Why ATI can kiss my hairy white A$$

Started by Bubbaspanky · 31 posts · 5,392 views

  1. #1
    Ok so last night at midnight-ish my machine crashes... I mean really crashes. So after many hours looking for somethign wrong I finally pinpointed my ATI vid card and my ATI Vid input card. I will have to make sure it's both, but it seems that way. I will tell you until recently I was a big fan of ATI in the past handful of year their support has become invisable, and their drivers have gotten worse and worse. At this point I am not buying another ATI and I will no longer recommend them.

    Grrrr... So here is what I am left with. Need a vid card, not happy with ATI and also need it to be AGP. Any ideas? I have seen good reviews of the 6800se (I think it's se). I need to stay near $150 max.

    Incidentally, I am going downstairs now to watch the Simpsons. If this machine crashes while i am gone I am throwing it out the 3rd story windows and moving so I am off the grid. You will never see me again, but my time here at GRB was great.
  2. #2
    Dang. not sure on the price Bubba, but I know the 6600 series cards are within your price range. Get a GT or an over clocked model, IMO. Still running mine here, 2.5 years, no problems, no complaints.
  4. #4
    Heya Bubba
    I'm running a 6200 OC, 256 meg and it runs great.
    The best part is this card is real cheap now.
    I'm sure any upgrade on this card will kick ass.
  5. #5
    I figured it was white, didn't need to know the rest.

    I'm not sure you should hold ATI accountable for your unnatural affection for video cards man.
  6. #6
    Not to play devils advocate here but I agree with Sarge. I hear a lot of complaints about NVidia as well. I think you will get good and bad support and drivers from any company. I have been using ATI for years and never really had any major problems with them. I have nothing against NVidia but ATI always seems to be a bit ahead performance wise, per price point. It is just like the Intel/AMD debate. People take sides.

    Did you possibly have a fan lockup or heat problem?

    I personally like Intel and ATI. I stick with them because of this. I have very few problems with my systems. If I do it is usually windows itself, not the hardware. In the 20+ years of being in IT I can honestly say I never had a bad Intel chip problem. I also have been using ATI cards for some time with very few problems..

    We have an on going joke when my friends when one of us have problems. We always say “I don’t have these problems” I say that more than most.

    At work we buy mostly Dell machines now and they seem to use both types of cards. I will say though that the few video cards that have went bad in my labs or staff computers at work were the NVidia ones. They seemed to heat up and die more often. This is a very small sample of course and is not indicative of anything really, just saying 😉 I think I did have one ATI card go bad come to think of it.

    Now with that said I have nothing at all against AMD or NVidia at all!. If you really want a change of pace I say go for it. let me know how it works out for you. I have thought of it from time to time but always want that next ATI card for some damn reason. 🙂

    I have been very happy with my ATI X-800 even though it is only the XL. I do wish it was just a bit faster to keep all my BF2 video settings on high. I have 2 on med and only 2X Anti-Aliasing @ 1024x768. Most servers I was fine but some I seem to get real jerky even with a low ping. I should turn a few settings down I guess. I cannot tell if it is the card or the server.

    So what card is everyone using,? What do they have their BF2 settings at and how much was the card?
    Do you notice jerkiness even with a sub 50 ping?
  7. #7
    Paladin wrote:Not to play devils advocate here but I agree with Sarge. I hear a lot of complaints about NVidia as well. I think you will get good and bad support and drivers from any company. I have been using ATI for years and never really had any major problems with them. I have nothing against NVidia but ATI always seems to be a bit ahead performance wise, per price point. It is just like the Intel/AMD debate. People take sides.

    Did you possibly have a fan lockup or heat problem?

    I personally like Intel and ATI. I stick with them because of this. I have very few problems with my systems. If I do it is usually windows itself, not the hardware.  In the 20+ years of being in IT I can honestly say I never had a bad Intel chip problem. I also have been using ATI cards for some time with very few problems..

    We have an on going joke when my friends when one of us have problems. We always say   “I don’t have these problems” I say that more than most.

    We buy mostly dell machines now and they seem to use both. I will say though that the few video cards that have went bad in my labs or staff computers at work were the NVidia ones. They seemed to heat up and die more often. This is a very small sample of course and is not indicative of anything really, just saying 😉 I think I did have one ATI card go bad come to think of it.

