Good brands of ATi video cards??

[pkirby11]

ATI has a solid offering in the 4870, but right now Nvidia has them beat on prices and drivers.

The Core 216 is faster in most games and is significantly cheaper (30-40$ w/ a free game.) And Nvidia seems able to keep cranking out better and better performance out of the architecture while ATI's remains stagnant.

Both good cards, though. Really can't go wrong with either one.

Funny, most Core 216 cards are about the same price as a 1GB 4870 considering the ones that really win in benchmarks are mostly weekend sales on Newegg. Second why does everyone talk about a free game. That's not a buying decision unless it's something you ever even thought of playing. Far Cry 2 in no way would sway my buying preference.

As for why I choose ATI over NVIDIA. Simple, drivers and I know some especially Rollo the politician will laugh. Funny though since going to Vista I've had more issues with NVIDIA drivers than ATI. Not to mention the performance is negligible and when you top off the fact that without any hardware changes I can go cross fire seems like the better deal to me at the time.

As for new buyers, I really think it's a matter of choice and finding the best deal. At this very moment, right now if you were to buy a Core 216 you'd be smart. But it will and has changed, ATI will adjust prices and new drivers will come out making them seem more appealing. I for one am happy with the current situation. I really don't think you can go wrong with either brand and in the end it's a win win for all.

[Rollo]

Funny, most Core 216 cards are about the same price as a 1GB 4870 considering the ones that really win in benchmarks are mostly weekend sales on Newegg. Second why does everyone talk about a free game. That's not a buying decision unless it's something you ever even thought of playing. Far Cry 2 in no way would sway my buying preference.

As for why I choose ATI over NVIDIA. Simple, drivers and I know some especially Rollo the politician will laugh. Funny though since going to Vista I've had more issues with NVIDIA drivers than ATI. Not to mention the performance is negligible and when you top off the fact that without any hardware changes I can go cross fire seems like the better deal to me at the time.

As for new buyers, I really think it's a matter of choice and finding the best deal. At this very moment, right now if you were to buy a Core 216 you'd be smart. But it will and has changed, ATI will adjust prices and new drivers will come out making them seem more appealing. I for one am happy with the current situation. I really don't think you can go wrong with either brand and in the end it's a win win for all.

I won't laugh, I'll offer a different perspective on what you said:

FarCry2- even if you don't want it, it's a hot new game you can easily sell for 10% of the cost of the card.

Drivers: Derek Wilson, AnandTechs video editor, just told us that ATi's drivers have more issues than NVIDIA's, and suggested they change their ways.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3463&p=6

Sale Prices:
With the new drivers the old 192 SP GTX260s are beating the HD4870 at new games, and they're available for much less every day of the week, everywhere.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/xfx_geforce_gtx_260_black_review/default.asp

So I just don't see the value in ATi cards at this time, a difference of opinion.

[Heinz68]

Before the 180 series drivers came out, the two cards traded benches, were approximately equal.

Since the 180 series drivers came out, the Core 216s pretty much sweep the 1GB 4870.

Check the reviews here, and at Firing Squad, Driver Heaven, FUDZilla, Bjorn3d, Guru3d, etc. instead of believing a guy on a forum. (even though if the post says "Rollo", you can take it to the bank!)
;)

You really don't have a reason to buy a 4870 now. When they were the same price and trading benches, I would have said "Pick the features you like and company you like". because the 4870 was very competitive.
The above are not real reviews or Video Cards performance comparison, it's all about Big Bang drivers selling and on few forums people other than NVIDIA fanboys are very critical about it.

Here what happen, NVIDIA sends few free cards to review sides tells them which 5 games to test and for the Big Bang effect gives them the NDA so the so called reviews hit the news at the same time.

About 4 or 5 sites went for it some others didn't. Basically it's marketing at it's best or worst depending the way somebody looks at. I'm sure if ATI picked 5 games at the time performing the best on their hardware and send them to be reviewed ONLY, some people would be calling murder.

There is no question on my mind that on SOME games (settings and cards) the Big Bang drivers are kicking ass and ATI needs to work much harder on them especially on the TWIMTBP games where NVIDIA gets on the inside first.

Anyway as I said not every site agreed to be part off this NVIDIA marketing drive before christmas.

Here is AnandTech (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3462&p=4) Rollo favored sites (he likes to qoute) said:
NVIDIA promised between some pretty significant performance gains with this driver, but the caveat is that the performance gains are only with certain hardware on certain games with certain settings. Obviously we didn't have the time or energy to test every permutation of everything. In fact, we just did a brief run down of a few games using the GTX 260 so that we could get a taste of what to expect in the general case.

