ATI (now owned by AMD) makes the Radeon Series Graphics card chipsets. NVidia makes the GeForce graphics card chipsets. These two chipsets are the only real name in High-end Graphics processors for gamers.
ATI and NVidia sell their chips to various companies for installation on video graphics cards the companies design around these chips. Some of the popular ATI ones are Sapphire, PNY and Diamond. Some of the popular manufacturers of the NVidia Geforce cards are: Verto, EVGA, PNY, BFG and Sparkle.
Most of the differences between them are the amount of memory and cooling designs. Other than that, each of the above companies make good products and stand behind them.
I get alot of questions about what video cards are the best and how they compare to each other. Below are links to 2 great web pages that list all current NVIDIA Geforce and ATI Radeon Cards and how they compare to each other. They are great guides as to what card you may wish to purchase.Click here to see nVidia Chips Comparison Table Click here to see ATI Chips Comparison TableThere are two very important things to remember when shopping for video cards.
1. Just because one card is newer than another doesn't mean it will perform better. And example is when comparing the ATI Radeon X800 to the Radeon HD 4350. The X800 was made back in 2004 and yet it still blows the HD 4350 released in 2009 out of the water in gaming performance.
2. Just because a card has a higher model number doesn't mean it's better than one with a lower model number.
(ie. The ATI 3870 smokes the ATI 4730 in performance)
Here's another great comparison site recommended by Eclipse [GSX]. It allows you to compare two cards side-by-side.
http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php Good luck and post any questions you may have here. I'll try to help. Mav