    Now with that said I have nothing at all against AMD or NVidia at all!. If you really want a change of pace I say go for it. let me know how it works out for you. I have thought of it from time to time but always want that next ATI card for some damn reason. 🙂

    I have been very happy with my ATI X-800 even though it is only the XL. I do wish it was just a bit faster to keep all my BF2 video settings on high. I have 2 on med and only 2X Anti-Aliasing @ 1024x768. Most servers I was fine but some I seem to get real jerky even with a low ping. I should turn a few settings down I guess. I cannot tell if it is the card or the server.

    So what card is everyone using,? What do they have their BF2 settings at and how much was the card?
    Do you notice jerkiness even with a sub 50 ping?


    Paladin, I would agree with you. I have used AMD and they were ok, but I find Intel more reliable. I have used exclusivly ATI since (except my #9, loved that card) the beginning of ATI. I have had All-in-Wonders, video inputs, graphics cards. I have recommended them to everyone. They seem consistant. HOWEVER in the past 1-2 years their drivers have gotten bloated and ugly. They require .net now. They conflict with their former versions. I can't get an ATI 9800 Pro (which ran BF2 awesome) to work in a machine with an ATI Wonder Pro input card. They are made by the same people how come their drivers conflict? I can't get audio and video to sync (Ati says it's a MS issue, MS says it's a ATI issue, ATI tech support only responds "reinstall the driver").

    All said and done, the drivers were causing some issues, but I am still having issues. It's either heat or memory. I will have to try and figure it out. But I will say with the 9800 in the machine it wouldn't even boot. 15 years I have been doing this and have never been so stumped by a problem.
  8. #8
    Bubba wrote:They require .net now.

    Not completely true. You can download a version without the Catalyst Control Center which is what requires the .Net stuff.

    I will say that I have had driver issues with my ATI 9600 lately as well. I used to upgrade everytime they released a new version, but now I don't unless they specifically say that they are fixing an issue that I am having or claim major improvements in framerate.

    I run most of my BF2 video settings on medium to low due to the age of my vid card (I think I bought it in 2003?) and I have shadows and other things like that off completely. With my new net setting and the extra 500mb RAM that Bubba gave me, I rarely have stuttering anymore unless I am on a mostly full 64 player server. I have all my system settings tweaked to maximize performance of what I have and have any unneccessary windows services disabled to free up system overhead.
  9. #9
    Sarge, consider putting shadows back on at LOW. I get a lot of info on enemy movements from them, especially if they are above me on a building. The shadows seem broke, though. Sometimes I see shadows of ppl running above me that it seems I should not see. . .they're always connected to someone though, so the info they give is good.

    I'm running a 9600xt, and all my settings are low, except geometry which is set on med, and dynamic lighting & anti-aliasing, which is off 🙁

    Of course, my view distance is set at 100%. That's the last thing I'd change!

    Paladin saw my BF2 running and said I was cheating because it's so light inside buildings. Well, I'm running a video card that was not state of the art 3 years ago when I bought it, so some things have to give for the sake of framerate. Plus, how do I know other ppl aren't running with similar settings? I sure don't get missed when I'm inside a building.

    AMD seems to have better dual-core chips, for now, and more bang for your performance buck in general. Intel has always been better with throttling down chips rather than letting them fry. . .my P2 saved itself a couple times when the heatsink got clogged with dust.

    ATI & Nvidia each have their plusses and minuses. It used to be ATI looked better, Nvidia had better framerates, if only by a few fps. I remember reading that Nvidia had implemented the pixel shader 3.0 earlier, but I'm not looking to buy a card now, so I'm not up to date with them.

    Sorry to hear of your problems Bubba, hope you get them ironed out soon.
  10. #10
    I've said it before and I'll say it again. Nvidia's Driver Support is Top Notch. I go all the way back to the TNT days. I buy Nvidia because of the driver support and not because of the hardware.

    I also feel Nvidia has done a better job of aligning themselves with the gaming companies. A lot of games are optimized for Nvidia drivers because of this. It is the same reason ATI has to release a driver to "fix" a game.

    I usually root for the underdog, but in this case I am a Nvidia Fanboi..... They have yet to let me down.....

    TNT/TNT2/GeForce2/GeForce3/GeForce4 Ti4200/6600GT
  11. #11
    Bubbaspanky wrote:
    Paladin wrote:All said and done, the drivers were causing some issues, but I am still having issues. It's either heat or memory. I will have to try and figure it out. But I will say with the 9800 in the machine it wouldn't even boot. 15 years I have been doing this and have never been so stumped by a problem.


    Ya know, I had the same problem with booting my computer last year. I'd pull the 9600 and put in an old 8500 and it would run. I ran one of those burn in testing programs later, Sylvia, something like that, and after 24hrs it reported I had a bad stick of ram. Removed that bank and put the 9600 back in and it would boot again.

