While I dont always agree with the opinions on this site, I was in full agreement on this subject. I am one of the few Idiots that bought into the 8800 GTX bandwagon. Nvidia gave me a good slap in the face when I booted Vista and found no valid drivers, no OC abilities, and no support from the company.
Yeah Nvidia is saying that they are spending most of thier effort on the new 8 line, but if that is so... where are the full featured, working drivers. I have been through beta after beta. I even used my experience to correct a Microsoft cheerleader that stated BSOD was a thing of the past in vista, as i have had numerous of them.
Here is where I have to take exception to the opinion that Microsoft is not to blame for this. They should get some of the blame for this. Vista is great, but some MS should have learned from the 9x to Xp conversion that driver support can be one of the biggest driving forces to early adoption of a new OS. In the XP generation, MS flopped and failed to get OEM manufacturers on board early enough to get viable drivers out the door before the OS release.
Here we see the same issue but to another level. Not only did vista fail to get their cheerleaders into the OEM corporate offices and development labs, but they down-right alienated some of them, Nvidia for one.
Why you may as is that. Well look at the development of D3D 10. Who was MS's main graphics vendor partner.... ATI. Anyone guessing why they have a better, more complete driver. Nvidia was left out in the cold.
Now I am not giving any excuses to Nvidia. They have been horrible to their customers, both old and new. I for one have been a avid ATI and AMD fan for most of my life. But we should recognize that MS had a lot of time to get into the vendor camps and make friends and excite them about the new OS so that they would have the proper motivation to create those drivers. Then for them to go further by alienating a major vendor like Nvidia... well they were asking for these issues.
This is just my longwinded two cents, but I think it needed to be said.
I'm of the mindset that any gamer should probably stick with XP at least until they pick up a DX10 card and a DX10 game. There is no reason to move to vista above DX10 support, and that is only there to FORCE people to move to Vista. XP works fine for everything, and with a VERY mature driver base it'll be fine for a long time to come. I'm usually one of the early adopter types when it comes to software and OSes, but this time, I'm gonna sit this one out for at least a good 6 months. Its gonna be mix of SP1, mature drivers, and some hacks to the stupid DRM scheme in order for vista to be worthwhile.
I like how the article doesn't bash Microsoft, but the nVidia bashing is a little overboard. He's accusing the lack of driver support as an attempt to lure people into buying the 8800 or something. That seems a little...implausible. I agree that nVidia's Vista support is poor at the moment, but the profanity and juvenile attitude are unnecessary.
To be honest, this article reads like it was written by a 13-year old gamer who's pissed because he can't blast people online with his new system. It would be one thing if it were a blog or column, but this is an actual article on the main page. The quality of journalism and integrity found in this article is abysmal compared to what Bit-Tech normally puts out.
It's the simple fact that another fairly well known gfx card company have drivers available that work as well in Vista as they do in XP, whereas NVidia didn't seem that bothered about it. Based on the fact they are a global company, with a userbase to match, you'd have thought they could have supported all those users from the off.
Originally Posted by [cibyr] I've been playing with it since it was Windows Codename Longhorn and the loading bar was orange. And yes, I have used the RTM version as well. There's simply nothing there that makes me want to swap over from XP as my primary OS.
Sorry mate, I didn't mean to be so harsh, but I've talked to so many people who are just bashing it without using it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DougEdey Vista has one major problem though, UAC.
It's got two settings On or Off. They should make a "Trusted" program list.
Actually, it has three - on, off and auto-raise. Since you're on business it's in the group policy editor and just auto-rasies any application that asks for it but you still keep most of the benefits of UAC.
It seems Nvidia are taking criticism on board then if Nforce 2 and 3 is sorted. That's a big step imo, motherboards being made far prematurely obsolete(and lets be honest, a mobile barton at say 2.6Ghz is still far from obsolete) by lack of support is very bad. Now lets just hope they get their video card drivers sorted ASAP for Vista.
Originally Posted by Da Dego I will be talking with their driver development team today to try and find a solution, so as soon as I know more, you'll hear about it. Props to NV for some quick moves to acknowledge the problem and get me in touch with someone who can fix it - now it just comes down to what kind of fix there is.
