware, viruses, crashes, they all occur almost exclusively due to user error.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I've not once had a problem playing any game new or old in 10 years with ATI or Nvidia cards.

of course you havent. I bet you have not even had a cold in 10 years either. get real because of all the games and drivers over a 10 year period there would have been at least a couple of issues at some point.

We don't need to turn this thread into a driver war debate,personally as I have already stated ATi drivers are fine in general just like Nvidia's,I would not been using ATI card if I had issues with drivers,obviously nobody here can say any driver is perfect for every game out there since its virtually impossible to test every game out there with all Nvidia or ATi drivers.

We can all point the finger at odd game or driver glitch on BOTH SIDES but the main point is in general ATI and Nvidia are equal IMHO driver wise.

well that was point to him because both sides have had issues and always will. him claiming to have never had one single issue with either companys cards over 10 years is ludicrous.

Depends on how many games he plays over those years,last time I had main driver issues (on both sides )was quite a few years back , its all down to what games we play and drivers/hardware we use.
Both sides bring out driver updates to fix bugs ,improve peformance etc but does not mean we'll encounter those bugs since its down to different/many factors.

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I've not once had a problem playing any game new or old in 10 years with ATI or Nvidia cards.

of course you havent. I bet you have not even had a cold in 10 years either. get real because of all the games and drivers over a 10 year period there would have been at least a couple of issues at some point.

We don't need to turn this thread into a driver war debate,personally as I have already stated ATi drivers are fine in general just like Nvidia's,I would not been using ATI card if I had issues with drivers,obviously nobody here can say any driver is perfect for every game out there since its virtually impossible to test every game out there with all Nvidia or ATi drivers.

We can all point the finger at odd game or driver glitch on BOTH SIDES but the main point is in general ATI and Nvidia are equal IMHO driver wise.

well that was point to him because both sides have had issues and always will. him claiming to have never had one single issue with either companys cards over 10 years is ludicrous.

I'm more compelled to say someone who has problems consistently with either company is merely not capable yet of using a computer properly. Same thing with problems with Windows itself that people like to blame on it. Malware, viruses, crashes, they all occur almost exclusively due to user error.

I rarely ever have any issues and neither due most people that at least somewhat knowledgeable of comps. but to say I never had a video driver or game conflict issue in 10 years would be crazy. there have always been issues with various games and various drivers and always will be. every driver fixes different bugs so surely at some point you ran into some issue along the way with at least one driver from one company in one game. if you havent then you likely didnt play very many games.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: Tempered81

Originally posted by: Panthur
I am 90% done getting a new high end gaming rig assembled for me but can't seem to get access to the final component....yes the Radeon 5870. Usually I have been an Nvidia guy in the past. Cost aside, should I just go for the 295? Isn't ATI's driver support far worse than Nvidia's historically anyways? Thanks.

I have to agree that the driver support is worse, even though I am an ati fan. They just dont have it together in the driver area like Nvidia does, despite the fact that they have far superior hardware. However choosing between a 5870 and 295 is a no-brainer. It's a single GPU that performs about 90-95% of the NV dual GPU card for $100 less. If you've ever used a crossfire or sli rig and then a single card that does about the same performance, you should know that the single card gives a much more enjoyable experience. Things are more fluid, minimums are higher, etc.

I mean would you rather X1900xt 512 crossfire or a 8800GTX 768? The X1900 CF might be 10% faster, and more expensive, but an experienced gamer would choose the 8800GTX.

Availability will be your biggest problem.

I disagree,ATI drivers are excellent,as a beta games tester myself I have been using both Nvidia and ATI drivers for years and find ATI drivers good as Nvidia drivers if not better,my recommendation is 5870 if he is buying right now.

IMO ATI has way more problems with new release games than Nvidia. Red Faction Guerrilla and Resident Evil 5 certainly come to mind. I personally got fed up with ATI last year because I waited for months for a couple of different issues to get resolved. Nvidia is far from perfect but I at least can play every game I know of right when it comes out.

that being said I would still recommend the 5870 over the gtx295. the 5870 is a much better investment for gaming than the gtx295.

I never owned an 8800gtx, but I seem to remember bfg bitching for a LONG time about poor drivers on it. Also, it's lucky that all of your games play ok on nvidia hardware because they usually take 4-6 months between driver updates.

