Sell your cards while you can

[Pace]

Try not to base ATi's reputation on your friends experience with 2 cards. I've heard very few ATi problems in general though.

3dfx: So, Parhelia and 9700 - how did you wire that?

[P5ycho]

All too often newly released games have major issues and even system hangs when an ATi cars is present in the system. I;ve seen this too many times to be able to rely on such a card for my workstation, which is not only used for games.

[3dfx]

Well Pace since you asked I was out shopping and I saw this gFx card made by 3dfx and it said get 2 for the price of one. So I looked closer and it said a Radeon 9700 and a Matrox Parhelia on one board and I though WOW!! So I jumped at it to be honest (I knocked the whole shelf down but hey I was excited) and all for 29.99 ..hehe anyways enough of the BS I used to have a Parhelia in my main rig but I now have a Radeon 9700. I still have the PARHELIA

[Reckless]

Originally posted by P5ycho
All too often newly released games have major issues and even system hangs when an ATi cars is present in the system. I;ve seen this too many times to be able to rely on such a card for my workstation, which is not only used for games.

I think the statement you make is valid when you replace ATI with "any video card except nVidia". nVidia's developer relations are second to none (or at least that's what the end user sees). I'm also obliged to use ATI at work and I've never had driver issues - only played a couple of titles on it tho - so I didn't just base my comments on my affluent m8! He had a G450 then since getting into games a GF2/MX400 now replaced by an ATI 9700. He's very pendantic and would be the 1st to complain should any of his games titles not quite be up to spec!

[DukeP]

*Cough* NeverwinterNights and 9700 *Cough*.

~~DukeP~~

[crow8k3a]

which do u like more since u have both, 9700 or parhelia?

[Rags]

Originally posted by Reckless
Misinformation like that only leads everyone to suspect you don't know jack My (far-too-rich) friend has two machines with new kit - both 9700's - and he's had zero issues.

ATI's drivers STILL are NOT great drivers. They are getting better, but they still are sub-par compared to the other two players.

Rags

[Reckless]

I agree in principle but nVidia drivers aren't what consider great either. Far too many releases fixing and breaking stuff as they go. Even Matrox dishonoured itself with breaking GPL (D3D) with their latest Gxxx releases. As for Parhelia, the hardware will be well out of date by the time (if) they fully fix something as complex as FAA.

Every driver team has issues. ATIs problem are more legacy information than the others but if you lined three (ATI, nVidia and Matrox) cards together in a room today you WOULD find something wrong with each of 'em. The hardware is probably moving too fast for the driver development teams to put in a solid job I'd guess.

Being a software developer I feel for anyone writing this sort of stuff. Sales & marketing leads the release not the technology.

[3dfx]

To be honest I think that the Radeon is a better choice, as the performance is much better(Considerably better tbh) and there are a lot less problems tbh concerning the hardware ie banding. I like the Parhelia, but not as a gaming card. There are some redeeming features however such as surround vision. Though lets be honest most of ppl dont have 3 monitors, either due to money restrictions or lack of space ie it's not very practical for most, and the Radeon is generally cheaper. So for me a better choice and it also has 400 Ramdacs. I find that the general 2D quality is as good as the Parhelia. So if I were going for a card I would probably for Radeon over Parhelia

[Ryu Connor]

I had more trouble with Parhelia drivers than I do with ATI R9700 drivers.

[P5ycho]

Looking at the mediocre performance and extreme noise levels of the just released GeforceFX, it looks like i'll be ordering a Radeon9700 tomorrow...

[chhfchhf]

I have
Parhelia512,G550,G450,G200,G100,MillenniumII,Mille nnium,Mystique and Impression
i don't sold any of them,because i love matrox!

[UberLord]

Originally posted by DukeP
*Cough* NeverwinterNights and 9700 *Cough*.

~~DukeP~~

Works life a charm with my 9700 - shiny water as well.
Excellent FPS provided you don't enable FSAA (but my old P. couldn't use FSAA with this title anyways )

[Kurt]

Originally posted by Ryu Connor
I had more trouble with Parhelia drivers than I do with ATI R9700 drivers.

ATi si still not on safe ground drivers-wise though...it could even get worse as third-party build card with their chips on them. Since mostly nobody knows about these board makers (except Sapphire which is starting to get a bit known -for its good products) all the blaim goes back to ATi...

The only cards we sell for integration into new PCs ar the ones which have a Windows-integrated driver as we've had too many problmes with the 7xxx and 8xxx series. Then we sell the 9500-9700 models, for performance reason. (we don't use nvidia in the low end because they are not price competitive and have worse image quality).

I think the other companies can't compete. You have SIS with an ultra low performance board at a very low price (cheaper than nvidia TNT2), but it's only 10% cheaper than a much faster Radeon VE/7000 board with dual HD15 output (we're talking 3 bucks here...). Then you have the integrated video on the chipset. Almost no-one has released a dual head system, except Shuttle -but it's not the kind of products we sell...

erm...end of digression

So "ATi's situation is improving" is probably a good summary

[Novdid]

ATI's situation is very good on the driver side of things. IMO the latest drivers are even better than nv's latest. How about that?!