Magical Sailor Fuku

As my computer is failing to do things like "stay switched on" and "work" which, despite repeated attempts of giving it a solid whack or screaming at it while throwing water on the motherboard, doesn't seem to be remedied anytime soon.

So, I'm building a new computer from scratch and one of the more important components is of course, the graphics card since it lets you do thing like stare at 3D rendered images of cows or play the smash hit game "Train Simulator 2004" on full graphic settings!

In all seriousness, choosing the right graphics card can help stave off the inevitable conclusion of having to upgrade again for up to 2 years so lets look at some pros and cons of both mainstream manufacturers!

ATI Pros

- Cheap and usually give decent performance for the price.
- Is producing smaller sized graphics card so they don't stick out of your case like it had a horrible accident in silicon valley.
- The newest range has DirectX 11 support, I guess that's good? Nothing really fancy came from DirectX 10.

ATI Cons

- Not always so reliable as you'd like them to be since my current ATI card likes to trick me into thinking it's working fine in a game before crashing suddenly from overheating.
- Driver support is usually hit and miss.
- Game developers sometimes forget ATI even exist when making games.

Nvidia Pros

- Widely supported on most major games.
- Has er, PhysX I guess.
- Often high performance.

Nvidia cons

- Pretty expensive, more so than ATI in some cases.
- Performance usually isn't that much better than that of a competing ATI card and can sometimes be worse.
- A man from Nvidia one day shot a woman who with her last breath, cursed the name of Nvidia by hoarsely whispering "Nvidiaaaaaa!". Responsible for the death of the woman, the man instantly felt bad but luckily recorded her dying gasp so he could then paste it on those stupid, often unskippable video segments where the Nvidia logo flashes up on screen where her voice is heard. It's the only reason I can think of for why they put these stupid things in games and make them unskippable.

With all this in mind, what better place to ask which brand is better than here? Sure, I could go to a PC tech forum or something but like that but who does that these days?
"Go against the grain!" my Granddad said to me as a policeman cuffed him and shoved him in the back of a Police car. I'm not quite sure what he meant that day but I think it's related to this poll.

IN VID E AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Being a Linux user, I have to recommend nVidia. ATI support on Linux has sucked for a long time (though it's getting better), so ultimately I traded in my ATI stuff for nVidia stuff.

I can't vote. Well, I have the ability to, but my all around reasoning tells me no one answer is best.

I've used Nvidia and ATI. I'm currently using ATI because it was the last upgrade I made. I've had no trouble with my nice little gfx card that resembles a friggen vcr cassette tape >_< And before my upgrade, I was using an Nvidia. It was nice, i only replaced it because it became out dated (damn LoTRO and Age of Conan with your high graphics standards for being mmos).

And I don't like ham.

So there you go =D

While Nvidia had the best bang for your buck for some years, the tides are turning, and now I believe it is with ATI that you will find the best deal.

Radeon HD 4850 or Nvidia 9800 GT : bellow 140$
Cheap cards, you should avoid those if you want to do some modern (beyond 2009) gaming.

Radeon HD 5750 : 150$
Not the cheapest entry level card but it has GDDR5 and Direct X 11 support.

Radeon HD 4890 : 200$
Old luxury card, it is now affordable and it offers better performances than the new Radeon HD 5770.

Radeon HD 5850 : 300$
Expensive but very good bang for buck. Sufficient as long as your screen is no bigger than 24 inches.

Radeon HD 5970 : 650$
Don't buy this one, save the 300$ to buy you a new Graphic card in 18 months

I LOVE HAM!!!!!

Seriously though, ATI has always made good quality stuff. I'm running NVidia right now, but that's mainly because of motherboard issues I'm not exactly sure of. (I am currently under the impression that ATI doesn't work as well on Intel chipsets as it does on AMD. That may just be a horrible myth I've been lead to believe. Besides, my motherboard is NVidia. I'm afraid they would get in a fight over which gets to date my hard drive.)

The main thing I would look for is something that will work well, compatibility wise, with your motherboard and chipset. The less your computer has to bang heads in order to get things to flow, the more time it can spend processing polygons and rendering your beloved cows. Another recommendation is to get two cheaper graphics cards and bridge them together. Yes, each card does have multiple cores by itself, but the more you can spread out your processing tasks, the more fluid things will be. Even though there might not be a dramatic rise in the number of polygons your computer can render, your framerate will be much better.

muffinstud wrote:Another recommendation is to get two cheaper graphics cards and bridge them together. Yes, each card does have multiple cores by itself, but the more you can spread out your processing tasks, the more fluid things will be. Even though there might not be a dramatic rise in the number of polygons your computer can render, your framerate will be much better.

Agreed : 2 Radeon HD 5850 in crossfire are cheaper and more efficient than one Radeon HD 5970 at the moment.

I also have a great recommendation for any graphic card buyer : live in the past !
Seriously : playing one years old games will save you tons of bucks in hardware and software : look at steam prices and decide for yourself.

Rodney wrote:I also have a great recommendation for any graphic card buyer : live in the past !
Seriously : playing one years old games will save you tons of bucks in hardware and software : look at steam prices and decide for yourself.

Also agreed. Through the wonders of Steam, I bought both Overloard games and the expansion, Raising Hell. The cost? 8 bucks. With an nVidia 9600GT, they look better than the Xbox versions.

Kind of late but depsite the advice of everyone here, I went ahead and bought an ATI 5750 -it was cheap!- this will probably cause people to scream in anger over my "poor" decision but eh, it runs really well and has some toilet pipes stuck to it so it stays quiet.

I also agree with the guy who said "You know you can play games from the past, right?", it's nice being able to catch up on things like that and be able to run them at full settings.