All this waiting... for that ? Why !?!?!
I've been waiting for a new video card since a long time (*proud* owner of a 9800GT here) and here it is, the new flavor of GPU is complete with NVIDIA DX11 offer.
And after all those benchmarks, and all those article i've read... Im left with a simple sentence to say : I would LOVE to have a new card, im the best potential customer a video card company could find... But yet, i won't buy one
Why ? Because the NVIDIA DX11 offer is a joke, THAT much heat and THAT much power consumption (and dont forget the sound that will make this monster on full load) for roughly 15% performance advantage ? Sorry, try again.
So yeah, im left with ATI... i look for a card like the 5850, looks nice at first view. Still little overpriced to my taste but hey i realy want a new GPU so
But then i hear so many horror stories about their shitty drivers... Even my friend got his hands on a Sapphire 5850 a couple months ago and RMA one (Grey screen of death + broken fan that was noisy as hell) to have a second one which still have at least one grey screen of death each 20 mins of gaming. He's now trying to RMA the other one but it's getting more complicated with the cie since its a kwown driver problem (for how many months now ???). Seems like a lot of people aren't having that much problem, but having one so close to me makes me feel cautious & worry. So ATI... Sorry, looks like a good product, but because of that deal breaker... Try again...
I'm left with my deep will to buy a new video card for my news games that waits only that to be played at MAX video settings, but that wont happen That leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth... I'll wait longer, my biggest bet would be that ATI will someday figure how to write a GOOD driver for their 5000 series and maybe comes out with another 5000 series card that would be binned at higher clock speed with refined fab process. But when will that happen ? I'm sure it will takes just too long for me.
Count me severely disappointed at least.
And after all those benchmarks, and all those article i've read... Im left with a simple sentence to say : I would LOVE to have a new card, im the best potential customer a video card company could find... But yet, i won't buy one
Why ? Because the NVIDIA DX11 offer is a joke, THAT much heat and THAT much power consumption (and dont forget the sound that will make this monster on full load) for roughly 15% performance advantage ? Sorry, try again.
So yeah, im left with ATI... i look for a card like the 5850, looks nice at first view. Still little overpriced to my taste but hey i realy want a new GPU so
But then i hear so many horror stories about their shitty drivers... Even my friend got his hands on a Sapphire 5850 a couple months ago and RMA one (Grey screen of death + broken fan that was noisy as hell) to have a second one which still have at least one grey screen of death each 20 mins of gaming. He's now trying to RMA the other one but it's getting more complicated with the cie since its a kwown driver problem (for how many months now ???). Seems like a lot of people aren't having that much problem, but having one so close to me makes me feel cautious & worry. So ATI... Sorry, looks like a good product, but because of that deal breaker... Try again...I'm left with my deep will to buy a new video card for my news games that waits only that to be played at MAX video settings, but that wont happen
That leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth... I'll wait longer, my biggest bet would be that ATI will someday figure how to write a GOOD driver for their 5000 series and maybe comes out with another 5000 series card that would be binned at higher clock speed with refined fab process. But when will that happen ? I'm sure it will takes just too long for me.Count me severely disappointed at least.
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Comments
The whole story about AMD's graphics drivers being inferior is an old wives take from the old ATI days.
Since AMD purchased ATI, AMD's driver development is vastly improved.
Buy a current gen AMD card without hesitation. Consider at least a 5830 to replace your aging 9800 GT and you will be impressed.
In fact, I'm surprised people aren't infinitely more pissed about the wave of desoldering NVIDIA cards that has swept this and other communities. The GPUs are flat out dying, but people seem to be okay with it because there's a quick, funny fix.
Whatever.
In the end, ATI has a very dedicated driver team. So does NVIDIA. IMO, they both make excellent driver packages.
You're right, most people on the net will post only if they are forced too (problems / angry / bad experience). But its and indicator of something. When there's so many people talking about it, it cannot be ignore. Im not saying that a driver must be perfect to be acceptable. I already had driver problems with my Sapphire X850 in the past but that was some visual glitch on some games, no deal breaker. But when the card itself is producing "Grey screen of death"... That's more than just annoying. I can accept problems but one that will make me reboot each 20mins or force me to wait 2 minutes to *maybe* see it resolve itself, with almost ANY game, and even on a desktop... That would make me angry. Add to that the big cursor problem that seems to comes back at each driver release until they hotfix it again.
I know my posts here sounds "all is black, there's no hope" lol Sorry for that. But its how i feel at the moment. Im sure both team will continue to work to make everyone happy, and in the end sells more cards. ATI will continue to work on drivers problems, and NVIDIA will probably release sub-cards that are less power hungry and heat whores.
