The actual users are not complaining as much about heat as reviewers so I am going by their statements.
There are a few dedicated threads on Nvnews to r600 v/s g80 cards and their differences/features and what not.
Superior Vista drivers all around? or just in OpenGL or Direct3D? Last I heard ATI's drivers were stable only in certain AAA games, but not in less "optimized" situations.
As in Vista, all around. Using Vista in general and in games. AMD has had a lead in Vista drivers for a while. Not to say Nvidia has been doing nothing, on the contrary, they have improved in leaps and bounds since the initial offerings.
Again, simply read a lot of the issues reported by users on sites such as Nvnews. They are directly attributable to drivers. The hardware itself is fine.
Umm, what issues are you referring to? All my games work great, and if its a new game then usually a driver release within a week or two of the game coming out fixes any problems. The only issue is the "fps drop" issue that some people have. I think that may have to do with poor cooling under load, and perhaps poorly optimized machines. (dirty driver updates)
The issue with the fps drop was identified as an issue with the memory buffer not being cleared and nvidia has identified and is working on a solution. Once again, a lot of dedicated threads dealing with it on Nvnews and several other sites and Nvidia has acknowledged this as a known issue. Will be a non-issue soon but I am simply pointing out that there are issues on Nvidia cards too.
Regarding games, there are issues, just as with the 2900 cards, in various games depending on hardware. As I said, the G-80 has been out WAY longer than has the 2900 series and the issues are attributable to the drivers.
Granted both sides have issues in different areas.... but when you look at the whole picture I would say Nvidia is by far the more polished and refined choice. I just hope that ATi can catch up, I would hate to see them get beat up next round. Thats not good for anyone, especially us the consumers. With the rumored 9800GTX specs leaked the last couple days ATI might be in a bit of hot water if they don't pull a rabbit out of their Heatsink.
The r600 is slower, there is no doubt that it is. But, crossfire performance is surprisingly good (regardless of what Hardocp says, pretty much every other benchmark and user performance listed online says different) and the cards do have some interesting features.
Nvidia has had a product out longer and it is faster. I think if you are looking for the fastest product on the market, there is but one choice.
But I don't think anyone should be disuaded from purchasing an r600 card given it's pricepoint and feature-set. It is not the best deal on the market perhaps but it does give you good performance for the price.
AMD's marchitecture is superior but the performance is simply not there. Nvidia's approach is simpler and it just does the job and has stood the test of time. At a certain pricepoint, it's a tossup. It's not so cut and dried one way or the other
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