    I know the video card uses your ram, just not how 🙂 Later I dumped the card anyways, it was the cheaper one with heatsink, and I always suspected it of crashing when running BF2, and sometimes would even lock up UT on me. Its always been best for me to wait for Palidan to upgrade his card, and mooch his old ones 😀
  12. #12
    yeah here is the kicker. I am going to a "LAN" on Fri and need to be up by then. So ordering somethign is more or less out. I went to the 2 stores around here for a good deal on the 6600GT and both are sold out. Seems I am going to be stuck with ATI x1300. grrrr
  13. #13
    Atomm wrote:I've said it before and I'll say it again. Nvidia's Driver Support is Top Notch. I go all the way back to the TNT days. I buy Nvidia because of the driver support and not because of the hardware.

    I also feel Nvidia has done a better job of aligning themselves with the gaming companies. A lot of games are optimized for Nvidia drivers because of this. It is the same reason ATI has to release a driver to "fix" a game.

    I usually root for the underdog, but in this case I am a Nvidia Fanboi..... They have yet to let me down.....

    TNT/TNT2/GeForce2/GeForce3/GeForce4 Ti4200/6600GT


    As I said I have nothing against NVidia but I disagree that ATI has bad drivers. I have had very very few problems with them.

    NVidia pays game makers for them to slap their logo on everything with the “Best if used with NVidia” campaign. It is total BS if the game is written correctly usually.

    If they are optimizing anything for any specific card over another then they really are programming out side the box making card specific calls to the hardware. I personally am not a fan of that!

    Well okay; if they at least have options to support any card but if you own x specific card then you will see more cool stuff. I guess that is okay but they better not slack on supporting one card in favor of another if the ATI equivalent could also do it. It better be a hardware limitation and not a game one “just because.”.

    If a game is written correctly, using Direct X or Open GL calls, the drivers handle the rest and most should be a level playing field with the main difference in simply how fat I cal fill etc….
  14. #14
    Once my 7900GT arrives I'll let ya know how well it performs.. by all standards when its put together I should be able to run everything at high with AA x4.. I've used toms hardware to do a lot of my research so far on vid cards
  15. #15
    Well I beleive it was Jack Handy who said "It takes a big man to admit he was wrong, it takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man." Well as Sarge can attest, I am a very large man, so I will admit I am wrong, but I hope none of you are big enough to laugh. In any case, Lexx wins the prize. I have the machine stable, replaced one of my sticks of RAM, that was key. I was also having a driver conflict. I am still unsure if the vid card is working, but the machine with the onboard vid is working. I will eiter have a new vid card or mine up and working by weds. :oops:

    I will save face here and say I am still very unhappy with ATI's driver support, in the past 2 years or so.
  16. #16
    Paladin..... I should restate what I am trying to say. Nvidia has paid certain game makers to optimize their games for features their cards support. Nvidia has done that several times. Because of this ATI is playing catch up. This does not mean the game makers didn't support DirectX or OpenGL, but those are always evolving and adding new features. A lot of times, it's who can get the hardware to the public to support these new features. Heck, Microsoft is always ahead of the game as far as DirectX support goes. It's the hardware guys that have to play catch up.

    As for drivers. I am not knocking the drivers. It's the timing I have a problem with. For example, Sarge how many times have you had to wait for ATI to release a driver after a game has been released so that you can play the game problem free? Anyone else?

    In all the time I have been using Nvidia cards, I have only had to update my drivers one time due to a game I bought having problems. The thing about it was I hadn't updated in 2 years (or formatted for that matter) and when I went to check, the driver was available at the same time the game came out. I'm sold.....

    Again, I am not comparing hardware. Personally, as long as it does what I paid for it to do, I am happy. I just think Nvidia has done a better job of getting their hooks into the industry and supporting the products I am interested in. This is of course my impression of the situation and doesn't really mean squat.
  17. #17
    Atomm wrote:As for drivers. I am not knocking the drivers. It's the timing I have a problem with. For example, Sarge how many times have you had to wait for ATI to release a driver after a game has been released so that you can play the game problem free? Anyone else?


    ummm....zero. Most of the "issues" that I have run into with ATI drivers are really minor - like the issue with the night vision in BF2SF where there was some ghosting. Most of the problems with BF have been due to EA/DICE suckitude 😉
  18. #18
    man, I have started a hate fest. Ok, so who is everyone voting for? And what is the correct religion? For the dorks on here, AMD or INtel? MS, or openoffice? Linux or Windows? Redhat or Debian? Red Sox or Yankees?