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I've not once had a problem playing any game new or old in 10 years with ATI or Nvidia cards.

of course you havent. I bet you have not even had a cold in 10 years either. get real because of all the games and drivers over a 10 year period there would have been at least a couple of issues at some point.

there you go again, calling someone a liar b/c he doesn't agree with your viewpoint. Have you considered that maybe he doesn't play the same games you play? And what if he is only a casual/moderate gamer and even does some of that on consoles? As a matter of fact, I do not recall a single instance of not being able to play a game correctly due to a driver conflict. Are you going to call me a liar, too?

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: Tempered81

Originally posted by: Panthur
I am 90% done getting a new high end gaming rig assembled for me but can't seem to get access to the final component....yes the Radeon 5870. Usually I have been an Nvidia guy in the past. Cost aside, should I just go for the 295? Isn't ATI's driver support far worse than Nvidia's historically anyways? Thanks.

I have to agree that the driver support is worse, even though I am an ati fan. They just dont have it together in the driver area like Nvidia does, despite the fact that they have far superior hardware. However choosing between a 5870 and 295 is a no-brainer. It's a single GPU that performs about 90-95% of the NV dual GPU card for $100 less. If you've ever used a crossfire or sli rig and then a single card that does about the same performance, you should know that the single card gives a much more enjoyable experience. Things are more fluid, minimums are higher, etc.

I mean would you rather X1900xt 512 crossfire or a 8800GTX 768? The X1900 CF might be 10% faster, and more expensive, but an experienced gamer would choose the 8800GTX.

Availability will be your biggest problem.

I disagree,ATI drivers are excellent,as a beta games tester myself I have been using both Nvidia and ATI drivers for years and find ATI drivers good as Nvidia drivers if not better,my recommendation is 5870 if he is buying right now.

IMO ATI has way more problems with new release games than Nvidia. Red Faction Guerrilla and Resident Evil 5 certainly come to mind. I personally got fed up with ATI last year because I waited for months for a couple of different issues to get resolved. Nvidia is far from perfect but I at least can play every game I know of right when it comes out.

that being said I would still recommend the 5870 over the gtx295. the 5870 is a much better investment for gaming than the gtx295.

I never owned an 8800gtx, but I seem to remember bfg bitching for a LONG time about poor drivers on it. Also, it's lucky that all of your games play ok on nvidia hardware because they usually take 4-6 months between driver updates.

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I've not once had a problem playing any game new or old in 10 years with ATI or Nvidia cards.

of course you havent. I bet you have not even had a cold in 10 years either. get real because of all the games and drivers over a 10 year period there would have been at least a couple of issues at some point.

there you go again, calling someone a liar b/c he doesn't agree with your viewpoint. Have you considered that maybe he doesn't play the same games you play? And what if he is only a casual/moderate gamer and even does some of that on consoles? As a matter of fact, I do not recall a single instance of not being able to play a game correctly due to a driver conflict. Are you going to call me a liar, too?

FACT: in ten year period both companies have had driver issues with many games. FACT: every driver revision fixes some type of issue with multiple games. FACT: if he played even a few major titles over the last 10 years then he would have had at least one issue at some point.

so yes if plays a lot of games then he is either mistaken or the luckiest person on earth to have never ran into one single issue from either company in any game in 10 years.

 

[Wreckage]

The GTX295 is still the fastest card. It also has features you can use right now, instead of waiting a few years.

But this site will always recommend the ATI card so, take it with a grain of salt.

You can look at benchmarks though and lists of games that actually use DX11 vs PhysX. Not to mention the large number of CUDA apps.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17618/11

 

[Hauk]

Hey OP, in stock at time of post...

Powercolor 5850

Gigabyte 5870

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The GTX295 is still the fastest card. It also has features you can use right now, instead of waiting a few years.

But this site will always recommend the ATI card so, take it with a grain of salt.

You can look at benchmarks though and lists of games that actually use DX11 vs PhysX. Not to mention the large number of CUDA apps.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17618/11

if by few years you mean in the next few months then sure. Aliens vs Predator, Dirt 2, and STALKER Call of Pripyat will all be coming out soon so enough with the "few years" nonsense. Battleforge already runs much better in DX11 than in DX10.1 or 10. oh thats right Nvidia just now came out with DX10.1 cards but they are low end crap so it doesnt matter anyway.

