Notebook graphic cards: ATI or NVIDIA?

[das_thunder]

So, for a notebook what would you prefer for a graphic card? An ATI or a NIVIA?

BTW, could you say what would be better for a laptop: an Nvidia Geforce 7300 512Mb DDR Turbocache: http://www.nvidia.com/page/go_7300 or an ATI Radeon X1700 512 Mb Hypermemory: http://ati.amd.com/products/mobility...700/specs.html

Do you know any place were to make an graphic cards comparative?

Thanks

[Goose+]

No brainer. Nvidia.

[Ricksa]

Why is it a no brainer? , the X1700 is more on the higher end of the scale than the 7300, just on benchmarks the X1400 beats the 7300 which is a fairer comparison, a fair comparison for the X1700 would be against the 7600go and even between these the X1700 has a higher benchmark and higher clocks. You don´t have to take my word for it there are a butt load of sites showing comparisons between these two cards and the obvious conclusion to me was that the X1700 mobility is superior to the 7300go.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-...ist.844.0.html

This is just one example of many sources that I looked at of which all said practically the same thing. De onde és em Portugal?

[Adunaphel]

In general terms i would go for nVidia, but in this case the ATi card is the faster card. That still doens't mean i would recommend the ATi card. Never before have i seen such crappy drivers from such a major company as when i used an ATi card in my desktop. Not to mention the sorry dualhead implementation they used (as soon as something moved on my secondary screen, the primary lagged, now imagine Winamp playing with a scrolling songtitle). So yes, actually nVidia is a no-brainer for me.

[Hidden_Hunter]

Neither, the trade offs usually associated with having a "fast" video card in a laptop make it not worth it imo.

[pdanev]

What are you going to use it for? Don't expect it to be a desktop replacement, all laptops have heating issues even under regular office work, now if you start playing some games I can guarantee you it will overheat unless you have a laptop cooler. I have x1600 in my laptop, graphics is really nice when you max it out, but don't expect any fps then, under max settings usually nothing is playable. So you will have to go for balanced performance/graphics setting, which will give you reasonable fps and semi-decent graphics, neither of which is comparable to a proper desktop. I don't know about nvidia, but this is my experience with ati. Had one in my previous laptop, have one now... don't expect much. Certainly better than some integrated thing, but don't expect miracles.

Also, I agree with the driver issues. Ati's website didn't provide any drivers until recently, and even now the drivers they offer are very very limited to a handful of models only. Then they tell you to ask the manufacturer for driver support, who of course don't really bother to update drivers for anything that's older than few months. Of course you can use some moded stuff like omega drivers etc, but in my experience those cause even more heating and other issues.

[Goose+]

For gaming, always Nvidia

[tinmanf1]

Originally Posted by Goose+

No brainer. Nvidia.

QFT.

L8

[jeffy777]

Nvidia, something like this ASUS with 7600go (512MB dedicated) would be good:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220044

[Ricksa]

I agree with the Ati driver issue Adunaphel picked up on, but out of the two cards posted originally the X1700 is the faster card, if it were me I would look into something like jeffy 777 posted.

[das_thunder]

Originally Posted by Ricksa

Why is it a no brainer? , the X1700 is more on the higher end of the scale than the 7300, just on benchmarks the X1400 beats the 7300 which is a fairer comparison, a fair comparison for the X1700 would be against the 7600go and even between these the X1700 has a higher benchmark and higher clocks. You don´t have to take my word for it there are a butt load of sites showing comparisons between these two cards and the obvious conclusion to me was that the X1700 mobility is superior to the 7300go.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-...ist.844.0.html

This is just one example of many sources that I looked at of which all said practically the same thing. De onde és em Portugal?

Ya you're right. That link is awesome.Thanks!

Guessing that I'm gonna look there for looking the graphics for the new portable!
Reading your post was cool! I wasn't expecting that last phrase in Portuguese!
E sou de Lisboa! Tb é Português?

"Bem vendo bem a Nvidia parece ser melhor... mas penso ke nao se deve generalizar e por isso no caso indicado iria para ATI!" - Jeez start writing in portuguese is bad!

Well, I was saying that Nvidia seems to be quite better... but I think that we can't generalize and because of that in this specific case the ATI would be a better choice!

I have a ATI 9600/9700 series on my laptop and never had complaints about it!

[Ricksa]

Sou Sul Africano mas veio para Madeira há 4 anos por isso sim podes disser que sou meio Português.

Sorry if this sudden outburst of Portuguese irritates you guys, I´ll stop here

[Xeon SX]

I have ATI, which is why I voted for NVIDIA

[rskrobot]

We have been using ATI in our desktops at work. We recently switched to NVIDIA. I much prefer the ATI card.
We do mostly 2D/3D vector processing, ATI seems to handle it better.

[jeffy777]

Well, it all depends on the card. You cant just say Nvdia is always better or vise versa.

[Adunaphel]

True, there are some ATi cards that have better performance for your money than nvidia cards. But that still doesn't mean i would recommend the ATi card.

[jeffy777]

Originally Posted by Adunaphel

True, there are some ATi cards that have better performance for your money than nvidia cards. But that still doesn't mean i would recommend the ATi card.

Exactly, if you are comparing a cheap nvidia with a more pricey ATI, then obviously the ATI will probably be better, but if you are comparing cards in the same range, then I would take the nvidia

[Kip_6666]

Originally Posted by jeffy777

Well, it all depends on the card. You cant just say Nvidia is always better or vise versa.

Thats pretty much my opinion too, and we're seeing the typical computer hardware discussion here. Some people have bad experiences with one brand, others with the second brand. Which makes it tricky getting a proper impression on the issue as a whole.
Many of those views are short and sometimes very superficial. You should ask yourself in how far you can trust them, because before you know someone has only read a random forum post on some other forum and then continues to present it as a fact on another. Thats how these things can grow while missing the point completely.

One of the main reasons is because computer items are quite complicated, not many people have time nor the motivation to figure out every important detail (and these details can be important to one person while the other person never uses that feature), so a generalisation is quickly made. And you need to ask yourself in how far it is important in your situation if any at all.

On topic

In my opinion there isn't much between nvidia and ati these days, I'd get the fastest card in the price range if you're going to be using it for games. If you want to use it for something else specific other than games you'd have to dig a bit deeper.

People are shouting that ATI has bad drivers, if you follow the tech news a bit Nvidia have been getting more bad press on driver bugs than ATI, but look another generalisation, maybe these bugs are only for specific cards. If you're buying a 7300 then these bugs might not even matter!

The above mentioned problems are mainly for the 8800 series.

[Jacobfox]

I can say honestly that the 8600GT in my Asus whups the llama's ass. I can only imagine how much the 8700 rocks.

[Quiky]

Originally Posted by Xeon SX

I have ATI, which is why I voted for NVIDIA

Ditto.

X700 in my 17" MSI, very nice graphics, but I would NEVER EVER EVER deal with ATI's shitty mobile drivers again.