Video cards Suck

[Xarick]

Yes I am ranting.
I remember having a voodoo 3000. What an amazing card. Glide was great, and tribes was amazing. Before then I couldn't tell you which card I owned.
Then I got and I still have what I believe was an Nvidia ti500 (I think that is what it was called) this is one of the old pci single fan, green heatsink heatsink, Not sure if it has video ram.. but to this day it still runs. I had to move on because glide was gone and tribes 2 only ran opengl.
Then I got a 9800pro which worked amazingly well and I really enjoyed it, but it had some bugs.
So I dropped that and went to an 8800gts 320 which also worked amazingly well. But really pissed me off that Nvidia gimped the memory bus and never wrote drivers to take advantage of it. I still have this card and it works well today.
So then I jumped to a 5850 which at the time was $270 as I was determined not to spend about $300 again. This card was a nightmare for drivers for a long time. I got so sick of tweaking games. Finally I found a driver that only required a few game tweaks (I think it was the 12.1) and I stopped updating.
So then I decide I will go Nvidia again since my last driver experience was so crappy. So I get a 670 and end up spending $340 for a OC version. And here I am again. CRAPPY drivers.
So either I am the stupidest purchaser in the world, or I pick the wrong company at the wrong time. OR I have no freakin clue anymore.
Regardless I am freakin sick of video cards, I have only owned this card for 3 months and I already want to drop kick it out the door.

What happened to the days when IQ was the most important part of any game? This card has some weird jaggies, texture issues, and the occasional crash. (to be fair my 5850 crashed, but rarely.. instead it would stutter real bad sometimes, or just freeze. It definitely had better IQ). I am not sure at this point why this card looks bad to me. But games like tribes ascend have these jaggies lines on just about every edge that didn't exist on my 5850. Granted the game play is smoother, but who cares how freakin fast your card is if your IQ is not as good.

I want a video card that just works with every game out of the box and doesn't require update drivers, or game tweaks. I want a graphics card that cares more about IQ than anything else and strives to make sure the image is as amazing as possible.

I am tired of FPS wars. I want to not buy the other guys card only to find out that THIS generation it is the turd.

I look forward to the new consoles because graphic cards are making me mad.

/Rant

 

[DaveSimmons]

I've had no problems with my stock-speed GTX 680 in games like Skyrim, Bioshock Infinite, Borderlands 2, XCom, Saints Row 3, Fallout New Vegas, ...

I don't always upgrade to the latest drivers, so maybe staying off the bleeding edge has helped. It's fast enough with "old" drivers at 19x12 that I don't worry about getting the latest optimizations.

Are you overclocking your CPU? Maybe it isn't as stable as you think.

 

[blastingcap]

Yes I am ranting.
I remember having a voodoo 3000. What an amazing card. Glide was great, and tribes was amazing. Before then I couldn't tell you which card I owned.
Then I got and I still have what I believe was an Nvidia ti500 (I think that is what it was called) this is one of the old pci single fan, green heatsink heatsink, Not sure if it has video ram.. but to this day it still runs. I had to move on because glide was gone and tribes 2 only ran opengl.
Then I got a 9800pro which worked amazingly well and I really enjoyed it, but it had some bugs.
So I dropped that and went to an 8800gts 320 which also worked amazingly well. But really pissed me off that Nvidia gimped the memory bus and never wrote drivers to take advantage of it. I still have this card and it works well today.
So then I jumped to a 5850 which at the time was $270 as I was determined not to spend about $300 again. This card was a nightmare for drivers for a long time. I got so sick of tweaking games. Finally I found a driver that only required a few game tweaks (I think it was the 12.1) and I stopped updating.
So then I decide I will go Nvidia again since my last driver experience was so crappy. So I get a 670 and end up spending $340 for a OC version. And here I am again. CRAPPY drivers.
So either I am the stupidest purchaser in the world, or I pick the wrong company at the wrong time. OR I have no freakin clue anymore.
Regardless I am freakin sick of video cards, I have only owned this card for 3 months and I already want to drop kick it out the door.

What happened to the days when IQ was the most important part of any game? This card has some weird jaggies, texture issues, and the occasional crash. (to be fair my 5850 crashed, but rarely.. instead it would stutter real bad sometimes, or just freeze. It definitely had better IQ). I am not sure at this point why this card looks bad to me. But games like tribes ascend have these jaggies lines on just about every edge that didn't exist on my 5850. Granted the game play is smoother, but who cares how freakin fast your card is if your IQ is not as good.

I want a video card that just works with every game out of the box and doesn't require update drivers, or game tweaks. I want a graphics card that cares more about IQ than anything else and strives to make sure the image is as amazing as possible.

I am tired of FPS wars. I want to not buy the other guys card only to find out that THIS generation it is the turd.