Is there any news on Nvidia's position, or have they just given Bit-Tech the usual "we are diligently working on imporveing our software" malarky?
I feel Brett's pain as I purchased a 7950GX2 on the cheap back in September as the release of the G80 seemed to prompt a few retailers to lower their prices. I thought I was being clever as it cost me less than two 7950GT's would've at the time but as soon as I installed Vista and played a game something seemed fishy. Sure enough, after a quick timedemo on Doom 3 and runthrough of 3DMark06 I saw that only half of my card is being used. I'm pretty annoyed as it's advertised on BFG's webiste and on the packageing as "Built for Microsoft Vista". I'm stumped now as I just bought a P5N32-E SLi last month but I'm now wishing I stuck with my P5W DH Deluxe. Nvidia has really let me down, if drivers weren't ready they shouldn't have bigged up their products prior to its release.
It's not just the consumer sector. I have an Adaptec 2410SA and though it is great that Vista sees it native during the install, it's a bit much that adaptec haven't bothered to fix up storage manager so I can't see or contrl the state of the array. :(
Oh and I have an Audgiy 2 ZS, Situation was even worse earlier when they were issuing time-limited beta drivers and not replacing them until the day aftr thye expired!
If you still scorn ATI (or now AMD) for poor gfx drivers, you are happily living in a now distant past. Ignorance is bliss, and it's much nicer to comfortably live with a 'healthy' (cough) set of prejudices than constantly adapting to reality, isn't it? You make yourself look like a bloody NVidia fan boy with your remark. Actually, it was NVidia's drivers, and for a good part the hardware (the infamous GF 5XXX series, already forgotten) that sucked during the last years, and the real cure is their 8XXX line, with its clean cut to old gfx tech (please regard that I am not saying they should abandon the older hardware, they should not - I am merely contradicting your remark about ATI drivers here). Switching from NVidia to a Radeon 9800 pro had been a decision I never had to regret. I am using a Radeon X800 XT PE on 64 bit Linux with OpenGL apps, and it works perfectly. While once having been a die hard NVidia user, I will not move back to their products anytime soon. I don't like their business practise, I don't like their driver cheating, I don't like their CineFX hardware (for good reason), and ATI manages to be up to par or beat them card by card. Their DX10 piece will stomp everything NVidia has to offer, and it comes right in time and by no means too late. Imvho there is no good reason to stick with NVidia unless a kind of pseudo-religious conviction urges you to do so.
As far as Vista is concerned: I can see no good reason to switch from XP to this DRM infested (P)OS. My only hope is that Vista will be the stumbling block ultimately causing M$ factual monopoly on PC OS's to fall, paving the way for Linux. (Before you start to bash me for Linux fan boyism: My main machine is a WinXP machine, and I *love* it. Linux can be a little harsh on those trying do some more with it than just every day tasks).
Originally Posted by t4ct1c47 Is there any news on Nvidia's position, or have they just given Bit-Tech the usual "we are diligently working on imporveing our software" malarky?
Not yet. I have actually been postponed until Thursday afternoon (EST). So hopefully, I will have something for you then.
Quote:
Originally Posted by karx11erx If you still scorn ATI (or now AMD) for poor gfx drivers, you are happily living in a now distant past. Ignorance is bliss, and it's much nicer to comfortably live with a 'healthy' (cough) set of prejudices than constantly adapting to reality, isn't it? You make yourself look like a bloody NVidia fan boy with your remark.
karx, I'm glad you seem to have had good experiences with ATI's drivers. I, for one, have not. You may not believe this, but I actually work with this stuff on a pretty regular basis, so telling me that I live in a distant past and am ignorant is not exactly very kind of you. As for your speaking of fanboyism, to state that ATI has "beaten [NVIDIA] card by card" is a little more than a stretch of the truth...and unless you have an R600 on your desk, I'd say you have little place to tell me how well it will beat the 8800 series into the dirt.
