Is there a real difference or is this just personal preferance at this point?

 

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Personal preference, each has its own loyal supporters.

This.

Both do the same thing, make ur graffix purdy.

 

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Performance - Draw
Dollar for dollar, both provide about the same performance usually. Nvidia has the best top end single GPU card, the GTX 580, but it costs more.

Drivers - Draw
This used to be AMD's big hurt. But AMD has improved greatly. There are fewer major disasters. Both sides have some driver bugs. AMD has an advantage with their driver updates. Regular monthly updates, plus they include small profile updates inbetween. May see multiple profile updates in a month. These profile updates are nice, because they are tiny files that install really quickly and include tweaks for newer and older games. Nvidia actually came out with this feature a long time ago but never really used it. AMD is making very good use of it though. Nvidia however has a much better relationship with game developers and tend to have optimizations for some games before the game's even released.

Cooling - Nvidia
Maybe it's because of the Nvidia 400 series being ridiculed for being a small nuclear power plant. But Nvidia has done really nice things with their heatsinks and fans on their high end cards. The coolers do a good job and aren't that loud. AMD on the other hand, dear god their cards are getting loud. AMD needs to do some work, the 6900 series almost seemed to be a step backwards for them. It's not terrible, if you have a good case with good air flow and running a single card or two well spaced dual cards it may not even bother you. But Nvidia clearly is winning with it's quieter cards.

from my personal experience i have to give the driver edge to nvidea, my ati cards required a driver for every single new game i wanted to play, i rarely ever had to update my nvidea drivers though. i used the same driver for over a year with no problems with my 8800. i haven't owned a new ati card a few years now so that might have changed. the ati cards always seemed to be a little better price/performance though. my next card i'll be looking at power consumption, noise, and heat instead of just price and performance.

 

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One thing I have read, and it might have changed cause it has been awhile, where AMD has the advantage is crossfire. From what I have read, you can crossfire any ATI card that is in the same series. With Nvidia it has to be the same card, have even heard accusations that it has to be the same manufacturer too, but not sure I believe that. Looked it up back when I had my 9500GT cause I wanted to do SLI with a 9800GT but people said I couldnt.

 

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The only real thing that could possibly sway a purchaser would be if you want to be able to use PhysX.. There are still some games being made that use it.

AMD is more flexible. However I really don't see it a buying point.

Nvidia requires two identical model cards. They don't have to be from the same manufacture (first version of SLI from Nvidia long time ago required it, long gone now though). So you can only SLI a GTX 570 with a GTX 570.

ATI won't let you Crossfire any card in the same series. But it will let you Crossfire two cards with the same GPU. The 6950 and 6970 can be Crossfire together. A 6850 can not be Crossfire with a 6950 though.

This is the same as your example of the 9500GT and 9800GT. Even if they were AMD, because they are different GPUs, they couldn't be Crossfire anyway.

http://sites.amd.com/PublishingImages/Public/Graphic_Illustrations/WebBannerJPEG/AMD_CrossfireX_Chart_1618W.jpg

And mixing two models with the same GPU will mean that the faster card will be dumbed down to the specs of the slower card. Crossfiring a 6970 with a 6950 will basically make the 6970 act and run like a 6950. So there is really no reason to do this. If you have a 6970 you should spend the extra money on another 6970.

This is very true. In general, when I look at GPUs, I usually try to look for the cards with the much beefier non stock coolers for a gaming PC.

 

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ah, thanks for clearing that up.





very true, not sure about the ATI, the last ATI I bought was a 128mb lol. I just bought a GTX 550ti SC, wanted a 570 but just couldnt afford it, and it runs like a champ, I cant even hear it over my case fans. When I first got it though I had a couple of issues with heat, was regularly getting over 75c playing Rift and assassins creed, but a bit of fan tweaking using the EVGA Precision software that came with it fixed that, since I adjusted I havnt seen it get over 68

 

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