    Ok everyone join together...
    Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya
    Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya
    Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya
    Oh lord, kumbaya
  19. #19
    Thats easy Bubba...

    Intel
    OpenOffice
    Linux
    Redhat Servers
    Ubuntu Workstations

    Da Yankee's!!!!!!

    Anything else you need me to tell you to like?

    :nerr:
  20. #20
    Sarge wrote:
    Atomm wrote:As for drivers. I am not knocking the drivers. It's the timing I have a problem with. For example, Sarge how many times have you had to wait for ATI to release a driver after a game has been released so that you can play the game problem free? Anyone else?


    ummm....zero. Most of the "issues" that I have run into with ATI drivers are really minor - like the issue with the night vision in BF2SF where there was some ghosting. Most of the problems with BF have been due to EA/DICE suckitude 😉


    I have never had to update my drivers to play a game either man. I do not agree that ATI has to catch up, sorry I just do not agree with that.
    😉
  21. #21
    Bubbaspanky wrote:man, I have started a hate fest. Ok, so who is everyone voting for? And what is the correct religion? For the dorks on here, AMD or INtel? MS, or openoffice? Linux or Windows? Redhat or Debian? Red Sox or Yankees?

    Ok everyone join together...
    Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya
    Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya
    Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya
    Oh lord, kumbaya


    Naaa. No fights at all man. Everyone is going to have things they love or hate. The difference with me is I won't usually bash stuff JUST because it is on the other side of my argument. Unles it needs to be 😉

    No Atomm you are NOT doing that and I did not mean what you were saying. sorry if that sounded that way 😉 You are cool man… 😉

    *ATI versus NVidia; As I said I have nothing bad to say about NVidia but will stick up for ATI when I feel it is getting a bad rap. I prefer ATI but would buy a good NVidia card if it was on sale and was as good a performer. Given price for price though; I will take ATI.

    * Linux versus Windows: Windows. Not because Linux is bad, it is far from it.
    My reasoning is simple; compatibility.

    Linux has too many distros. That is its downfall. Too many things do not run on it. They need to get there act together to really compete. As an OS it rules. It is cool and stable and I like it. They need to get all these distros down to just a few and have drivers out the ass. Driver support is good sometimes and really bad on other things. They need to do auto updates, some distros do, they all need it. They need to standardize. I could go on. Applications support is also a big negative.

    Redhat or Debian? What about Mandrake? Or the other ones 😉

    *Mac versus PC. PC. Again Macs are fine but I am not a fan of the lack of 3rd party hardware for them. I like to build my own systems, put in my own MB’s. I do not want to HAVE to go through Apple for everything. It is pricey and lame. I like games and game support on the MAC is bad. MAC have shitty graphic support for 3D applications. I also hate one button mice!!!!! I know you can get others but the OS should support that natively! Did I mention I HATE THEM!!! 😉 I also do not like the interface as much. This is just a personal preference but I like my menus on each application’s own window. It is more efficient. The Amiga did the same as the MAC and I never did like that part and I loved my Amiga.

    The Unix core in the MAC OS is very sweet. I love the stability but am sick of some users saying they never have issues with MAC and MAC’s never crash. BS! I see professors have problems with their MAC’s all the time. They do crash less than a PC because of the hardware being so restricted to just what Apple produces. This is good for that but again, not good for me as you pay for that privilege with a lot of restrictions. This is the same reason I do not like console games.

    *AMD versus Intel. I already covered this. I like both but will buy Intel. I LOVE AMD and want them to succeed very much. If it was not for them Intel would get complacent. I feel competition is great for everyone! It keeps companies moving forward. I think Intel handles heat better as far as frying if it loses cooling. AMD produces less heat natively though so that is cool. No pun intended. or was it… 😉
    Just what happens if they chip loses its cooling? I like the Intel MB’s better usually. I like the chip sets that work with the Intel chips. Just my opinion. I just have had very few problems with Intel so stick with them.

    *MS, or openoffice. If you have a copy, MS office all the way. The world uses it and so will you. 😉

    I LOVE open source, I really do. Sourceforge rules 😉
    Open office is fine if that is all you have or can afford. If you will just edit simple documents, OpenOffice is just fine. If you get into the real meat of the programs though, MS Office is the way to go.


    * I don’t do baseball 😉
    Steelers baby!!!!
  22. #22
    It's not that the games don't run well on existing drivers, it's just that usually there are decent gains in framerates and general performance in certain games for at least a couple of releases after a game comes out.

