Video Cards

[Zhiro]

Which way to go on video cards? ATI or NVIDIA? Stay within budget, or GO BIG? What is your opinion?

[Stephen]

Zhiro,

You should be looking for the card that gives you the most bang for the buck.
Rather than looking solely at the brands, look at the performance of specific models. Check reviews on site like ExtremeTech to see how various models perform in their tests.

Keep in mind that as soon as any device (video, CPU, hard drive, etc.) is released, a bigger, better, badder one is just on the horizon.

Set a budget, see what you can get for that amount. If it meets your needs, buy it. If not, increase your budget or wait for prices to drop.

[PCD_Chris]

Zhiro, you may want to pay close attention to the types of games you play and whether or not they're designed to work better on any one video card. For instance, I've mostly been playing Battlefield 2 lately (sweet game by the way) and it's optimized for nvidia cards. If most of your games don't specify and one states nvidia, nvidia might be the way to go. This might help narrow it down a bit.

[a shrubbery]

Usually the high end cards will be significantly more expensive than the mid-range cards.  I typically take a measure of performance/dollar (which can be tricky to measure) and try to find what level of card will both suit my needs and have the best performance/dollar ratio.  Usually this puts me at the mid range of the latest cards available after that particular series has been out for about 6months. 

You should also consider:
 Do you need features such as hdcp/hdmi, DirectX10.
 Make sure you get a card with the correct connector.  PCs more than a year old may use AGP instead of the newer PCI-e
 High end cards often require a more powerful power supply.  Check yours.
 For really high end setups consider using either SLI or ATI's crossfire.  Your motherboard usually has to support these features.

One more thing, I have nothing against AMD/ATI's graphics cards but their drivers on linux are not very good.  As a result I generally look for nvidia add-in cards.  If games aren't important to you Intel's onboard video should be enough.

[PCD_Chris]

Good suggestions shrubbery.

Make sure you get a card with the correct connector.  PCs more than a year old may use AGP instead of the newer PCI-e

After first reading this I thought you meant the difference between DVI and VGA (I only read the first sentence and then went back and read it again).

If you're like me, I have an older 21" Dell Trinitron that uses a VGA connector so I had to purchase a DVI to VGA adapter. There is no adapter if you get a card that supports a different slot than your motherboard.

One more thing, I have nothing against AMD/ATI's graphics cards but their drivers on linux are not very good.  As a result I generally look for nvidia add-in cards.  If games aren't important to you Intel's onboard video should be enough.

I don't think AMD/ATIs driver problems are limited to Linux. My past experience is that their driver support is not up to par with nvidia. Although, it may have gotten better over time and since the AMD acquisition -- not sure. nvidia drivers are typically rock-solid.

[deep]

Dang it lol! I was just about to post this exact question!
Anyway, my personal choice (and current setup) is the nVidia 7950GT. Its made by XFX and is the Overclocked edition with the core clock running at about 585MHz, and has 768MB of on-board GDDR3 RAM.

Its amazing. The original reason I went with the card is because I had better luck with nVidia's Linux Drivers (and still do, really.. lol) over ATI's..
Now, with the games that I play on my PC, I'm actually very glad I went the way I did..

[a shrubbery]

Good suggestions shrubbery.

Make sure you get a card with the correct connector.  PCs more than a year old may use AGP instead of the newer PCI-e

After first reading this I thought you meant the difference between DVI and VGA (I only read the first sentence and then went back and read it again).

If you're like me, I have an older 21" Dell Trinitron that uses a VGA connector so I had to purchase a DVI to VGA adapter. There is no adapter if you get a card that supports a different slot than your motherboard.

Hi Chris, you bring up a good point too.  Most graphics cards come with at least one DVI/VGA adapter but I've noticed recently that some of them do not.  This is especially true if you purchase an OEM rather than retail box as it may have NO accessories.  I believe if you have to you can buy an adapter for about $5.  If your monitor can use either DVI or VGA connections it's almost always better to use the DVI connection as the picture will be clearer and it could be slightly faster to display (only important in games and heart surgery).