nvidea vs ati vid cards

[tagkc]

Since my vid card shot craps, I'm needing it to replace it. A buddy of mine swears that ati cards have a problem w/ WoW. In the past 3 years, I've had one of each (nvidea 5800 and an ati x1300). Each has lasted about a year and half, so I haven't have the greatest of luck with either.

So, I'm looking for suggestions. My MB has an 8x AGP slot so I can use either that or a PCI interface. Plus I'm on a steep budget at the moment, so I'm looking to stay under $100.

Anyone care to throw out their 2 cents worth and offer up some suggestions on a card?

Thanks

[Kalos]

The Recommended Hardware thread has a 7600 GS in AGP listed. It's recommended.

Your friend is sort of right. They're inferior to ATI cards, for WoW anyway. There was a massive bug several patches ago, which caused ATI cards to be unstable in DirectX mode, and was solved by running the game in OpenGL mode. Unfortunantly, ATI cards have much more sucky performance in OpenGL, as witnessed by many people, complaining their framerates had dropped. Nvidia on the otherhand, do both modes fairly equal, and have a better driver track record. It's why I've got them listed as recommended parts, as well as th fact the parts listed are decently pirce and perform ok for the game.

[Erinion]

Come on...the new ATI cards work fine with WoW. My x1950 pro is great at max'd out settings (55-60fps solid at 1280x1024 + second screen for fun). I expect the latest versions are even better.

Just because a companies previous efforts were not up to scratch doesn't mean that their new components should be written off. If that was the case then we'd all still be putting AMD cpu's in our PC's instead of C2Ds because "AMD used to be better".

Don't overlook ATI!

(and no... I'm not an ATI fanboy, I've owned Nvidia cards as well as ATI and my next card will be an Nvidia.... but for now my ATI is excellent for WoW)

[Kalos]

Come on...the new ATI cards work fine with WoW. My x1950 pro is great at max'd out settings (55-60fps solid at 1280x1024 + second screen for fun). I expect the latest versions are even better.

Just because a companies previous efforts were not up to scratch doesn't mean that their new components should be written off. If that was the case then we'd all still be putting AMD cpu's in our PC's instead of C2Ds because "AMD used to be better".

Don't overlook ATI!

(and no... I'm not an ATI fanboy, I've owned Nvidia cards as well as ATI and my next card will be an Nvidia.... but for now my ATI is excellent for WoW)
Knock it into openGL mode for WoW and watch performance plummet. It works fine...as long as you completely ignore OpenGL and never have to use it; sadly for both ATI-WoW users and ATI themselves, WoW users had to at one point to be able to play at all. The OpenGL flaw is still very much in them, in fact the X1xxx series was famed for it at the time. They work fine...as long as you play in the right mode. But when that mode became broken for a while in WoW, and ATI's own workaround was to switch to OpenGL mode for the game, and then users moaned on this forum about the FPS draining away, it speaks for itself. And that hasn't been fixed, it's exactly the same today if one uses/has to use that mode. It's a problem with the arctecture design itself, witnessable throughout many games.

If ATI did have a new effort sure, I'll give it a clean slate. But you have the same card generation that happened to have this flaw, you're just lucky enough to be playing WoW at a time when OpenGL isn't your last resort, because you wouldn't be using that mode with ATI products volenteerily. They're good for somethings, but for WoW, I wouldn't want to have a card that could only do one form of rendering well when the competition is offering cards that do both well. If they solidly fixed this in cards that costed the same or less that the 7600's I'd have listed them a long time ago.

Don't overlook ATI, but especially look at their product's track record with WoW. Experience tells me this is a very real flaw, and well and has affected users before. All the ATI cards that do have this flaw fixed are either too old or too expensive and new.

[tagkc]

It's interesting what you say about the ATI x1300 card. Like I said, I've been using 1 for the past year plus, in DirectX mode and typically have 60 FPS (well, except when I'm in Shat...)

[Xandro]

It's interesting what you say about the ATI x1300 card. Like I said, I've been using 1 for the past year plus, in DirectX mode and typically have 60 FPS (well, except when I'm in Shat...)

Completely off-topic, but I think the Shatt issue is just Shatt itself in my humble opinion, that place is like walking through molasses.

[tagkc]

Completely off-topic, but I think the Shatt issue is just Shatt itself in my humble opinion, that place is like walking through molasses.

Oh absolutely, hence my singling it out. Everyone knows what a craptacular lagfest Shat is :laugh: