quote:Original post by Ranger50000 Making a statement that ATI is as good as Nvidia because one game has problems on the Nvidia and not the ATI, is about like saying that Richard Nixon is as bad as Joseph Stalin because Stalin never toppeled a South American goverment.
Oh give the man a break... he provided a good example to contradict any theory stating that NVIDIA drivers are always better. To be fair he''s already named one more than you have. This isn''t an invitation to start spewing, but rather a nod to your own respect for the readers by *not* posting a full list.
ATI''s driver program, with its 10-12 updates per year, is now at least on par with NVIDIA''s. Whose is better is now not an issue... both are great. Those who remember what ATI''s drivers *used* to be like would never even bother to bring this point up any more.
Anyways I don''t mean to be criticizing anyone personally. My point is that many of already short list of games that have problems with ATI cards are more due to "strategic alliances" than any problem with ATI''s drivers (*cough* BF: Vietnam... and here it''s only with forced AA/AF - works perfectly otherwise), and this works in the other direction as well, as noted by the C&C example.
Personally I can say that I''ve had as many fun "issues" to work around with NVIDIA cards as ATI. I wouldn''t say one is clearly better than the other at all.
To summarize: regarding SM3.0 and 4.0, it looks like you are going to have to decide yourself. My suggestion is to look into the things that you can do in 3.0 that are not possible in 2.0, and look at the benchmarks applicable to those specific features (when they come out). That way you can make an informed decision on which shader model you really want to use/target given the expected features and performance.