Gainward nVidia vs ATI

[AnotherAnonymous]

I currently have a Gainward Bliss 7800GS Golden Sample 512MB (Actually a
7900GT Chip with 24 pipelines) which seems to struggle under Windows Vista
x64 playing WoW and some other games. Would an ATi X1950 series AGP card be
a better choice for performance? It seems that nvidias x64 vista drivers may
be the problem as I have no problems with video performance under Win XP pro
x86 and x64 playing any game on the market today. My system is AGP 8X.
Thanks for any info provided.

Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939
AMD 4800+ X2
3.0GB OCZ DDR 400 (2-3-2-5)
2x Western Digital Raptors SATA Raid 0
AGP 8X
Currently Win XP Pro x64, would like to go with vista x64 if possible with
this rig.
Nothing ever over clocked.

 

[BigJim]

your right the problem is not the card but the combination of vista and
nvidia and since you are running 64bit OS.
Who knows if they will ever get the drivers right.

 

[First of One]

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_64bit_beta1.html
What version of the motherboard chipset drivers are you using? Looking at
this page, nVidia has very limited support of the nForce3 chipset under
Vista 64-bit. In particular, there is no GART driver, so AGP functions may
not be active. If that's really the culprit, changing to an X1950 Pro won't
help. In fact, I'd risk saying the Radeon cards are even more sensitive to
the absence of a GART driver.

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OSID=37&CatID=3180
VIA has proper AGP drivers for Vista 64-bit. So if nothing else works, swap
out the motherboard with one based on the VIA KT890 chipset. Something like
the Asus A8V, $60:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131033