Nvidia fan regrets ATI purchase

[QuantumPion]

So I've always been somewhat of an Nvidia loyalist, ever since the first Geforce. The 5900 sucked bad and in hindsight I should have gotten a 9700 instead but every other Nvidia card has been as good or better than its ATI counterpart as far as I can remember.

Anyways, for my newest upgrade I decided with all the bad press around the Fermi, I'd might as well try out an ATI for once. So I picked up a Powercolor 5870 LCS for my new watercooled build. This is an upgrade from an EVGA 285gtx so it's not a huge expected jump in performance. However so far I have been extremely disappointed and regret not just getting a Fermi after all.

The ATI drivers are beyond terrible. I thought all the complaining I used to hear about ATI having bad drivers was just an exaggeration or minor complaint. However I can now safely say that these complaints really understate how terrible the drivers actually are. So far in just one week of ownership, I've had the following issues using drivers 10.1 through 10.4:

1) Firefox crashes with hardware accelerated flash videos frequently
2) hardware accelerated videos have artifacts or become corrupted if the window is minimized or moved
3) anomalous flashing grey boxes on the desktop
4) monitor power saving mode does not work - monitor just displays full black instead of actually going into standby mode
5) graphics driver frequently crashes and is recovered and restarted by windows, in games, while playing videos, or just doing nothing.
6) multiple games have significant issues, ranging from frame rate glitchyness (frame rate jumps from 5 to 100 fps about once per second) to artifacts to crashes.

Even the most supposedly stable catalyst driver pales in comparison to the greenest nvidia beta driver I've ever used. This is my first and last ATI card I will ever purchase. :thumbsdown:

 

[VashHT]

So I've always been somewhat of an Nvidia loyalist, ever since the first Geforce. The 5900 sucked bad and in hindsight I should have gotten a 9700 instead but every other Nvidia card has been as good or better than its ATI counterpart as far as I can remember.

Anyways, for my newest upgrade I decided with all the bad press around the Fermi, I'd might as well try out an ATI for once. So I picked up a Powercolor 5870 LCS for my new watercooled build. This is an upgrade from an EVGA 285gtx so it's not a huge expected jump in performance. However so far I have been extremely disappointed and regret not just getting a Fermi after all.

The ATI drivers are beyond terrible. I thought all the complaining I used to hear about ATI having bad drivers was just an exaggeration or minor complaint. However I can now safely say that these complaints really understate how terrible the drivers actually are. So far in just one week of ownership, I've had the following issues using drivers 10.1 through 10.4:

1) Firefox crashes with hardware accelerated flash videos frequently
2) hardware accelerated videos have artifacts or become corrupted if the window is minimized or moved
3) anomalous flashing grey boxes on the desktop
4) monitor power saving mode does not work - monitor just displays full black instead of actually going into standby mode
5) graphics driver frequently crashes and is recovered and restarted by windows, in games, while playing videos, or just doing nothing.
6) multiple games have significant issues, ranging from frame rate glitchyness (frame rate jumps from 5 to 100 fps about once per second) to artifacts to crashes.

Even the most supposedly stable catalyst driver pales in comparison to the greenest nvidia beta driver I've ever used. This is my first and last ATI card I will ever purchase. :thumbsdown:

Hmm, does not sound like normal conditions to me, you might want to troubleshoot b4 you throw away your videocard.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Odd, I've had a 4870 since June 2008 and haven't experienced any of that. The 4870 was my first ATI after a long string of nV (6800, 5900, gf4, gf3, gf2).

Perhaps you have a defective card, or your cooling isn't working properly?

 

[SlowSpyder]

If you're getting artifacts it makes me think something else is going on. Is the card overclocked? I have absolutely zero, none of the issues you describe on Cat 10.3 with Vista 64.

 

[v8envy]

This certainly looks bad. While I'm no fan of ATI drivers, today their windows drivers are pretty much on par with NV ones.

I presume you did the obvious -- un-install the NV drivers and switch to VGA mode, reboot, run driver cleaner, reboot, install ATI drivers, reboot? Have you tried with a clean OS install and recent chipset & ATI drivers?

That said, ccc is a giant flaming pile of crap. Uninstall it. It has been blamed for many usability issues.

Lastly, it could be you got a bad card, hardware wise.

 

[Genx87]

Uninstall CCC and see if it clears up.

I should just put that in my sig lol

 

[Quiksilver]

All of that sounds more like a failing card than drivers issues...

That said, ccc is a giant flaming pile of crap. Uninstall it. It has been blamed for many usability issues.

I've seen the said a few times and most of the time actual driver crashes seem to be reduce by a large margin when this is done.

