Nvidia fan regrets ATI purchase

[Dark4ng3l]

The problem with that, as I've stated previously, is that it's a huge PITA to RMA a watercooling component, as I would be completely without my rig until the new card arrived, which may take longer than usual if they do not have any replacements in stock.

Well you have 2 choices here. RMA the card or live with the problems. Outside of that nothing we can tell you is going to magically cause everything to fix itself.

 

[zerocool84]

Alright I found out that unlike Nvidia drivers, attempting to install older catalyst drivers on top of new ones will install sucessfully but not actually downgrade the driver version. Apparantly you have to uninstall->reboot->reinstall->reboot every time. After going through that I am now actually using 10.1 cat's instead of 10.4 and several of my issues have gone away (the flickering box and driver crashes). My monitor still won't go in standby though.

I'm pretty sure I thoroughly removed all the nvidia components beforehand but I guess the next step would be to try a driver cleaner program.

P.S. - To all the trolls, yes my thread is definitely flamebait, I did that on purpose out of frustration with ATI after never having significant issues with nvidia. However I assure you my problems are genuine and I am no noob computer builder.

P.P.S Here is a pretty pic of my rig, sorry for crappy iphone photo.

Nice rig

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

You aren't telling us enough information about your preparation steps you took before you installed the card; much about your machine e.g. O/Cing; I just went through a huge thread with a guy who couldn't install XP and do you know why? He never set the bios to CD ROM first, and the SATA bios setting to Native IDE - &$@%#!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[QuantumPion]

You aren't telling us enough information about your preparation steps you took before you installed the card; much about your machine e.g. O/Cing; I just went through a huge thread with a guy who couldn't install XP and do you know why? He never set the bios to CD ROM first, and the SATA bios setting to Native IDE - &$@%#!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okie dokie. Before rebuilding my rig, I uninstalled all Nvidia driver components and software (drivers, physx, 3d glasses junk, something else). I shutdown the computer without letting it reboot back to windows so it would not reinstall anything automatically. I then put new rig together, booted it up, and installed cat 10.4. The card is at factory clock settings (which is 875/1250).

 

[QuantumPion]

Well you have 2 choices here. RMA the card or live with the problems. Outside of that nothing we can tell you is going to magically cause everything to fix itself.

I choose option 3: complain at ATI for having crappy drivers. Unless someone can point out something I missed that may fix the problem. So far all I've heard is a few people say they have no problems, and a few people say they also had weird 2d problems and that they were probably driver or software related.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Ive never had issues with ATi drivers also. There were the one or two small quirks but that didn't ruin my day or anything.

However sometimes, different hardware/software combinations can cause problems. So I think you would try to reinstall the drivers again by going through the usual steps just one more time to confirm things.

If this doesn't work out for you, there are several options laid out for you to proceed next.
1)RMA the card as it could be a hardware problem.
2)Try fresh install of your OS.
3)Go back to nVIDIA.

 

[extra]

I choose option 3: complain at ATI for having crappy drivers. Unless someone can point out something I missed that may fix the problem. So far all I've heard is a few people say they have no problems, and a few people say they also had weird 2d problems and that they were probably driver or software related.

Meh, I don't think your thread is flamebait and you are within your rights to complain of course. However, the ATI drivers are solid and have been for quite a while. There are some weird glitches caused by having remnants of older drivers still around, but meh. I'd do things like: Try a fresh install of win7/64. Or try the card in a different box if you have one. If you want to "give up" on it then shrug, why not. Perhaps return it and get gtx470--which is solid card too--i mean the only thing that matters at all is if you are happy. If you'd be happier with an Nvidia card, then don't let anyone on any forums talk you into something that you'll constantly be second guessing. shrug

 

[QuantumPion]

Heh, found a thread discussing the monitor standby issue. Apparantly Cat 10.2 fixes the problem so I will try those. I thought this post was funny though:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messagev...=126579&STARTPAGE=4&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

Thank Gunn,
This card is going back no matter what so I feel any more help I ask for is wasted, but I can't sit by and watch crap like this happen on a $400 card.
Maybe there is a reason I've only owned an Nvidia card since I've had PCs (ok Vodoo wayyy back in the day), but this was one time ATI had a clear advantage and could win me over...
....but instead I learn about why I've heard all the ATI horror stories about drivers for years while I safely looked on from the comforts of Nvidia sidelines.
Like you said, it's an embarassment at the very least, just plain bad management, cheap offshore coding, and bad QA at the worst.

