I admit to being preferring ATI BUT???

Okay I have a bit of a dilemma.
I have hung on for the next gen ATI cards and now I have seen the pricing £250+

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=594382
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=595228
http://www.advancetec.co.uk/acatalog/info_2911056.html

Now why should I buy the ATI when I can buy an 640MB 8800GTS for £214

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=496748

I would suspect there maybe another price drop from Nvidia to tempt folks like me from buying the ATI.
Is there anybody else here with the same problem and what is your thoughts?

No reliable benchmarks are out there, so it's worth a wait to see how HD2900XT stands against nVidia's cards.

Deffinatly wait for some benchmarks and a few weeks for the prices to settle.

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Originally Posted by staffsMike

Deffinatly wait for some benchmarks and a few weeks for the prices to settle.

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You are right and I keep telling myself that.
I have held on to the cash for ages. Its just that Leadtek 8800 is so tempting.:juggle:
Apologies for the screwed up title was not paying attention.

I've had the leadtek for the past couple of months and i'm really happy with it. Handles everything I've thrown at it with out a single problem. The current driver is messing up with a couple of codecs but it doesn't really bother me.

If they had similar benchmarks and were a similar price I don't know which I would have. The ATi in my laptop is actually pretty awesome as old as it is..but I do normally buy nvidia.

Thats the dilemma the Leadtek is over £40 cheaper than the lowest priced ATI.

Will be interesting to see how the 2900XT improves with the usual driver updates. I can see things looking a lot brighter for it then.

Until then it just competes on performance with the GTS and is slightly too overpriced...

Hexus Review - Linky

Obviously there are a few others around the web as well, but I wouldn't want to point you away from the wonderful world of Hexus....:p

Whether they are 'reliable' or not depends on how much you trust a particular website and its methods, but after having a read, the 2900XT doesn't seem to be as good as it was expected to be, bested by an 8800GTS on some occasions, and not really appearing to bother a GTX, let alone an Ultra.....

When some reviews show the 2900 giving faster framerates as the resolution goes up I think it's fair to say lets see how the drivers mature ;)

I just hope nVidia drop their prices some more to help me out with my SLi system :D

Here's a post apparently showing how much of an improvement you can expect from 8.37.4.2. With these drivers the XT performs bettter than a GTX in Oblivion? :O_o1:

I must admit to preferring ATi cards myself, the image quality always seems to be spot on. However when I've had the cash / reason / inclination to upgrade and Nvidia cards have been the better price / performance buy I have gone with those.

Personally with DX10 yet to be made use of in any meaningful way I'm not in a rush to buy a DX10 card, I'd rather wait to see how the technology pans out and who out of Nvidia / ATi have managed to impliment it better.

So I guess in your position I'd hold fire for a few months but if I had the money burning a hole in my pocket I'd get the 8800GTS.

On a side note is there any time frame on the XTX version of the new ATI cards. I'm anxious to see how they perform, I'll be upgrading this summer and this r600 seems impressive considering it's performance with just these early drivers.

There's a problem out there at the moment in getting reliable benchmarks for the HD 2900XT, many many differnet places are reporting wildly different results, even on the same driver specification.

Until we get a follow up review from somewhere reliable like Hexus or [H] it'll be hit or miss whether the ATi card proves to be worth it.

What really confuses the issue is the 3DMark06 results, the HD 2900XT appears to generate better results that even a GeForce 8800GTX but it doesn't translate into better capability in the most common games??

I gave in and bought the Leadtek 640MB 8800 GTS fitted my water cooling and I am very happy.
It overclocks very well but it can stay at stock as there is no need it can handle everything I throw at it straight out of the box.
Sorry ATI but but you were just to late.

I think it would be more fair to compare benchmarks of the GTS with the first drivers that came out for it, and the 2900xt currently.
It seems that in most benchmarks, the 2900xt can just about out-do all the GTS's, albeit not by a huge amount, but theres a couple of anomolous results here and there than can only be put down to drivers.

I don't think you'll be particularily disapointed with your GTS, but i'm going to hang on a bit more and grab a 2900xt.