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ATI drivers question...

Z

zippy

Diamond Member
I understand that ATI is often behind in their drivers and the drivers aren't even always too good. Here is my question though - why?! They are the largest (or at least a close second since nVidia showed up to play) consumer graphics card company and they have oodles of OEM deals, yet their drivers are generally stinky for quite some time after the product is released.

Why is that? Wouldn't it make sense to devote more money to producing better drivers? Wouldn't that, in turn, get more sales because consumers wouldn't be wary of poor drivers?

I just don't get it. Can anyone explain?
 
All valid comments, Zippy. I am running a newer ATI driver than is available on their download site . . (Radeon, 64 DDR) 4.13.7153. I downloaded a new one last night, but have not tried it yet . . . 4.13.7189. None came from the ATI site . . . but the 7153 works great . . . been using it for about a month now.

However . . . no thanks to ATI. Your point is well taken.
 
Under Par Drivers was the Main reason why I dumped my Radeon for A GF-3....the Radeon Win2k perfomance was miserable.....35 fps in CS at 800 by 600......
I have to agree
 
Just want to add . . . I installed the new 7189 drivers for the Radeon, and they work perfectly so far. Speed seems a bit better and smoothness is good. That makes two new sets of Ati drivers in the past couple of months. But . . . the curious thing is, they do not come from or are they available at the Ati site. They are here:

Ati Drivers

 
actually, i think that lately ati has been releasing drivers pretty quickly (they just released some... yesterday, i think, and the previous set was released about 2 weeks ago) so i think they are trying to repair their image for the release of the radeon 8500
 
Hmmm...I'm not really trying to make a point, but at the same time I am. On the one hand, I am trying to say that it is absurd that they release graphics cards that have issues with major OSes. You would not believe the headache I had to get my friend's AIW Radeon to work under Win98se and WinME last November - I had to mix around the IRQs and use an unsupported driver set because the official ones didn't work. Now, does that make any sense? The supported driver set didn't work, so I had to use one that wasn't supported. If I called ATI, what would they have said? "Urrr...try the ones that if you use you can't call us...BYE!" 😉

On the other hand, I'm really curious why such a large company is so inept at creating good drivers for their cards. It takes quite some time after release before the drivers are stable under all configurations and OSes it seems. WTF? I don't understand this. Don't they give their driver dept more than a monkey and a 3x86? 😉

Sure, the Radeon drivers work great now, but that is way too long after release.

I love the Radeon cards, but I hate how it takes them so long to get good drivers. 🙁

Maybe ATI will have good drivers on the 7500 and 8500! 😀 <crosses fingers>

Oh yeah, and why aren't the ATI drivers on their own site? To get out of support? So they are leaked so they don't have to comment or support them? I just don't get the rationale behind all of this BS.

nVidia leaks drivers too...why not have confidence in your products?!?
 
and use an unsupported driver set because the official ones didn't work.

actually ATi takes those unsupported driver sets, does their tests on them, and calls them official drivers. that's how the driver thing seems to work at ATi. the latest 7189 drivers are unsupported as well.

no doubt when the official drivers for the 7500 come out (or are they out already? gotta take a look at ATi's website), there'll be newer 'beta' drivers available for the whole Radeon series (that includes all the 7xxx cards, as well as the original Radeon series cards).

but they'll be safe to use, cause the drivers have already matured greatly.
 
Yes, I know those unsupported drivers eventually become supported drivers. But for a time, they are not supported. Not that I need support, but it's ridiculous.

And why would their supported drivers not work? 😕
 
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