EDIT: Reverting fixed the issue, so they should obviously fix this next release. Not sure how/why it wasn't fixed in the hotfix to address all the grey screens/colored line (which doesn't seem to help many).
I'm getting Bioshock 2 and will also pick up that second Crysis title that came out in 2008 I think, so I'll see if I get those issues with this particular card.
I always run at stock and I have 5 fans in my system (GPU right now at 39C) so I don't see me suffering from what many think is thermal death and can't be undone really with a patch (just limit the problems is all).

 

[badb0y]

Heh, found a thread discussing the monitor standby issue. Apparantly Cat 10.2 fixes the problem so I will try those. I thought this post was funny though:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messagev...=126579&STARTPAGE=4&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

I have owned cards from both companies and never had a problem with either. Fanboy's exaggerate shit way out of proportion. You probably got a dud card, RMA and get another one it's not rocket science.

I hate when people say stupid shit like "Oh I got x product from company B and it sucks! No wonder I always stayed with company A."

Well okay but there are 100000x more people who didn't have a problem with product x so it's obviously not that all of company B's product suck.

 

[QuantumPion]

I find it unlikely that there are so many people with dud cards complaining about the same problems.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1328312.html

Here is a discussion regarding video acceleration crashes, but they are using older drivers and mention something about a hotfix but I couldn't find more info on that.

The link in my previous post was like 5 pages long of people complaining about the same issue. I doubt they all had dud cards.

More:

http://www.rage3d.com/BOARD/showthread.php?t=33961587

more discussion about the same issue. Even beta 10.5 drivers haven't fixed it. The issue may be related to either visual c++ packages not installing correctly, or video card idle clock speeds too low causing crashes. No know fixes found, except for possibly "leaving a 3d application running to force the card's clock speed to be maintained".

 

[Quiksilver]

Okie dokie. Before rebuilding my rig, I uninstalled all Nvidia driver components and software (drivers, physx, 3d glasses junk, something else). I shutdown the computer without letting it reboot back to windows so it would not reinstall anything automatically. I then put new rig together, booted it up, and installed cat 10.4. The card is at factory clock settings (which is 875/1250).

Generally when I'm trying to nuke drivers to change vendors or just upgrade them I usually do something along the lines...

Download and Install Driver Sweeper.
Download Latest Drivers.
Download and Install Crap Cleaner.
Reboot Into safe mode.
Uninstall old drivers.
Reboot (in safe mode) and keep it from trying to reinstall drivers.
Run Driver Sweeper (selecting nvidia/ati)
Reboot Normally and keep it from trying to reinstall drivers again.
Run Crap Cleaner's Registry Cleaner and remove all driver related registry.
Install Latest Drivers.
Reboot.

See if problems still remain, if they still do rinse and repeat with older driver sets until one works. If they don't I would probably say this isn't a driver issue but a hardware issue.


EDIT:

Oh another thing, check to see what your idle clocks are as ATI's powerplay caused all sorts of issues with cards; usually with downclocking the card. To fix this I forgot how but you have to raise the Powerplay clocks...

 

[badb0y]

By the end of the thread it seems like many people's problems was fixed.

 

[QuantumPion]

Ah, may have found an actual fix at last.

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=260&threadid=123699

Problem is either bad video card bios, and/or tweaking the idle card speed higher. Will report back tomorrow.

 

[ronnn]

This is getting silly. Just buy nvidia and be happy. Most of your forum stuff is from last year. You must have looked deep.

Install os on a fresh partition, if card does not work with stock software - rma. No need for exotic research for ati to run well.

