ATI Tells NVIDIA "Writing is on the Wall"

[Nexus-]

That's the funniest thing I have read all day. Perhaps they make quality hardware, but there drivers sure suck. :x

Only if your using linux they suck. ATI loves microsoft and has way better driver support. Even with vista coming up that will be even more aparent.

[NightmarE D]

Here's the way I see this whole thing.

ATI needed to hook up with AMD in order to look at Nvidia and start running it's mouth even more than before. It's pretty childish on ATI's side honestly.

It'll be funny when Intel hooks up with Nvidia in some kind of partnership. You know there's got to be some kind of talking going on between Intel and Nvidia since this has happened. I hope they partner up and look at AMD and ATI and say "Now what? Your move ;) "

I have two old systems that I just rebuilt for my nephews that now live with me. One is a 533mhz AMD With 3DNow, an 8mb ATI video card and 128mb's of ram. The other is a 333mhz Pentium 2, 4mb Nvidia Riva 128 video card and 128mb's of ram.

Nothing special, old parts I had laying around. Just something for them to play games on the internet (pogo, runescape) or some old PC games.

The 333mhz Intel Pentium 2/4mb Nvidia system blows away the 533mhz AMD/8mb ATI system.

The Intel system runs Quake 3 Arena pretty decently (that 4mb nvidia card was pretty good for it's day) and the other system gets as far as the game menu and crashes. I had to go get a couple patches for that game to run at all on the AMD system. It was a joke.

I will always hate AMD and ATI. Especially ATI because you really do need patches to run a lot of things it seems like. The only reason I even had anything made by them was because it was a friends old PC that he didn't want anymore and I never got around to doing anything with it and completely forgot I had it in the basement.

[icecaveman]

^ That's some serious BS mate. Do you know nothing about history? Yes AMD had some bad chips MANY years ago, then they made better chips than Intel for YEARS with much better price/performance ratio than Intel. Now Intel has managed to make something better than Intel again but AMD will top them again at some point.

That's how the PC market has been going for years just as ATi and nVIDIA kept trading places for the performance leader in the graphics cards. Did you not remember 3dfx used to be the leader in graphics cards? How times can change.

I assure you ATi will dominate the next generation of graphics cards, being in their second generation of unified shader architecture while nVIDIA won't even touch that yet. That means ATi will be the only company offering true DirectX 10 cards in the early life of Vista.

[revvo]

I will always hate AMD and ATI. Especially ATI because you really do need patches to run a lot of things it seems like. The only reason I even had anything made by them was because it was a friends old PC that he didn't want anymore and I never got around to doing anything with it and completely forgot I had it in the basement.

Oh really? A lot of patches? Ok one of the latest important small fix was Half-Life 2, Doom 3 also I think... Half LIfe 2 I don't even remember one but yeah they might of released one for it I can't say.

Am I the only blind **** here?

ATI doesn't release a game-specific patch at every driver release this is fanboyism at its best. And when they do, people complain? How can you complain when a company fixes a problem? Since when are patches a bad thing? They don't release patches at an alarming rate at which you get ****ed at by saying "OMG ANOTHER PATCH WHY WHY CAn"T THEY STOP SO MANY PATCHES 0mg0mg SPLAT!". If you're bitching about ATI releasing a patch once in a blue moon then I wonder how much you're bitching about Windows patching up every week.

In the end what do we care as customers? We want the best piece of hardware for the best price. I don't care if its Intel or AMD but yeah you can continue hating AMD and ATI all you want. **** man you're complaining about gaming performance on your old computers and you're what? ignoring at the same time that since the beginning of the AMD K7's, AMD has been very competitive in the gaming market and dominating with the Athlon64's until now when Finally Intel delivers something to kick AMD's ass?

BLablablalbal :wacko:

[Krome]

AMD should have bought nVidia, now THAT would make a good team.

I don't think that's how it would have been or could have been as we can see now. AMD and nVIDIA don't mix... I remember when Windows XP first came out, MS had to pump out a lot of patches for AMD processor.

I don't think they could afford it

Yeah my thoughts exactly. I don't think AMD can afford nVIDIA.

Here's the way I see this whole thing.

ATI needed to hook up with AMD in order to look at Nvidia and start running it's mouth even more than before. It's pretty childish on ATI's side honestly.

It'll be funny when Intel hooks up with Nvidia in some kind of partnership. You know there's got to be some kind of talking going on between Intel and Nvidia since this has happened. I hope they partner up and look at AMD and ATI and say "Now what? Your move ;) "

I have two old systems that I just rebuilt for my nephews that now live with me. One is a 533mhz AMD With 3DNow, an 8mb ATI video card and 128mb's of ram. The other is a 333mhz Pentium 2, 4mb Nvidia Riva 128 video card and 128mb's of ram.