I have had numerous poor experiences (as have several others) with ATI's drivers in recent memory, in particular its northbridge drivers. On the other hand, NVIDIA's NForce chipset drivers were always very stable and worked well. Just because the Radeon drivers have been on a bit of a streak doesn't mean that the entire driver division deserves a medal. Aside from being a little 'neutered' (for lack of a better word), this is the first time I can say that I've been let down by any NVIDIA drivers since its release of the FX5xxx series.
I was so harsh about your ATI driver statement because in my experience it is not true (I have been using ATI hardware across quite a few hardware platforms), and claims like that one, made by apparently clueless people (not you, probably, but there are enough noobs trying to look expert, just repeating what others have been telling them before w/o knowing crap about it), are constantly ruining ATI's reputation - something ATI has not deserved at all.
The only NVidia card yet to be matched by ATI currently is the 8800, and their counterpiece is on the way. Ofc, there are no benchmarks yet, but from the specs you can see where this will get. As far as the earlier models go (beginning with the Radeon 9700): ATI has had an offer at least as good as every NVidia card. So?
If I needed any more proof that you are not up to a qualified discussion about this topic, then it was this sentence:
Quote:
Just because the Radeon drivers have been on a bit of a streak doesn't mean that the entire driver division deserves a medal.
That 'streak' is lasting quite a few years already. And didn't we talk about graphics drivers? Wanna talk about how many unstable, sucky drivers NVidia has released, containing more than questionable 'performance optimizations' at the cost of image quality? Did you ever try to install an NVidia gfx driver on Linux recently? It's a PITA.
It says a lot to me that you are trying to avoid a discussion about NVidia's gfx drivers by suddenly speaking about chipset drivers (it tells me that you are trying to avoid a discussion you are well aware would turn into a minefield for you if you tried to defend NVidia).
Dude, I am not trying to insult you, but I think what you are writing actually does show quite some NVidia fanboyism.
I'd also like to add that ATI have most certainly not matched NVidia card for card and neither has it been the other way around. There have been definitive peaks and troughs for both gfx card companies. The Geforce1 blew everything away and quickly built a pedestal for itself from which to gloat at ATI. It really wasn't until ATI came up with the 9800 that they snatched the crown back, leaving NVidia licking its wounds for a fair while. The 9800 could only be more or less matched in performance by the time NVidia released the 6600 and from then on it's been a case of NVidia and ATI attempting to outdo each other and only managing mild success for the most part.
Thank you for your feedback, it has been taken on board.
I think you're wrong about matching card for card. The last two major architectural launches (R520 and R600) have shown ATI to be 'late to the game' by over four months in each case. The company's a bit better at refreshing products though so let's hope the AMD merger changes the former.
Originally Posted by Da Dego I have had numerous poor experiences (as have several others) with ATI's drivers in recent memory, in particular its northbridge drivers. On the other hand, NVIDIA's NForce chipset drivers were always very stable and worked well. Just because the Radeon drivers have been on a bit of a streak doesn't mean that the entire driver division deserves a medal. Aside from being a little 'neutered' (for lack of a better word), this is the first time I can say that I've been let down by any NVIDIA drivers since its release of the FX5xxx series.
I'm not an NVidia fanboy, in fact i only have a little more respect for them over ATI
But really, my decision to get a x1900XT over a 7800GTX (at the time) has really bugged me, the ATI card was £100 less, which is what swayed me at the time
However, it sounds like a jet engine, and the other day just playing HL2 the thing kicked into a gear higher then Ive ever heard (i think i need to clean out the HSF) and it actually did sound like a vacuum cleaner
However, drivers for my x1900XT have been an utter pain in the ass, something to do with the DFI SLI-DR board (NF4) and ATI drivers has caused me problems, and by their own admission there have been some problems with some NF4 boards and ATI GFX cards
I cant use the latest drivers because they frequently crash with source, requiring me to reinstall the drivers (an utter PITA) which just leads to the same thing a few hours later, not a great gaming experience
I was unable to connect my GFX card to my TV (it just has a blue screen) and cant find any real reason why, until i re-installed windows lately and it started working
ATI's CCC is bloated, slow, unhelpful, and not even very good - the "catalyst crew feedback" system is a joke, only allowing you to say whats good about ATI's products, and not actually complain that it sucks ass (this is probably what made me lose the most faith in ATI, i cant stand companies that just shove their fingers in their ears and ignore people, or bias the data they collect)
So For me, the transfer from NVidia to ATI has been a dreadful experience, i have regretted it for a long time, and still do, £100 just isn't worth if for the hassle
ATI also failed to make a good "SLI" solution, most people who actually used crossfire i talked to payed a lot of money on a "master" card and all the rest of it, and gained 0 performance for it (well when it was initially released) this is a very poor show indeed
In all my time using Nvidia products i had few complaints (Ive had a 5200, 5600 (well 2 from the FX series, these might not be the exact numbers, not great choices either), 6800GT) and then Ive had 1 ATI card - the x1900XT - the almost flagship at the time and quite frankly, i just prefer nvidia's cards outright, and if i had any money at the moment, i might change back to nvidia (unfortunately i don't so I'm stuck with my X1900XT)
this article is the only one, amongst a lot of the ones released on bt.net that makes me react. this is my reaction to brett. history repeats.
