Are ATI Radeon Driver problems a thing of the past now??

[Toolman]

Are ATI's drivers & buggy software problems a thing of the past now that they have unified drivers? I thot I read that somewhere and wanted to make sure before purchasing the Radeon 8500 AIW for a P3 @ 1GHz system. Ya think this is too much card for this system. See additional system specs under "My Rig #1". Thanks!

 

[Budman]

Are ATI Radeon Driver problems a thing of the past now??

Yes for me,they work fine here.

 

[BD231]

No problems here.

 

[Wolfsraider]

no problems here

 

[gamephile]

I have been using the catalyst series drivers on my ATI VIVO 64m for a while now with no problems. ATI still has yet to solve some stability issues with their multimedia center however. Every time, and I mean every, I run Video In on my W2k box and close it, the program remains running and the next time I run the program, I have to manually cancel both instances from the Task manager and hope I can start it up again before it BSOD's. Yeah thats right, it BSOD's my machine unless I get another instance of it running in under 10 seconds of manually shutting down the old one. TO this day it's the only thing that can bring down my machine....that I have encountered that is. Annnyways...as far as games the drivers seem to be doing fine.

 

[Duvie]

As I guy who has had AIW cards and tv tuners recently I say no they are still there...BUt anymore then any other company??? NO!!! I have worked through them all....

Tv tuner and AIW cards are still troublesome for some so don't beware but be aware!!!


I hate there install procedure for updating drivers...I though updating nvidia drivers were less troublesome, but then again you get use to it and it becomes procedure.


I recently found a problem that has made me revrt back to older drivers...ATI catalyst drivers cause ghosting in autocadd versions 2000 and newer. I had to search through bulletin boards to find the fix and dropping back 2 seriers of drivers and it worked. In the boards a lot of ppl were striken with it.




IMO, ATI still sucks more in comparison to nvidia when it comes to drivers, but then lets also remember no one offers a software package like ati and their mmc drivers for their AIW cards...

 

[GTaudiophile]

I've owned 3 ATi Radeon videocards on 3 separate machines (2 Radeon 32DDRs and 1 Radeon 7500), and I've NEVER had a single driver problem. They've always handled the games I've thrown at them. I believe ATi makes a superior product hardware wise, and I will continue to support the company with more purchases. My next vidoecard will either be a Radeon 9700 or 9500 PRO.

 

[bex0rs]

I'm having stability issues with my Radeon 7500 under WinXP using the latest drivers (Catalyst 2.3) when viewing certain Java applets. Sometimes my computer will just lock up, and other times it will switch to 640x480x16 and force a reboot.

Here's what the event log says:

The driver ati2dvag for the display device \Device\Video0 got stuck in an infinite loop. This usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your hardware device vendor for any driver updates.

I'm thinking of switching to a low-end nvidia card since all I don't game on this computer, but I need it to be stable for coding, etc.

~bex0rs

 

[bex0rs]

Also, i should add that I am using a clean install of XP+SP1 and Catalyst 2.3

Here is a link that crashes my system without fail (contains a java applet):

http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~mpbrown/ssu/java2d.html

~bex0rs

 

[CraigRT]

It's not so much the drivers are total crap.. it's mainly some 3d glitches and certain small flaws... I believe most average people could live with ATI's "driver problems" on a day to day basis just fine. (for the MOST part) I do however think without a doubt, that NVidia has superior software in almost every way to ATI. ATI however makes a KILLER piece of hardware.

 

[peang]

I have AIW Radeon 32mb on my comp.
and now is stable as a rock
been up for more than 2 weeks now.

 

[rbV5]

ATI's problem isn't the drivers with their mature products, its the driver installation/uninstallation. AIW cards (and the rest of the Radeon line) are very stable with mature drivers and a feature laden multimedia suite that no other card/chip maker matches...

but,

The driver installation program/procedure is horrible. Its non-intuitive and there is no clear-cut uninstall procedure that a nOOb can figure out. I've never been more than a driver re-install away from a fully functioning AIW card in over 2 years myself.....period, but thats because I mastered clearing my registry, manually installing drivers/WDM's, MMC....on and on long, long ago. I don't have problems, but I can see why many have. If ATI would keep their registry entries and naming conventions in the same spot in successive driver releases, maybe someone could create a decent uninstall utility. Then have an installation that checks your rig for the proper components for the various cards features...man that would be sweet!

