The deciding factor of high end graphics card purchase?

[Jimmers]

I'll be the heretic and say I buy cards for speed.
IQ is important too, but it's moot if so much filtering is going on that games stutter or even stall.


Oh yeah, and I'm a frame rate whore

 

[Mendel]

Price and IQ are a biggie, but since they seem to be pretty evenly matched this generation in those departments, I voted drivers. NVIDIA's drivers are still light years beyond ATI's drivers (ATI's drivers STILL DON'T HAVE APP PROFILES)... and they work under Linux, Big plus.

Funny thing? It came down to the same thing for me and I went ATi for drivers.

On linux you are correct from my understanding, but I don't use linux yet so I don't know; but I do know when to expect the next set of Catalysts and their fixes/improvements....on the nVidia side it's just too bloody unpredictable for me.

Besides, I just don't trust them on drivers and I really think ATi is actually ahead on the D3D side of things.

And you're right on not trusting them too... I don't trust them either, even if I have one of their cards... I would have favored an ati card but this just was sooner available here and I reeeeaally wanted to play certain new games with high res&AA

Goddamnit. I have wondered about installing linux or not for about half a year... well I guess now would be a good time since I just bought an nvidia card and certain assembly 2004 winning demo would only run on linux with nv cards... But anyways. one of the minor things why I chose nv this time (availability,again, was the biggie though) was the drivers... I just got sick at not being able to play thief 3 (without the glitches) for so many months...

Then again. I can now tell from experience... Ati's Anti Aliasing Truly is superior. Even if this geforce 6 series has the rotated grid thingie instead of the ancient not so much rotated thingie... it just sucks compared to atis 6x AA...period!

 

[madshi]

For me:

(1) power consumption/heat
(2) IQ
(3) speed

 

[WaltC]

I voted image quality...... and, BTW, I own both a 6800GT and a X800Pro. So far, while the GT is faster on benchmarks, the difference in games seems to be non existant* - as far as speed goes. With everything set to highest quality - 16X AF on both, 4X FSAA on GT and 6X FSAA w or wo/temporal on the Pro - the X800 has percievibly better quality.....

*the only exception is DOOM III, of course.

Fascinating, as this seems to be a consistent trend among nVx and Rx reference designs over the past two years. It would make for a fascinating article, I think, to look into why this is so. Is it compiler optimization, general driver optimization, filtering optimizations, etc., that are responsible--or does the difference stem from inside the hardware architectures themselves, or from some combination of the two? I think also the fact that we both have 21" monitors may make such distinctions much easier to see, as well (if I remember correctly from a previous post of yours that you have a 21".)

Software, now software was the nutcrusher for me. I actually had filled out an order for a GT and was ready to hit the "send order" button, but I hesitated. I kept thinking of them like clockwork monthly ATi driver updates and nVidia's "whenever we feel like it" attitude towards drivers, and I cancelled my GT and hunted down an X800 pro vivo.

Complete agree with this--this is a big one for me, too. After years of hunting and pecking between quarterly official Detonator releases, not to mention the myriad "unofficial beta" Dets popping up from gosh knows where, being on the Catalyst bandwagon for the last two years has spoiled me rotten. No way would I ever revert to the "Guess where this week's beta driver comes from, and guess what it does differently from last week," driver plan.

I buy $400-$500 3d cards for the express purpose of 3d-gaming, and as the Windows market is by far and away the most robust 3d-gaming market there is, the "Linux factor" is not an issue for me. As well, with Longhorn reportedly moving to a standard 3d-accelerated GUI, I can only see this divergence becoming ever more pronounced in the years ahead. (I just won't play politics with my software choices...)