But for that time to come, i have to wait... That is what makes me feel 'all black'
Try turning up the fan speed. I got one striped crash screen, turned up the fans (only while gaming), and haven't had any problems since.
See, thats my point though, the company that ATI was during the X850 era, and the company they are now with AMD at the helm is far, far different.
I had massive driver issues with my 9700 pro, but I put up with it because when it worked it was by and far the best card on the market at the time. My X850 was not as bad, but I wont say I did not have issues.
My experience with the Radeon cards of the last three generations has all been solid. 3xxx 4xxx and 5xxx drivers have all been consistently good to me and everyone that I build for.
The 9700 Pro + NF7-S 2.0 + JIUHB Athlon XP 1700+ combo remains one of my most beloved systems.
I had a few day one issues with games that just would not work with the default ATI drivers in the old 9700 pro days.
Mafia is the first that comes to mind, then, there was some kind of flight game, I dont recall what game though.
In each case they had a fix in a few weeks, but dealing with their customer service dept was difficult at the time. Things have vastly improved since then. The flow of information is much much better.
The whole "ATI drivers suck" argument is a really old Nvidia marketing ploy, that had some basis in fact about five or six years ago, but no longer holds any real weight.
Like you, I am not disputeing that a few people have not had issues with curser sizing, or some fine color calibration issues as Snark points out, but honestly, in the past few years, I cant recall a single service that I did on a PC where I could trace the issue back to a Radeon driver problem, and on my personal systems they have been consistently running just fine.
I mean, someone saying that the current Radeon brand has driver issues would be like me trying to point out the problems Nvidia has baseing it on arguements from the failed 5900fx line. Or perhaps picking on Intel because the Pentium 4 fell short. In the world of PC hardware, those things were a lifetime ago. They came, they went, they are no longer the case.
Good,
Depriving yourself of the goodness that is the Radeon 58xx series because a few outliers said they had a driver issue, well, you would just be missin out for no good reason.
Case in point, the 9800GT. Look, you have used it, the drivers matured over time, but google 9800GT driver issues, and see how many forum posts there are with people complaining WOW would not load a level, or that their computer would crash when trying to install, or I see this about a guy pissed that he is getting constant blue screens. On every product, on every forum, there are some problems.
Even I would coincide the 9800GT is generally a pretty decent video card with good drivers...
So I guess my point is this. If your going to get a specific piece of feedback, don't look for something generic like "ATI Drivers suck" thats a broad generic statement that means absolutely nothing. Now, if you want to see what Snark has said a few times, "hey, Im a photo pro, and every-time they fix something in the driver they throw off my color calibration", now thats something to consider in the total weight of the argument, its a specific gripe.
My saying Fermi is hot, loud and unavailable.... Thats specific too....
Yes, that combo was killer, I had one that is still running somewhere in my parents house today.
As to drivers and bad cards, well, I've never RMA'd an ATI/AMD card, but have had to RMA numerous nvidia cards (starting with the old Geforce2 GTS/Pro) over the years.
I've never had a problem with the current generation of ATI drivers, other than if you leave the fan to auto, it will NOT ramp up like its supposed to, but setting it to run @ 35% power all the time solved all heat issues I was having. I also enjoy the fact that my 5850 only draws a max of 151w and I really doubt I've ever approached quite that high of draw.
Not only does this continue to affect far more people than any of AMD/ATI's driver quirks, but they flat out lied to partners, consumers and investors until they absolutely had to come forward with the truth.
@Mason & Thrax : The NIVDIA bug is worst than any ATI bug ever , its KILLING the card. I wont argue with that. They solved it fast, but when you're card is dying it's often not fast enough
Let me try to explain more of the background on my first post :
I didn't say NVIDIA never had problems with drivers either... But the ones they have seems "less noticiable" in most case (ok, except when your card is dying lol). I mean, for exemple by my experience : My X850 had problems to simply run some games at the beginning. Sure some patch made it works after a week or 2 but there's still the fact that a game was not playable during this time.
I got my 9800GT pretty soon and got some glitch here and then but never saw a game that i was unable to play because of my video card.
I don't blame ATI for having all kind of possible weird problems for their cards... What i blame is that after many months now, My friend got an RMA card and the replacement still have the same GSOD problem. It's not some some NVIDIA fanboy that posted that on some forum at this point, its my friend and i've come to his house and saw the problem with my own eyes.
@shwaip : i'll told him to try to turn up the fans, maybe it will help. i've heard GSOD is a problem related more with the memory of the card, not with heat... but its worth a try
@Cliff : You're right... at the moment i'm holding myself of buying a 5850 because of what i've heard and what i saw with my own eyes. Not because its not a great card, in fact atm its the choice i want the most, but only because of GSOD that seems still present in a RMA replacement card many months after the official release of the card.
