Conclusion

Bioshock is one of the biggest game releases of this year, so naturally both nVidia and AMD want to beat the other in terms of performance and image quality. While it is sometimes hard to decide which company has the best IQ algorithms in place, performance is a whole lot easier to measure.

In our tests both competitors seemed to be evenly matched, with nVidia slightly in the lead under Windows Vista. In Windows XP ATI took the lead with its HD2900XT, though we are still unsure if the card was rendering everything the same way the 8800GTX was. Picking between the 8600GTS, the 8600GT and the HD2600XT would be equally hard. The numbers speak in favor of the 8600GTS, but the HD2600XT never lagged behind by more than a frame or two and often times it managed to catch up. The 8600GT, while the slowest card we tested today is also considerably cheaper than the two faster competitors, so marking it as the "loser" would hardly be fair.

As you can see our testing confirmed that big games get a lot of support, so both AMD and nVidia cards perform just admirably in Bioshock. Regardless of the card (save perhaps the 8400 and HD2400 models we intentionally avoided today) you’ll be able to run the game just fine, be it at 1920x1200 with the 8800GTX/Ultra/GTS or the HD2900XT or at 1280x1024 with one of the budget gaming cards like the 8600GT/GTS and the HD2600XT. When something like this happens the directors of both companies might throw each other nasty looks, but us consumers should celebrate the good support both companies offer.