Man, I really don’t get people who swear by certain companies and brands no matter what, be it Intel vs. AMD or (as in this case), nVIDIA vs. ATI.
What you guys (the ones fighting) don’t realize is that any two companies in competition will invariably gain and lose the top spot. We have seen it happen over and over again. It is more apparent in the hardware industry because of their incredibly small product cycles.
Take the example of Intel and AMD. Intel was unchallenged till the time of P3. The P3 was a good product; however it was beaten by Athlon. In the next generation, the P4 (I am not considering the Willamette, only the Northwood) proved to be superior (at least in most benchmarks) than the Athlon XP. The again, in the current generation, AMD FX 64 kicks the Prescott’s @$$.
Similarly, in the graphics industry, nVIDIA was totally unchallenged up till the time of the GeForce4 Ti (despite some competition from the Radeon 8500). Then it got complacent, and ATI was able to steal its thunder with the Radeon 9700. Due to nVIDIA resting on its laurels, their FX chip was unable to beat the Radeon 9xxx series (except FX 5200 vs. 9200). Now the 6800 chip beats the X800 chip in almost all tests (as proven by multiple sites). In fact, the X600 is nothing more than an updated version of the 9600 chip.
My point is that no company can dish out market leading products for long, because the other guys are not fools. The necessity of survival dictates that they will try their best to make their next product better than the other company's. A man fights best when he is backed into a corner.
If you consider pure performance, I think it would be foolish to deny that the Radeon 9xxx series is superior to the FX series in every market segment, especially when pixel shader performance was concerned. nVIDIA cards were and are better at OpenGL than ATI cards. While nVIDIA does offer some innovative AA techniques (like Quincunx), ATI’s renderer does not take as big a hit as nVIDIA’s when AA is turned on.
All this has changed with the release of NV40. This core is far superior to anything in the market. While the X800 is a really powerful card, it can’t touch the 6800, with regards to both, raw power and feature set. If you want numbers go over to *www.thetechlounge.com/review.php?directory=xfx_geforce_6800_gt_256&page=6 for Doom3 card comparison or to *www.thetechlounge.com/review.php?directory=xfx_geforce_6800_gt_256&page=7 for HL2 (Counter-Strike: Source) card comparison.
Anidex, while the 9600 is a good card, it is not comparable to a 5900. It is the best card in the mid range segment, beating the 5600 and 5700. Saying that the PS 3.0 is not relevant because no games are coming of it is wrong. When buying anything new, it is wise to look at today and tomorrow. Anyway, there are games available which support PS 3.0 today, like Far Cry (with patch 1.2). Also, nVIDIA drivers are superior to ATI’s. OpenGL is not cr@p. In fact, the almighty Carmack endorses it! DX and OpenGL both have their advantages and disadvangates.
ATI does not have as strong a market presence as nVIDIA, especially in India. Ditto with AMD. People will buy a brand with higher visibility, regardless of performance and/or price. That’s why you will find more FX cards than Radeon 9xxx (despite the latter being superior).
nVIDIA has been cheating in the FX drivers (53 to 56), like in 3DMark03. The guys at Future mark not only confirmed it, they even released a new build to counter this problem. nVIDIA also cheated with Far Cry. The FX cards got a significant FPS drop if you renamed the FarCry.exe file to something else. This was wrong of nVIDIA. However, ATI cheated with Quake III benchmarks, dropping the quality slightly to get a FPS boost. I don’t fully remember what happened, but it had to do with Radeon 8500 (I think).
NOTE: there have been no report of either nVIDIA or ATI cheating with their new cards.
Moreover, almost the entire industry agrees that the 6800 is faster and better than the X800 (excluding certain cases e.g. Battlefield: Vietnam).
.