did you forget about 3dfx addon cards (not 3dfx3 and later series) being forgotten in win2000 (except with openGL)?
as a tech journalist, you've experienced major os evolutions win2000. winxp took advantage of the maturity of win2000 drivers, but you already know that, don't you?
it's not new that new os means a lot of driver issues, and take it as you want, but all the specific setups can't be taken in account, and SLI is a specific setup. dx10 is the vistas flagship, the only reason imo to switch os. it's clearly no wonder that nvidia, and most likely ati too, are working really hard on it. why?
because xp does the job when it comes to dx9!
From the narrow perspective of a game-player there is a case for staying with XP to play DX9 games, but for other use Vista is clearly a step forward.
Given the amount of time this system has sat in beta I think the attitude of hardare companies is shocking. Sure you can say MS should have left it with the same driver model as XP but then you're blocking all real progress on the OS. Sometimes you need to make a big step to move things along and this was that time
Originally Posted by Tim S Thank you for your feedback, it has been taken on board.
I think you're wrong about matching card for card. The last two major architectural launches (R520 and R600) have shown ATI to be 'late to the game' by over four months in each case. The company's a bit better at refreshing products though so let's hope the AMD merger changes the former.
Tim,
for every current NVidia card except the 8800, there is an ATI card performing just as good. You can bet that ATI's DX10 hardware will be at least as good as NVidia's - they have the technological background with their game console hardware.
NVidia had a tech lead with their PS 3 hardware, but in fact that was a theoretical advantage. There are still few games that use this feature, which is now offered by ATI hardware as well. Imo ATI always chose the better path since their introduction of the Radeon architecture: They implemented the features apps (games) would really use, and optimized the silicon. NVidia on the other side tried to do what they'd always done since they killed 3dfx with it: Using some fancy tech and the related buzzwords to make people believe their product was the only way to go.
What we haven't discussed at all now is driver stability and performance. It is an open secret that NVidia hardware does not offer as good AA as ATI's does, and they managed to catch up with the 8X00 architecture only. Image quality improvement techniques are there to give users they same visual quality at a way higher resolution with the accompanying insane memory and bandwidth requirements would do, w/o the cost. ATI is beating NVidia here, and that for a long time already.
kenco,
'match' doesn't mean 'better'. It means 'up to par'. So actually we are not contradicting each other.
Imo NVidia's hardware may not be (significantly) worse than ATI's, but it's certainly not better.
randosome,
for 100 BP you could have afforded a really nice low noise replacement cooler, e.g. from Arctic Cooling. ;) If your TV connection only works after reinstalling WinXP, I don't think ATI's drivers are to blame for it - rather your WinXP installation. At least you have no proof, so you could blame as well M$ (or yourself, depending on what you had installed on it). I am using an X1900XT on a ASUS SLI board with an ATI chipset, and have no problems at all. I never had any driver or hardware problems since my first Radeon 9700 pro. I owned several 9800 pros on various systems, an X800 XT PE, and as I said, an X1900XT. The X800 now works flawlessly on a Linux system, and is as good as silent even when running under load. Admittedly the X1900XT cooler was ready for the trash can already when leaving the factory, but then my main (WinXP) rig is watercooled anyway. I already thought of adding another X1900XT to my SLI capable machine just for the heck of it, but for one I simply don't need that much horsepower, and then the water coolers are so bloody expensive ...
