Any software ATI GPU's utilizes that Nvidia cant?

I know Nvidia cards can utilize video rendering and decoding and several other things, with the help of CUDA but is there any software out there or any type of work that ATI can manage or has an advantage over the Nvidia?

I was asked to get a replacement for my brother's laptop and since he has the 5850 and being an ATI fan and knows how much better the 5850 is in gaming over the GTX460, he doesnt want the GTX460 (only card AW has available right now in UK) but thats not a valid reason for him get an ATI card rather than the GTX460 since the reps keep convincing him the Nvidia card is better since it has 1.5 GB GDDR5 RAM over 1GB GDDR5 that the 5850 offers. He needs a valid reason to have an ATI card in his replacement and he paid extra for that card over the base card as well. Could you guys help me out?

 

Ok so arguments for the 460m GTX can be Physx and Cuda acceleration. Cuda is useful for rendering etc and h.264 video playback using CoreAVC.

Against the 460m include things like GPU Physx games are limited, If you have a fast enough processor then Cuda give minimal boost. 1.5GB GDDR5 gives no performance increase. Most games these days use around 500mb on highest texture settings u @1080p. Unless playing at extreme resolutions, there is no increase. And the 5850 has more performance per price.

Ambiguous: The whole driver argument. IMO both drivers are good and bad, no company pulls ahead. Nvidia release more often with minor fixes as you go. Ati release every month with a proportional amount of fixes as well. DX11 performance. People claim Nvidia Fermi as superior tessellation performance, however this is yet to be proven.

Hope this helps a bit. Didn't understand your question. Are you trying to persuade him Nvidia or Ati?

 

Sorry if it wasnt clear I'm trying to persuade the rep to give me an ATI card since only nVidia is available and thats not the one my brother wants somehow even if that means upgrading me to something else. I need some pro's for ATI cards against nvidia.

 

Oh right. Tell your brother its all about performance and the incredible overclockability of the 5850. What the Ati lacks in features it makes up for with sheer power.

 

I thought he wanted something to tell the Dell rep to make them more likely to give an ATI CArd?

 

how about eyefinity ^^

 

Ah whoops yeah I get it now. Yeah eyefinity is good but then there is nvidia surround and 3d vision. Both cards have their pros so I guess it's just a matter of hard persuasion. Just just tell them you are developing something specifically for Ati using OpenCL and Stream.

 

Is the 5850 really better than the 460M?

And it's possible to upgrade to a 5870 right? I'm no mathematician but I'm going to go ahead and hazard a guess that 70 is definately more than 50, or does the '50 actually have advantages over its bigger brother?

 

the 5850m is more powerful and highly overclockable usually,you can overclock it to 5870m speeds and beyond so not much point in getting the 5870m unless its a similar price to the 5850m

 

These two ^^ posts were exactly what I was looking for . I remember reading awhile back, around the forums that certain college projects that students were doing needed ATI cards since thats what was the main point of their projects, even certain types of work related projects were based around ATI cards, but those are good points so far, and Ill try my best to persuade them if not, then Ill have to accept what they give me I guess.

I totally agree with this point, we both have the 5850 and are both running clocks over the 5870. Since we can get equal to better scores than the 5870 I rather keep my card than upgrading and having to worry about warranty problems if I run into problems later on, since Dell will only accept the system config that you've ordered otherwise it would void the warranty. I could always keep the 5850 as well and change it back when its time for a tech to come over but I cant afford to keep two cards right now