what is the difference between the ATI RADEON and the NVIDIA graphics cards ?

lately i bought a Sony Vaio fw laptop but the new thing for me it has an ATI RADEON graphic card not an NVIDIA , is there a big difference ? and if there is a difference , wich one is the best ?

Neither brand is best. It depends on what you want to use it for.For a laptop the difference is negligible.

i have both, pretty much the same

there two different manufactuer cards. they are rivals of each other. if you want to compare specs look here. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Graphic-Cards.130.0.html

You are comparing Apples and Oranges... or Apples and Bananas... or Oranges and Bananas...The difference between ATI and NVidia is democracy. Its the same difference between AMD and Intel. It's the same difference between Sony and Dell and Acer and Asus and Gateway and Packard Bell and HP and every other manufacturer that is allowed to make a product that gives you a CHOICE.Because we are all about choice and Anti-monopoly. If there was only ONE video chipset manufacturer, then they would dictate the price we pay. Since there are two major video chipset manufacturers and they make competing products, the price of each has to remain competitive, and we the consumer don't get screwed.end of line

Back in the days, Nvidia meant great graphics and ATI meant poor performance. Now nVidia means not so great graphics and ATI means very affordable great graphics. It's long lived battle between the GPU "Graphic Processing Unit" industries. Yes nVidia are still great, but their latest GPU's "Fermi" lacks in conparison to ATI's latest. I use to love nVidia until they just kept on remodeling their GPU's to other names with a slight higher performance. So I switched to ATI and am quite satisfied with them. But since you are talking about a notebook, the built in GPU, either nvidia or ati are at the same range. Chances are you wont be able to play max out games with neither one. So just be happy you got either one instead of an Intel or SiS GPU system.

both are good graphic card makers and if you were to ask 20 people which is the best you would get 10 for nvidia and 10 for ATI, But the graphics in a laptop are very hard and expensive to upgrade unlike a desktop PC.