That may well be the case, but you seem to ignore the fact that Nvidia has had a four-month head start on sales being the only one with "next generation" hardware on the market with both G7x/R5xx and G8x/R6xx. Personally, I've had more headaches with ATI's drivers (especially CrossFire) over the last 18 months than I have with Nvidia's, but then what would I know, I only use the hardware every day.
There's no denying that ATI's anti-aliasing is better than Nvidia's and the filtering has been too. I was one of the first to bitch at Nvidia for their frankly diabolical filtering quality in GeForce 7-series. I continued to flag it everytime I reviewed a 7-series product, especially at the high-end, because it was a reason to buy ATI's X1000 hardware over anything Nvidia could offer - image quality on X1000 simply couldn't be touched by Nvidia and it was a reason why I actively recommended buying X1950XTX over 7950 GX2 (despite being slightly slower) and another reason why I recommended X1900XTX over 7900 GTX.
who cares the heck about some piece of hardware you cannot even fully use because there are still no DX10 capable drivers, and there are major problems with the target OS, and that is Windows Vista?
Your argument simply isn't one. If anything gets clear here then it is that NVidia tries to use new tech features to push their sales no matter what.
ATI's hardware will come in time, and I bet it will beat NVidia's. And the drivers will be there and work.
Imo you are fighting an uphill battle with your arguments. ;)
Let me add one thing: Should at any time in the future NVidia's hardware prove to be vastly superior to ATI's I will not hesitate a second to switch to NVidia. I used to love NVidia hardware. (I still remember my Creative TNT2 Ultra blowing my Voodoo 2 SLI setup plain out of the water ... I sold that card later, sniff, to appease my wife who thought I'd spend to much time with my computer ... if I have learned one thing then it is to never listen to my wife if it comes down to computer issues .... Or that fabulous GF 4 4600 ...)
But please stop doing ATI injustice and apologizing every goof up of NVidia's.
Your argument has no base when you consider that GeForce 8 is a fantastic DirectX 9 performer under Windows XP and there are no DirectX 10 games out. You'd be an idiot to buy an X1950 XTX over an 8800 GTS today.
DirectX 10 specification is so strict that cards are going to perform in DX10. Also, who's the company pushing DirectX 10 games into our hands this year? It's not ATI, it's Nvidia, so if anyone's hardware is going to work, it'll be Nvidia's.
Also, as a gamer, I see no point in upgrading to Vista until DirectX 10 games roll up. I'm sticking to XP until DX10 games get here - my copy of Vista is sitting on my side until that time.
Nvidia knows there are issues with their drivers and we called them for it too in this article. They have put their hands up to acknowledge that this is the case, too. ATI has done the same - it's OpenGL driver is complete bollocks as far as I'm concerned. Talking to both rather extensively, they're working on the problems they know they've both got with their current drivers under Vista. Neither is willing to stand 100% behind it's drivers and admit that they're "perfect" today, but ATI definitely has the better drivers today.
You missed my point about X1000 - how late was that and how pissed off were X1800 owners when X1900 turned up three months later at exactly the same price point?
Also, you don't need to tell me all the Nvidia hardware you own as justification for your preferences for ATI hardware. We've got the message, you're beginning to sound like a broken record.
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Yeah Nvidia is saying that they are spending most of thier effort on the new 8 line, but if that is so... where are the full featured, working drivers. I have been through beta after beta. I even used my experience to correct a Microsoft cheerleader that stated BSOD was a thing of the past in vista, as i have had numerous of them.
Here is where I have to take exception to the opinion that Microsoft is not to blame for this. They should get some of the blame for this. Vista is great, but some MS should have learned from the 9x to Xp conversion that driver support can be one of the biggest driving forces to early adoption of a new OS. In the XP generation, MS flopped and failed to get OEM manufacturers on board early enough to get viable drivers out the door before the OS release.
