Switching from ATI to Nvidia, an interesting experience

[TronFAQ]

So I just did a minor upgrade to my computer yesterday, I doubled the memory (from 2GB to 4GB) and swapped my ATI 3870 video card for an Nvidia GT240 (the GDDR5 version). The memory certainly provided a nice productivity boost, but the card is really a sidegrade rather than an upgrade. (In fact, it's probably even a slight downgrade.)

Why would I switch to a GT240 if it's no better than the 3870? For a few reasons.

• I've never owned an Nvidia card before. I wanted to gain experience with Nvidia cards, and see what the competition offered. The image quality seems to be pretty much the same, but I'm not a big fan of Nvidia's digital vibrance feature. Which makes colors in videos too saturated, without adjustment.
• It performs about the same as the 3870, more or less. Maybe a tad slower. But it produces less heat and uses less power, and the fan is quieter even under load.
• It was dirt cheap. Just over $50 with rebate. So now I have a $50 card that performs about as well as a $200+ card I bought 3 years ago.
• It accelerates Flash and Video playback, which the 3870 did not. (Because ATI decided not to bother with supporting acceleration on their older cards. )
• I plan to do another upgrade in a few months time, when I can afford it. In addition to a better processor, I'm probably going to get a Radeon 6870 at that point. But I'll still keep the GT240 and use it as a dedicated PhysX processor. The GT240 is ideal as a PhysX card, and can be made to work with an ATI card if you know how.

Basically, I got the GT240 in preparation for my next upgrade. Was thinking long term. But in the meantime, I get the chance to gain experience with the Nvidia side of things so I no longer have to say "I don't have an Nvidia card, so I can't really help with your problem".

If you have a really old desktop video card, the GT240 is a nice cheap upgrade while the rebate lasts.

[Daddyo]

The really cool thing about Nvidia, if your a programmer, is the free CUDA libraries & compiler http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home_new.html that build programs for the parallel processor itself.

Amazing computing power, on the order of 600 gigaflops double-precision math if you buy their high end processor, that's equivalent to the best supercomputer out there just 14 years ago, for $2500. With a cheap graphics card - e.g. anything on the list here including yours Tronfaq (270 gigaflops) http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_gpus.html#Q2 it's nearly the same performance, you can do crazy things, like galaxy simulations. Just check out their examples.

Unfortunately my card is just a wee bit too old to do this. Today's best supercomputer (in China) is about 1000x more powerful. The best six-core PC processor is 'theoretically' about 100 gigaflops.

[Jizaboz]

I used Radeons up until the Nvidia 8400 came out, mainly due to price .

I've been very satisfied with my Gforce 250 OC'd, despite blowing up one PSU due to the PSU not having 26 amps on one rail

[TronFAQ]

@Daddyo: Yeah, Nvidia are definitely the pioneers in the GPGPU area. AMD is way behind. (I say AMD because they dropped the ATI brand starting with the latest Radeon 6000 series.)

@Jizaboz: So far I'm fairly satisfied with my purchase, but there are some minor things that are bothering me.

I've noticed that when I place a load on the card while playing games, there's a faint burning smell. I've examined the card more than once, and continue to keep an eye on it. So far, there's no evidence of melted or burned components. At least, nothing visible. I don't know if perhaps, because it's new, maybe the plastic/epoxy/sealant they use on the components is burning off a little and that's just normal for this card. I only know I've never had this before with any other card.

While in-game image quality seems to be slightly superior to my old ATI card (particularly when it comes to transparency), the video playback quality is inferior in my eyes. Maybe I need to tweak some things. But I didn't need to muck around with my old card.

Finally, in Tron 2.0, there's a really annoying delay before certain events occur. Like when the game first loads, it pauses for quite some time before the main menu and then the Jet animation in the KA Mod almost gets skipped over. Also, when I want to race on a Light Cycle, again once a level is finished loading there's an annoying pause and the rez-in animation is skipped.

I think it might have to do with the fact that the GT240 only has a 128-bit bus on the card, versus the 3870's 256-bit bus. So loading textures into the card's memory is probably taking longer, hence those long pauses. But it could be something else. I've tried turning off Precaching in the game and some other things, but little has helped so far.

And Nvidia had to go and release newer drivers just a couple of days after I installed the card. Now I'll probably want to update again. .

[TronFAQ]

A quick update on the problems I was having.

The burning smell seems to be fading with time. The more I use it, the less it's there. So hopefully I was right about the card just needing a bit of a burn-in period.

Regarding slowdowns in Tron 2.0, it seems that if you set an Nvidia card's power management mode to "Adaptive", it slows the card's bus speed down to a minimum and goes into a very low power state. Which is fine for desktop activities. But once a game is run, it takes a while for the card to leave the power saving state and switch to full performance mode. On this card, at least.

By changing the setting to "Prefer maximum performance", it helped to reduce the pausing. But it still hasn't been eliminated.

[TronFAQ]

Santa was good to me this year (aka I was able to afford it, when I thought I wouldn't) so I picked up a new Radeon 6870 for Christmas. The GT240 has now become a dedicated PhysX card instead.

After having switched back to the ATI/AMD camp, I can safely say that each side has advantages over the other. It depends on what's more important to you, whether AMD or Nvidia should be your choice.

For me, this is what I observed:

• The video playback quality of both my old (3870) and new ATI/AMD cards are superior to my Nvidia card. I've been using exactly the same playback software and monitor in both cases, and the ATI cards are noticeably better in this aspect.
• For the in-game visual quality, the GT240 was slightly superior to the old 3870. But the new 6870 has caught up, and I'd say they're about even.
• When it comes to the hardware side, ATI/AMD and Nvidia both produce solid products. But of the software side (drivers), AMD has a lot of work to do. The Nvidia drivers and Control Panel are far better on the whole. AMD is trying to change that now with their recent drivers, but they're still not there yet. If anything, in attempting to rework their drivers to improve them, they are actually making them worse during the transition period. The latest Catalyst driver is causing me a few glitches on occasion. (So basically, it sucks right now.)

With the 6870, I was able to crank up the anti-aliasing at 1680x1050 and still get 60 FPS (with VSync turned on) most of the time in Tron Evolution. It occasionally dipped down to as low as 30 FPS in large, wide-open spaces like CLU's Regulator in the last chapter of the game. I'm pretty pleased with its performance, especially considering my processor (Athlon X2 6400+) is still a weak point and probably holding back the card a little.