 

[dflynchimp]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The GTX295 is still the fastest card. It also has features you can use right now, instead of waiting a few years.

But this site will always recommend the ATI card so, take it with a grain of salt.

You can look at benchmarks though and lists of games that actually use DX11 vs PhysX. Not to mention the large number of CUDA apps.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17618/11

Actually, if you really wanted PhysX then you only need to wait until Q1 '10 to get it from Fermi, which would also level the DX11 field.

And no this site does not ALWAYS recommend ATI cards. At least for me I will look at all things considered and try to make a logical recommendation. I'm sure many other users do the same. And truth be told your post positively glows green so at least AT has one Nvidia proponent

It's true that 295 is still faster than the 5870 overall, but that's not the only factor in the equation. DX11, power consumption (5870 draws 117W less under load) and heat are also important points of consideration.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The GTX295 is still the fastest card. It also has features you can use right now, instead of waiting a few years.

But this site will always recommend the ATI card so, take it with a grain of salt.

You can look at benchmarks though and lists of games that actually use DX11 vs PhysX. Not to mention the large number of CUDA apps.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17618/11

This site doesn't always recommend the ATI card - back in the 8800GTX days, the only top-end card that people recommended was the 8800GTX.


The philosophy since forever has always been that if you have a single card vs. a dual chip/dual card solution and the single card is within ~10% performance of the dual solution or so, it's always sensible to go with the single card, due to its lower power consumption, the fact that it won't have problems with multi-GPU in any games, etc.

When the new GPU consumes less power, is smaller, and has a more complete featureset, then the decision becomes a near no-brainer unless you have a particular preference of card manufacturer.

When the new GPU is cheaper than the old one, or considerably cheaper, then really it takes a fanboy to recommend the old card.

 

[BFG10K]

If it came down to a choice between those two parts only, I?d go with the 5870, mainly because it?s single GPU.

Originally posted by: Schmide

I don't think they ever fixed the g80 ut2004 xp light creation stutter.

That was fixed a long time ago.

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: toyota

FACT: in ten year period both companies have had driver issues with many games. FACT: every driver revision fixes some type of issue with multiple games. FACT: if he played even a few major titles over the last 10 years then he would have had at least one issue at some point.

so yes if plays a lot of games then he is either mistaken or the luckiest person on earth to have never ran into one single issue from either company in any game in 10 years.

ok, um, you 3 FACTs went from "driver issues with many games" to "driver issues with ALL titles other than a few" in just 3 steps. I'm sure that you don't understand what I mean, so let me explain: you stated that both companies have had driver issues over the past 10 years in many games. This is absolutely without a doubt a fact. However, when you stretched that to imply that anybody who played more than a few major titles would have then definitely encountered driver issues you lost me. I personally have played civ I - IV, bg, bgII, nwn, nwnII, TQ, KOTOR and Quake III to name some games that I have played in the past 7-8 years. I have played many others, but these come quickly to mind and I played them a LOT. I have had over this time frame a gf2 gts, 9800 pro, 6600gt, 7600gt, x1950xt, 3870, 4850, and gtx 260. As I stated earlier, I haven't had any driver issues at all that I can recall. I do not doubt that driver updates have offered improvements to my gaming experiences over the years, but I cannot recall a single instance of being unable to play any of those games or any others for that matter due to driver issues. Now, do you want to backtrack and change your "FACT" to "Opinion", or are you just going to call everyone here a liar?

btw, I count 7 "major" titles there that require decent graphics cards(civ I-III weren't too demanding). Where you come from is a few more or less than 7?

