How well do newer AMD-based video cards work in SL?

[Snickers Snook]

I am considering a 6950 or 6770 or similar to replace my old nVidia 9500 GT. A couple of my techie friends are real AMD fans and say that AMD-based cards are better price/performance than nVidia. BUT, I've also been around here long enough to know that many people think nVidia is better for SL than AMD (ATI).

UPDATE: I have a decent PC -- It's an AMD Quad core something with  6gb of RAM on Windows 7 Home Premium. The one lacking thing is the PCIe is 1.1 16x not 2.1. It has a 600 watt power supply.

[valerie Inshan]

Hi Snickers. I'm not a great techie, but my iMac runs a AMD Radeon HD 6770M and I am more than happy with it. Smoothe and beautiful graphics, great performances and no lag. Of course the 6950 will be even better along with at least 1 Gb memory. I don't know about PCs, but Apple abandoned  nVidia on their lastest machines because of poor performances...

[Hiro Starbrook]

I have an ATI 6950 card and I installed the latest drivers which come with improved OpenGL support which is important for SL. Overall I think the card works very well and SL is fast and very smooth. So I think it is a very solid card, especially for the price.

However, somehow I had expected more. I thought SL would have recommend me the Ultra setting and that I would now get a far better picture quality. That didn't happen. What I would like to know is whether an ATI card with the new drivers is similar or still lagging a good Nvidia card in terms of SL performance (OpenGL).

[Alicia Sautereau]

If SL is your most played game, i would suggest to reconsider going for an nvida card as it playes abit nicer with opengl

If it`s a mix of different games then it doesn`t matters so much as every company has their preffered manufactor and it`s an hit&miss aocross the board with "best card"

[LoveAngeL Lyre]

Hello Snickers. The good performance is a combination of many factors no only of the graphics card. I am sure not if you will notice big difference using a very good graphics card with an old processor, motherboard and power supply. From my experience here in Forums i have read more problems with AMD cards than with Nvidia cards. On the other side if your aim is the Ultra performance, you have more possibilities to achieve it with an AMD and no with a Nvidia card. You understand that there is no a specific answer for your question, it is no easy to build or upgrade a tower for SL. SL has too many specificities. Maybe the best you can do (if it is possible) is to try a pc with similar stats with yours (and the new graphics card) in real visiting a store. Only this way you can be sure.

[Jacki Silverfall]

ATI works fine for SL. But it sucks at other programs. Don't get one.