#1 The BIG reason.
Unreal Engine 2 game support.
I still love to play Rainbow 6: Ravenshield and SWAT 4. Anybody who has attempted to play these classics under WinXP on a 8800 series, will have noted the extreme stuttering, making decent gameplay for 5 year old games impossible. In RvS you could disable UseHardwareTL and have it be playable without issue, the same fix doesn't work in SWAT4.

#2 Alternate Pixel Center
BF 1942 + mods
The original, and still the best. No better way to have AA and still have readable text than Ati's Alternate Pixel Center

#3 Multi Monitor Support
I can't believe this, but finally Ati seems to have better multi monitor support. With a GTS, my system would have a freaking embolism if I moved a video screen from one monitor to another. With a 3870, smooth as warm butter.

These comparisons are to a G80 based 8800GTS on an XP Pro System

Main 3 reason's I can't stand ATI

#1- Ati/AMD driver site, friggin pisses me the hell off.

#2- Their Cards Look ugly as hell, and usually are ridicoulsy huge

#3- Their card power adapters, a 6 and an 8 pin. just pick one of the two

8-pin is the new PCI-X spec. DaAMIT just surprised the market. The adapters are cheap enough and cards nowadays should come with them. New NV cards will have them as well.

The 3870x2 is no larger than the top spec NV offering right now (8800GTX768MB or whatever it is). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder my friend.

I'd like to see Quadfire in action, that would be a big plus if it works right (for once).

i don't have 3 reasons to pick one over the other. i have only one reason to pick nVidia over AMD/ATI. "Keep Aspect Ratio". Why this option is not included in ATI's drivers is beyond me. Some games do not support wide screen resolutions and having them stretch to the full width of the monitor is completely unacceptable.

I'm just outlining some reasons here. Reviewers don't bench old games anymore (though some still think Quake 3 Arena is relevant - maybe on my Voodoo2...) It's a nasty shock when a high end card can't play what ran well on a GF4 or 9500Pro.

the next gen of games is always more relevant in a review then past gen. I do agree that older games do matter but "old" is different to everyone. I play alot of games every month and to me ES4:Oblivion is old now mind you its still a best seller and only about 2 years old in march but when you play 10 games a month it was 240 games ago

I think more people are concerned with future titles then how games of the past will run. but most magazines still use fear, q4, and hl2 to bench now anyway, those are all old titles to me. so for me nvidia is a no brainer, current games run much faster and i find nvidia drivers much less painful.

Just to add:

- Crossfire WITH multi monitor support, yes I can have 4 monitors and have CF enabled - not that most games like having more than one active display.
- F@H GPU2 client, to bad Quad CF is limted to AMD CPU's.

If you have a 3870X2 (or crossfire with one monitor)though you have to enable the second monitor in order for the F@H client to see it properly though. That's only from what I've skimmed over, and there's a fairly easy workaround though.

Quad Crossfire (and tri-SLI for that matter) is a total waste of money (and even more money since you have to buy a huge PSU and spend money on your power bill) at this point. Some games (Crysis) don't utilize it, some games don't support FPS over a certain amount (UT3) and some games (COD 4) it doesn't even matter since the FPS are goofy high enough even with one card. Is 2560X1600 the res you're shooting for? Then dole out the dosh (1300$+) for a 30" monitor.

ATI needs two or more gpu's to out perform Nvidia's top single gpu's.

Shhhh don't tell everyone dude lol

Good thing you can buy 2 or 3 of them for the same price then.

my first 2 cards were ATI & this build I went Nvidia just because I wanted to try SLI instead of crossfire.

I ain't trying either dual GPU setup until they get their acts together and release something with good value and it actually works as advertised. I will probably be waiting for a long while yet.

Ha Ha! So true!

just a note, 8800GT's are cheaper at online retailers then the 3870. right now a certain Canadian e-tailer is
selling them for $169, there almost always under $200.so ati is slower and more expensive now. i think its funny how fanboys of ati try and defend the fact that they can't get a decent GPU out the door.

i am a fan of who ever is faster, these companies don't pay me so i don't take sides. nvidia is simply killing ati and there is no excuse thats a fact everyone needs to face, and the at most $20 price difference either way is hardly any selling point for an inferior card.

the only thing i feel ati has going for it is crossfire, it scales much better then sli does.


anyway heres the current pricing from said e-tailer

Gigabyte Radeon HD RX3870 700MHZ 512MB 1.9GHZ GDDR3 Dual DVI-I HDCP HDTV Out PCI-E Video Card (27774) In Stock $233.99


EVGA E-GEFORCE 8800GT 600MHZ 512MB 1.8GHZ DDR3 PCI-E Dual DVI-I HDTV Out Video Card (512-P3-N801-AR) (27704)
In Stock $169.99