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995

Originally posted by: toyota

FACT: in ten year period both companies have had driver issues with many games. FACT: every driver revision fixes some type of issue with multiple games. FACT: if he played even a few major titles over the last 10 years then he would have had at least one issue at some point.

so yes if plays a lot of games then he is either mistaken or the luckiest person on earth to have never ran into one single issue from either company in any game in 10 years.

ok, um, you 3 FACTs went from "driver issues with many games" to "driver issues with ALL titles other than a few" in just 3 steps. I'm sure that you don't understand what I mean, so let me explain: you stated that both companies have had driver issues over the past 10 years in many games. This is absolutely without a doubt a fact. However, when you stretched that to imply that anybody who played more than a few major titles would have then definitely encountered driver issues you lost me. I personally have played civ I - IV, bg, bgII, nwn, nwnII, TQ, KOTOR and Quake III to name some games that I have played in the past 7-8 years. I have played many others, but these come quickly to mind and I played them a LOT. I have had over this time frame a gf2 gts, 9800 pro, 6600gt, 7600gt, x1950xt, 3870, 4850, and gtx 260. As I stated earlier, I haven't had any driver issues at all that I can recall. I do not doubt that driver updates have offered improvements to my gaming experiences over the years, but I cannot recall a single instance of being unable to play any of those games or any others for that matter due to driver issues. Now, do you want to backtrack and change your "FACT" to "Opinion", or are you just going to call everyone here a liar?

for the sake of an argument you are trying to make things complicated? the point I am making is that if someone has played a lot of games while using cards from both companies it would be basically impossible to have not run into at least one driver issue from one company or the other in 10 years of gaming. I cant even remember details of most of the little issues that I ran into just in the 6 years I have been gaming but I certainly know I had them. I know ATI had missing fences in STALKER Clear Sky which was a very well known bug. I also know vsync could not be enabled from both companies for some games on certain drivers. I know several sets of Nvidia drivers caused stuttering in Bioshock. I know ATI has current issues with Red Faction Guerrilla and Resident Evil that is being or has been fixed with newer drivers. those dont even likely represent 1% of the many large or even small issues that are out there just from the last year or so.

I never said anything about only issues causing a game to not be playable, I am referring to ALL issues big or small. so no I dont believe you or him if you are saying that you have never had a single issue with any game ever. if you two are only referring to never coming across a game being completely unplayable or not working then sure that is plausible.

 

[SSChevy2001]

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: bryanW1995

Originally posted by: toyota

FACT: in ten year period both companies have had driver issues with many games. FACT: every driver revision fixes some type of issue with multiple games. FACT: if he played even a few major titles over the last 10 years then he would have had at least one issue at some point.

so yes if plays a lot of games then he is either mistaken or the luckiest person on earth to have never ran into one single issue from either company in any game in 10 years.

ok, um, you 3 FACTs went from "driver issues with many games" to "driver issues with ALL titles other than a few" in just 3 steps. I'm sure that you don't understand what I mean, so let me explain: you stated that both companies have had driver issues over the past 10 years in many games. This is absolutely without a doubt a fact. However, when you stretched that to imply that anybody who played more than a few major titles would have then definitely encountered driver issues you lost me. I personally have played civ I - IV, bg, bgII, nwn, nwnII, TQ, KOTOR and Quake III to name some games that I have played in the past 7-8 years. I have played many others, but these come quickly to mind and I played them a LOT. I have had over this time frame a gf2 gts, 9800 pro, 6600gt, 7600gt, x1950xt, 3870, 4850, and gtx 260. As I stated earlier, I haven't had any driver issues at all that I can recall. I do not doubt that driver updates have offered improvements to my gaming experiences over the years, but I cannot recall a single instance of being unable to play any of those games or any others for that matter due to driver issues. Now, do you want to backtrack and change your "FACT" to "Opinion", or are you just going to call everyone here a liar?

for the sake of an argument you are trying to make things complicated? the point I am making is that if someone has played a lot of games while using cards from both companies it would be basically impossible to have not run into at least one driver issue from one company or the other in 10 years of gaming. I cant even remember details of most of the little issues that I ran into just in the 6 years I have been gaming but I certainly know I had them. I know ATI had missing fences in STALKER Clear Sky which was a very well known bug. I also know vsync could not be enabled from both companies for some games on certain drivers. I know several sets of Nvidia drivers caused stuttering in Bioshock. I know ATI has current issues with Red Faction Guerrilla and Resident Evil that is being or has been fixed with newer drivers. those dont even likely represent 1% of the many large or even small issues that are out there just from the last year or so.

I never said anything about only issues causing a game to not be playable, I am referring to ALL issues big or small. so no I dont believe you or him if you are saying that you have never had a single issue with any game ever. if you two are only referring to never coming across a game being completely unplayable or not working then sure that is plausible.

