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In November, NVIDIA delivered its smashing blow, pushing ATI off the top platform spot. Today, the X1900 series fires back with 384 million transistors and 48 shader units in 16 pixel pipelines. As a result, ATI now walks away with both the single and dual card title belts

I won't say I told ya so Bush

Read about it here X1900

- 401RCAF_HitMan

As a result, ATI now walks away with both the single and dual card title belts

<disclaimer>Before I start, let me say that I have looked at many sites and the way they do hardware reviews and such. At the beginning, I used Tom's Hardware. I have since realized that while they are not the worst, they seem to lack a lot of info and in-depthness about their testing techniques and what they look for in their tests. It has been stated on other forums that they like to play favorites. I can't back this up, so don't ask. Personally, I don't like them. Instead, I prefer to use HardOCP. Every review, they explain their testing system, and go very in depth about each test they use. They also test differently than other sites. Instead of doing an apples-to-apples comparison, they let each card do what it does best, and push each card to it's highest playable settings, then compare those results. This means they also take into account grpahic quality. This best represents how a prospective buyer would use the card.</disclaimer>

With that in mind, I would like to disagree with you Hitman

Let's have a matchup of the cards:

Quake 4 (X1900 512Mb vs. 7800GTX 512Mb): 7800 GTX wins!
Quake 4 (X1900 Crossfire vs. 7800GTX SLI): 7800 GTX SLI wins!
FEAR: X1900 wins!
FEAR: Crossfire wins, barely (7800GTX has higher rates, but X1900 allows for a higher grapphic setting.)
Serious Sam 2: 7800 GTX whoops up!
Serious Sam 2: 7800 GTX SLI whoops up!
Need for Speed Most Wanted: Tie
Need for Speed Most Wanted: Crossfire whoops up!
Call of Duty 2: Tie
Call of Duty 2: Tie
Battlefield 2: X1900 wins, barely.
Battlefield 2: Gonna have to give this one to X1900 for better image quality, even though frame rates were lots lower (wins)
EQ2: 7800GTX wins!
EQ2: SLI wins!
Sims 2: 7800GTX wins!
Sims 2: SLI wins!

So if we add up the points:
0 = Tie
1 = Barely wins
2 = Wins
3 = Whoops up

7800 GTX = 9
X1900 = 3
SLI = 9
Crossfire = 6

Looks to me like NVidia still has the upper hand (barely). Now, I would not mind at all if I had an X1900. Both cards are great Just don't go around parading such bold statements when you're wrong

P.S. I know my scoring system is pretty bad, so don't pay much attention to that. But I think it is clear though the actual results from HardOCP that the 7800 GTX is indeed to better card of the two, but only barely.

www.hardocp.com/articl...t=OTUzLDE=

The tests themselves are actually biased.
Games written on one brand will favour that brand in the operation (this applies to other components as well but mainly graohics and cpu's).
Same applies to test prog's like 3DMark, etc.
If you wanted the best performance across all the games you play, you'd be better off having the top cards from both brands and swapping according to which game you're playing.
Use enough tests that favour the brand of card being tested and you'll get the result you want.

[edit: nVidia were due to release more advanced cards early last Autumn (Fall for you US guys :))but postponed. Many in the industry believe they did so because they didn't feel enough pressure to do so and wanted to keep pushing their old surplus stock of existing cards. ATi have caught nVidia up recently but, in this competetive market, nVidia still have cards up their sleeve (sic) and when they're ready, they can just trickle-feed what they have and buy time for their development to build even more. Btw, current nVidia cards can perform better than they leave the factory and even nVidia admit to under-clocking and restricting them. Some 6800LE users unlocked hidden pipelines and reached GT standard, without even clocking.]

I've owned both ATI and Nvidia cards and liked all of them...

I use my own 'benchmark' system though and it's a simple one...

Does it play the games I do, works out of the box and how much does it cost?

Simple questions really but demanding research to make sure it's what you want at the price you can afford or want to pay. Having state of the art cutting edge technology is great, but the prices are usually more than I want to pay. After all, if you can see no difference after 10 FPS, what's the difference?

On a personal level, if the game plays smooth and has good visual quality at the resolution I like, I'm a happy guy. Being a person that builds a lot of puters, I also like the 'works straight away' theory. XP, which is the most popular OS in the gaming world has drivers built in for both ATI and Nvidia, so putting in any of these cards will at least get your puter running without external help from you. And for non-gamers, that's all they need. Gamers on the other hand demand more, but that's where the research comes in...lol

And what about pricing? Well, everyone has their mind set on a limit they'll usually pay for a new card. Everyone is different and gamers are usually first to 'pony up' for the better/newer/cooler cards. To me, the best time to buy that HOT card is once the newest models have been released which as Shades pointed out, is why Nvidia hasn't released their newest cards yet. After all, once the new HOT models come out, the price starts dropping on "last years" models at a fast rate and if your games can run on 2 year old technology, you'll even save more, that is, until the card manufacturers changes the requirements...

Which brings us to this. Not only are the cards getting better, but now the socket they run in is changing and the mainboard manufactures are following too. The new Xpci and PciXpress is the new HOT socket saying goodbye to the older PCI and AGP slots. Rumor has it ALL the newer games will demand some new hardware to run properly, so eventually we'll all have to upgrade to keep up or risk the dreaded "choppy" frames problem.

Actually, we've been lucky. The computer world for gamers hasn't really changed much in the past couple of years and we've been able to get by with technology 2 to 3 years old. In the past, the best we could do was upgrade every 1 1/2 to 2 years, so get your wallets out, it's time...lol

So in summary I have to say, I'll still do research for a new card once I find out that new game I just have to have demands it and yep, I'll look for best deal I can find and it could be ATI or Nvidia, but if the past counts, the savings in the 'bucks' department will usually be Nvidia...

Xcaliber... I'm not disagreeing with you bud, I was just posting the results from Tom's Hardware...infact I am the proud owner of dual Nvidia 7800 GTX cards both of which are also water cooled and I am extremely happy with them.