ATI cannot make working video drivers

[audiofreak]

Seriously, is this the best reply you could come up with after having days to think about it?

Seriously, do you think someone would spend more than two minutes reading your posts and thinking up a reply?

I'm older than you are so calling me a child is pretty immature.

I do not hide my age here, so anyone else who is not showing their own can claim that they are older than me.

1. I said that you behave like a child, not that you are one.
2. Being older does not automagically mean that you are smarter.

ATI cards are likes buses- they're huge, red, and have bad drivers.

QFT

[OC Nub]

I currently have 2x3870's, 2x4850's 3x4890's 2x5870's and thats just a small %age of the ATI cards I have had over the years. I always thought most people that complained about ATI drivers were either being extremely picky and looking for something to about, or they were closet NVidia Fanboy's just looking to bash ATI, until I started trying to run BC2 with crossfire 5870's. No matter what I try I either take a huge hit in FPS or I get great FPS but the game closes about every other game at best. I am faaaaar from being an NVidia fan, but this issue has pissed me off. I ordered 2 Palit GTX460's and they run BC2 great in SLI, the FPS arent as high as with the 5870's (when it actually worked) but the game runs smooth on max settings and 0 crashes.

[Blkout]

Seriously, do you think someone would spend more than two minutes reading your posts and thinking up a reply?



I do not hide my age here, so anyone else who is not showing their own can claim that they are older than me.

1. I said that you behave like a child, not that you are one.
2. Being older does not automagically mean that you are smarter.



QFT

This thread failed for you, but hey, you gave it a try and you got some attention like you wanted. Feel better yet?

[audiofreak]

This thread failed for you, but hey, you gave it a try and you got some attention like you wanted. Feel better yet?

I actually found another bug, this time with ATI Catalyst Install Manager under Windows XP SP3.

When you have reboot dialog shown, take a look at menus in other programs that are running including Windows Explorer -- they will all be skinned/themed with ATI Catalyst Install Manager theme.

Mind you, I even have Themes service disabled in this install -- not only ATI Catalyst Install Manager is blatantly disregarding my preference about themed windows -- it is overriding all other menus (regular and context) with its skin/theme! That means it is using some dirty hack or global hook to perform the task which is bad programming practice.

[stangracin3]

ive had it comfirmed that some of you are failures installing drivers.

I watched chew* via livestream uninstall, install, and test about 6 drivers from ati. He had ZERO problems.

[hafiqb]

audiofreak, I feel your pain. Coming from Nvidia to ATI for this generation, the drivers and the driver team are really screwed up.

I have actually posted something similar in another forum. Whatever anyone may say I do not find it acceptable or a "small" issue if my two 5870's in crossfire are beaten by GTX460's in SLI for almost half the price or if my HDMI scaling (which was fine for previous releases) does not stick in 10.8 anymore. I mean come one how much crap you all are willing to accept from this ATI driver Team after spending hard earned bucks on the hardware?

Things which were working before suddenly do not anymore and not being detected before release...as said this is not acceptable and people should be making noise about it so that the driver team is forced to buckle up (maybe less time spend on blogging...).

[Ket]

For everybody flaming, which helps nobody and certainly won't convince ATi or nVidia to fix any highlighted issues in this thread, lets have another objective look at both sides.

Perhaps I can offer a objective viewpoint on things here. As mst of you will know I've rcently tested a HD5830 and GTX460, so I'm kinda ideally positioned to clear fact from fiction on the driver front.

ATi:

- Crap tessellation performance. This is likely both software and hardware bound problems.
- Neverending general usage bugs such as the multi monitor issues
- CF not working properly in a lot of configurations
- ATi simply removing game profiles if a bug is reported instead of fixing it
- Retarded band-aid fix for monitor flickering in 2D
- Installation problems. (eg: cats 10.3 installed fine with the HD5830, cats 10.4 wouldn't work at all, and the less said about 10.5, 10.6, and 10.7 the better.)

nVidia:

- Vanishing game profiles
- micro-stutter in some games
- BSODs for no reason

Each side has its flaws, but certainly right now ATi are a lot worse. I use a very 1-2-3 configuration to avoid problems with drivers in my systems and ATi are even failing on this level now, its why I switched to nVidia.

[hafiqb]

I think what really would help is if anybody knows someone of the driver team and politely show them this and other threads of "customers" expressing their unhappiness or maybe send an open letter to AMD management demanding to know what are the actions planned to ensure that the driver team finally delivers. The bad rep for ATI drivers is going on for years, someone is clearly sitting on his/her backside.

