Maximum PC

ATI had a reputation of sketchy drivers. AMD has tried to improve this, but they can't escape what ATI left.

Either way, AMD and NVIDIA trade blows really and AMD does actually perform better if only slightly (something like <10%) at certain price segments. But in the end, it doesn't really matter and it comes down to brand preference.

I've switched between nVidia and ATi over the past decade and they both performed nicely.

For me it was always down to the better performer at the price point I was willing to pay.

This time around it was the AMD 7870 that won me over and I love it.

As for AMD/ATi drivers I've never had a bad experience with them.

As for nVidia I can say the same.

my computer: q6600 @ stock speed, been running 24/7 for like 6 years now (i bought it when it first came out), 4gb ram, 500gb hd, 40" 1980x1020 seiki tv/monitor & a 22" viewsonic side monitor & a 15" 4:3 old style lcd.

I forget what I had when I first got the computer, but I upgraded to a nvidia 9800gt because I got a good deal on it. That was really nice.

Then I decided to go for ATI, the 5770 was only $130 when it was released and I got a free game (which I never did play) so I decided to get it to be ready for Direct X 11. It wasn't really any faster, maybe a little. The picture quality was great and it overclocked very well, I could almost max the sliders on the ati thing and w/ it at %100 fan speed it actually ran cooler while overclocked. The overclocking didn't help too much but it gave me the few extra fps I needed to play smoothly in most things.

Well, it died (dunno why, I woke up from drinking one day and it just didn't work), so I bought a evga superclocked 560 1gb. I was expecting a huge jump in performance but again it doesn't really perform much better than the 5770 did. Not only that, but with the 5770 I could play a movie/tv show/cartoon on my second monitor while playing a video game and it never seemed to affect the performance at all. The 560 won't let me do that, the second monitor just goes black and the sound stops by the time the episode/show switches to the next episode.

I used to upgrade my computer all the time before I got the q6600, which has been one heck of a processor throughout the years. It's finally about time I replace it because some newer games like Planetside 2 just won't run worth a flip. I've had nvidia/ati cards both and never had any serious issues with either. I still have a number of rage/radeon/geforce cards in a drawer and they all still work as far as I know.

I never understood the disdain most people had for ATI as they've never really given me any issues performance or driver wise. When I do finally upgrade my computer I'm not sure which I will go with but I'm leaning towards an ATI board again.

OP deleted his post. Curses! :T

If people are still talking about ATI drivers, let alone ATI cards...they're hanging onto the past. ATI drivers really did suck prior to the x700 and the PCIe slot. It's 2013 and nVidia can suck just as much as AMD can when it comes to drivers.

Not one AMD card since then has a single issue due to drivers. Nine years of good drivers? Not bad. It may be power color or whatever card budget minded folks are picking up that flood the "bad driver" myth still to this day.

Disclosure: I'm nVida biased due to folding only. Their drivers suck more, but we're not talking about anything glaring. This ain't 1999 and I'm just nitpicking. Sometimes hardware just stinks and you can't blindly blame drivers for the engineers that phoned it in on the card's design. These type are just stamping out cards as they see fit.