 

[legcramp]

It's obviously a defective card, guess you're not a very smart Nvidia Fan to figure that out.

 

[bryanW1995]

The problem with that, as I've stated previously, is that it's a huge PITA to RMA a watercooling component, as I would be completely without my rig until the new card arrived, which may take longer than usual if they do not have any replacements in stock.

it doesn't matter if it's a pita or not, your card is broken. rma it already.

btw, I recommend keeping a backup card lying around in the future in case this happens again. I started doing that a few years ago with video cards and psu's, it's saved my a$$ a few times now.


edit: by the way, have you checked the system for overall stability since installing the card? A few years ago I installed a 3870 and started having all kinds of problems... after 36 hrs of frantic troubleshooting I discovered that I had a bad stick of ram...

 

[hawtdawg]

The last 2 laptops i've owned had ATI products, the only issues at all that ive ever had with them is regarding driver installation.

I think the OP is making shit up. People still pretend like ATI's drivers suck when they've been on par with Nvidia since the 9700 days.

I don't quite get the NVidia/ATI fanboy nonsense. Both companies make great products.

 

[at80eighty]

my Nvidia crashes more than the ATI. I have had absolutely no issues with my ATI card - i too never picked one up because of the circular rumors of the drivers, but they have run as smooth as butter and i'm going to go for ATI once again in all likelihood around the holidays

 

[Schmide]

Just for troubleshooting purposes, if you still are having the sleep issue, try plugging in the original HSF and see if it still happens. I had a card that I had to RMA that only screwed up when the fan wasn't connected.

 

[Maximilian]

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:

pebkac

 

[T2k]

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.

I never understood when people cannot diagnose at least the nature of a problem like this - pull out a new HDD and install a brand new OS with minimal set: drivers, MS Security Essentials and say, Firefox with Flash. Test it.

FYI hw-accelerated Flash is not out yet it's still an Adobe Labs release IIRC and it crashes all the time both on my .tablet and my wife's Macbook.

 

[Meghan54]

The problem with that, as I've stated previously, is that it's a huge PITA to RMA a watercooling component, as I would be completely without my rig until the new card arrived, which may take longer than usual if they do not have any replacements in stock.

I call bullshit on that. From your rig's pic you kindly provided, you've got more than enough tubing to run from your outlet on your cpu block to your reservoir using the tubing you've got from your gpu to res. You just clamp off the tubing going into your cpu and clamp off the tubing coming out of the video card. Then, move the tubing to your outlet barb/compression fitting/whatever you're using. Just too easy.

But I guess any excuse to bleat and complain like a goat is good.

And, yes, I too watercool and have had to pull blocks out of a loop to change/remove the component from service. So I know it can be done. You just have to want to do it.

 

[FalseChristian]

We're getting off topic here. The OP isn't trying to flame-bait. He is having legitamate issues with his expensive new GPU. I strongly suggest you RMA the card and get another one as your 5870 shouldn't be acting in the way you describe.

 

[BD231]

So far all I've heard is a few people say they have no problems, and a few people say they also had weird 2d problems and that they were probably driver or software related.

You say this after over half the people in this thread told you it's a hardware issue, then you post this:

Ah, may have found an actual fix at last. http://forums.amd.com/game/messagevi...hreadid=123699. Problem is either bad video card bios, and/or tweaking the idle card speed higher. Will report back tomorrow.

He's an ass, don't help him.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Okie dokie. Before rebuilding my rig, I uninstalled all Nvidia driver components and software (drivers, physx, 3d glasses junk, something else). I shutdown the computer without letting it reboot back to windows so it would not reinstall anything automatically. I then put new rig together, booted it up, and installed cat 10.4. The card is at factory clock settings (which is 875/1250).

You might want to try Drive Sweeper and uninstall everything again like all the ATI and Nvidia drivers, and then try re-installing the ATI drivers. btw, what os are you installing on again?

If that doesn't work you might want to try a fresh OS install :thumbsup: