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Nvidia vs ATI chipsets

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JeanneAnne

JeanneAnne

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hi ever1 .. my brother is building me a new computer .. Here is what he said:

>>Note the video card has an ATI chipset. I dug around for a couple of hours looking for a NVIDIA that offered a comparable price for performance, but I couldn't justify spending more money on a card that wasn't any better than its ATI counterpart. The last time I built a computer, NVIDIA had the edge, and so I've got a NVIDIA card in my computer right now. But this time around, ATI is the way to go.

Anyway I'm sorry I looked for a NVIDIA but ended up with an ATI Raedon. I assure you there is no reason whatsoever to lose any sleep over this. If you want you can have my card and I'll just go ahead and use the new one. ;) <<

Seems like every1 says that Nvidia is the way to go for SL .. Is this true? Will the ATI card be ok? or should i tell him to switch it out like he says he will? I told him to go w/ a Nvidia but hes stubborn .. he says that Nvidia drivers are "disgusting" .. i bet he coulduv found a good Nvidia card if he had wanted to .. but nooooo ... Thanks for any advice or insite any1 can offer .....

Jeanne


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Bouttime Whybrow

Bouttime Whybrow

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i agree with him.

i just a new comp and i too wanted an nvidia as my old one, but after reading up i found ati has made leaps forward and while nvidia is usally recommended for sl and gaming in general there is issues with their drivers concerning sl, its in an SL wiki somewhere, i don't have the link but you can find it.

anyway, i went with an ati 1gig and its great. i think he is telling you the striaght dope.

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JeanneAnne

JeanneAnne

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Ansariel Hiller wrote:

Regarding the "disgusting" nvidia drivers: At least they don't give you a pink SL as happened recently with certain ATI driver versions.
:D
From my experience, nvidia has been less troublesome with SL.

Thanks Ansariel .. Yeah, seems like the consensus is that Nvidia cards work best for SL .. i wish he would just do what i asked him to do .. but my brother thinks he knows it all when it comes to puters .. So now i'll be paying for this new ATI card & will end up getting his older ~used~ Nvidia one .. I think he planned it that way ... I wonder if anyone plays SL just fine on a ATI chipset tho ...

Jeanne

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JeanneAnne

JeanneAnne

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Bouttime Whybrow wrote:

i agree with him.

i just a new comp and i too wanted an nvidia as my old one, but after reading up i found ati has made leaps forward and while nvidia is usally recommended for sl and gaming in general there is issues with their drivers concerning sl, its in an SL wiki somewhere, i don't have the link but you can find it.

anyway, i went with an ati 1gig and its great. i think he is telling you the striaght dope.

Awesome Bouttine !! Thanks! ;)

Jeanne

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Bouttime Whybrow

Bouttime Whybrow

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here is the link with the relevant part quoted below.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Graphics-cards/ta-p/700073

 

"

Note about NVIDIA drivers

NVIDIA graphics cards may cause driver-related problems. After installing the latest NVIDIA drivers, the Second Life® Viewer may crash with an error message that states: "Second Life is unable to run because your video card drivers did not install properly, are out of date, or are for unsupported hardware." This appears to be a problem with the NVIDIA drivers' initial installation: the first time the install process is run, something fails silently — a file or set of files doesn't copy properly, but the installer doesn't give you any notice that something went wrong.

There is a solution: ensure that all of your applications are closed, and install the NVIDIA drivers again. For some reason, the drivers almost always install correctly the second time.

If these steps do not solve your problem, please see NVIDIA's Driver Installation Hints."

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Perrie Juran

Perrie Juran

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If you scroll on down to the SL Viewer sub forum you will find a lot of discussions about this.

You'll find the majority favor Nvidia but many have equal success with ATI.

Sometimes I get the impression there is a bit of a crap shoot in picking a card.

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JeanneAnne

JeanneAnne

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Ansariel Hiller wrote:

That's waaaaaaaaaaaay old! Never ever heard of anyone with that issue. I only heard from hundreds of people having

Looks like the pink & purple issues was w/ 3000 - 6000 series cards .. The 1 hes ordered is SAPPHIRE 11188-22-20G Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card (OC Edition) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102987 .. so maybe its newer & doesnt have these issues ... hope not !!

Jeanne

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Peggy Paperdoll

Peggy Paperdoll

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ATI (AMD) vs nVidia is exactly like the age old fuss over Chevy vs Ford.  Both chipsets are excellent products.  Both provide graphics rendering to wow your eyes and impress your friends.  Both chipsets have their ups and downs.  Both excell in areas where the other falls short......then it suddenly turns the other way.  It all boils down to what do you want.  Get an nVidia and everything is hunky dory.........until one day nVidia releases a driver that makes the peformance drop like a rock and it appears you made a huge mistake.  Or get an AMD/ATI and the same thing happens.  What do you do?  Like Pierre said........"it's a crap shoot".

