8800GT 256mb vs HD3870 512mb vs HD 3850 512mb

[shaithis]

My new 3870 arrives on Tuesday. The first thing I'm going to do is load up Crimson Skies. I can't wait.

It may not be quite as fast as the equivalent nVidia but I'm more than happy to trade a few FPS for reliability.

Good luck with the new purchase but once you get a series of bad catalyst drivers from ATI, I wonder who you will turn to next?


Both companies are just as good (and bad) as each other, the irony is that at the moment nVidia are just ahead in every way. One of the most important things with hardware purchasing is knowing whats good NOW and differentiating between a normal failure and a design-fault.

Painting one company as "bad" helps no-one, including yourself

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Good luck with the new purchase but once you get a series of bad catalyst drivers from ATI, I wonder who you will turn to next?


Both companies are just as good (and bad) as each other, the irony is that at the moment nVidia are just ahead in every way. One of the most important things with hardware purchasing is knowing whats good NOW and differentiating between a normal failure and a design-fault.

Painting one company as "bad" helps no-one, including yourself

I personally think that the ATI cards are fine for most people and are priced accordingly lower than the higher performing Nvidia parts. They offer lower power consumption,lower price and better HD media capabilities whereas the Nvidia parts are faster for games but cost more.

Each companies current products have their advantages and disadvantages. What people seem to be not highlighting is the amount of performance you are getting for the money with the midrange parts from both manufacturers challenging the previous high end cards.

[Webby]

Well after 3 nVidia cards in a row I've finally had enough of their drivers and support (?) and ordered one of these from Scan.

Just so you know the fan on that card maybe a bit loud as originally it ran at 100% all the time... I'm sure you can set the fan speed using ATI Tray Tools, Rivatuner etc. or it may have been an isolated incident for the review I was reading (a pre-production sample was under review).

[blinky]

I stuck my Asus 3870 at the weekend and have had some occurences when the fan has ramped up to 100% when the temperature is low (e.g. HL2). I just set it up to run at 60% in Riva Tuner. Might flash it to the fan fix BIOS as looking at the BIOS revision it is locked at 862MHz