Nothing special, old parts I had laying around. Just something for them to play games on the internet (pogo, runescape) or some old PC games.

The 333mhz Intel Pentium 2/4mb Nvidia system blows away the 533mhz AMD/8mb ATI system.

The Intel system runs Quake 3 Arena pretty decently (that 4mb nvidia card was pretty good for it's day) and the other system gets as far as the game menu and crashes. I had to go get a couple patches for that game to run at all on the AMD system. It was a joke.

I will always hate AMD and ATI. Especially ATI because you really do need patches to run a lot of things it seems like. The only reason I even had anything made by them was because it was a friends old PC that he didn't want anymore and I never got around to doing anything with it and completely forgot I had it in the basement.

I'm with you on everything you said...

[icecaveman]

Forgot to remind NightmarE D nVIDIA is constantly patching games with new and new driver releases and many of them break compatibility or cause slowdowns for example in videos so nVIDIA isn't perfect in that aspect either.

[mAcOdIn Veteran]

Well ATI was complete crap up until the 8500(which was still flaky. The 9700 Pro was great, the 2.x series drivers were great, and here I am in 2006 loathing the 6.x series again, love the cycle with ATI. ATI has gotten sloppy again, while I think their hardware is fine their drivers are turning to crap again very fast. They're still a contender, they haven't quite degressed to pre-8500 era drivers, but I am dissapointed. To be fair though I've had problems with Nvidia before as well, so while problems do occur with everything, I think ATI's list of driver issues keeps getting bigger and bigger now, they've lost the high ground and have a serious problem in prioritizing in my opinion. If AMD could maybe point the team in the right direction all could be well again, they have the talent, they've done it before, just for some reason they're losing it.

AMD I think was alot more cinsistent, the K6 was a good step up but yeah the P2 and P3 were way better, the K7 however was even better, and the K8 is no slouch either. They've never really stumbled since they've decided to take on Intel, they don't always hold the speed crown but they've never really just floundered or released crap. I think they've got a good handle on the situation and their ultimate goals. In recent memory I'd say Intel was infinitely more reckless and silly than AMD, with the whole Netburst architecture, Rambus memory, switching to DDR-II when it was infact slower.

I think this will be an interesting time, hopefully good stuff comes out of this.

[jerry]

Forgot to remind NightmarE D nVIDIA is constantly patching games with new and new driver releases and many of them break compatibility or cause slowdowns for example in videos so nVIDIA isn't perfect in that aspect either.

I wouldnt bother wasting any time on him. :whistle:

[Mr. Gibs]

Oh really? A lot of patches? Ok one of the latest important small fix was Half-Life 2, Doom 3 also I think... Half LIfe 2 I don't even remember one but yeah they might of released one for it I can't say.

Am I the only blind **** here?

ATI doesn't release a game-specific patch at every driver release this is fanboyism at its best. And when they do, people complain? How can you complain when a company fixes a problem? Since when are patches a bad thing? They don't release patches at an alarming rate at which you get ****ed at by saying "OMG ANOTHER PATCH WHY WHY CAn"T THEY STOP SO MANY PATCHES 0mg0mg SPLAT!". If you're bitching about ATI releasing a patch once in a blue moon then I wonder how much you're bitching about Windows patching up every week.

In the end what do we care as customers? We want the best piece of hardware for the best price. I don't care if its Intel or AMD but yeah you can continue hating AMD and ATI all you want. **** man you're complaining about gaming performance on your old computers and you're what? ignoring at the same time that since the beginning of the AMD K7's, AMD has been very competitive in the gaming market and dominating with the Athlon64's until now when Finally Intel delivers something to kick AMD's ass?

BLablablalbal :wacko:

ati got the **** owned out of them because of half life 2....works best on ATI yeh sure, ATI users couldnt even get to the game menu.

Microsoft does not release a patch every week. And also, microsoft patches AREN'T NECCESSARY all the time. ATI patches on the other hand are.

And also, Intel extreme owns the **** out of amd.

Forgot to remind NightmarE D nVIDIA is constantly patching games with new and new driver releases and many of them break compatibility or cause slowdowns for example in videos so nVIDIA isn't perfect in that aspect either.

bull****, i havent had any problems with nvidia since i got one about 6 years ago. ATI has way more problem.