The bigger issue is that this is going to hurt the overall company rep and minimizes the excellent effort of the hardware/process development team. As of know I dare say that AMD is well in control at the hardware side (i.e. good cost-effective products and development cycle). A shame to spoil it with poor software support\skill and worst totally unnecessary. Someone in the AMD top management needs to "kick but" so to speak and bring things in control, this is going on for too long.

[hafiqb]

ive had it comfirmed that some of you are failures installing drivers.

I watched chew* via livestream uninstall, install, and test about 6 drivers from ati. He had ZERO problems.

The OP is feeding back a real issue. I says this is the usual crap of some people on many forums saying "you are doing something wrong". I myself use driver cleaner all the time, had both nvidia and ATI cards/drivers, I hope you get the point.

Can you explain or better confirm why crossfire does not perform or why in newer drivers issues are suddenly broken? These bugs are officially acknowledged so I will be interested to know how you are going to cover this with your above statement.

[reflex]

The are just not consistent. I personally have never had a driver that stopped my machine dead, but performance varies way too much

[skuldarin]

i've actually had to stick with 10.6 due to 10.7 and 10.5 causing the GPU to straight up choak on startup. i haven't tried 10.8 yet... but as of right now, 10.6 only seems to do dirty pixilation at startup from time to time, IE, as soon as windows hits the login screen there's pixels that show in odd colors and in streaks going up and down wise or straight across and it's randomly splattered all over the screen (does this both on monitor and tv, but still rare to happen).

[zalbard]

ati ccc does't compare to nvidia control panel.
nvidia control panel is much easy'r to use.

while ati ccc is nothing but bloatware tbh.
i'm still missing lot controls that i have avaible on nvidia control panel.

You could use ATI Tray Tools instead.

[mejobloggs]

You could use ATI Tray Tools instead.

Or even better, use RadeonPro http://www.radeonpro.info/

[OC Nub]

ive had it comfirmed that some of you are failures installing drivers.

I watched chew* via livestream uninstall, install, and test about 6 drivers from ati. He had ZERO problems.

Yes that must be why crossfire isnt working well for me only in BC2, thanks for the insight.

Other than in BC2 using crossfire I have had very few issues at all with ATI cards or drivers.

[Sentential]

Ati drivers have been lousy for as long as I can remember to atleast as far as the Radeon 9700PRO days. Each time a discussion takes place on the matter it breaks down like this.

The bottom line is this, nvidia has always, ALWAYS had reliability issues mechanically however their software team is top notch and makes a fool of ATi's and has for years. ATi has better manufacturing and has for many years but their software is laughible. Before anyone wants to call me a fanboi need I remind everyone how DISASTEROUS the launch of CCC was? HMMMM?

[hafiqb]

+1. And this is the green goblins big advantage, I believe people would rather buy ok hardware but feel safe that the software support to make the hardware run properly is strong versus good hardware on paper but hampered by poor/buggy software support. I am one of those personally. Still I will stick to me 5870's for now, just not in the mood to shell out for a pair of GTX460's (although I really thought very hard about it for a period of time...).

Here is still hoping that SOMEONE from AMD will read this thread and others and...things will improve (based on the Driver teams track record fat chance).

BTW where are they in the forums, I see certain EVGA reps do keep track of the forums and jump in very fast to ease a customers unhappiness.

[Ejizz]

Well that settles it then... everyone else who has a problem is just wrong, cause if it's compatible with your hardware/software combination, it must be compatible with every other system in the world.

All those people with problems are clearly hallucinating or simply lack the intelligence to operate a PC. Maybe complaining about ati drivers is just a passing fad and people are only doing it to be stylish.

Are you actually even running an ATI card or are you pulling our big legs?

[Ejizz]

Ati drivers have been lousy for as long as I can remember to atleast as far as the Radeon 9700PRO days. Each time a discussion takes place on the matter it breaks down like this.

The bottom line is this, nvidia has always, ALWAYS had reliability issues mechanically however their software team is top notch and makes a fool of ATi's and has for years. ATi has better manufacturing and has for many years but their software is laughible. Before anyone wants to call me a fanboi need I remind everyone how DISASTEROUS the launch of CCC was? HMMMM?

Fanboy, why are you going back all those years?
They are irrelevant, at the most you should be comparing drivers from the last two generations with more weight added to the current gen.