 

[Wolfsraider]

Originally posted by: rbV5
ATI's problem isn't the drivers with their mature products, its the driver installation/uninstallation. AIW cards (and the rest of the Radeon line) are very stable with mature drivers and a feature laden multimedia suite that no other card/chip maker matches...

but,

The driver installation program/procedure is horrible. Its non-intuitive and there is no clear-cut uninstall procedure that a nOOb can figure out. I've never been more than a driver re-install away from a fully functioning AIW card in over 2 years myself.....period, but thats because I mastered clearing my registry, manually installing drivers/WDM's, MMC....on and on long, long ago. I don't have problems, but I can see why many have. If ATI would keep their registry entries and naming conventions in the same spot in successive driver releases, maybe someone could create a decent uninstall utility. Then have an installation that checks your rig for the proper components for the various cards features...man that would be sweet!

i agree 100% with you but i also am seeing more and more that ati is fixing the bugs in games and aps now more than ever.the only ati card i never got to work properly was a tv wonder ve and yes i am probably at fault in xp because the install process was so different compared to 98 where it loaded and ran without a glitch.but since i couldn't find a real driver that was certified(this includes third party etc...)windows xp balked everytime i tried.but a friend has it working perfectly on his machine.

mike

 

[ProviaFan]

I've not had any problems with the recent Catalyst drivers, except for a small visual artifact issue with an early version of the Catalyst series and UT (the original one, not UT2003). That issue is gone now with the Catalyst 2.3 drivers.

 

[sechs]

I've had six ATi cards without a single problem. I used to have to work on a computer with an Nvidia-based card; crashed at least once a month due to the drivers.

I personally rate ATi's drivers as better than Nvidia's. Not as slick as Matrox, but up there.

 

[blackhawk]

Got a few ATI cards from the old rage IIc to the 8500 retail version with lots of radeons in between.

The driver update process is getting much better but nvidia cards still simpler to do. I have a couple TV cards and an AIW that give some grief in XP and require homework to be done. I still have one old Gforce ddr that I run on a BX mb at 89mz agp bus.

I think of them like amd cpus, cheaper but require more care and homework to make them run well.
Love my 8500 still after 6 months!

 

[spanner]

I'd say they are still there. Even in the Catalysts. Unless they have improved in the last two weeks since I got rid of my R8500. The most recent problem I had with them is that they would consitently crash 2d programs that made use of hardware acceleration. I almost always had to adjust setting in order to get it working right with games. All these problems dissappeared when I switched to a G4 4200. If you got with ATI I hope you have better luck then I did.

 

[chansen]

I'm using a Radeon VE that I was forced into once I bought my LCD and couldn't find another DVI card for a decent price. The only game I play is NHL 2002, but the VE isn't up to that task until you crank it down to 800x600 or lower.

My other problem with the card is in IE, when a web page has a lot of images down a column (like CNN or ESPN's banners), scrolling down the page causes a streaking effect where the text (not images) is redrawn with each line scrolled, but the old text location is not erased. So, scrolling results in an unreadable page. Sometimes it goes away with further scrolling. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all. A little frustrating, but the problem has never surfaced anywhere but IE.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: chansen
I'm using a Radeon VE that I was forced into once I bought my LCD and couldn't find another DVI card for a decent price. The only game I play is NHL 2002, but the VE isn't up to that task until you crank it down to 800x600 or lower.

My other problem with the card is in IE, when a web page has a lot of images down a column (like CNN or ESPN's banners), scrolling down the page causes a streaking effect where the text (not images) is redrawn with each line scrolled, but the old text location is not erased. So, scrolling results in an unreadable page. Sometimes it goes away with further scrolling. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all. A little frustrating, but the problem has never surfaced anywhere but IE.

You're running the latest Catalysts, right? Also, AFAIK, the Radeon VE is extremely crippled (even my Radeon SDR PCI is faster); you might want to look into getting a GF?MX card or something similar - although the Geforce cards have historically had 2D image quality problems, I hear that's getting better, but it won't even be a problem for you since you'd be using the DVI output.

 

[microAmp]

Originally posted by: BD231
No problems here.

1st ATi card for me but on a clean install too.

 

[kingbob]

I used to have an infinite looping problem with my Radeon 8500 but I fixed it with the agp driving power. So far, with the latest Catakyst drivers and my card oc'ed its fully stable and screams for a R8500.

 

[ElFenix]

radeon AIW on a system thats had two other video cards in it since the last time it was formatted, not a problem but it doesn't get gamed on much.

 

[LS20]

well, i play a few games here and there and stuff with my Radeon 8500LE and have had almost zero problem


the only problem that I do have is that most of the time, counterstrike in Direct3d at 1024x768 will lock up before the gamescreen loads (game loads fine, but freezes before entering game)... but I can play it in Open GL at 1600x1200 all day long

 

[Tripleshot]

I have had zero problems with with ATI products for over 3 years. I installed two nvidea cards in systyems I built for customers just a few weeks ago, and right out of the box, they are in need of driver updates. You needto update nvidea way too often to make any of those cards worth the effort to use.
ATI Radeon has ample frame rate and stability to play any game I have ever launched on my pcs. And I use every OS except windows 3.1 to use the card. It is in a test machine with removable HDDS to swap out various OS's and test them.

ATI rocks. I am anxious to see what they will unveil at comdex in a few weeks.