Which cards are better? ati or nvidia?

GTX 550ti or 1gb GTX 460 SE.

Although the GTX 550ti is a little bit faster than the 5770/6770. The 6790 is a little bit faster than the GTX 550ti. The 6790 Isn't worth the price unless you can buy it for $130. The 5770 and the 6770 are the same. BTW, the 5750/6750 is on the same level as a GTS 450.

AMD/ATI does have a far better selection of budget cards compared to Nvidia. The Budget 6670 will outperform the GT 440. Anything that's in the $100 and lower range belongs to AMD/ATI.

When you compare two cards like the AMD Radeon HD 6870 and the GTX 560 you probably won't see a real performance difference. The GTX 560 can be overclocked higher and that's the extent of it. In the 6950 & GTX 560ti and up class the Radeon card is just a little bit faster but the Nvidia card can overclock higher.

Nvidia cards usually have more stable drivers and the drivers are easier to work with. I've had a lot of problems when it comes to updating the Radeon Drivers. I've even had Radeon drivers cause BSOD. Most of the time the Radeon drivers don't get installed correctly.

Nvidia's PhysX is a very weak selling point. There's only a small handfull of games that actually support PhysX and most of those games are unknown. Let me explain how PhysX works. In games that support it, you can use a second Nvidia card to render objects in a game. If you don't have a second Nvidia card then the CPU will pick up the slack. This is much different from SLI.

In a game that uses PhysX there is no difference between a single AMD Radeon card and a Single Nvidia card since the PhysX processing is left to the CPU.

You really don't start seeing decent graphics performance until you go to the 6770 & GTX 550ti class. Although, the 6670 & GT 440 class is okay for light gaming, anything below this class just isn't that good for gaming. Cards like the 6450 and the GT 520 aren't much more powerful than an Integrated graphics chip.

Here's a list of the cards and their counterparts

6450 = GT 520

6570 = GT 430

6670 = GT 440

6750 = GTS 450

6770 = GTX 550ti

6850 = 1gb GTX 460

6870 = GTX 560

6950 = GTX 560ti

6970 = GTX 570

6990 = GTX 590

The GTX 580 is in a class of it's own.

They're pretty well equal at this time. I would overlook the performance within each class and look at the customer service you would get with each manufacturer. EVGA is probably the best graphics card company on the market with XFX coming in at second. Evga only makes Nvidia cards while XFX mostly makes Radeon cards. Sapphire is the world's most popular Radeon card manufacturer.

AMD and Nvidia only make the graphics chips. The chips are then sold to these companies who then make the actual card. Sometimes these companies will make a cheaper model that uses lower quality parts to cut costs.

The entire AMD cards working better with AMD processors and Intel chips being perfered for Nvidia cards thing is just the worst make believe I've ever heard of. Whenever these cards are benchmarked, the testbed usually stays the same. The usual test bed for benchmarking is a Core i7-960 that been overclocked by 300mhz. You still have a 6970 beating a GTX 570 by 3% or more in that testbed. It's total BS

The most desired card to have is the Reference design card. This is a card design that made by Nvidia and AMD. The actual card is still made by EVGA, XFX, ASUS, etc but they follow that design. The reference card is usually over-engineered and is very overclockable. This card should last longer than a cheaper off design.

I've usually bought Nvidia cards because of EVGA's great customer service but also the ease of installing the drivers. Also, the Nvidia cards do a better job with a LCD TV display. I'm still open to buying a Radeon card. There are times that it's just dumb to stick to one brand.

In 2009 Radeon released the 5000 series, there was no point in buying a Nvidia GTX 200 card because the Radeon 5000 series card performed better and they were much cheaper. You have to pay attention to what's on the market at the time. Right now, everything has an equal. In early 2012 there may not be any equality as one Brand has it next generation cards out while the other brand is rushing to finish their own.

I Like ATi never had a card die on me, cant say the same for Nvidia :P But using an ATi card on smaller operating systems can be a pain... So Windows/Mac then its going to be an ATi Card. But Linux/BSD/Skyos/etc. Its going to be an Nvidia... But who else unlike good old AMD/ATi would release their new chip (HD 3850) for the aging AGP slots :P Long live my Quad Xeon gaming rig :P

for stable no hicups, no headache, less games problem with drivers and bugs, more peformance, true and more PhyX game control, very reliable its long lasting my good old Geforce 9800GT is still alive until now since i brought it in 2008 , perfect for hardcore,perfect for graphic setting to make it more realistic,perfect for 3D - go with Nvidia if you choosing Ati HD5770 i go with Geforec GTS450 since both are made for budget

in ATi (according to my experience) has great performance however it wont guarantee you a %100 performance still gives you some lag , great memory management in video card newer ATi cards gives DD5 while Geforce has DDR3 which means on DDR5 releases more memory which gives performance some DDR3 that Nvidia has still the same anyway ,

however ATi sometimes gives you , driver headache some games having a system and graphic glitching problem, sound problem in some games , overheating problem do you want to spent another $$ for new card ? my Ati HD3650 died on me even replaced new one, ATi have no pure PhyX they only renders it and emulate it so games with PhyX wont run perfectly on ATi cards ..

Advice:

if you want to build with NVIDIA i suggest it well nicer if you combine it with INTEL cpus while ATi's are AMDs , and dont believe those hypes cause some games made only for designated graphic card like Half-Life 2 was made for ATi which gives optimized performance...but today many games are made for Nvidia like CRYSIS series and Mafia 2, cause of PhyX and the future games man its out there more intense games well be released soon..

goodluck