How is ATI doing these days?

[dakota81]

Does anyone know if ATI has written good drivers yet for their new line of Radeon video cards? They are so tempting to buy with a much better price/performance ratio than nVidia cards, but as past experience goes, ATI simply doesn't know how to write drivers, resulting in slow, buggy operation when the hardware theoretically can match nVidia's speed.

So basically I'm just curious here, I want so bad to try out a Radeon, but just know that I'll be burned on the drivers.

 

[teknikal]

Not sure about their older cards, but the upcoming releases will feature a card with Core speed faster than the current GeForce 3 and feature programmable vertexes and shaders. In comparison, the GeForce 3 has just programmable shaders.

The downside to the "newer" ATI cards is that the instructions incorporated in the drivers for the cards are not compatible with Nvidia's. So, software developers will have to write two different sets of instructions for each game they make.

There is a new Radeon card due out before fall that is supposed to be comparable to a GeForce 2 Ultra for only $200. I can't remember the name, but I would check out ATI's website for more info.

tek

 

[dakota81]

I'm not inquiring if ATI's hardware can match that of nVidia, I want to know if the software drivers are on par, because ATI does have a history of buggy, incomplete driver releases.

 

[teknikal]

Yes, I did dodge the question it appears! The driver issue is nothing more than pure speculation at this point. According to the tests/benchmarks in the latest issue of Maximum PC, it seems that they will be less buggy. Until the general public really gets a chance to try it out, there's no telling if it's going to be a problem. The main concern of most is that ATI hasn't released a driver update for the older Radeon cards in over 4 months! Hopefully, that won't be a problem with the newer ones.

So far, outlook is good!

tek

 

[ceh4702]

This is kind of hard for the average person to test unless you happen to have an ATI and Nvida video card or extra money to burn. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[qaengr]

Hello all experts on ATI video card !

I have ATI wonder Pro 128 . It works fine with windows 98 in recording from VCR and playing back with sound. But when I use with Windows 2000 Pro OS, It records and playback OK, but the sound does not play. This is same machine with the same hardware and all sound drives are working normal, just use different OS.

Any idea how to make the playback sound on windows 2000 work when playing a recording mpg file ?

Thanks.

qaengr.

 

[XuhQshinR]

The Latest driver release for the RADEON family was released around the first of August. It is called "the CATALYST software suite"

It is a fully released and supported display driver for Windows XP. DirectX 8.1 and OpenGL support are included.

These drivers, as part of the CATALYST software suite, are the first to market which have been designed for Microsoft XP Service Pack 1 (to be released by Microsoft at a future date). CATALYST 02.2 has been optimized for maximum stability and compatibility with Service Pack 1.

You can get it here

http://mirror.ati.com/support/products/pc/radeon7200/winxp/radeon7200winxpdrivers.html

 

[DBSSP]

The new 9700 beats out the 4600 GeForce. I've always used ATI and I have never had a problem other than some minor driver updates. What hardware doesn't?

Check out this link to wet your appetite for an NVidia destroyer!

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,388839,00.asp

Jay
"If the words up and down were reversed, would you trip and fall or trip and fly?"

 

[stools11]

I use to have Win95 and ATI with tuner card so i was a able to pick up tv stations, video etc. Then I changed to Win98 and now my pc cannt detect the ATI stuff. What do i do?

 

[SonofAdam]

Houston Chronicle writer Dwight Silverman reviewed the latest ATI cards in a recent column. Here is the web reference:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/tech/weekly/1604419

John Hanley

 

[qaengr]

Hi Stools11,

You have to install ATI software again for windows 98 to take effect. Software is provided by ATI website.

Good Luck

Qaengr.

 

[Idlost]

I have a radeon 9700 and it simply is fantastic ! latest and stable drivers available at ati.com