This is old info, not not sure if it holds true from the ATI x#00 cards or the newest GeForce line.
I own a GF3 ti200, GF4 ti4200, Radeon 9600, 9800 and x700.
From my experience the ATI cards render crisper textures and harder lines while the GeForce cards give a "softer" overall render. The ATIs are really clean renderers; NVidia loses some texture quality but provides superior anti-aliasing.
To be fair, Half-Life 2 at 6x AA looks really amazing on the x700 (well, all other settings at max as well) but I prefer the look of every one of my other games as it renders on the GF4 ti4200.
As for framerate performance, the ATI cards I own are a generation ahead of the NVidia cards, so they get way better framerates, so I can't give you good info as how the newest generation of each company compare. The GF4 gets a framerate of 30 in PlanetSide and 5-10 in EQ2 while the x700 gets 150+ in PlanetSide and a comfortable 30 with little variation with nearly max settings in EQ2 (only shadows and reflections are off or at low settings, 5 HQ models allowed at once, all others settings max as far as I recall). RAM speed has as much an impact on these numbers as my videocards do however (133 MHz SDRAM in the GF4 comp, 533 MHz Dual Channel DDR2 in the x700 comp).
If I feel so inclined, I'll try and get a screenshot with max settings (in EQ2) from the best of each company card I have to try and show the differences.
Quib
|