ATI is still suffering from a period of time (almost a year long period) when it seemed they just were not interested in providing OpenGL support......they were after the gaming market which is almost exclusively DirectX graphics (and they actually gained that market over nVidia).  But it really hurt them in the OpenGL market.  nVidia seemed to take the opposite approach and concentrated heavily on OpenGL (and, I think, ceded the gaming market to ATI).  That was great for SL users since SL is OpenGL graphics..........and that's where the graphics preference of choice became nVidia.  In the last year or so (since AMD bought ATI) it looks like AMD/ATI decided to compete with nVidia for the OpenGL market.........and they are doing pretty good job of it.  One card release will out perform the competition then the competition ups the game and takes the lead........it's all good for the comsumer.  Both cards are excellent because of that competition.

It's just what you want........a Ford or a Chevy.  :)

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Orca Flotta

Orca Flotta

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Right now it seems like Nvidia have the edge over ATI, once again. Their newest and bestest card (forgot the number, 690GTX?) is the fastest thing ever but costs you an arm and a leg. While ATI/AMD cards are perfectly usable for a lot less dough. I guess as long as you get a top of the line card both makes are very well capable of runnning SL on ultra.

Limiting factor will be your conection's data throughput rather than your chipset. Go wireless or be on a less than optimal link and you can forget about the milliseconds your hardware is faster than other hardware. If you have the choice ... go the trusted Nvidia way. If not ... just say pffft and enjoy SL on ATI's best.

 

 

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Nyll Bergbahn

Nyll Bergbahn

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JeanneAnne wrote:

Looks like the pink & purple issues was w/ 3000 - 6000 series cards .. The 1 hes ordered is
SAPPHIRE 11188-22-20G Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card (OC Edition)
.. so maybe its newer & doesnt have these issues ... hope not !!

Jeanne, LL fixed the pink bug a few versions back and it is not an issue now. There were a couple of variations of it, one affected prims (which I never suffered with using my ATI Radeon HD 5850), another affected some system layers. Both are fixed. Occasionally, it may take a rebake but that's it. Niran's viewer, which I usually use, had an issue with the pink system layer bug after fixing the prim bug a while back but he fixed the system layer bug last week. So all is well with it too. 

I can run on Ultra with shadows and DoF, no problems and get a good fps. I have to disable VBO in Preferences > Graphics > Hardware in V3 in the latest V3 mesh viewers but is fine enabled in Niran's.

There was a thread last July about the 6950 where the OP said it wasn't working well with V3 but another person said it worked great with Firestorm and I think you use it.

Another thread here http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Technical/How-well-do-newer-AMD-based-video-cards-work-in-SL/qaq-p/1312183/comment-id/17941 Doesn't matter one jot what SL recommends after installing a card, it's how it runs when you move the slider up.

Nothing else I can find or even recent so I'm guessing any driver issues are long sorted or we'd have seen more threads.

 

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JeanneAnne

JeanneAnne

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Nyll Bergbahn wrote:

JeanneAnne wrote:

Looks like the pink & purple issues was w/ 3000 - 6000 series cards .. The 1 hes ordered is
SAPPHIRE 11188-22-20G Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card (OC Edition)
.. so maybe its newer & doesnt have these issues ... hope not !!

Jeanne, LL fixed the pink bug a few versions back and it is not an issue now. There were a couple of variations of it, one affected prims (which I never suffered with using my ATI Radeon HD 5850), another affected some system layers. Both are fixed. Occasionally, it may take a rebake but that's it. Niran's viewer, which I usually use, had an issue with the pink system layer bug after fixing the prim bug a while back but he fixed the system layer bug last week. So all is well with it too. 

I can run on Ultra with shadows and DoF, no problems and get a good fps. I have to disable VBO in Preferences > Graphics > Hardware in V3 in the latest V3 mesh viewers but is fine enabled in Niran's.

There was a thread last July about the 6950 where the OP said it wasn't working well with V3 but another person said it worked great with Firestorm and I think you use it.

Another thread here
 Doesn't matter one jot what SL recommends after installing a card, it's how it runs when you move the slider up.

Nothing else I can find or even recent so I'm guessing any driver issues are long sorted or we'd have seen more threads.

 

Thanks so much Nyll :matte-motes-inlove:

Brobot says that the components arrived today & he'll start assembling my new pc & have it ready this weekend. Then he either has to bring it down to me or i have to go get it. I'd rather he brought it here so he can set it up & make sure everythings working.

Yeah, I use Firestorm. I've been using the beta because I get the best fps with it but with the new machine I'll use the latest mesh enabled FS. I will be SOOooooo glad to put my settings up to where I can finally see SL in all its glory, & set my draw distance to where i can see trees & stuff before I fly into them! Will be so nice !!

My old computer ~which my brother also built~ was a nice one .. It was just old. He had told me not to spend 1 cent upgrading it but then said that if it had a PCI-Express slot ~he didn't remember if it did or not~ that I might want to try putting a new video card in it & see if that helped. So over the weekend I unplugged everything, pulled it out onto the carpet, opened the case & looked. I couldn't tell anything so I took pics & sent them to him & he said Yep! .. it was a PCI-Express slot alrite. So I thot I was only going to have to buy a card ~not a whole new computer!!

