ATI's opengl guy is an arrogant prick that apparently can't code worth sh1t. At the rage3d forums he consistantly denies problems when they are brought up or sidesteps the issue entirely when enough people confront him and attempt to get him to address it. He's also made several comments about just how he feels about us end-users. This gamma issue, the refresh rate issue (suprised no one has harped on that yet), the long-lived (but currently fixed) 16-bit texture bug, Neverwinter Nights performance, plus the myriad of other problems that seem to be exclusive to their OpenGL support are inexcusible for a company in ATI's standing. And this is on top of the entire driver team's habit of breaking previously working features (AA in several games, AF w/ real TF), horrid resource allotment decisions (adding VPU recover, smart shader, and that crap unified control panel instead of spending the energy to bug squash), their apparent lack of response to feedback from their beta testers (which shocks me, why even have a beta program when bugs reported by testers still make it into release drivers and aren't worked on until enough people bitch through their driver feedback page) and lack of response to consumer requests (SSAA, Digital Vibrance, game profiles). I'm no Nvidia fanboy, I own an ATI card, I even own ATI stock, but they are showing all the signs of a company that's growing too big for their britches and losing touch with the very people that put them on top. They are blowing their chance to establish a loyal consumer base, they have the best hardware out now, but a lot of long-time ATI users are getting tired of the same old driver crap and many new Nvidia converts are wondering why the hell they have to put up with these problems in the first place. I hope ATI gets a smack back from Nvidia like the one they handed Nvidia with this current-gen line because every driver release seems to be a slide further down the hill for them and I'm afraid that's what it will take to get them chugging back up that hill again.
Edit1: Oh, and I forgot to mention they still don't have any 64-bit drivers out. Beaten by Creative Labs to that table for crying out loud.
Edit2: One more edit and I'm done. Scroll down and look how good the Far Cry demo looks with AA here:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?s=ae81d02d23ca3e6f3c24b70c1027778f&threadid=33746890
Of course that's with the 3.5 drivers. Maybe they'll have it fixed again in the 4.4 drivers. But those won't be out until a few weeks after the full game comes out. Cross your fingers everyone.
