well sense the forum is dead i figured i would get a good chat going.

8800 or 3870 which do you like and why

Don't get me started....

I originally went with a 3870 because I wanted a card which would exhaust outside of the case.

Most recently I've got an 8800 GTS coming in which also ports outside of the case but will offer about 20+ % to frame rates.

Depends on what you want and what kind of money you want to spend.

what happens if the whole point of this is to get people started.

Anyways, in the pc i just built i put a 3870 in for 2 reasons it was cheaper for only a lose of 10-15 fps for the games i play(mostly racing) and i got a killer deal on a ATI mobo

Well I had an 8800GTS 320MB. Ravensheild, SWAT4 and UT2004 were all UNPLAYABLE, I mean 1FPS unplayable, something to do with Hardware T&L and the Unreal 2 engine games under XP. Also there were really annoying flashing textures in BF2, I think they may have fixed this now. So I switched to a HD3870, which runs those games perfectly. So what if I get a few FPS less in newer games, I run with Vsync forced anyway - and all those crappy console ports are designed to run at 30fps. Plus I have the added bonus of Alternate Pixel center, which is really handy for the '42 series and mods, F@H GPU2 client, being able to run multiple displays with CF enabled (but not while folding)

there is a divide on this forum between ati and nvidia, so i am also no wanting to start this again either, and i will simply say 8800 series hands down. your best bet would be to google 8800GT VS 3870 and see what the word is on some bigger forums.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... ?p=2578885

i can't believe anyone is still debating which card is faster, its been determined a long time ago that the 8800GT/GTS are much faster cards. SLI doesn't scale as well as Crossfire so if you wanna buy 2 cards at once and have mo interest in overclocking or tweaking your cards then the 3870 would be slighlty better on a basic motherboard. the 780/790i has resolved much of the scaling issues now and you should see alot closer results.
if the 3870 was a superior product i doubt AMD/ATi would be hemmoeraging cash like niagra falls.

i do have to admit the 3870x2 does have my attention and is more appealing to me then the 9800gx2. if the 9900GTX doesn't pan out in july i may pick up 2 of them.

The original question was "Which do you like and why" so I guess arguing that nVidia cards not running certain games correctly is valid but if we're talking about straight performance here for most games and systems (ie. not Crossfire/SLI) it shouldn't really be a question anymore like sbeeze316 stated.

I say "most games" too because if the problems Dr_BenD_over had with his GTS were widespread then I'm sure reviews would be pointing it out like crazy. As it is I've only heard of this problem from a handful of people and have heard many more people say they love their 8800 series card.

Thing is they only cover newer games in the reviews, not the sometimes 5 year old games that have the issue. Or they use one map which works just fine, but others won't.

I'm certainly not the only one with this issue. 56 pages on nvidia's own forums, thread started in 2006, still active, still not resolved
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=23904

They did fix it in Vista, but not in XP, and a lot of those games don't work under Vista due to assorted copy protection schemes

I have never had a real problem with ATI or Nvidia.
I just buy the best card in my price range. Buying the 8800GTS was a smart move I think.

S3 is teh way to go w00t!

I use multi-monitors, so ATi would be my only solution to multi-card setups. I like easy choices.

decisions are gonna be alot easier if ATi goes belly up. can't help but feel that AMD has driven them into the ground.

I don't think ATI is in danger of going out of business any time soon, but I do think they backed the wrong pony in the console department.
I wasn't real happy to see them go under AMD either.

I've been pretty big on ATI myself, not for any great reason though.

there losing cash at an amazing rate and there sales are way under projections and looking at how amd is sinking quicker then a cinder block i can't imagine unless something drastic happens they will be the same company in 5 years.

i was ati during the glory years, the 9800 pro, x800xt, and x1900xtx. but last couple builds have been 8800 series nvidia cards simply because ati can't compete with it. kinda sad truley considering these are refreshes of 1 1/2 year old cards.