ATI or GeForce ?

**chevy** · January 30th, 2003, 01:07 PM

Look at http://www.bluesnews.com/plans/1/ (R300 is ATI 9700, NV30 is Nvidia 4 Ti)
They are equal... nearly, at least for Doom.

**prime** · January 30th, 2003, 07:18 PM

The NV30 is the GeForce FX. The Radeon 9700 is FAR superior to the GeForce4 Ti, but slightly slower than the GeForce FX. From Tom's Hardware:

The GeForce4 Ti really lags behind the latest cards with FSAA and Anisotropic filtering enabled.

However, with the advanced effects disabled, the GeForce4 Ti is perfectly adequate.

You have to realize that FSAA and Anisotropic filtering are by-and-large unsupported on the Mac. However, ATi has stated that they will release a control panel that enables those features system-wide. nVidia has said nothing of the sort. Plus there has never been any mention of the GeForce FX on the Mac, though it will come around eventually.

The Radeon 9700 is far superior to the GeForce 4 Ti, and there will soon be support for FSAA and other advanced features, but only on the Radeon 9700. That's fine, because the GeForce4 Ti couldn't handle it anyway.

To sum it up, get the Radeon 9700!

**kendall** · January 30th, 2003, 08:23 PM

a video card is only as good as its drivers. ati seems to have pretty good driver support for mac. maybe its the same for nvidia but i've never had an nvidia card in a mac so i dunno. id go with whats worked for you in the past since the cards are fairly equal. no matter what you go with, its not going to be the faster for long. i think video cards get outdated the fastest of all hardware.

**JetwingX** · January 30th, 2003, 10:14 PM

also i heard from my friend at school that another company is going to be entering tto graphics card race. i don't know if it's true or not but for now it's just a rumor (yeah i started my first rumor

)

**Drizzt** · January 30th, 2003, 10:37 PM

I chose ATi when I upgraded to my Radeon 8500 because of all the issues I read from users at macgaming forums about their games running real slow and crashing a lot, and these users were mainly using nVidia cards. My Radeon hasn't let me down yet, and I've been very impressed w/ it's performance and drivers. Oh and here is an article that I saw and quickly glanced at that will tell you the Geforce FX's shortcomings.

**hulkaros** · January 31st, 2003, 01:42 AM

Originally posted by stealth
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro just came out for the Mac

http://www.apple.com/powermac/graphics.html

which one would u choose? NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti or Ati Radeon 9700 Pro ?

and since i dont know much , which do u think is the best one id like ur help :P

On the Dark Side Radeon 9700 Pro gives Ge4ce a run for its money... And as for the newer offer from Nvidia Ge4ce FX, as prime mentioned, it is slightly faster than ATI... But: Is more expensive + where and when exactly can I buy one for Macs? Right...

**phatsharpie** · January 31st, 2003, 02:04 AM

The Radeon 9700 Pro is definitely the best video card out there right now. All benchmarks I've read so far shows that the GeForce FX, when it arrives will be faster than the 9700 Pro in some tasks (but not all). The FX will be competitive. Its main advantage seems to be its faster clocked GPU. However, the 9700 Pro have a better memory architecture (256 bit path versus Nvidia's 128 bit path) - this allows it to be faster than GF-FX in tasks that are memory intensive.

The main drawback to the GF-FX is that it's HUGE (its heatsick readily consumes a spare PCI slot on the PC side) and that it's NOISY. Also, it'll be more costly than the 9700 Pro when it ships. Considering that it doesn't offer drastic amount of additional performance for more price and noise - probably not the best deal. But we'll see when it comes!

Of course when the GF-FX ships, ATI should be ready to ship it's next Radeon - based on R350 technology. The race never ends!

**Zammy-Sam** · January 31st, 2003, 04:33 PM

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I read about a project between NVidia and another company (lol) to release a new 3d-api for Apple, since windows directx is too strong in the pc-market. Currently there is just OpenGl for Apple (as far as I know) and it's not supporting all the features of the new highend graphic-cards.
This new api should be optimized just for Geforce cards, of course. If that's more than a rumor, I would consider Geforce cards too, eventhough the ati 9700pro is very powerful. And the new pbooks going for NVidia than ati looks pretty interesting...