Same thing happened 8800 vs 9800.

Nvidia almost pulses a Tick-Tock system (a la Intel)... they'll release an absolute monster using a completely revolutionary architecture (8xxx, 4xx) which runs hot and loud. They will then spend a few cycles refining that before starting over again.

I do believe their next-gen card is supposed to be a overhaul again, too.

I do have to say, however, that my 480s have been mostly fine.... bar sticking 4 of them side-by-side on air in a case with no side intakes and running furmark.

I used to have a 9800GTX back in the day. I guess I'm lucky to have not gone for the big guns immediately then.

I do miss my old 3DFX Voodoo ;-P It could dual up aswell, guess it was the start of SLI back in the days. That was one sweet card, running Quake 1 etc

But anyways, a 400 or 500 series will do just great.

My 460 runs super fine...

Well i guess i should go with the nvidia cards ,But i have seen in some sites saying some ati cards gives super quality in games. Can anybody explain me which card i should go with?

Both companies produce equally good cards for the most part. Aside from that DX11 geometry instancing crash, my HD6870 hasn't had any problems.

amd 7850 is a good card too

which Games are you playing ceylonfarmer ?

when you have money buy the nvidia gtx670

Well i want to play crysis, crysis warhead,Crysis 2, Crysis 3,GTA IV,DEAD SPACE 2 on the highest settings and buying a 670 gtx is a complete no no since i can't afford that much money only for a vga card

well the 6850s can play crysis 2 maxed out pretty well at least my one did.. i guess the Nvidia 460 would be similar as well..

I also dont see many issues with the games you mentioned .. Mainly because they are console ports.. if they are ported to the PC properly then you might not be able to run them maxed out but would stll look good..

You really cant expect to get awesome performance on the latest gaems with a cheap card..

My advise would be to save up a little longer for a 670 as others have mentioned. .basically the best card on the market for that kind of cash at the moment.

No money = no graphics card.

GTAIV is not very performance intensive and I even can't run it on highest settings... The rage engine gives a good view distance but CryEngine can do the same with alot more power saved. Also Rage engine doesn't support AA, so the game looks kinda ugly on PCs.

I agree that rage engine gives a good view distance i adjusted the view dist settings in gtaiv that gave me some performance but still not enough . Oh and how do you adjust the view dist settings in cry engine 3 can it be done by console commands ?

The choice between AMD and Nvidia comes down to these factors:
1) Do you want to run more than 1 card? Nvidia still has the edge in this field.
2) Outside of gaming, what do you do with your computer? Cuda may either be a very helpful asset, or a price inflator.

Go with a Radeon 6870/GTX 560 at the very least. I use a GTX 570, and it runs everything with ease. A 560 TI should do everything you need though.

buy four 220gt cards for quad sli

2.5) AMD GPGPU stuff for bitmining etc is better than using nvidia right now (600 series NV dropped off the gpgpu stuff but amd added more so )
3) multimonitor setups (on single card), pretty sure AMD has the upper with this, though 600 series nvidia cards finaly have more than 2 display outputs usable (previous cards having 2 max, unless like a gtx590, etc)
4) (stereoscopic) 3D, nvidia has the best solution for 3D right now (again, like SLI they've simply been doing it for longer than AMD so it's more mature)

just to add to a good pro-con list

I myself am an nvidia guy, running multiple cards(SLI) and 3D would just be a headache on AMD for me