Will you promise to never buy an Ati/Amd card?

[Ejizz]

Still I will stick to me 5870's for now, just not in the mood to shell out for a pair of GTX460's (although I really thought very hard about it for a period of time...).

Seems 460's got plenty of issues as well...

[jaredpace]

I currently have 2x3870's, 2x4850's 3x4890's 2x5870's and thats just a small %age of the ATI cards I have had over the years. I always thought most people that complained about ATI drivers were either being extremely picky and looking for something to about, or they were closet NVidia Fanboy's just looking to bash ATI, until I started trying to run BC2 with crossfire 5870's. No matter what I try I either take a huge hit in FPS or I get great FPS but the game closes about every other game at best. I am faaaaar from being an NVidia fan, but this issue has pissed me off. I ordered 2 Palit GTX460's and they run BC2 great in SLI, the FPS arent as high as with the 5870's (when it actually worked) but the game runs smooth on max settings and 0 crashes.

You have an i7 @ 4.3 with 5870 Crossfire and an i7 @ 4.3 with 460 SLI. Playing through a large range of new and old games. What pros and cons have you noticed about the two setups - aside from what you've mentioned above about Bad Company 2 sucking on the 5870 CF.

How is game compatiblity, temperatures, drivers, performance, overclockability, noise, etc? Thank you.

[hafiqb]

Fanboy, why are you going back all those years?
They are irrelevant, at the most you should be comparing drivers from the last two generations with more weight added to the current gen.

Will you promise to never buy an Ati/Amd card?

For me I have had a 8800GTX followed by a GTX280 and now the two 5870's. My HANDS ON experience: Nvidia drivers are better than ATI's (actually also more user friendly, setting up profiles in ATI is over complicated).

[reflex]

+1 I have never had a problem with nvidia drivers. Usually, I could install a driver and it would work fine for like a year. Then I would update because I was getting paranoid that I am losing performance and usually it wouldn't even make a difference.
My experience has been similar with ATI, but not for running XF. Performance and stability seems to be all over the show from driver to driver

[audiofreak]

Someone in the AMD top management needs to "kick but" so to speak and bring things in control, this is going on for too long.

The problem is that corporations of today are pushing this "nobody is responsible for the screw-up, it just happened" mantra. There seems to be no repercussions if you mess things up, only rewards if you do well. It's Skinner's fault I tell ya.

I am off to IDF 2010 now, sorry if I don't post as often while there.

[Carfax]

The "rumors" of ATI having inferior drivers compared has been around as long as I've been a computer enthusiast.....which is going on 13 years now.

At one point, it got so bad that ATI completely overhauled their driver department, and the "Catalyst" was born.. I remember the day ATI launched their first Catalyst driver, and how skeptical people were that things were going to change LOL

Things did change however, but even to this day they are still not on par with Nvidia....especially in multi GPU configs.

The last time I tried ATI hardware, I had 2x HD 4870 in Crossfire, and let me tell you, it wasn't a positive experience

[Sentential]

Fanboy, why are you going back all those years?
They are irrelevant, at the most you should be comparing drivers from the last two generations with more weight added to the current gen.

Will you promise to never buy an Ati/Amd card?

Orly? So the HD4850 that I own that needs a custom fan profile from afterburner to keep from going to 100C* at desktop because CCC wont throttle the fan properly isn't recent; or how about all the problems people continue to have with grey screening on the HD58xx series including the HD5770 I tried to get for my sisters' lanbox. In the end I gave up and bought her an Optimus based laptop and she adores it.

Nvidia isnt a saint and the reliability of the GTX2 and 4 series is a joke like the bricked GTX260 I have with burned out VRMs but to stick your head in the sand and say that ATi's issues with drivers are non-existant is remarkable. When I buy anything I weigh the pros and cons. Like it or not, heat is something that can be controlled, reliability can also be controlled but I am not a programmer, I dont know how to write driver code and because I can do the latter two I chose nvidia this round. Will that change? Probably because I dont see how nVidia can survive as a company without a buyout from intel or similar.

I am not going to sit and try to justify my purchases but I'm gonna call it like I see it. ATi's drivers are still lousy just like AMD's motherboards are lousy case in point all the issues Asus and others have had getting Thuban to work "right" in any motherboard. Does that make me a fanboy?

My point is this; ATi has a long LONG history of this kind of bs, and people always wanna pretend it doesnt exist. So once again BS its been like this for years quit making excuses for em.