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Never had any of that stuff happen in any of my ATI cards... Now youre just being biased because of your Nvidia preference, drivers are pretty much equal nowadays, both sides have their share of problems and anyone who disagrees is a blatant fanboy

 

[Madcatatlas]

Why dont you just RMA that card and buy a 480? it will cost you about the same i think, since the watercooled edition is...silent, and costs more.

i think you will find 480 a great card. with the same chance for failure as your current card and it could have abit more noise (who knows, its fermi after all), unless your getting a watercooled edition. I dont know the prices for these cards.


good title btw

 

[QuantumPion]

All of that sounds more like a failing card than drivers issues...



I've seen the said a few times and most of the time actual driver crashes seem to be reduce by a large margin when this is done.

It could be a defective card, who knows. The temp sensor says it is running at 25 deg C idle which is only a few degrees above ambient. The max load I've seen it get to, using OCCT GPU+CPU stress test, was 45 deg C. My first impression though is not a hardware issue, which I think usually involves hard crashes and image corruption. What I am getting looks more like software problems.

How could CCC be causing issues? I thought it was basically the equivalent of the Nvidia control panel.

 

[Genx87]

All of that sounds more like a failing card than drivers issues...



I've seen the said a few times and most of the time actual driver crashes seem to be reduce by a large margin when this is done.

% of time my driver crashed with CCC installed? About 90% of the time over a span of 30 mins. Most of the time it would recover within Vista. But also I had an issue with Media Player. It would constantly toss errors in the event viewer. I had a similar post like this one when i first got my 4850 after everybody raved about how great ATI drivers were back in Oct 08. I was worried because I owned a 9600 AIW that had the worst drivers I had ever seen from any card manufacturer. About 50% of the time the driver install on reboot would grab 100% of the processor on the highest priority possible. Couldnt even move the mouse. And I came from an 8800 GTS 640 that was rock solid to my 4850 that was horseshit for stability. So I was pissed! I uninstall CCC and now the amount of driver crashes I have had since I did that back in Oct 08? The number doesnt fit on my hand because it has been zero.


Whoever manages CCC development should be fired. After all these years for it to be that big a pile of shit is embarassing.

 

[QuantumPion]

Why dont you just RMA that card and buy a 480? it will cost you about the same i think, since the watercooled edition is...silent, and costs more.

i think you will find 480 a great card. with the same chance for failure as your current card and it could have abit more noise (who knows, its fermi after all), unless your getting a watercooled edition. I dont know the prices for these cards.


good title btw

Because draining, disassembling, reconfiguring, reassembling, and refilling my watercooled system is a complete pain in the ass. I would only resort to this if the card was obviously defective and I had to replace it.

 

[CurseTheSky]

I have cards on both sides of the field and do not have issues with either one.

Perhaps you left remnants of the Nvidia drivers on your system when you swapped cards?

 

[QuantumPion]

% of time my driver crashed with CCC installed? About 90% of the time over a span of 30 mins. Most of the time it would recover within Vista. But also I had an issue with Media Player. It would constantly toss errors in the event viewer. I had a similar post like this one when i first got my 4850 after everybody raved about how great ATI drivers were back in Oct 08. I was worried because I owned a 9600 AIW that had the worst drivers I had ever seen from any card manufacturer. About 50% of the time the driver install on reboot would grab 100% of the processor on the highest priority possible. Couldnt even move the mouse. And I came from an 8800 GTS 640 that was rock solid to my 4850 that was horseshit for stability. So I was pissed! I uninstall CCC and now the amount of driver crashes I have had since I did that back in Oct 08? The number doesnt fit on my hand because it has been zero.


Whoever manages CCC should be fired. After all these years for it to be that big a pile of shit is embarassing.

I'll try uninstalling CCC when I get home, hopefully it is just that causing my problems. If it is I'll take back what I said about regretting buying an ATI card. ()

 

[Grinja]

How could CCC be causing issues? I thought it was basically the equivalent of the Nvidia control panel.

Some people have issues with Catalyst AI although I've never come across any myself.

I only upgrade my drivers every 3 months or so but have yet to have any driver issues with my HD5850. In fact I can't recall the last time I had a show stopping bug with either nVidia or ATI.

 

[Genx87]

I'll try uninstalling CCC when I get home, hopefully it is just that causing my problems. If it is I'll take back what I said about regretting buying an ATI card. ()

Well honestly it left a bad taste in my mouth. 2 of 2 ATI cards for me in 6 years with driver issues is enough for me. I will use this 4850 until I drive my machine into the ground. But my next machine will most likely have an Nvidia card. Some of the shit I see with ATI just baffles me to this day. The CCC issue aside. Their drivers have problems dealing with my DLP. Sometimes out of the blue it will set the resolution outside what the TV can do and give me a blank screen. This never happens with any of the Nvidia cards I have tried on the set. And I had a hell of a time getting it to initially set the correct resolution on my old Dell LCD. It wouldnt set it correctly at 1600X1200 until I told the driver to allow all resolutions. For some reason the driver thought the LCD couldnt do 1600X1200.

/facepalm

 

[v8envy]

Whoever manages CCC development should be fired. After all these years for it to be that big a pile of shit is embarassing.