Edited July 27, 2006 by mAcOdIn

[mAcOdIn Veteran]

Wow, ATI users couldn't get to the game menu? I've had HL 2 forever on my 9700 Pro and it ran great on that, I had no problem with the menu. Maybe if someone was trying to play it on a pre-8500 class card with shaders maybe. And don't call people names, this is your warning.

[Mike E]

Meh...I'm still an Nvidia fan

[Chanser]

I wish AMD buy Nvidia! :D

I'm no fanboy, I just follow whoever has the best bang for buck crown. :)

[andresjk]

Smart AMD to continue selling ATIs chipsets for Intel

[Digitalx]

dual core GPU :D X1900 XTX X2 :D

[theyarecomingforyou]

ati got the **** owned out of them because of half life 2....works best on ATI yeh sure, ATI users couldnt even get to the game menu.

What on Earth are you talking about? I pre-ordered Half-Life 2 - I installed it straight away and it ran perfectly on my ATi card. I have not even heard of the problems you describe, despite hanging around the Steam forums.

ATi used to have dreadful drivers but that changed with the 8500 series, though early drivers for it still had the tendency to BSOD. However, it was only a few years before that when nVidia reference drivers would produce the same results, relying on OEMs to pump out custom drivers (often arriving months late, it at all). ATi continued to improve, though they couldn't compete with the huge performance increases nVidia would manage. However, nVidia drivers went downhill and their nForce drivers were just dreadful - boot time trebled and system performance would often reduce (something to do with the IDE drivers), not to mention the nightmare I've had trying to get onboard LAN to work (I had to install a network card as several motherboards, nForce 1,2 and 4 have all had problems). Then there were the dozens of beta release nVidia would push out for graphics, fixing a problem with several games but screwing up another - not to mention the PureVideo problems they had. However, it wasn't long till ATi added the CCC and brought responsiveness crashing - it still takes ages to load up. There's no denying that ATi drivers have been very unimpressive recently but nVidia hasn't been winning any fans either.

Both ATi and nVidia have their problems. nVidia seem to win when it comes to sheer performance but when you start cranking up the AA/AF ATi come into their own - HDR + AA still isn't possible for nVidia (demonstrated most notably by Oblivion), yet ATi manages just fine thanks to their flexible and programmable architecture. However, SLI is infinitely better than Crossfire and has better support (and performance) when it comes to motherboards. Then there is ATi's dreadful Linux support, an area where nVidia does particularly well.

There are plenty of pros and cons on either side. A fan of ATi can produce a good arguement for their superiority as much as an nVidia fan. I personally side with ATi because I am more interested in image quality and, despite a few hiccups in the past, has been consistently better, though I have no loyalty. I do hope ATi's drivers improve, though with Vista there will be less flexibility and there should be less room for drivers to cause problems.

[CrimsonBetrayal]

Its always interesting to see how blindly loyal people are to brands like little marketing goats. Baaaaa!

As long as technology continues to progress and be competitive, it's good for us as consumers. Whatever is best price/performance when I buy, that's what I get. The name is irrelevant. It could be a blow-me CPU with a you-suck GPU and 2 GB of pink-daisy ram, as long as it is the best deal I can get for my dollar, that's what I'm going to buy.

My 2c.

[Sethos]

I know i'm out of touch with this whole ATi vs nVidia scene.

But i keep hearing about ATi Drivers arn't working properly, they are quite 'crap' or plain sucks. I've had ATi the last 2 years and i never, ever

had a single ATi driver problem ... Am i just lucky or can't people configure their drivers?

[strekship]

And also, Intel extreme owns the **** out of amd.

Maybe now they do, but before intel got their act together AMD was running past them in terms of performance. Thats how it works if you didn't know. Do you think intel would have put so much effort into their new core processors if they were not facing competition in the performance area?

Oh, and my 9600Pro always played HL2 just fine. I have also never had any driver problems with ATI. The only problem i can remember is some old 5.XX driver that made the BF2 textures turn black. I have had much more problems with my nForce3 chipset drivers.

[mAcOdIn Veteran]

I know i'm out of touch with this whole ATi vs nVidia scene.

But i keep hearing about ATi Drivers arn't working properly, they are quite 'crap' or plain sucks. I've had ATi the last 2 years and i never, ever

had a single ATi driver problem ... Am i just lucky or can't people configure their drivers?

Depends on what games you play. Way I see it with ATI's driver problems(outside of the CCC which isn't really a bug just a pain in the butt) is that they're almast always a problem on something niche, not used by most people. Like MoH; the spearhead expansion, how many people are still playing that right now and are they going to put the same work into fixing MoH:spearhead as opposed to say a Battlefield 2 problem? How long was CoH broken for ATI?

