I have had terrible experience with nVidia drivers. They generally work, but nVidia is incredibly lazy with fixing the aspect-ratio problem, and I probably won't purchase another card of theirs based on that alone. The Linux drivers worked great until I "upgraded" from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04, and DOSBox quit scaling properly, although to be fair I don't know if this is entirely the fault of the drivers. ATI's Linux drivers are supposed to be pretty bad, but they also have an open-source alternative, whereas nVidia's drivers are closed. I would be willing to take the chance and get an HD4850 if I had expendable cash.
The thing with the ATI is that you're actually paying the same for a card that performs a little worse than the 9800GTX. If it were like the 9800PRO (which can kick a 5900Ultra in the ass harder than a C2D kicks an Athlon) thats another story... Veg oil is not a good choice since it gets dirty too quickly. Props for the experiment though, how did it go?
All of the benchmarks I'm looking at says it performs better than the 9800GTX. I didn't realize the 9800GTX was so cheap these days, though. If I was concerned about the price, I might go with a 9800GTX over an HD4870. At this point, though, even if I'm paying $80-90 more, I'd still buy the HD4870, just on the principle of nVidia screwing me in the past.
It depends. I've seen it get better max framerates but lower average frame rates. It's nice to see ATI return though. Now I agree with you on the Nvidia drivers. I just had my first BSOD mess with them.
Have had several BSOD's with nvidia drivers being at fault and had other problems as well. Only had one ATI card for a short while and although had a problem getting the drivers to install after that i had no problems. I really think that the two cards are close in comparison with each other although i've heard that the 9800GTX is better and then heard that the Radeon is bettter so i guess it just depends..
Finally, I have my system built, configured, and stable... which is quite a feat considering the direction I took (790i and Vista 64-bit... there are horror stories out there). I'll start with some specs: CPU: Intel E8400 (Core 2 Duo, 45nm, 3GHz): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037 GPU: ZOTAC 1GB 8800GT (2x): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500023 RAM: 4GB OCZ Reaper DDR3: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227293 MOBO: XFX 790i Ultra 3-Way SLi: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813141009 I don't have a camera with me, so no pictures at the moment. But I'll try to get some shots of my setup as soon as I can, and post them when I do. Oh, and it turns out the heatsink/fan I bought for my CPU didn't fit my mobo afterall (the heatsink itself did, but the bracer to hold it up was too large), so I'm going to have to delay OCing my CPU until I buy one that does fit. It took me a couple hours to build, and two days to configure. Vista is pretty beastly, but once I got all the kinks ironed out, it has been smoothing sailing. In the end, I'm happy with the decisions I've made.
Nice choice of components, I was thinking about the E8400 too but looking at how games and apps are taking advantage of extra cores I would consider the Q6600. But then nahalem is near launch so I may wait and see.
If I hadn't already been waiting for 2 years already (my newegg wishlist was constantly changing :lol: ) I might have waited for Nehalem, but you can only wait for so long. So, I figured I'd go with Core while it was still hot, and squeeze every bit of performance out of it as I can. I've played the waiting game for too long, it was time for me to just go with it :dance:
Yeah I'm kinda in the same situation, went for a A64 when it was still hot, but then 5-6 months later the first C2D came along, and then AMD made things worst by releasing the AM2 socket, crushing any possibilities of upgrading my PC to more advanced A64 versions in the future. Anyway, if things go right I may be getting some extra income so putting together a new rig wont be such a difficult decision.
Yay! so far I love Vista 64. e8400 is badass and so is 8800GT. I can't even imagine how nice a dual 8800Gt is. I guess Crysis will rock.
I got my new monitor yesterday. I've already put it in and I am VERY pleased with it...Dynamic contrast is awesome, and the 2 ms response time makes TF2 look much much better, and not as grainy in some areas, too. This is also my current gaming setup as well.
i think i have that same monitor. http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SyncMaster-906BW-19-Inch-Monitor/dp/B000MGVDCQ/ref=pd_ys_iyr1
