ATI makes me SICK!

[bobytt]

I had many many video cards, but last year and 4-5 months i had 8800GTX and 99% of the time i doesn't had any problems. Since G200 is out i got 280 , sli 260 and i still never had any issues... i got one 4850 for friend of mine , and the card was pretty much ok , exclude the fan problem.
I got 3 days ago 4870X2 and since i had it , i think i got older with few years. Awesome piece of hardware.... HORRIBLE software support. the only driver that never gave me a problem is the one on CD that came with the card. The last Catalyst 8.8 was the worst thing that could possibly be released from the people who wrote this driver. after uninstalling the drivers on my and my friend computer and reboot and install the new 8.8 i spent around 6 hours trying to put both computers in working condition. I doesn't even want to tell you trough what i went. BUT i just want warn you.
Dont look all those reviews over the internet. Play safe buy Nvidia. Unless you doesnt want to spent most of your time fixing drivers problems. And just to give you little example ill tell you that i erase all the ati files with driver sweaper and driver cleaner pro , and after install the performance was worst then before to isntall the new driver... I just dont get it WHY? WHY ati , doesnt hire some good programers , some people that know how to write drivers? Why doesnt offer NVidia's driver programmers double of their sallary and just fix this once for ever?


Anyway , i lost my friday night , and istead to play with you guys i was fighting with bunch of problems...

So one advise if you are going to update drivers or anything like that with ATi (and may be NV) do it early at the morning , so you can be ready by the early night nad have chance to play a little bit

[juneau]

I had many many video cards, but last year and 4-5 months i had 8800GTX and 99% of the time i doesn't had any problems. Since G200 is out i got 280 , sli 260 and i still never had any issues... i got one 4850 for friend of mine , and the card was pretty much ok , exclude the fan problem.
I got 3 days ago 4870X2 and since i had it , i think i got older with few years. Awesome piece of hardware.... HORRIBLE software support. the only driver that never gave me a problem is the one on CD that came with the card. The last Catalyst 8.8 was the worst thing that could possibly be released from the people who wrote this driver. after uninstalling the drivers on my and my friend computer and reboot and install the new 8.8 i spent around 6 hours trying to put both computers in working condition. I doesn't even want to tell you trough what i went. BUT i just want warn you.
Dont look all those reviews over the internet. Play safe buy Nvidia. Unless you doesnt want to spent most of your time fixing drivers problems. And just to give you little example ill tell you that i erase all the ati files with driver sweaper and driver cleaner pro , and after install the performance was worst then before to isntall the new driver... I just dont get it WHY? WHY ati , doesnt hire some good programers , some people that know how to write drivers? Why doesnt offer NVidia's driver programmers double of their sallary and just fix this once for ever?


Anyway , i lost my friday night , and istead to play with you guys i was fighting with bunch of problems...

So one advise if you are going to update drivers or anything like that with ATi (and may be NV) do it early at the morning , so you can be ready by the early night nad have chance to play a little bit

No offence but i think you're wrong. You had driver problems, not everybody. I know a lot of people with 4870X2 cards that have no problems at all in any games. Play safe? Ati release so many good drivers it's unreal. Nvidia knock out say 1 driver every 3 months if you're lucky. Hopefully it works but if it doesn't you have to rollback and wait another couple of months.

I think anybody buying Nvidia right now is either a fanboy, has too much money, or doesn't really care that that Nvidia aren't the speed kings they were 12 months ago.

It does suck what you had to go through though. I'm guessing Vista?

[WalkinTarget]

Gimme a month until the 1gb 4870 cards come out and I'll join one of you two in commenting on this situation. These 1gb cards are taking forever to be released !

I've always been in Team Green's camp, but its obvious even to me that Team Red did something right. Every power user experiences driver issues over the course of their gaming lifetime, so its like saying hard drives made by....
1)Seagate
2)Western Digital
3Maxtor
4)IBM/Fujitsu
.. suck because one of them crapped out on you two years ago. I've had only a few drives die on me, but I don't take it personally and swear off all models, unless its painfully clear that its defective, such as the IBM 20-40gb Death.., err DeskStars from years ago.

[{CLR}geneSW]

Maxtor
.. suck. its painfully clear that its defective, such as the IBM 20-40gb Death.., err DeskStars from years ago.

yes, I croped it down... but you said what I've been thinking for many years. Every time I've bought a Maxtor drive.... it craps out within a few months... so I just say away from them like the plague...

[juneau]

yes, I croped it down... but you said what I've been thinking for many years. Every time I've bought a Maxtor drive.... it craps out within a few months... so I just say away from them like the plague...

+1 My only ever dead drive was a maxtor.

[WalkinTarget]

I had a WD 160gb fail on me, and the only thing I can attribute to its failure was plugging the mouse into the keyboard port and vice versa.

This was on an Asrock board, so don't get the idea that don't know where they go .. I plug them in blindly (going by feel) at work on a daily basis.

The Asrock board has them lined horizontally instead of vertically. I booted it up, made sure I was in Windows, then went to bed. I woke up to see a blue screen staring at me with the message 'Cannot read C:/'



I've been searching for other users with borked ATI installs on the 4870 and found none on the forums I frequent.

[bobytt]

Well juneau for every 1 happy person with 4870x2 i can show you AT LEAST 10 that are cursing ATI. Its just the way how ATIfanboys live these days they have to suffer their love to the red.

And by the way , my ONLY bad HDD since i start to work with computers is last december one WD 150GB Raptor

[WalkinTarget]

i can show you AT LEAST 10 that are cursing ATI

I know what you mean. I find that most tech forums are full of success stories on their hardware of choice. I try and post on everything that works out of the box ... just to say it does.



Point being, you don't make a post on stuff that just works, you only post on what DOESN'T work. I still can't dig up anybody with anything that directly points to bad ATI drivers, just Vista problems or CF issues in-game.

[bobytt]

Well. you just did
And as far as i know of 3 people in my job that got 4870X2 all of us have drivers problem sad but true.

[H0ly-H@nd-Gr3nade]

If you don't want it, I wouldn't mind taking it off your hands..

[bobytt]

eeeh , i will suffer .....

[DougBob]

I got to admit, NVidia has always been better on their driver support and software installs. Each ATI I've ever owned was a little more problamatic, but worked fine when I got it fixed.

[bobytt]

I got to admit, NVidia has always been better on their driver support and software installs. Each ATI I've ever owned was a little more problamatic, but worked fine when I got it fixed.

I can see on your picture that you have a lot of white hair... i think you owned at least 4 ATI cards

[Sirex]

4)IBM/Fujitsu

So you know, Hitachi are IBM...

My IBM drive died years back, got an RMA replacement from Hitachi, and wham 3mths later same thing.

I've not when near Hitachi since, and TELL, not advise, people to keep away from them.

[DougBob]

i Can See On Your Picture That You Have A Lot Of White Hair... I Think You Owned At Least 4 Ati Cards

Rofl