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GeForce 7900 Vs. Radeon X1900 65

Posted by Zonk from the ready-fight dept.
Gamespot has an article comparing the shiny you get when using a Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTX SLI and an ATI Radeon X1900 XTX Crossfire. From the article: "All told, the barrier to entry is enormous; but once you're there and running your games at 1920x1080 with 4x antialiasing and 16x anisotropic filtering, any regrets you might have had about spending a small fortune will be thrown out the window. We're sure that one of these setups offers a better experience, however. The two could differ in terms of raw performance or the subtleties of image quality depending on the game. Either way, if you're going to lay down the smack for the best performance, we're going to make sure you get it."
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GeForce 7900 Vs. Radeon X1900 More

GeForce 7900 Vs. Radeon X1900

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  • Do they do that? I'm talking with everything turned on full on EQ2 at those resolutions. It brings my system down to it's knees with a 7800GT. Yeah, I may be one of the few people that actually play this, but it's gotten a LOT better since launch.

    Guess there's no set test they could do though to make it all fair. No "demo" script they can run on different configs.

  • I have to say from general use (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Thursday March 16, 2006 @06:43PM (#14937425)
    I'd recommend nVidia over ATi to peopel, even for Windows. For Linux, no contest. I'm not Linux savvy, but I've actually gotten nVidia cards to work accelerated in Linux all the times I've tried. I still have yet to successfully make an ATi card work completely. However even in Windows the nVidia drivers seem a little more polished. For example in World of Warcraft there are certian areas that will cause an ATi 9600 and 9800 (and probably more) to have a GPU reset, meaning in essence that the graphics card crashed and the driver had to reset it. ATi allegedly fixed it a few driver releases ago, but it persists. nVidia card have had no such problems.

    I generally believe these are the more important factors to look at. The good news is that new cards are fast to the point that no matter what you get, you'll be happy. Any 7800 or 7900 card is enough to rip apart any game out there. You won't find yourself saying "damn, if only I'd bought an ATi this would run better" or vice versa. Because of that I really think the thing to look at is overall system and app stability.

    Also, though it might be fun to have a mitching high end setup, I recommend against it unless you've simply tons of money to spend often, and nothing to spend it on. Some people might be tempted to get something like that with the idea that you don't need to upgrade for quite some time. Fair enough, after all that performance is such that it's way ahead of current titles' requirements. The problem is that video cards come out with new features at an amazing pace. The upgrade the abilities of their shaders and rendering engines to do new, more realistic graphics. So it becomes not a question of raw pixel pushing power, but what they can do with it.

    Once could get a professional visualization system built in 1999 that far exceeds the raw pixel stats of new boards, using a large array of Voodoo chips (Quantum3D makes such products), driving amazingly large displays with super high fidelity anti-aliasing. Yet, you'd find they were incapable of running a game like Quake 4. Why? Well for all their power, they lack the new features that are used now to create visual effects like visual distortions due to flame. Those capabilities weren't introduced to cards until receantly.

    Thus your best bet is to find a price point that you think you can afford around once a year and look at buying there. Rather than trying to spend $600 once every three years, look at spending $200 every year, and so on. In general, you get a better experience for it. This holds true at basically any price point I've ever looked at.

    If you can afford to buy around the upper end of the mid range cards, which is generally $150-200, you tend to find that nearly all games out there will run well, which a reasonable amount of eye candy. Developers aren't stupid, they know that most people don't have the latest $600+ card, and they need to sell to everyone they can. However even if you get a more low range $100 card, you still should find game run fine, just with details turned down.
    • I prefer Nvidia, but at the top end, with single cards (no prospect of SLI-ing or Crossfire), the ATI cards are currently cheaper *and* faster.

      I'm holding off on purchasing right now - but I may well end up buying ATI next time (I've Nvidia ATM) for this reason.

      I'm not attempting to run Linux though.
    • I've never had any problems running either ATI or nVidia under Linux.

      That being said, I much prefer ATI at the lower end of the spectrum. nVidia tends to lag really bad in my experience. I say this because I originally bought an nVidia MX 5400 for my main system and had hella local lag playing my games. I bought a cheap ATI 9600SE, which was a bit cheaper than the nVidia was, and it rocked the house. I threw the nVidia in my second system, which is almost exactly like my main system, but less disk space, an
    • FYI, the current nvidia drivers for linux do not support 7300, 7600, or 7900 yet(the drivers are 3 months old). I spent a bunch of time researching my upgrade from ti4200 to narrow down my choice to either the 7600gt($200) or 7900gt($300) (which are the best bang for the buck, I think) before realizing the linux driver situation. Hopefully they release them soon before I have to go with something else; also upgrading my 5 year old dual 1Ghz durons. :)
    • For example in World of Warcraft there are certian areas that will cause an ATi 9600 and 9800 (and probably more) to have a GPU reset, meaning in essence that the graphics card crashed and the driver had to reset it. ATi allegedly fixed it a few driver releases ago, but it persists. nVidia card have had no such problems.

      Ive been playing Wow for quite a while using a 9600xt and have not once come across a GPU reset. Although right now I can't even start the game Silk Road, but I dont think thats a genera

  • Do the math!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by i_am_the_r00t ( 762212 ) on Thursday March 16, 2006 @06:43PM (#14937435)
    7900 is a full 6900 better than 1900. Am I the only one who sees this?

    geez.

  • Red Bars? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey, I've got an idea... lets make sure everyone cranks up their contrast, and prays for a cure to color-blindness... why did they make BOTH bars in their graphs RED? I had to adjust my monitor just to tell that there WAS a difference.

  • Advertising Video Cards on Video Cards? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by R3d M3rcury ( 871886 ) on Thursday March 16, 2006 @08:19PM (#14938036) Journal
    I went to the web site and they had video that showed the output of the two video cards side-by-side. It reminded me of an old bit about advertising color televisions on television.

    1. If you have a black & white television (remember those?), you can't see the colors.
    2. If you have a color television but not the brand being advertised, you can't see how much better the colors will look.
    3. If you have the brand of color television being advertised, you don't need the advertising.
  • Personally the variation between both cards in performance is ususally BARELY discernable by pretty much anyone. Another key point isn't the processor on the GFX cards but the system itself. I could have a nice 3000+ amd cpu with 256mb ram running the 7900 SLI config or 1900XFX and have total CRAP performance. the other aspect is personal preference. both cards are fairly evenly matched from the specs and benches yes one has a bit better then the other in everyother catagory but bottom line is. If you

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