Here we see the same issue but to another level. Not only did vista fail to get their cheerleaders into the OEM corporate offices and development labs, but they down-right alienated some of them, Nvidia for one.
Why you may as is that. Well look at the development of D3D 10. Who was MS's main graphics vendor partner.... ATI. Anyone guessing why they have a better, more complete driver. Nvidia was left out in the cold.
Now I am not giving any excuses to Nvidia. They have been horrible to their customers, both old and new. I for one have been a avid ATI and AMD fan for most of my life. But we should recognize that MS had a lot of time to get into the vendor camps and make friends and excite them about the new OS so that they would have the proper motivation to create those drivers. Then for them to go further by alienating a major vendor like Nvidia... well they were asking for these issues.
This is just my longwinded two cents, but I think it needed to be said.
To be honest, this article reads like it was written by a 13-year old gamer who's pissed because he can't blast people online with his new system. It would be one thing if it were a blog or column, but this is an actual article on the main page. The quality of journalism and integrity found in this article is abysmal compared to what Bit-Tech normally puts out.
It's the simple fact that another fairly well known gfx card company have drivers available that work as well in Vista as they do in XP, whereas NVidia didn't seem that bothered about it. Based on the fact they are a global company, with a userbase to match, you'd have thought they could have supported all those users from the off.
Somewhat related:
Nvidia talks nForce2, nForce3 Vista support
Sorry mate, I didn't mean to be so harsh, but I've talked to so many people who are just bashing it without using it.
Actually, it has three - on, off and auto-raise. Since you're on business it's in the group policy editor and just auto-rasies any application that asks for it but you still keep most of the benefits of UAC.
well done
"He shall shake the heavens with his pen." Quote from, well... me.
Is there any news on Nvidia's position, or have they just given Bit-Tech the usual "we are diligently working on imporveing our software" malarky?
I feel Brett's pain as I purchased a 7950GX2 on the cheap back in September as the release of the G80 seemed to prompt a few retailers to lower their prices. I thought I was being clever as it cost me less than two 7950GT's would've at the time but as soon as I installed Vista and played a game something seemed fishy. Sure enough, after a quick timedemo on Doom 3 and runthrough of 3DMark06 I saw that only half of my card is being used. I'm pretty annoyed as it's advertised on BFG's webiste and on the packageing as "Built for Microsoft Vista". I'm stumped now as I just bought a P5N32-E SLi last month but I'm now wishing I stuck with my P5W DH Deluxe. Nvidia has really let me down, if drivers weren't ready they shouldn't have bigged up their products prior to its release.
It's not just the consumer sector. I have an Adaptec 2410SA and though it is great that Vista sees it native during the install, it's a bit much that adaptec haven't bothered to fix up storage manager so I can't see or contrl the state of the array. :(
Oh and I have an Audgiy 2 ZS, Situation was even worse earlier when they were issuing time-limited beta drivers and not replacing them until the day aftr thye expired!
Nice article and hope its over soon. :D
As far as Vista is concerned: I can see no good reason to switch from XP to this DRM infested (P)OS. My only hope is that Vista will be the stumbling block ultimately causing M$ factual monopoly on PC OS's to fall, paving the way for Linux. (Before you start to bash me for Linux fan boyism: My main machine is a WinXP machine, and I *love* it. Linux can be a little harsh on those trying do some more with it than just every day tasks).
I have had numerous poor experiences (as have several others) with ATI's drivers in recent memory, in particular its northbridge drivers. On the other hand, NVIDIA's NForce chipset drivers were always very stable and worked well. Just because the Radeon drivers have been on a bit of a streak doesn't mean that the entire driver division deserves a medal. Aside from being a little 'neutered' (for lack of a better word), this is the first time I can say that I've been let down by any NVIDIA drivers since its release of the FX5xxx series.
The only NVidia card yet to be matched by ATI currently is the 8800, and their counterpiece is on the way. Ofc, there are no benchmarks yet, but from the specs you can see where this will get. As far as the earlier models go (beginning with the Radeon 9700): ATI has had an offer at least as good as every NVidia card. So?
