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I was wondering why is ATI so much better than Nvidia? I mean whats so different? Anything in the architecture?

nVidia is focused more on floating point calculations and ATI is better for integer calculations.

Hashing requires lots of integer calculations.

odd isn't it.

nvidia is 10x better for gaming. Power hungry - better drivers

ati = float math

Here is your question:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Why_a_GPU_mines_faster_than_a_CPU

anyone know when the 7000s series are coming out?

reference cards should be out Q1/Q2 2012

http://techreport.com/r.x/geforce-gtx-460/gf104-block.png
Lets take a look inside the GTX 460 which has eight shader modules.
http://techreport.com/r.x/geforce-gtx-460/gf104-sm-block.png
Each shader module has 48 cuda core. One cuda core can do one integer and one float operation using its ALU.
Thus the GF104 / GTX160 card has 8 * 48 = 384 ALUs for integer operation.

http://techreport.com/r.x/radeon-hd-5870/memory-block.jpg
Lets see whats inside the ATI Cypress Radeon 5870 which has 20 SIMD engines.
Each SIMD engine (one red row in the picture above) contains 16 thread processor.
http://techreport.com/r.x/radeon-hd-5870/stream-core.jpg
Each thread processor contains 4 ALUs + 1 special purpose ALU for transcendental (sine, cosine, etc). Thus one thread processor can can do four integer operations using 4 ALUs.
Thus the Radeon 5870 has 20 * 16 * 5 = 1600 ALUs,  out of which 1280 ALUs can be used for integer ops.

Now the nvidia ALUs run at twice the clock speed i.e. for a 700MHz device they will run at 1400MHz, while the ATI ALUs run at advertised clock speed.
But the ATI ALUs can do shift and rotate in one clock cycle, while the nvidia ALUs can do these operation in (4 clock cycles?  pls correct me if I'm wrong)

So the maximum overall speedup with an ATI GPU (assuming same clock speeds) will be 1280/ (384 *2 / 4) = 6.6X.

We see around 70MH/s with a GTX 460 while we see 400MH/s with a 5870. The ratio = 5.7X.

 :o
I have to get one of the 5000 series....

ATI has more cores than nvidia which makes GPU mining much faster.

Just like AMD are better CPU miners than Intel.

Yes true, but IMHO a Radeon core != Geforce core especially when it comes to executing SHA 256 operations.

I must dissent, i have a ATI 6950 and i bought it for gaming and it is perfect for that.

ATI = many, not too powerful stream processors

NVIDIA = less, but more complex stream processors

Calculations needed for bitcoin mining = computation of SHA256 = very easy task = performed well on a single ATI stream processor, while a NVIDIA processor is a waste of computational power

They are good at different games. Often AMD is a little more bang for the buck (not very much though). Maybe Nvidia drivers are a little better. Nvidia has better drivers/support in Linux.

Agreed

Nvidia makes good polished products.
ATI makes cards with raw performance.
Somehow ATI is winning here for doing less R&D.

LOL

That's hilarious xD I'm very glad I stuck with my overclocked 5850 for this... Shame I'm only getting 2btc/week now though, stupid difficulty increases @.@

I got 5870 and 6970, Your better off going 6970 I think.

I went 6770 in my Linux-box because of space limitation.
The difficulty increases is slowly killing me  :(


Edit: Plus 5850 in main rig

Prices are better but ATI drivers suck!

This.

Unfortunately there is the prejudice that floating-point calculations is what matters, thus many compute clusters for scientific purposes went with Nvidia. Probably due to the physics people being the first to jump on the GPGPU bandwagon and AFAIK floating-ppint is what most of them want.

Philipp

Try Q4 2011.

From the AMD Fusion Developers Summit speaking with Eric Demers (AMD's chief technology officer) about AMD's new GPU architecture.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1561107&postcount=300

This "prejuidice" originates from that GPUs were originally build for rendering 3D graphics, which is mainly floating-point heavy.

Some modern shader algorithms heavily use integer math as well, but the main meat of rendering is still fp.

I can't say for sure but I'd guess it has to do with different aspects of gaming.  I've heard it put that Nvidia is not so great for mining and better for gaming.  I think it was Nvidia now I forget.

I feel sorry for the gamers who can't find a card in stock or at a reasonable price because of all the AMD card hoarding as of recently.

They still have Nvidia cards available , and sooner or later this madness will stop.

and sooner or later this madness will stop, and many new used cards will fill the market for low prices

I like the sound of new used cards :).
Check a few stores from which  I've bought pc components in the past , no out of stocks signs yet:)

I love ATI and have never owned a nvidia card in my life

That's why you love ATI.
It's like claiming you have the best wife in the world , since this is the only one you ever had.

I think ATI is more power, but Nvidia is probably one of the best gaming GPUs, just for gaming.
I have a Nvidia GTX 770 gigabyte, $400, and it only get like 250 KH/s lol

I've mostly owned Nvidia cards but recently switch to AMD. I still believe that Nvidia cards are more polished and have better drivers and support but when it comes to cost/performance ratio, you can't go wrong with AMD.

Hashing needs integer calculations aka ATI .

I have been nVidia lover too all my life. Looks like it's pretty much useless, why not get gaming + mining performance from a card in the same price range aka ATI.  :)
My next card gonna be an ATI

So if I understand it right, ATI is better because they have quantity over quality and each core can do less but is enough for a part of a hashing operation?