The picture we see is a little bit dimmer than the best case scenario painted on the driver download page noting performance increases. Here's how performance looked at 1920x1200 under a handful of games we have been (or will be) testing with for a while.
http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/3920/anandgamestableej1.th.jpg (http://img114.imageshack.us/my.php?image=anandgamestableej1.jpg)http://img114.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)
What a surprise all of a sudden the Big Bang doesn't look so big. Looking at it kindly I would say the performance within margin off errors is about the same and in Oblivion the performance actually decreased.
Here is part of AnandTech Final Words: (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=1853351)
But NVIDIA believes that their GeForce GTX 260 core 216 competes well with the similarly priced Radeon HD 4870 1GB part. Well, that's not entirely true. NVIDIA believes they have a better part, but from what we've seen in the past there are definitely reasons to pick up the 4870 1GB instead (as we have recommended in the past). NVIDIA approached us last week with some information on a handful of recently released games saying that their GeForce GTX 260 core 216 was the best option in these new titles. We'll certainly see after we run all the tests, but stay tuned for an update on that area.

[Heinz68]

Before the 180 series drivers came out, the two cards traded benches, were approximately equal.

Since the 180 series drivers came out, the Core 216s pretty much sweep the 1GB 4870.

Check the reviews here, and at Firing Squad, Driver Heaven, FUDZilla, Bjorn3d, Guru3d, etc. instead of believing a guy on a forum. (even though if the post says "Rollo", you can take it to the bank!)
;)

You really don't have a reason to buy a 4870 now. When they were the same price and trading benches, I would have said "Pick the features you like and company you like". because the 4870 was very competitive.
The above are not real reviews or Video Cards performance comparison, it's all about Big Bang drivers selling and on few forums people other than NVIDIA fanboys are very critical about it.

Here what happen, NVIDIA sends few free cards to review sides tells them which 5 games to test and for the Big Bang effect gives them the NDA so the so called reviews hit the news at the same time.

About 4 or 5 sites went for it some others didn't. Basically it's marketing at it's best or worst depending the way somebody looks at it. I'm sure if ATI picked 5 games at the time performing the best on their hardware and send them to be reviewed ONLY, some people would be calling murder.

There is no question on my mind that on SOME games (settings and cards) the Big Bang drivers are kicking ass and ATI needs to work much harder on them especially on the TWIMTBP games where NVIDIA gets on the inside first.

Anyway as I said not every site agreed to be part off this NVIDIA marketing drive before christmas.

Here is whatAnandTech (http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3462&p=4) Rollo favored sites (he likes to qoute) said:
NVIDIA promised between some pretty significant performance gains with this driver, but the caveat is that the performance gains are only with certain hardware on certain games with certain settings. Obviously we didn't have the time or energy to test every permutation of everything. In fact, we just did a brief run down of a few games using the GTX 260 so that we could get a taste of what to expect in the general case.

The picture we see is a little bit dimmer than the best case scenario painted on the driver download page noting performance increases. Here's how performance looked at 1920x1200 under a handful of games we have been (or will be) testing with for a while.
http://img1.hugeup.com/f/11242008/df24a54.jpg (http://hugeup.com/v/df24a54)
What a surprise all of a sudden the Big Bang doesn't look so big. Looking at it kindly I would say the performance within margin off errors is about the same and in Oblivion the performance actually decreased.
Here is part of AnandTech Final Words: (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=1853351)
But NVIDIA believes that their GeForce GTX 260 core 216 competes well with the similarly priced Radeon HD 4870 1GB part. Well, that's not entirely true. NVIDIA believes they have a better part, but from what we've seen in the past there are definitely reasons to pick up the 4870 1GB instead (as we have recommended in the past). NVIDIA approached us last week with some information on a handful of recently released games saying that their GeForce GTX 260 core 216 was the best option in these new titles. We'll certainly see after we run all the tests, but stay tuned for an update on that area.

[LordJuanlo]

Those new nVidia drivers are good news for ATI users, some sources say that the incoming ATI drivers will have a noticeable performance increase. It's possible that ATI was saving a bit of performance on the 4800 cards, or simply they have found new ways to optimize speed without removing rocks.

Anyway that's the kind of war that benefits users. We need both ATI and nVidia in a strong fight, none of them should relax, after releasing the refurbished Geforce 9000 series it was clear that nVidia needed a big hit in their balls, and that's what 4000 series has given. We all need strong sales of ATI cards so that the war can continue.

As a result of this, we have got an excellent performer card like the 4870, and lower prices for the heavily overpriced GTX series (at launch). If ATI 4000 cards didn't sell so well, people who want nVidia cards would be paying a lot more, and this is very important for people who can't have free hardware upgrades, that means 99'9% of us.

[noko]

Yes, me love ATI so very very much, now I can play around with a 260 216 for $239 :captnkill:.

[grey_1]

Those new nVidia drivers are good news for ATI users, some sources say that the incoming ATI drivers will have a noticeable performance increase. It's possible that ATI was saving a bit of performance on the 4800 cards, or simply they have found new ways to optimize speed without removing rocks.

Anyway that's the kind of war that benefits users. We need both ATI and nVidia in a strong fight, none of them should relax, after releasing the refurbished Geforce 9000 series it was clear that nVidia needed a big hit in their balls, and that's what 4000 series has given. We all need strong sales of ATI cards so that the war can continue.

As a result of this, we have got an excellent performer card like the 4870, and lower prices for the heavily overpriced GTX series (at launch). If ATI 4000 cards didn't sell so well, people who want nVidia cards would be paying a lot more, and this is very important for people who can't have free hardware upgrades, that means 99'9% of us.

Yep.