Well... the inside was dusty so while I had it open I thot I'd better vacuum the insides. What my brobot & the guy @ Best Buy both think happened was that static electricity from the vacuum fried the puter when it wasnt grounded. So .. a $924 lesson learned !! Altho I'm not sure how I'm going to pay for it .. I'm actually glad to be getting a new computer. Now I'll be able to see shadows & see mesh & set all my settings high. I'm really missing SL right now but I have a feeling I'm going to fall in love w/ SL all over once I can see everything properly! :)

Jeanne

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Nyll Bergbahn

Nyll Bergbahn

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JeanneAnne wrote:

Brobot says that the components arrived today & he'll start assembling my new pc & have it ready this weekend. Then he either has to bring it down to me or i have to go get it. I'd rather he brought it here so he can set it up & make sure everythings working.

Yeah, I use Firestorm. I've been using the beta because I get the best fps with it but with the new machine I'll use the latest mesh enabled FS. I will be SOOooooo glad to put my settings up to where I can finally see SL in all its glory, & set my draw distance to where i can see trees & stuff before I fly into them! Will be so nice !!

My old computer ~which my brother also built~ was a nice one .. It was just old. He had told me not to spend 1 cent upgrading it but then said that
if
it had a PCI-Express slot ~he didn't remember if it did or not~ that I might want to try putting a new video card in it & see if that helped. So over the weekend I unplugged everything, pulled it out onto the carpet, opened the case & looked. I couldn't tell anything so I took pics & sent them to him & he said Yep! .. it was a PCI-Express slot alrite. So I thot I was only going to have to buy a card ~not a whole new computer!!

Well... the inside was dusty so while I had it open I thot I'd better vacuum the insides. What my brobot & the guy @ Best Buy both think happened was that static electricity from the vacuum fried the puter when it wasnt grounded. So .. a $924 lesson learned !! Altho I'm not sure how I'm going to pay for it .. I'm actually glad to be getting a new computer. Now I'll be able to see shadows & see mesh & set all my settings high. I'm really missing SL right now but I have a feeling I'm going to fall in love w/ SL all over once I can see everything properly!
:)

Jeanne

Oh hell, expensive lesson.

Anyway, while I have to agree that Nvidia cards cause less issues than ATI/AMD cards, Nvidia is by no means trouble free. Some of the mid to high range Nvidia cards had serious driver issues last year. The new AMD HD 7970 had driver issues too when it came out, may be fixed now. The new Nvidia GTX 680 worked ok so the new mid range ones should too when released.

Your brother may have been able to pick up a Nvidia GTX 560 Ti for about the same money or a bit less if still available. That would be around the same performance as the AMD Radeon HD 6950. Next Nvidia card up is the 560 Ti 448 but considerably more expensive, closer in price to the 570 than the 560 Ti.

What CPU is going in to the new computer btw? SL seems to prefer quad cores over dual cores.

Anyway, hope you enjoy your SL with the AMD HD 6950. If you need help, do ask. There are plenty of residents using ATI/AMD cards successfully who know how to solve issues and any tests I've read show it beating the Nvidia GTX 560 Ti in other games.

Yes, Shadows look cool.

The Wilderness - sim windlight settings - Ultra - No Shadows - Full Reflections - 380m draw distance

Wilderness Ultra No Shadows.png

The Wilderness - sim windlight settings - Ultra - Deferred Rendering - All Shadows - Full Reflections - 380m draw distance

Wilderness Ultra Shadows.png

 

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JeanneAnne

JeanneAnne

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Gorgeous pics Nyll !!

& thanks so much ...

The processor he's putting in is: AMD FX-8120 Zambezi 3.1GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8120FRGUBOX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103961

& the mobo: GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514

Components arrived yesterday & he's prolly got it together by now. I'm going to bug him to bring it down here this weekend. Hope he can but he has two young children & a busy life. I'm jonesin' for my Second Life !!! :womansad:

Thanks again for taking interest & for all your help ...

Jeanne

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iAntonio Vyper

iAntonio Vyper

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Hi, I have never had issues with Ati cards and Second Life. The choice should only be driven by anyone's needs. Actually I'm using a Sapphire HD6770 1G Vapor DDR5, I wanted a quiet, low power consumption card (= less heat produced = less noise) and generally these pros are hard to find in the nVdia cards. On Viewer 3 it shouts ~50 fps at Ultra Setting and ~130 at High Settings (in my case, on a machine an i7 2600, a solid state hard drive and 16Gb RAM though). If you don't care about electricity bill to be paid at the end of the month, the noise, the warm air in your room and your pocket, you can just pick the very last (and newest) high end card on the market, no matter which brand is. You will be sure about 'who's better'. All this 'generally talking' just to say it's meaningless to talk about a 'Vs' without clearly considering your needs . :matte-motes-wink:

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