Not sure about Stalker Clear Sky

Resident Evil - AA + Motion blur - problem was in the fixed 9.10 beta - 9.11 also work fine. The problem only happen with DX10 and the 9.10 beta were released 8 days after to fix the problem.

Red Faction Guerrilla - This is a buggy game, but work fine as far as drivers goes.
http://www.gamebrood.com/2009/...-issues-fix-and-fixes/

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001

Originally posted by: toyota

Originally posted by: bryanW1995

Originally posted by: toyota

FACT: in ten year period both companies have had driver issues with many games. FACT: every driver revision fixes some type of issue with multiple games. FACT: if he played even a few major titles over the last 10 years then he would have had at least one issue at some point.

so yes if plays a lot of games then he is either mistaken or the luckiest person on earth to have never ran into one single issue from either company in any game in 10 years.

ok, um, you 3 FACTs went from "driver issues with many games" to "driver issues with ALL titles other than a few" in just 3 steps. I'm sure that you don't understand what I mean, so let me explain: you stated that both companies have had driver issues over the past 10 years in many games. This is absolutely without a doubt a fact. However, when you stretched that to imply that anybody who played more than a few major titles would have then definitely encountered driver issues you lost me. I personally have played civ I - IV, bg, bgII, nwn, nwnII, TQ, KOTOR and Quake III to name some games that I have played in the past 7-8 years. I have played many others, but these come quickly to mind and I played them a LOT. I have had over this time frame a gf2 gts, 9800 pro, 6600gt, 7600gt, x1950xt, 3870, 4850, and gtx 260. As I stated earlier, I haven't had any driver issues at all that I can recall. I do not doubt that driver updates have offered improvements to my gaming experiences over the years, but I cannot recall a single instance of being unable to play any of those games or any others for that matter due to driver issues. Now, do you want to backtrack and change your "FACT" to "Opinion", or are you just going to call everyone here a liar?

for the sake of an argument you are trying to make things complicated? the point I am making is that if someone has played a lot of games while using cards from both companies it would be basically impossible to have not run into at least one driver issue from one company or the other in 10 years of gaming. I cant even remember details of most of the little issues that I ran into just in the 6 years I have been gaming but I certainly know I had them. I know ATI had missing fences in STALKER Clear Sky which was a very well known bug. I also know vsync could not be enabled from both companies for some games on certain drivers. I know several sets of Nvidia drivers caused stuttering in Bioshock. I know ATI has current issues with Red Faction Guerrilla and Resident Evil that is being or has been fixed with newer drivers. those dont even likely represent 1% of the many large or even small issues that are out there just from the last year or so.

I never said anything about only issues causing a game to not be playable, I am referring to ALL issues big or small. so no I dont believe you or him if you are saying that you have never had a single issue with any game ever. if you two are only referring to never coming across a game being completely unplayable or not working then sure that is plausible.

Not sure about Stalker Clear Sky

Resident Evil - AA + Motion blur - problem was in the fixed 9.10 beta - 9.11 also work fine. The problem only happen with DX10 and the 9.10 beta were released 8 days after to fix the problem.

Red Faction Guerrilla - This is a buggy game, but work fine as far as drivers goes.
http://www.gamebrood.com/2009/...-issues-fix-and-fixes/

well its good that the RE 5 issues have been addressed. just so you know I was making it up about Red Faction Guerrilla here is the info. "Users can experience shadow corruption using ATI 1000, 2000, and 3000 series cards in certain situations. ATI is actually working on this as it is a driver issue."

http://community.redfaction.com/forums/topic/6840

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The GTX295 is still the fastest card. It also has features you can use right now, instead of waiting a few years.

But this site will always recommend the ATI card so, take it with a grain of salt.