In conclusion, what i wanna say is that... i don't know... back in time when i got my X850 it was all fun and nice to read review and beanchmark, even when reading user review we didnt all that kind of bad problems with those cards. NVDIA was doing great too it was a good competition. Most cards didnt have that much bad feedback. Those days it seems to be less the case, and that's a bit sad to see.
Chosing and buying a new video card should be a great moment of happyness. Not something to worry about, but maybe that's just me...
Let the discussion continue lol
Did you see this new review?
But in the end I want DX11 and was not happy with my 5870 or 5970 due to me having those GSOD issues (even after the patches & hot-fixes). So I ordered 2 GTX 480's and will be putting them on water.
Either or maybe Fermi will be a better chip after they nail down a respin and hit the core speeds they aimed for, but for now I will be content with a 15-20% increase over the 5870... But since I am not comparing it to ATI for me it will be a 80% increase over my current GTX 295
I don't care if GTX480 is even slower than HD 5870 with DX10 games. Even my previous generation cards can play them at full detail. If I were paying several hundred dollars for the top card, it is GTX480. Second is GTX470. Here, I said. Now flame away.
Come on now, you know that Metro 2033 is one of Nvidia's showcase titles. Its a way its meant to be played title. Its highly suggested that it be used in their reviewers guide. The developers helped them code for that, its not hardware alone.
Its like me saying, look at the numbers for HAWX....
Metro 2033 is a "way its meant to be played" Nvidia optimized title, not much different then the whole mess with Batman a few months back.....
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2977/nvidia-s-geforce-gtx-480-and-gtx-470-6-months-late-was-it-worth-the-wait-/12
Also, are you seriously suggesting that the combination of hardware and optimized code is some sort of underhanded trick to increase framerates?
The problem is that there are not many DX11 titles. Check this one then, Battlefield Bad Company 2 which also supports DX11.
With 8X AA at 1920x1200 GTX480 is ~30% better while noAA is closer to the 15% figure. Can you imagine the difference if there was tessellation too? There is an undeniable trend that when tessellation and AA are turned on, GTX480 starts to show its power. And, I ask you why would I be interested in the performance of a $500 card without AA and tessellation in an old game at a low resolution? It will perform satisfactory anyway.
Well, I meant HAWX before Nvidia could be bothered to support DX 10.1. AMD was killing them for a while, and it was in part because AMD supported the developer to get that into the game and Radeon owners were awarded with about a 20% performance boost, purely software related.
I'm not suggesting optimized code is underhanded, I'm just saying, you cant cherry pick a single application and say thats the end all be all, single best "where it counts" way to measure performance, especially, when you know the established relationship is one that favors a particular camp. Metro 2033 is a showcase title for Nvidia, much like Batman AA was, you take that any way you want...
I absolutely agree.
However - to dismiss the numbers based on the fact that this particular game is optimized is a little specious, considering as mirage has mentioned, that this is not the only game where the numbers are considerably higher, and when his own example (optimized for the competion), is also soundly beaten.
Edit: removed the qualifier "considerably" after looking at that second benchmark
But yet, we should ignore the 20 other benchmarks that only have it winning by a narrow margin despite the major delay, cost premiums, lack of availability, and increased heat output and noise, because it can do 8X AA better at 1920X1080 on a couple of optimized DX 11 titles?
Come on man....
Also, even if AMD won the 8X AA benchmarks, and I believe anyone that has read enough of my posts will know this is not something new for me to say...
Benchmark at 8X AA at resolutions that high is dumb. Hell, making it available for people to enable is dumb, even for AMD. Nobody, absolutely nobody gets any visual benefit from 8X AA at 1080P. Its ridiculous! Its taxing the card for the sake of taxing the card and reducing your frame rate. Anyone that thinks thats a benchmark that counts to most gamers is not being real.
Most sites still run it at 4X, which I think is fine, honestly, I run 2X, or in some cases none at all when I am at that high a monitor resolution. AA does not matter like it used to in the days of getting the original counterstrike to chug along at 640X480, when jaggies were a major visual flaw. At 1080P on a modern game, the only reason to run 8X is because your some kind of hardware masochist that wants to see if he can break his card. Its a dumb benchmark.
Anyways, I don't see the point in getting a GTX 480; it'll have equivalent cards for much cheaper in a year or two, and I'll wait until then.
@Cliff; gotta agree about 8x over 4x. I can't notice a thing, personally.
Except a lower frame rate, and warmer card
The fan noise has not been the issue people said it would be and 72c under load isn't a big deal across the board. Maybe it is just the EVGA variants, but the heat and noise issue has been blown way out of proportion.
It is a hot card don't get me wrong, but in real world gaming the card hoovers at 68-72c.