If I needed any more proof that you are not up to a qualified discussion about this topic, then it was this sentence:
It says a lot to me that you are trying to avoid a discussion about NVidia's gfx drivers by suddenly speaking about chipset drivers (it tells me that you are trying to avoid a discussion you are well aware would turn into a minefield for you if you tried to defend NVidia).
Dude, I am not trying to insult you, but I think what you are writing actually does show quite some NVidia fanboyism.
I think you're wrong about matching card for card. The last two major architectural launches (R520 and R600) have shown ATI to be 'late to the game' by over four months in each case. The company's a bit better at refreshing products though so let's hope the AMD merger changes the former.
But really, my decision to get a x1900XT over a 7800GTX (at the time) has really bugged me, the ATI card was £100 less, which is what swayed me at the time
However, it sounds like a jet engine, and the other day just playing HL2 the thing kicked into a gear higher then Ive ever heard (i think i need to clean out the HSF) and it actually did sound like a vacuum cleaner
However, drivers for my x1900XT have been an utter pain in the ass, something to do with the DFI SLI-DR board (NF4) and ATI drivers has caused me problems, and by their own admission there have been some problems with some NF4 boards and ATI GFX cards
I cant use the latest drivers because they frequently crash with source, requiring me to reinstall the drivers (an utter PITA) which just leads to the same thing a few hours later, not a great gaming experience
I was unable to connect my GFX card to my TV (it just has a blue screen) and cant find any real reason why, until i re-installed windows lately and it started working
ATI's CCC is bloated, slow, unhelpful, and not even very good - the "catalyst crew feedback" system is a joke, only allowing you to say whats good about ATI's products, and not actually complain that it sucks ass (this is probably what made me lose the most faith in ATI, i cant stand companies that just shove their fingers in their ears and ignore people, or bias the data they collect)
So For me, the transfer from NVidia to ATI has been a dreadful experience, i have regretted it for a long time, and still do, £100 just isn't worth if for the hassle
ATI also failed to make a good "SLI" solution, most people who actually used crossfire i talked to payed a lot of money on a "master" card and all the rest of it, and gained 0 performance for it (well when it was initially released) this is a very poor show indeed
In all my time using Nvidia products i had few complaints (Ive had a 5200, 5600 (well 2 from the FX series, these might not be the exact numbers, not great choices either), 6800GT) and then Ive had 1 ATI card - the x1900XT - the almost flagship at the time and quite frankly, i just prefer nvidia's cards outright, and if i had any money at the moment, i might change back to nvidia (unfortunately i don't so I'm stuck with my X1900XT)
history repeats.
did you forget about 3dfx addon cards (not 3dfx3 and later series) being forgotten in win2000 (except with openGL)?
as a tech journalist, you've experienced major os evolutions win2000. winxp took advantage of the maturity of win2000 drivers, but you already know that, don't you?
it's not new that new os means a lot of driver issues, and take it as you want, but all the specific setups can't be taken in account, and SLI is a specific setup. dx10 is the vistas flagship, the only reason imo to switch os. it's clearly no wonder that nvidia, and most likely ati too, are working really hard on it.
why?
because xp does the job when it comes to dx9!
Given the amount of time this system has sat in beta I think the attitude of hardare companies is shocking. Sure you can say MS should have left it with the same driver model as XP but then you're blocking all real progress on the OS. Sometimes you need to make a big step to move things along and this was that time
for every current NVidia card except the 8800, there is an ATI card performing just as good. You can bet that ATI's DX10 hardware will be at least as good as NVidia's - they have the technological background with their game console hardware.
NVidia had a tech lead with their PS 3 hardware, but in fact that was a theoretical advantage. There are still few games that use this feature, which is now offered by ATI hardware as well. Imo ATI always chose the better path since their introduction of the Radeon architecture: They implemented the features apps (games) would really use, and optimized the silicon. NVidia on the other side tried to do what they'd always done since they killed 3dfx with it: Using some fancy tech and the related buzzwords to make people believe their product was the only way to go.
