ATi (AMD) finally beats out nVidia in Graphics Card Shipments

For a long time, through the early to mid 2000s, nVidia was the card maker to beat. They always seemed to have the cutting edge speed and rendering capabilities that left ATi in the dust.

But since the inception of ATi's 4 Series of cards, all of that changed. Now, with the 5 series, ATi has finally taken that 51 to 49 percent lead (on dedicated card shipments).

I've used both through the years, and both have served me pretty well. I had always found nVidia's drivers to be better for the early to mid part of the 2000s, but once ATi catalyst started getting good, things changed. It started a shift for ATi to write good drivers and good software to go along with their quality cards.

Around 2005/6 I began noticing (especially on the low end) nVidia cards that would fail, particularly due to bad capacitors. Since the card specs are licensed to 3rd party companies (such as XFX, BFG, Asus, etc.), some companies like to cut corners (as any industry). I noticed that the ATi cards that I installed around the same time STILL WORK TODAY and I still used them to spruce up older hardware for users that either still use the same PC or want a recertified one with the ability to play some decent flash games.

So congrats ATi for beating out nVidia. Now if you could get those chipsets with better RAID functionality in place like nVidia has, you'll be top dog all around.

Of course, all of this could change...tomorrow, just like anything else.

-Nate

Source: News.com