While in my experience, ATI has pulled out better benchmarks, Nvidia's drivers are more solid. Everyone I know that has tried ATI has had driver issues with nearly every new game release.
I've had pretty good results from both camps; although I can verify that the nVidia cards I have owned have all been basically bullet proof. That said, I love my Eyefinity setups too much to give up my HD6970 now
I use ATI for my regular devices as I find those to be a bit better overall when I'm not pushing things to their limits. Just a bit more reliable in my experience and I don't recall any driver issues. To be fair, though, I rarely modify the graphics card from what the computer comes with (I just buy whatever has the best specs overall), so maybe that's why I've not have driver issues. That said, when I want to do a lot of gaming, I use nVidia. I don't see much of a difference in the graphics quality, but I find the sheer amount of graphics nVidia seems to be able to handle is higher. I even went to the trouble of getting a tablet with nVidia Tegra 3, just to be sure it'd process all the graphics with no problems. Overall, I find them both to be rather interchangeable for normal use. For gaming, nVidia just edges out ATI for performance, but not by that much.
nVidia's cards over the last few years have produced, in my recollection, better performance/cost. Admittedly I haven't built a computer with an ATI card since the Radeon 9800 Pro (~2004). Here's an excellent site for video card research: Video Card Reviews and Specifications - Welcome To GPUReview.com! - GPUReview.com Here's another: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html
I've never had good results with nVidia cards. Nowadays I specifically use Sapphire Radeons in both my home PCs. At work I use an ATI FireMV. My favorite video card will forever be the Voodoo 5500 AGP.
Depends on your proc. Running AMD? Go with ATI. Running Intel? Go with nVidia. I've stuck with this philosophy since AMD bought ATI and I never, ever have issues.
My last desktop ati card was x1950pro. Since then I have gone with a GTX 260 and now I have GTX 580 + 260 for physX. Both cards still hold their own. GTX 580 being from the previous generation is still plenty powerful and doesn't lag far behind GTX 670. Radeon's current flagship, 7970, is toe to toe with Nvidia's 680 so can go either way. Both have their pros & cons.
nVidia of course. Always intel and nVidia. AMD is only good if you want a modern PC and you don't have the money. But even then you should save money for the real thing. But even when I had an AMD processor, I had a nVidia Graphics card. Before that it was 3dfx and Matrox, but ATI was never an option.
It's more of a rule of thumb for me, not absolute. Just what I've experienced with my personal PC's, and ones I've built for clients. Side note: Isn't the 6970 awesome?! I think I paid like $120 for mine just under a year ago and it's still fantastic.
Built my PC in '09 and due for an upgrade here in '13. However, I went with the Intel i7 and an HD4890 at the time and I still have no issues with new games. You just have to be smart about building the computer.
been an nvidia customer for a long time now. I'm sure ati is just as nice in most ways, but its more customer loyalty at this point that I know I'm getting a rock solid card with nvidia, and I don't have to worry about it too much or do much guesswork outside of researching which card to pick up.