I look forward to the new consoles because graphic cards are making me mad.

/Rant

Why don't you just buy last-gens high end? You get a price break and the drivers will have a year or more to mature. There are plenty of people who are selling their GTX 5xx and HD 6xxx cards right now.

 

[Barfo]

What happened to the days when IQ was the most important part of any game?

Pretty sure it's this:

So either I am the stupidest purchaser in the world

 

[BUnit1701]

Anyone else think its funny this pops up the same week as the 'Im having naughty time with my video card' thread?

 

[flexy]

Uhm, I agree.

The number of game tiles who use stupid "deferred" rendering resulting in horrible jaggies IS TOO DAMN HIGH. It's 2013 and we have DX11 with graphics cards often in the $700-$1000 range - and games which oftentimes look worse than those released 15 years ago.

Just yesterday I had a hell of a time getting forced AA work in" Euro Truck Simulator 2" (with not so great success)...but there are plenty of modern games where jaggies seem simply be accepted as "well, have to live with it"...despite the fact that people spend a ton on "high-tech" graphics cards.

I understand, tho, it's not only a h/w problem....but this should not be happening! 15 years ago I could play almost ALL games with decent/great AA...and it gets worse and worse despite the fact that graphics hardware today is MUCH more powerful than it was 15 years ago!

Common sense says today anyone SHOULD be able to run whatever game at 8xAA without problems - REALITY is that a lot of games don't even have the option for that. (Prime example: In Far Cry 3, I only get "decent" quality using a downsample hack to reduce jaggies).

 

[JBT]

I can't really think of a time I had such problems with drivers. I've ping ponged back and forth between the two as well.

 

[Maximilian]

No problems in nearly 4 years with my 5850, except the 13.4 drivers break doom 3.

 

[Spike]

Buy a console?

 

[blastingcap]

Buy a console?

Wow. You went there.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I generally don't change my drivers if there isn't a problem. Trust me its a smart policy.

 

[blackened23]

Well, he has a point. While DOS games could be a PITA, From the late 90s and early 2k years gaming was pretty hassle free. I think I rarely bothered with drivers because everything just worked. In fact, I always used the CD drivers that came with my cards and never, ever, ever bothered with updating them. Emphasis on never updating them for a year or two at a time. You obviously can't really do that now.

Nowadays you have to download a new driver practically every month. Not sure what's up with that! I'm not saying I have a tremendous issue with it, but he's absolutely correct in some ways. Late 90s especially, games just worked - so I can see his viewpoint.

 

[DaveSimmons]

For a single-GPU system, you really don't need to update the drivers that often unless you want to win at benchmarks. Yes, you will miss out on improved performance on some games, but you'll also miss out on problems.

That's just my opinion of course. We'd need someone to create a giant database of fixes and unwanted side effects for every game, for every driver version to prove it.

 

[ShreddedWheat]

Loved my 5850! Almost 3 years and no probs with drivers. Crossfired and was great in all games but Skyrim...recently went to 7870 due to wanting better performance in Skyrim...otherwise best; longest lasting card ever!

 

[blackened23]

For a single-GPU system, you really don't need to update the drivers that often unless you want to win at benchmarks. Yes, you will miss out on improved performance on some games, but you'll also miss out on problems.

That's just my opinion of course. We'd need someone to create a giant database of fixes and unwanted side effects for every game, for every driver version to prove it.

Hmm, not sure i'd agree with this. I guess, it highly depends on what type of games you play and how regularly you buy new games - for one who frequently purchases titles at launch, I do feel that you can't ignore drivers in this day and age. There have been many titles that necessitated new drivers from day one to function properly, Tomb Raider being one of them (among many).

It depends really on your purchase habits. I really disagree overall though - you do have to tinker with drivers more than say, 10-12 years ago when you could just install CD boxed drivers and never update. Just IMHO

Not that i'm complaining about it - i'm okay with it. I do see Xarick's point, however. He isn't wrong, so I don't understand why others in the thread saw the need to troll/insult him.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Are you using a different version of AA with the new card?

 

[alcoholbob]

This gen only sucks because Titan is 1k and can't even reliably stay above 30fps with max details at 1080p on recent AAA titles.

 

[Will Robinson]

Loved my 5850! Almost 3 years and no probs with drivers. Crossfired and was great in all games but Skyrim...recently went to 7870 due to wanting better performance in Skyrim...otherwise best; longest lasting card ever!

Agreed...HD5850 is a beauty!
How's the change to HD7870 been?
I'm thinking of upgrading to the Sapphire 7870-2GD5-OC-V2 2GB (SI)

 

[BrightCandle]

Op, how about you describe the problems you are seeing and maybe we can either confirm if they are genuine bugs or something is amiss?