You can look at benchmarks though and lists of games that actually use DX11 vs PhysX. Not to mention the large number of CUDA apps.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17618/11

Pleeeassseee, recommending an obsolete card which doesn't support DX11, Tessellation, Eyefinity, plus horrible power consumption, SLI scaling issues, you should recommend him instead the GeForce 7900GTX because DX9 is already here and will play all games today. (That is a reply using your logic and cheap marketing tricks which are nauseating)

Back to reality, PhysX is a gimmick which will not give you inmersion in games and won't change the gameplay enough to justify to go with such old power sucking card, CUDA is another gimmick which gamers do not care and while the idea is great, doesn't benefit gamers in any way. Plus the link with a game that uses the old Source Engine which doesn't even challenge the HD 4770 series, a waste of power.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: SSChevy2001

Originally posted by: toyota

for the sake of an argument you are trying to make things complicated? the point I am making is that if someone has played a lot of games while using cards from both companies it would be basically impossible to have not run into at least one driver issue from one company or the other in 10 years of gaming. I cant even remember details of most of the little issues that I ran into just in the 6 years I have been gaming but I certainly know I had them. I know ATI had missing fences in STALKER Clear Sky which was a very well known bug. I also know vsync could not be enabled from both companies for some games on certain drivers. I know several sets of Nvidia drivers caused stuttering in Bioshock. I know ATI has current issues with Red Faction Guerrilla and Resident Evil that is being or has been fixed with newer drivers. those dont even likely represent 1% of the many large or even small issues that are out there just from the last year or so.

I never said anything about only issues causing a game to not be playable, I am referring to ALL issues big or small. so no I dont believe you or him if you are saying that you have never had a single issue with any game ever. if you two are only referring to never coming across a game being completely unplayable or not working then sure that is plausible.

Not sure about Stalker Clear Sky

Resident Evil - AA + Motion blur - problem was in the fixed 9.10 beta - 9.11 also work fine. The problem only happen with DX10 and the 9.10 beta were released 8 days after to fix the problem.

Red Faction Guerrilla - This is a buggy game, but work fine as far as drivers goes.
http://www.gamebrood.com/2009/...-issues-fix-and-fixes/

The only Resident Evil 5 issue I know of is the blank screen during cutscenes, but that is fixable by limiting the frame rate . I know about this from someone who had the same problem on an Nvidia card, so this is not ATI related.
Red Faction is buggy as hell, I can't play it because the sound has serious issues. Apart from that, on the graphic part, it works rather well.

Issues I had with ATI are:
-the missing fences in Stalker ( don't know if it was fixed by now, but it was very annoying)
-FarCry2 stuttering. Although it was fixable by using the frame limiting command, having to play it at only 25 fps wasn't very cool. Don't know if it got fixed by now, but I waited and waited for ATi to fix it and it never did.
-BIA graphical corruption. This bug was fixed after two catalysts, so I had to wait for almost 2 months to play the bloody game from that level.
-NFS Shift performance issue. This is by far the most annoying bug in a game for me today. Even though people are blaming EA for this problem, I still think that it's related to ATi's drivers. BIA bug was also blamed on the game producer, but it was clear that was ATI's fault all along.

Now, I don't know what sort of issues have been on Nvidia's parts all this time, but this is what I noticed on the Ati side. Even with all of these, I wouldn't get the GTX 295 behemont over the 5870. Having dx11, a much lower power consumption and a lower price, at almost the same performance, doesn't make GTX 295 any appealing to me at all.

 

[honolululu]

Random question here. Basically the driver writing teams often have to reprogram the GPU to work with 'funky' code from the game? I mean, you can't really say the driver is at fault if the game is spitting out unexpected data to the GPU.

Even if it works on one driver set but not the other company's, it's still the game dev's that weren't compliant with the driver, or were compliant with a driver set from some time ago when they starting making the game. (Which is understandable, I'm just asking for personal education)

Also, has anyone ever heard either company talking about how good its driver development team is in an official advertisement? They put in extra work to make sure other company's games work on your hardware. It's only the game images, the hardware, and now Physx that gets advertised, but never the drivers?

 

[v8envy]

FWIW, the Linux drivers for ATI are complete and utter garbage, still. They've improved tremendously compared to even 2 years ago, but are either badly broken or feature lite. ATI open source, community open source, proprietary. They all have various (different) issues. There's also a very narrow window between the hardware getting support by the proprietary driver and becoming unsupported. For instance, the X1950XT is no longer supported via the binary blob. At the moment only the 4-series is relatively problem free.

NV's drivers for Linux have been working, full-featured and performant for years. If you're running Linux as your primary OS and don't want to reboot Windows for gaming or multimedia playback you have no choice but to be an NV fanboy.