ATI or NVIDIA?

zeraeiro · Post #1by **zeraeiro** » 19.07.2006, 21:22

I teach astronomy to the general public and I'm thinking of buying a new laptop. From what I've seen around celestia has several issues with ATI 3D cards.

One of the main reason for me to buy a laptop with considerable graphic 3D power is to be able to use Celestia in classes/presentations using the most possible eye-candy. If it wasn't for Celestia (or other 3D eyecandy to come) I wouldn't spend so much money on a powerfull laptop.

Things is, most of the laptops where I live (Portugal) come with ATI cards (e.g. x1600).

Should I buy a laptop with NVIDIA to use Celestia? If so, what card, is a Go 7600 good enough?

Thanks in advance.

Don. Edwards · Post #2by **Don. Edwards** » 20.07.2006, 04:27

Go with any notebook with an nVidia based video chip. Celestia was originaly made for nVidia based cards and still works best with them. When it come to percentage of compatability nVidia offers a 100% were ATi is 90-95% at best.
I am sure most other users will agree with me, but there are some very strong ATI supports out there. They just just know what they are missing in Celestia by using ATI over nVidia.

My 2 cents

Don. Edwards

zeraeiro · Post #3by **zeraeiro** » 20.07.2006, 21:46

Things is that here in Portugal I think I would get a much better deal with ATI, but on the other hand (at the present) I'm only buying a powerfull PC because of celestia so maybe I should play it safe with NVIDIA.

Thank you very much for your answer. Any more opinions?

RocketMan@JSC · Post #4by **RocketMan@JSC** » 21.07.2006, 02:26

Not that it matters in your case, but for Linux, Nvidia supports their graphics cards much better than ATI. It's enought to sway me over.