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New NVidia Graphics Cards Reviewed
UnixRevolution writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of Nvidia's new FX5950 and FX5700. According to Tom's Hardware, ATI's Radeon 9800XT is still at the top of the heap." They're still some pretty slick cards, if only for their heat sink designs.
You know what I find pretty damn interesting? That my Radeon 9600 operates with NO active cooling at all, only a simple heat conductor. Quite is good.
TODO: Something witty here...
ATI nVidia
speed 10 9
price 5 5
heat 9 1
noise 9 2
features 10 9
TOTAL 43 26
Choose ATI.
If the time comes that ATI's Linux drivers actually get as good as NVidia's, there won't be any reason to buy NVidia cards anymore.
seeing there's no such thing as a ti4300. There is a 4200 and a 4400.
Nvidia really isn't close to being put out of business. Sure, ATI's $500 card is slightly better than Nvidia's $500 card, but guess what, very few people spend $500 on a video card. Look at the GFFX 5700 Ultra vs Radeon 9600XT if you want to see a more mainstream comparison. Nvidia is very competitive in the mainstream market where are the business is at. Oh, and if you are running anything other than Windows you might want to go grab a Nvidia card because their drivers are still better than anything ATI has for Linux/BSD.
A margin that small will not put them out of business, unless the gap grows larger in future cards.
You have a point, but it only works in terms of people upgrading, for example, from the ATI 9800Pro to the ATI 9800XT, or the 9700 to the 9800XT, or the GeForce4 5800 to the 9800XT, so on and so forth.
What you're not taking into account is that most people (even the majority of the "hardcore") don't upgrade in those kinds of tiny increments. Most people will tend to upgrade about once a year (or when they notice a performance drop in new games), in which case they WILL get a significant performance boost from the newest card. It's also worth noting that none of the crazy high-end, hotly anticipated DX9 games (Half-Life 2 and Doom 3) have even hit the market yet, which has probably delayed the upgrades of the majority even further.
In short, the longer ATI stays on top the higher their market share will grow. After all, it worked for Nvidia. Two years ago, a hardcore gamer wouldn't have wasted their bodily fluids to spit on ATI's cards - now they're the performance leader and those same hardcore gamers are either buying ATI cards or at least considering it.
The situation will probably be different again in another two years because it's a dynamic business. The question is whether or not Nvidia is set up well enough to stay in the game if they continue to be in second place. I don't know myself, since I'm not a business analyst. It sure is fun to watch, though. :)
PERIOD.
Then there's this endless fascination with how many FPS you can get on some antique game. That's not what it's about. The question is how detailed a scene you can render at full frame rate.
I agree completely.
I love Nvidia beacuse of their drivers. They work very well on linux and M$. I only need to download one driver file and it will work with all Nvidia cards. Even in my laptop under linux they work. The number of my freinds who have ATI cards in their computers who are always having driver issues and having to find unofficial drivers are very high. I dont need the hassle.
The other thing is that with Nvidia drivers you can notice the speed increase with the driver updates.
In one PC I have a RIVA TNT2 card that is getting benefit from the driver updates.
On a seperate point there is no reason why Nvidia should GLP their drivers. They belong to them and it is their work and that is that. They have every right to protect their work. (I do not say it wouldnt be nice to have them open, but hey WTF!) To demand these things is impolite.