Buying new GFX card

[Sosseres]

The main reason I did not want an ATI is because of power consumption/heat issues. Nothing against them personally (My last card was an X700 Pro, and a great card), but their latest cards run pretty inefficiently.

Is the watt difference all that large?

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,680543/Review-Ati-Radeon-HD-4890-versus-Nvidia-Geforce-GTX-275/Reviews/?page=3

(I've ever only owned nvidia cards, so can't comment from experience.)

[kyanwan]

I avoid ATIs like the plague due to the way they do their drivers (No, I don't want shitty 3rd party drivers.)   I find - Nvidia is usually superior in the drivers department. 

[IceRiccy]

I avoid ATIs like the plague due to the way they do their drivers (No, I don't want shitty 3rd party drivers.)   I find - Nvidia is usually superior in the drivers department.  

Mwah depends. nvidia was the only one that had problems on vista with there display driver malfunction constantly. Wasnt fixed until like 3-4 patches ago.

Nvidia has stronger and more intresting cards though. 3d vision on each card starting at the 8800 series. Ati has nothing like that.

[bloody000]

I avoid ATIs like the plague due to the way they do their drivers (No, I don't want shitty 3rd party drivers.)   I find - Nvidia is usually superior in the drivers department.  

Mwah depends. nvidia was the only one that had problems on vista with there display driver malfunction constantly. Wasnt fixed until like 3-4 patches ago.

Nvidia has stronger and more intresting cards though. 3d vision on each card starting at the 8800 series. Ati has nothing like that.

bullshit. I barely had any problem with nvidia drivers. on the other hand, I had a 4870 for three months and that three months were full of annoyances.

[zherok]

Haven't had any problems with my admittedly not very exceptional HD 3650. I usually go for Nvidia as well, but as a cheap upgrade it was the best deal, getting an equivalent card in the price range from Nvidia wasn't an option. Still, it works well for me.

Last time an ATI card was really spotty for me was a Radeon 9000. Probably the worst video card I've owned, although a GeForce FX 5200 doesn't trail too far behind.

[IceRiccy]

I avoid ATIs like the plague due to the way they do their drivers (No, I don't want shitty 3rd party drivers.)   I find - Nvidia is usually superior in the drivers department.  

Mwah depends. nvidia was the only one that had problems on vista with there display driver malfunction constantly. Wasnt fixed until like 3-4 patches ago.

Nvidia has stronger and more intresting cards though. 3d vision on each card starting at the 8800 series. Ati has nothing like that.

bullshit. I barely had any problem with nvidia drivers. on the other hand, I had a 4870 for three months and that three months were full of annoyances.

really? Every since Vista came into existance nvidia has been having nothing but problems with there drivers stopping to respond when dealing in high graphical performances. It took them several patches to fix this. Even so, they havent 100% fixed it, but merely bandaged it when players themself startd finding solutions.

One of those problems is the all known nvldklmm driver part (or however you spell it).
Im not saying nvidia is horrible btw, cuz I only nvidia products. But I do acknowledge them having problems on vista.
With the Ati drivers, i never really had a problem when i used computers that had a ati card on vista.

[bloody000]

I used 8.9, 8.10 and 8.11 when I had my 4870, in none of them the scaling worked properly, I set it to Do Not Scale and the driver happily ignored me.

The "driver has crashed and recovered" problem is not nvidia specific. And I never had it except in Clear Sky and that was when I still had the 4870.

[mgz]

i currently am having zero issues  with my ati 3870s running in windows 7 64 bit, compared with the mysteries of whether or not i would get a bsod every couple of hours  some updates from nvida and sometimes not on windows xp pro. With 2 8800gts's

neither has perfect driver support but i for one wont be buying nvidia for a while.

[kyanwan]

I avoid ATIs like the plague due to the way they do their drivers (No, I don't want shitty 3rd party drivers.)   I find - Nvidia is usually superior in the drivers department.  

Mwah depends. nvidia was the only one that had problems on vista with there display driver malfunction constantly. Wasnt fixed until like 3-4 patches ago.

Nvidia has stronger and more intresting cards though. 3d vision on each card starting at the 8800 series. Ati has nothing like that.

bullshit. I barely had any problem with nvidia drivers. on the other hand, I had a 4870 for three months and that three months were full of annoyances.

really? Every since Vista came into existance nvidia has been having nothing but problems with there drivers stopping to respond when dealing in high graphical performances. It took them several patches to fix this. Even so, they havent 100% fixed it, but merely bandaged it when players themself startd finding solutions.

One of those problems is the all known nvldklmm driver part (or however you spell it).
Im not saying nvidia is horrible btw, cuz I only nvidia products. But I do acknowledge them having problems on vista.
With the Ati drivers, i never really had a problem when i used computers that had a ati card on vista.

Fail OS is fail.

That's why 85%-90% of desktops don't run fail OS - that's why they offer downgrades for improved performance when you buy a new PC.

[queenmetroid]

Yes, fail OS is fail. Windows 7 or BSOD.

I've never had problems with either ATI or nVidia, but my overall experience with nVidia has been better. In any case, I just recieved a magical infusion of 5000 bucks, so I'm thinking of a total system overhaul. Whether I do or not remains to be seen, I'll be deciding in the next few days after pricing it out.

[kyanwan]

I just recieved a magical infusion of 5000 bucks, so I'm thinking of a total system overhaul.

Lucky.   I wish I got a magical infusion of just $500.   

Damnit.