I think the CCC management and development is done by the same guy writing the Linux driver in his spare time. In between his crystal meth, booze and cheap hooker binges. It's a close contest as to which is worse.

At least you have the ability to expunge CCC and use working third party underclock/overclock/voltage/thermal monitoring tools. And not firing up a .net runtime is a big bonus.

 

[Genx87]

I think the CCC management and development is done by the same guy writing the Linux driver in his spare time. In between his crystal meth, booze and cheap hooker binges. It's a close contest as to which is worse.

At least you have the ability to expunge CCC and use working third party underclock/overclock/voltage/thermal monitoring tools. And not firing up a .net runtime is a big bonus.

lol

 

[Mem]

So I've always been somewhat of an Nvidia loyalist, ever since the first Geforce. The 5900 sucked bad and in hindsight I should have gotten a 9700 instead but every other Nvidia card has been as good or better than its ATI counterpart as far as I can remember.

Anyways, for my newest upgrade I decided with all the bad press around the Fermi, I'd might as well try out an ATI for once. So I picked up a Powercolor 5870 LCS for my new watercooled build. This is an upgrade from an EVGA 285gtx so it's not a huge expected jump in performance. However so far I have been extremely disappointed and regret not just getting a Fermi after all.

The ATI drivers are beyond terrible. I thought all the complaining I used to hear about ATI having bad drivers was just an exaggeration or minor complaint. However I can now safely say that these complaints really understate how terrible the drivers actually are. So far in just one week of ownership, I've had the following issues using drivers 10.1 through 10.4:

1) Firefox crashes with hardware accelerated flash videos frequently
2) hardware accelerated videos have artifacts or become corrupted if the window is minimized or moved
3) anomalous flashing grey boxes on the desktop
4) monitor power saving mode does not work - monitor just displays full black instead of actually going into standby mode
5) graphics driver frequently crashes and is recovered and restarted by windows, in games, while playing videos, or just doing nothing.
6) multiple games have significant issues, ranging from frame rate glitchyness (frame rate jumps from 5 to 100 fps about once per second) to artifacts to crashes.

Even the most supposedly stable catalyst driver pales in comparison to the greenest nvidia beta driver I've ever used. This is my first and last ATI card I will ever purchase. :thumbsdown:

I'm pretty sure its a faulty card,try getting a new replacement,btw my old Nvidia 7800 card had similar issues years ago ie driver crashes,artifacts,glitches etc.. IT WAS THE CARD,anyway I suggest you do some proper troubleshooting before you blame ATi since its obvious no company on this planet would release any product in this state as stable,you have a faulty card.

For the record my ATI cards are as stable as my Nvidia cards ,its not rocket science to get cards from either company working great.

 

[Attic]

You ought to just go back to nVidia, you don't sound like someone who is capable of even minor troubleshooting. And your bias for nVidia is perhaps clouding your ability/desire to give the ATI card a fair go.

I've been using nVidia and ATI cards for years now, I buy whichever one I like best.

Can't say i've ever had terrible issues with either. Though I am capable of troubleshooting and fixing issues that arise, and i've had issues that i've solved on both GPU's.

Again, i'm pretty capable when it comes to computers so I don't rush to a message board to bad mouth a product. I typically take the time and gather the needed knowledge to fix the issue.

Bad mouthing ATI drivers gets a bit old and makes the poster sound a bit like a whiny child, incapable of doing anything for him/herself.

 

[BD231]

Certainly dose sound hardware related, I have an ATI card and only see those issues when I try and overclock it beyond its capabilities.

 

[yh125d]

I have owned only one ATI product, and in the last 9 mos. I haven't had a single GPU/driver related crash, so I'd say they're stable. Don't try to make it sound like these problems happen to everyone using ATI and we just choose to live with it.. >.>



The only annoyance I've had with CCC is apparently I can only do overscan adjustment through HDMI, not DVI, and I don't even know that that's a CCC thing or a DVI limitation

 

[Dark4ng3l]

I have owned 4 ATI cards. The only thing I can remember causing a crash is overclocking. Either this is software related or PLBCAK.

 

[adairusmc]

You ought to just go back to nVidia, you don't sound like someone who is capable of even minor troubleshooting. And your bias for nVidia is perhaps clouding your ability/desire to give the ATI card a fair go.

I've been using nVidia and ATI cards for years now, I buy whichever one I like best.

Can't say i've ever had terrible issues with either. Though I am capable of troubleshooting and fixing issues that arise, and i've had issues that i've solved on both GPU's.

Again, i'm pretty capable when it comes to computers so I don't rush to a message board to bad mouth a product. I typically take the time and gather the needed knowledge to fix the issue.

Bad mouthing ATI drivers gets a bit old and makes the poster sound a bit like a whiny child, incapable of doing anything for him/herself.

This.

 

[sandorski]

I have owned 4 ATI cards. The only thing I can remember causing a crash is overclocking. Either this is software related or PLBCAK.

Indeed. ATI's Windows Drivers are excellent.