Graphics £250 to spend on graphics... but which card?

No thankfully I didn't get that one But I believe that's the first one there have been problems with. There was one ATI CCC version (believe it was 9.x or something like that) which DID cause BSODs and incompatibilities with some games...

 

So both Red And Green can do crap drivers!? Who'd da funk it? Throw in the fact that both can do a dud card or two, have partners who sometimes don't deal with a rma as efficiently as they should you basically have two companies who are no better or worse than each other.

What can be said is that at the moment few would disagree that Ati have the better overall product range at the moment.

 

Just to qualify that for him, in terms of price/performance, ignoring any product problems.

 

Oh yes I would never deny that, ATI are far ahead of NVIDIA at the moment...

 

ph4zed i actually own the card ( 5850 or did till it got moved to another computer) And dirt 2 pre patches struggled alot on it. Cant say ive ever had the urge to go back and test it again since then. Diffrence is i dont have a totally clean pc with just dirt 2 installed that all review sites use.(who does)

If you get anywere near 35min fps id be quiet surprised. and i was using 8xAA which i use on all games.

driver wise ATI have more issues with the bigger releases. Nvidias drivers are pretty sound on release due to the way its ment to be played program.

splinter cell conviction runs like crap on ati cards and the issue is still not fixed. And thats a big budget game, Just a pure lack of testing going on

i own the 5870 and have the second one on its way to install. Even im not stupid enough to deny the ATI cards are better right now but they dont drastically out perform the old high end cards. Once the 5850 is back below £200 ( it was around £180 on release you have to remember) i will have alot nicer things to say about it. Till then its overpriced for a card that doesnt outperform last gens cards.

AVP does testilation but ati cards dont do it very well.

Most people recommend the card but dont own it, From a former owner its a good card but dont expect to dazzle the world.

and for the budget excluding direct x 11 ( which is still not required for any game, Required means would only run on a dx 11 card) SLI or Crossfire is better performance for the money.

crossfire and sli scaling are at near 80% these days.

 

Most people can live with less than 8x aa though, especially at higher resolutions. For those people a 5850 is a great card.

Sure, if you want 8x aa at very high resolutions then of course you'll need a very high-end card or multi-card setup. You pays your money....