What gfx card should i get

[zerver]

ATI drivers may suck, but if you want max FPS in Spring for the least amount of $$$, ATI still wins.

And 5970 released half a year ago still pwns GTX 480. Too bad both cards are overkill since Spring is CPU limited.

[aegis]

if you want max FPS in Spring for the least amount of $$$, ATI still wins.

at the cost of consistent stability/features

[Caydr]

ATI +Opengl == rubbish

Opengl == rubbish

[aegis]

even if only high-end professional, handheld/embedded, and open-source/crossplatform markets care about opengl, that's not a big deal right? those markets are rubbish, right?

[AF]

Glide emulation is not a pivotal feature of the OpenGL spec that has been implemented in such a way that there are undesirable quirks requiring extensive testing on multiple ATI cards for defective API behaviour.

Heck it took ATI over half a year to add any OpenGL support of any kind to Vista. For at least 6 months, the post XP ATI drivers were all Directx only.

This is for an industry standard API found on the majority of consoles and platforms, it has a near monopoly, the only exception being windows and the xbox where it has competition from directx.

Just look at google. 'nvidia opengl' brings up opengl specs and driver releases, whereas 'ATI opengl' brings up users complaining their shaders break on ATI cards or they cant initialize a basic OGL window, and theyre not all linux, the majority are windows users complaining, with recent cards too, 4xxx and 5xxx series cards

[Super Mario]

Has anyone download and install the open GL 4.0 preview driver?

[Caydr]

Heck it took ATI over half a year to add any OpenGL support of any kind to Vista. For at least 6 months, the post XP ATI drivers were all Directx only.

NV on the other hand merely crashed Vista at every opportunity for about two years, becoming the driving force behind people in general and especially gamers thinking Vista was a POS.

Look up NV4_DISP.DLL BSOD. How common was that problem? I knew it by memory.

even if only high-end professional, handheld/embedded, and open-source/crossplatform markets care about opengl, that's not a big deal right? those markets are rubbish, right?

I like how you imply that nothing high-end professional is done on Windows. I think I'll now imply that Linux is best-suited to rout--- Whoops, that would get my post deleted again.

I don't know how to word this best, but basically yes those platforms are irrelevant to this discussion.

[aegis]

I like how you imply that nothing high-end professional is done on Windows.

nope! I'm implying high-end professional stuff on windows uses opengl for rendering: cadd/modeling, photoshop, video editing, etc

those platforms are irrelevant to this discussion

which is more compatible with
1) linux games
...
3) spring

trying to bring the thread off topic? I have a button for those cases

[Caydr]

Max, Maya, AutoCAD, and Inventor all use directx.

which is more compatible with
...
2) windows games
3) spring

Most "linux games" run on windows - their developers want more than .5% of people to be able to play them.

[aegis]

"linux games" run on windows

only if your card/driver supports opengl

[echoone]

I'm picking up a new low-end desktop (600$-800$ from dell or ibm or w/e) soon and need some advice on gfx card - nvidia or ati? which is more compatible with

1) linux games
2) windows games
3) spring

and has less headache?

Here's the original post. Lets do something novel and actually address the requested issues. Better yet, lets actually use some of that "critical thinking" that someone insists they have above all others here; yet has been seemingly unable to provide.

1) linux games
Easily goes to NVIDIA unless you are a complete fool.

2) Windows games
Probably goes to ATI; but only by a narrow measure, and that assumes they are not OpenGL games. This also assumes Windows games on Windows - which seems more than reasonable.

3) spring
Since "linux games" is listed as the number one item I'll assume that means proper linux support is accordingly a high priority. As such, that means the answer is easily NVIDIA.

So, by a ratio of 2:1, it seems its completely clear the only acceptable answer for him is "Use NVIDIA". Oddly enough, that seems like it parrots my original response. Not to mention that of many others.

Now then, let's use some more of that critical thinking. The original poster said he wants to use a rig costing 600$-800$. So of course its a reasonable assumption that someone building a budget box wants to buy an extremely high end card.

Additionally, as others have pointed out, Spring it self is largely CPU bound. Which means even if buying a high end card, the associated performance boost of doing so would likely never be seen. Which further underscores, any potential performance difference between ATI and NVIDIA really doesn't matter.

So again, caring about critical thinking, we're really talking about a budget video card with excellent opengl support and excellent linux support. By definition, we have exactly one answer - NVIDIA. Period.

Since we now have a completely valid and correct answer, do we really need to continue here? Anyone else find it interesting that if you remove all of a specific person's posts and in turn remove replies to those posts, we have almost nothing but the correct answer and a dramatically shorter thread? But thankfully, he assured all of us he wasn't trolling.

So really, at this point, doing anything other than recommending a good, budget NVIDIA card for the original poster is not only completely unhelpful but also off topic. So, what might those recommendations be?

[Coresair]

Depending on your PSU i would recommend a gtx 460. They are simply a steal at 200$-230$. If you don't want to upgrade your psu and it does not have any pci-e connectors i would recommend the eco version of the 9800gt.



PS: I just ordered a gtx 460

[Carpenter]

NVIDIA is just more compatible with spring, but then again I find ATI more compatible with many FPS games. So depending on your intentions, there's not any 'correct' answer.

These words are all based on my own experiences, and I could insist that stories based on experiences are more reliable than statistics or anything else.

But yes, ATI's drivers are giving me some headache causing graphical bugs in spring, so if your only intention is to have a good card for spring, then it is NVIDIA, all the way.

[TradeMark]

I have 30$ ATI card, and i have no compatibility problems with spring. Runs smoothly.

[Caydr]

What *are* these Spring compatibility problems? I haven't had a problem since I first bought a 4870 soon after it was released. Since then I've had a 4890 and now a 5850.

[Coresair]

What size shadows do you use, how about dynamic water? also note ati's poor drivers cause performance poor compared to nvidia counterparts in all ogl applications not bottlenecked by something else.

[aegis]

many of the compatibility options are worked around by developers who get complaints, an easy fix is hardcoded "this doesn't work for ati so we'll disable it"

[CarRepairer]

many of the compatibility options are worked around by developers who get complaints, an easy fix is hardcoded "this doesn't work for ati so we'll disable it"

Exactly. Caydr doesn't even know what devs have to go through just so his game doesn't crash. Talk about lack of appreciation.

[zerver]

That maybe true. However, anyone playing this game seriously should disable fancy graphics like shadows and dynwater anyway since there are hardly any computers on the market that with it enabled can produce a constant 60FPS through the whole game anyway. My i7 965 certainly could not do it. ATI or Nvidia did not matter, performance was still CPU bound. High FPS and super large unit draw distance is all that matters to win the game.

[TradeMark]

Yeah, i stopped playing with higher than lowest possible settings when my com got killed because of lag

Seeing shadows or fancy water in game isnt all that important for gameplay...

My geforce8800 couldnt even handle the new water effect, it started running on >90 celsius and screaming for me to shut it off. (it honestly screamed at me!).