Vista - ati vs nvidia

i noticed that for SOME reason that nvidia cards are always better, i dunno why.

like an example is 8600gts vs 2600XT

2600XT specs 256mb

800mhz core
2.2ghz memory gddr4
120 steam processors
35.2gb/s memory bandwith
128bit bus


8600gts 256mb

675 mhz core clock
2000mhz memory
32 gb/s memory bandwith
32 steam processors
128 bit

testing shows that the 8600gts is faster, but all the specs, the ati card is better, is it that the ati cards their drivers are super bad?? or are all the review sites all nvidia fanboys.

They aren't super bad, but aren't super great either. Some games/benchmarks are just more optimized towards nvidia cards

i mean, it is like ati cards like super overrated my ati itself..

pound for pound they are pretty evenly matched , just most game devs aim towards optimising for Nvidia , along with Cuda and many other enhancements Nvidia has the edge (imo) ATI users will tell you differant.

simple fact is if a game is optimised to run on an Nvidia chip it will run faster with an Nvidia card when matched against the similer speced ATI

ive owned ATI ill never go back , poor driver/game support my main issue , and issues with IQ and anti alaising , and what did ATI do to solve the issue?? Nothing!

it always seemed to left to the driver modders to solve the issues , dunno what ATI are like now they lost me forever a few years ago

poor driver support? they release updates every month, nvidia did not start doing something like that till ATI started doing it.

well lot of benchmark, DX 10 and games that need alot of shading power, ATi beat nvidia, but all the dx 9 games ATi loss, is like ATi card suited to beat nvidia in DX 10 games??

Even though they release monthly updates, some games are still just badly supported, if at all.

For just one example, Fallout 3 has been out for 8 or so months. Crossfire still does not work properly with this game. With HDR enabled it still has a flickering/strobe effect as well as the FPS simply cutting in half for no apparent reason. And after all this time, the chances are that's the way it's going to stay

The only thing that lets ATI down are the drivers. Sure, they're not as bad as they used to be from what I hear (I've only been using them since Cat 8.10), but there is room for improvement.

Nvidia just seem to be on the ball with newer game release support than ATI. The Nvidia users complain, Nvidia release a beta driver. ATI users complain, ATI just releases silence....

oh just so you know..... the benchmarks for those two cards.... the 2600xt wins..... easily........ i know because my friend got one the other day for $20 (don't know how he did it...... good deals on craigslist ) and he looked up the benchmarks, the 8800 would be even at a low res but the higher res you go the lower the fps for the 8800...... the 2600xt would drop maybe 4 or 5 frames where the 8800 dropped 30 or 40...... anyway just what i know about those two
oh and its the 8800gts they benchmarked.... not the 8600gts haha

that what i thought but, alot of review sites seem to nvidia fan boys. i mean look that the specs of the cards, ATi beats the 8600gt or 8800gt easily, but benchmark shows otherwise. i was like wierd...

ATI Radeon HD 2600XT vs Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS - TechSpot

OK. Although the ATI card has higher clocks on paper, it doesn't always translate to better performance as the above link demonstrates.

As for the GDDR choice, GDDR4 is more of a gimic for a card such as the X2600. GDDR3 more than suffices and is also cheaper than GDDR4.

I would won't give you any recommendations in regards to which is better because I spent nearly $600AUD on my current GPU, therefore what I am looking for is vastly different to what you are looking for.

I think Nvidia are just better with driver support. I know that they have, several times, released two or three beta drivers within two or so weeks of each other due to new games.