The problem I have with ATI's drivers now is that the problems they create stay on the list for months in some cases for over a year, which is what happened for some of their TV out functions. Of course this is still something that could happen with Nvidia but since they don't have a list of known issues it's harder to track this stuff, so it's easier to attack ATI because they hand you the ammunition. When you're Nvidia and you never acknowledge a problem and it persists across drivers it's annoying, when you're ATI and you acknowledge the problem and it persists it's like a slap in the face. That's the key difference, both Nvidia and ATI let bugs in their drivers pass through, both of them choose something else to focus on rather than fixing some of these bugs, but only with ATI do you actually get written confirmation that yes they're ignoring it. With Nvidia you can claim ignorance, with ATI it's negligence, and that's aggrevating. Then to see the list of driver additions and to see that they've tweaked the CCC and increased a benchmark score while not touching the bug that affects a game you can not physically run, it's just aggrevating.

My last Nvidia card was a geforce 3 card, great card although once the XP driver 28.XX series came out I got instant bluescreens until their next official driver, so that was an annoying wait that was a few months, it's not an ATI only occurance.

But yes, I have a huge problem with ATI's drivers right now. The last 2 releases flat out do not install on my system while everything prior to them worked, I've tried formatting, and man has Microsofts call in activation service gotten worse with their stupid say aloud your activation number to the computer than repeat the process to the person who finally picks up. And after a format they want me to clean my drivers? Use the Driver Uninstall feature of a driverset that doesn't install? I hate tech support. Why don't they ask me if the surge protecter is turned on next. It's so obvious that they changed something in 6.5 up that just doesn't work on my system and they tell me to use a driver cleaner or increase my AGP transfer rate when I'm using Pci-express, and all that I need for them to do is ask me for something, a log or some crap that I can send them, not to go off on some lame script.

[Sethos]

The only thing i didn't like about the Official drivers is ( As mentioned ) The CCC!

That is why i started using Omega Drivers, they work like a charm (Y)

[Rogue`]

Although i don't think this was a good move on either ATi's or AMD's part, I hope they both learn allot of things off each other, and lets all hope it starts a GPU price war :D

About this HL2 & ATi thing....if anyone remembers, game shops started selling the game 2 days earlier than they were meant too....so I had the game installed and running the minute Steam decrypted the files.....and my 9800Pro had no problems with it at all, so i don't know what people are smokin :)

[Berserk87]

if it were to become a one company market(i dont think it ever will be), that would kinda ruin the purpose of a pc...which is customization...why have a pc if u cant customize it.

[Fourjays Veteran]

nVidia won't be defeated easily, I'm sure.

I had one ATi card, and it kept taking me out of games, and displaying a message a long the lines of "The GPU has encountered an error and has been reset". Took it back to the store, changed it for my current nVidia which is still going strong. I'm always very wary of trying a product again, after there has been a fault like that - I would understand if it did it after a year of use or something, but not on something brand new.

My only comment regarding support of games between nVidia and ATi, is that I have noticed a lot of FAQS (for games I play) that have several items stating compatibility issues with ATi cards. Not normally something that makes the game unplayable, usually something like a certain effect makes the graphics scrambled so it has to be disabled.

[Daybreak]

....

The problem I have with ATI's drivers now is that the problems they create stay on the list for months in some cases for over a year, which is what happened for some of their TV out functions. Of course this is still something that could happen with Nvidia but since they don't have a list of known issues it's harder to track this stuff, so it's easier to attack ATI because they hand you the ammunition. When you're Nvidia and you never acknowledge a problem and it persists across drivers it's annoying, when you're ATI and you acknowledge the problem and it persists it's like a slap in the face. That's the key difference, both Nvidia and ATI let bugs in their drivers pass through, both of them choose something else to focus on rather than fixing some of these bugs, but only with ATI do you actually get written confirmation that yes they're ignoring it. With Nvidia you can claim ignorance, with ATI it's negligence, and that's aggrevating. Then to see the list of driver additions and to see that they've tweaked the CCC and increased a benchmark score while not touching the bug that affects a game you can not physically run, it's just aggrevating.

....

Contrary to what you think, nVidia does list the open issues with their drivers on every release. The details can always be found in the corresponding release notes for each driver, and have done so for as long as I can remember (IIRC, release notes during the Geforce 2 era had issues listed).

[mAcOdIn Veteran]

But the disparity is that many times you don't get an official release, you'd go months without a real driver and in those months be playing with unsupported and undocumented drivers from the board makers like Asus and the like.

Edit This might have changed post 9700 Pro era as that's when I jumped ship, but in the past new official Nvidia drivers were pretty rare.