    The problem that I have with that is that those performance increases usually are for the x series cards leaving my lowly 9600 to flounder along as best it can 🙂
  23. #23
    Paladin wrote:. I also hate one button mice!!!!! I know you can get others but the OS should support that natively! Did I mention I HATE THEM!!! 😉


    FYI I know the Mac OS has 'supported' two button mice for a very long time, just they didn't come with two button mice. I always plugged a PC mouse into a mac. With the one button mouse you can hold I think command and then click to get a right click. Also they now have the "mighty mouse" which is a two button mouse even though it only looks like a one button.
  24. #24
    Bubbaspanky wrote:
    Paladin wrote:. I also hate one button mice!!!!! I know you can get others but the OS should support that natively! Did I mention I HATE THEM!!! 😉


    FYI I know the Mac OS has 'supported' two button mice for a very long time, just they didn't come with two button mice. I always plugged a PC mouse into a mac. With the one button mouse you can hold I think command and then click to get a right click. Also they now have the "mighty mouse" which is a two button mouse even though it only looks like a one button.


    Yea but I mean it should only ship with them and all programs should really take advantage of them, not just a kludge 😉

    It is such a waist of a good resource. Hell I use all my buttons all the time.
    I think 3 should be standard like it is on Unix and more or less PC's these days.
  25. #25
    Ok, that's enough.... Too many opinions in this thread..... If I wanted you to have an opinion, I would give it to you. 😛

    Seriously, I'm just giving you a hard time.

    I agree with Paladin about the chipset thing. I really think Intel Chipsets are more stable. My laptop is AMD, but my Desktop is Intel and will stay Intel.

    If I remember correctly, OSX uses a modified Gnome GUI. I actually prefer Gnome over KDE. For that reason, I like OSX better.

    As for Office.... I use to feel the same way. I thought Office was Da Shit! Then I started thinking about what I actually used it for. Writing letters and making Spreadsheets. Other than that, I didn't need any of the other apps. So, I tried Open Office 1.4. It's still installed on this laptop and it has done what I needed. It wasn't very pretty and felt like something I used on Windows 95. I just downloaded 2.0 for my desktop. It is very much improved. The look and feel has come a long way. I actually like it better than I expected. Personally, I will never buy MS Office ever again. It's become too bloated. It is really has become a business product and not a consumer product.

    As for Mandrake, there is no Mandrake.... It is Mandriva now. What Bubba is eluding too is there are really two major flavors of Linux. Redhat is one. Mandriva is based on the Redhat Distro. There are a lot of other distro's that also base their distro on Redhat. Debian is the other man distro. Suse, Gentoo, Ubuntu and many others are based on the Debian tree. So, what it basicly comes down to is which tree do you prefer.

    Redhat was always the hobbiest favorite with Debian being the more hardcore favorite. Recently, Ubuntu has started to change that. All of my servers have been Redhat. All of my home boxes have been Redhat or based on the Redhat Tree, but Ubuntu has really changed my mind about Debian.

    As for linux drivers. I learned something today I did not know. The Linux Kernel forbids propriatery drivers. There was an article on Slashdot about it. Apparently, this is part of the reason ATI and NVIDIA Linux drivers have been so far behind. They basicly start from scratch because they don't want to reveal their secrets to their competition. This really suprised me and gives me even more reason to hope OSX is released for home built PC's. The BSD license does allow propriatery drivers.

    I love talking tech.... Even when people disagree.... Keep it up....
  26. #26
    Shrug, I've used both. my current card just kicks ass. And it just happens to be Nvidia. Before this bawx I was running an ATI Rage-Fury Max. I even played UT really well with it. You give me Intel vs AMD, though, and I must admit to being an AMD fan.
  27. #27
    Atomm wrote:Ok, that's enough.... Too many opinions in this thread..... If I wanted you to have an opinion, I would give it to you. 😛
    ........

    I love talking tech.... Even when people disagree.... Keep it up....


    Shut up...no talk to me. What are you secretly a women????

    😉
  28. #28
    :duel:

    I challenge you to a duel to the death......
  29. #29
    Atomm wrote::duel:

    I challenge you to a duel to the death......


    Name the weapon man! 😉

    I am good with most firearms as well as swords, and various Martial Arts weapons including the bo, tonfa, si, nunchuku and sherikens . 😉


    Okay I am out of shape but I bet in that situation, I would hold my own. Like riding a bike, you never forget! 😉
  30. #30
    Yeah but Atomm is good with a 7mm sniper rifle. ;-)
  31. #31
    😉