Davros wrote:

Thats not going to be an issue as any old ogl game is going to run at a massive framerate
eg: quake 3 8800gts 1280x1024 999fps

For me it is, I play Grand Prix Legends a lot, and with my old Geforce 9600 GT I had much better performance in OpenGl than with my new Radeon HD 6770 in Direct3D. Don't even have to try it in OpenGl, real slideshow (1080p resolution). Of course it is debateble if GPL with the latest mods still can be called an old game. Also I have been told to check out certain older driver versions, but my card is too new for those.

NVIDIA OpenGL is better, particularly when considering cards like Radeon 9250 and older. Also, various old OpenGL games used NVIDIA extensions and/or developed essentially for GeForce. Developers didn't like ATI much back then because their drivers sucked and their developer relations were awful.

Of course with how RAGE just recently proved AMD still can't be bothered to write working OpenGL drivers, I guess they haven't changed.

For 2000 games and older I usually use my Voodoo5. Otherwise I'd go GeForce, probably because I'd be looking for table fog and quality OpenGL. For DirectX 7 and newer games I often try a modern PC first though and I have both NV and ATI cards around.

Nvidia = Coca Cola

ATI = Store Brand Cola

That is all.

I don't trust that Coca Cola very much. They have been screwing things up really bad.

Having tried many of the generations of ATI cards as well as NVidia boards I believe the only ATI hardware better than NVidia hardware was from the 9800 - X800.

Anything other than that Nvidia stuff has always been more stable/compatible.

Basically for me I just make sure Nvidia didn't screw up this gen before purchasing a new board. I tried the 6990 and what a joke that thing was, loudest card I ever heard and the drivers would not stop using overscan on my computer which cause the colors to wash out.

My typical ATI experience every time I try them out again.

McMick wrote:

Nvidia = Coca Cola

ATI = Store Brand Cola

That is all.

So they both suck.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Hmm the GT520 is really a media centre card, not that recommended for playing games. And it's very new. For XP I would really start off with some second hand cards like the ones I listed. Or even older ones.

Because the thing is for a GT520 there aren't any old drivers, the card is way to new...

The Nvidia GT520 has more then enough muscle for anything I care to throw at it. It should be similar to the AMD HD6450 which already proved to give me enough FPS.

I won't buy any Nvidia Geforce 6, 7 or 8 series card again. As I had my fill with their solder overheating issue. For anything later: I agree the drivers are new and one should expect problems with certain older games. Still, I haven't tried the newer Nvidia cards and drivers myself yet.

My AMD HD5450 was installed temporarely in the Sandy Bridge PC for testing: I was quite happy with the stability and compatibility, using the the latest driver v12-1. This again proved me the HD6450, which I returned to the shop, was defective. Even though the shop says it behaves perfectly fine on their test system.

I bought the exact same HD6450 model from another shop, to avoid getting that bad specimen back. And hope the new one will behave as well as the HD5450 when it arrives.

I have seen myself that there can indeed be a specific graphics card issue with a given make/model of motherboard.

Sometimes it is a BIOS setting causing the problem, the defaults would cause issues or the machine would not post for example.

I have seen where just a certain motherboard revision on the hardware level was the culprit.

This is why they are probably not seeing the problem when they test it out on thier machine.

Not saying it's bad perse just somehow incompatible with your setup.

I take it that the HD6450 has had no such issues ???

I see.
The first HD6450 I installed had plenty of problems on my system, see the first post. Changing it with Intel graphics or a HD5450 made the problems dissappear.