What we haven't discussed at all now is driver stability and performance. It is an open secret that NVidia hardware does not offer as good AA as ATI's does, and they managed to catch up with the 8X00 architecture only. Image quality improvement techniques are there to give users they same visual quality at a way higher resolution with the accompanying insane memory and bandwidth requirements would do, w/o the cost. ATI is beating NVidia here, and that for a long time already.
kenco,
'match' doesn't mean 'better'. It means 'up to par'. So actually we are not contradicting each other.
Imo NVidia's hardware may not be (significantly) worse than ATI's, but it's certainly not better.
randosome,
for 100 BP you could have afforded a really nice low noise replacement cooler, e.g. from Arctic Cooling. ;) If your TV connection only works after reinstalling WinXP, I don't think ATI's drivers are to blame for it - rather your WinXP installation. At least you have no proof, so you could blame as well M$ (or yourself, depending on what you had installed on it). I am using an X1900XT on a ASUS SLI board with an ATI chipset, and have no problems at all. I never had any driver or hardware problems since my first Radeon 9700 pro. I owned several 9800 pros on various systems, an X800 XT PE, and as I said, an X1900XT. The X800 now works flawlessly on a Linux system, and is as good as silent even when running under load. Admittedly the X1900XT cooler was ready for the trash can already when leaving the factory, but then my main (WinXP) rig is watercooled anyway. I already thought of adding another X1900XT to my SLI capable machine just for the heck of it, but for one I simply don't need that much horsepower, and then the water coolers are so bloody expensive ...
There's no denying that ATI's anti-aliasing is better than Nvidia's and the filtering has been too. I was one of the first to bitch at Nvidia for their frankly diabolical filtering quality in GeForce 7-series. I continued to flag it everytime I reviewed a 7-series product, especially at the high-end, because it was a reason to buy ATI's X1000 hardware over anything Nvidia could offer - image quality on X1000 simply couldn't be touched by Nvidia and it was a reason why I actively recommended buying X1950XTX over 7950 GX2 (despite being slightly slower) and another reason why I recommended X1900XTX over 7900 GTX.
who cares the heck about some piece of hardware you cannot even fully use because there are still no DX10 capable drivers, and there are major problems with the target OS, and that is Windows Vista?
Your argument simply isn't one. If anything gets clear here then it is that NVidia tries to use new tech features to push their sales no matter what.
ATI's hardware will come in time, and I bet it will beat NVidia's. And the drivers will be there and work.
Imo you are fighting an uphill battle with your arguments. ;)
Let me add one thing: Should at any time in the future NVidia's hardware prove to be vastly superior to ATI's I will not hesitate a second to switch to NVidia. I used to love NVidia hardware. (I still remember my Creative TNT2 Ultra blowing my Voodoo 2 SLI setup plain out of the water ... I sold that card later, sniff, to appease my wife who thought I'd spend to much time with my computer ... if I have learned one thing then it is to never listen to my wife if it comes down to computer issues .... Or that fabulous GF 4 4600 ...)
But please stop doing ATI injustice and apologizing every goof up of NVidia's.
DirectX 10 specification is so strict that cards are going to perform in DX10. Also, who's the company pushing DirectX 10 games into our hands this year? It's not ATI, it's Nvidia, so if anyone's hardware is going to work, it'll be Nvidia's.
Also, as a gamer, I see no point in upgrading to Vista until DirectX 10 games roll up. I'm sticking to XP until DX10 games get here - my copy of Vista is sitting on my side until that time.
Nvidia knows there are issues with their drivers and we called them for it too in this article. They have put their hands up to acknowledge that this is the case, too. ATI has done the same - it's OpenGL driver is complete bollocks as far as I'm concerned. Talking to both rather extensively, they're working on the problems they know they've both got with their current drivers under Vista. Neither is willing to stand 100% behind it's drivers and admit that they're "perfect" today, but ATI definitely has the better drivers today.
You missed my point about X1000 - how late was that and how pissed off were X1800 owners when X1900 turned up three months later at exactly the same price point?
Also, you don't need to tell me all the Nvidia hardware you own as justification for your preferences for ATI hardware. We've got the message, you're beginning to sound like a broken record.