Well , I have been a long fan of amd , and i am fearful of what this means. And for those of you who doubt , from real experience amd has in the past , mopped the floor with intel for gaming. But since AMD and ATI got together , i really lost alot of respect for them. Nvidia by far rules the graphics market , and for awhile it was the AMD/Nvidia combination that made this stand. WHat would ever posses AMD to buy ati , is beyond me. Would have rather seen ATI stand alone , and watch Nvidia buy out AMD , then competition (on the cpu side) would have been good . But alas you cant play the latest games on "what if's"

FingerMeElmo87 said:


Sorry man, lol.

Ever since the merger of AMD and ATI, both companies have sucked. Can you believ that ATI still hasn't released a Vista TV capture driver for it's AIW cards !! Don't even pretend to waste your time.AMD just doesn't have it together anymore.When a company refuses to do what it did best,and makes everybody's hardware obsolete thinking thaty'd pony up some huge bucks, then the people have to speak up with their Dollars and blow off ATI/AMD. I've blown hundreds of Dollars on ATI cards, and have tried to set up the ultimate Media computers, but this lack of a driver for the TV capture makes me SCREAM!!!!!

I think that I've had the worst experience ever with an ATi capture card - especially with their drivers too. All of this was before the merger, but holy s**t ... ATi have never p**sed me off more as a customer than any other company I've dealt with. From the second I clicked on the "Install" button, it was nothing but a catastrophe. I hate ATi.

*edited by moderator*

Please watch the language

Bryan Ditman said: Try two NVIDIA 8800 Ultras SLI and a NVIDIA DualTV TV tuner. There's an ultimate media computer for you (watch two different TV shows at the same time on two separate monitors and have a stretched desktop across two monitors for whatever you fancy).

Remember when Sony brought out their PS3 (at cebit I think).... they showed pre-rendered videos and people were already talking about the 'phony-sony' . But the PS3 though expensive did not disappoint in terms of quality. So I think Your being a little hasty on this one Sander.

Mike L said:


WOw, one bad experience is a bit much to have such a strong opinion.

My X1800XT has never failed me, overclocks like a charm and have had top notch performance from it since day 1.

Varun - PS3 gfx are terrible, especially when compared to the target renders they showed off pre-release.

BTW, havent seen you here in a while!

I'm still using a X800XT PE (press edition) in my main system, AGP flavor that is, and my notebook features a X1600 mobile. The only issue I have with the X1600 is that HP refuses to use a std. ID for the chip, hence I can't update to the latest Catalyst without using a 3rd party tool. Other than that I've never personally experienced any issue with ATI graphic cards, besides them not delivering on the advertised performance (ie. X1800 launch).

Best regards,

AMD was first with 64 bit for desktop and Intel refused to work with MS to develop 64bit OS stating there was no market for it. Now they have to make 64bit architecture to AMD design specs.

March 2005 - EPA honors AMD with energy star certificate for innovative Cool'n'Quiet technology

AMD was first to redisign the x86 to bring dual core to desktop, Intel quickly slapped to p4 on a board to catchup. Then they did some work after seeing what AMD could do, and wow they really did with a great job with Core 2.

AMD for years concentrated on FSB and memory handling issues to reduce the CPU clock bottleneck, now after years of the GHz myth generation they have worked it out with Core 2.

And all my customers ask for Intel p4 still and centrino, belieiving they are asking for what is good based solely on marketing.

We need AMD, not because they any better or less dishonest than Intel, but it is because over the last 4 years they have pushed the CPU's to be where they are today.

Ian M said:
There's still no market for it. A couple thousand is all. Very few OEMs even offer to install a 64-bit Edition of Windows because of all the subsequent complaints about software/hardware not working. I'm sure if Intel was going to launch a 64-bit CPU, it would have been an extension of x86 or a whole new cross compatible architecture and it probably would have appeared in what we now know as Core microarchitecture. AMD jumped the gun so that they can take the rights before Intel.

I wholeheartedly feel that we, as consumers, lost because of this. x86-64 is the only instruction set that has seen any real use out of AMD (no software puts 3D Now! to good use). All of the #86's were designed by Intel and so were all the SSE technologies.

Intel will have to reinvent the wheel (so to speak) sooner or later because x86-64 isn't a thoroughbred 64-bit processor. The likes of IA-64 is and there's been many talks of porting a similar system to the consumer market. Considering x64 flavors of Windows don't even support 16-bit libraries/executables, IA-64 may make the jump to desktops sooner rather than later. The advantage: twice as fast because it handles either two 32-bit instructors or one 64-bit instruction at a time. Damn AMD for getting in the way or we might have already seen it. Because of AMD, the shift to a true, 100% 64-bit processor (not an extension) for consumers has been delayed for probably close to, if not over, a decade.

As far as I understood the issue was with MS not wanting to write an OS for IA-64 for desktop, but i could be wrong.

As for everyone bagging 64 bit support, for the last 6 months I have been building 64 bit vista with only 2 incompatibilities - 1 fixed in 2 weeks after I reported the issues, the other new drivers were loaded on the companies site a week after the webcam was installed, both were in June. Everything else I have built I use manufactures that have kept up to date with vista beta to have full working drivers out early Jan.
Not saying it's perfect, but it is far from what everyone is reporting.

But back on track - AMD sure screw up when it comes to marketing, leaving it up to us techies to convince the public of the better cpu - well it now is Core 2, but value for money sometimes AMD it the choice.

Ian M said:
It was Intel not wanting to preemptively release a 64-bit product to a market where demand is non-existent. Microsoft has many server-class products available for IA-64 processors but because Intel wasn't prepared to release a desktop variant just yet, Microsoft had no reason to strip the Server OS down to consumer level.

Ian M said:
I am running two Windows XP Professional x64 Edition computers myself. The issue is the millions of Joe Somebody's out there that try to run their legacy printer on it to discover it doesn't work. Then come the subsequent support calls asking how to fix it. Then the support person has to say, "I'm sorry but your operating system doesn't support that device." Who does Joe Somebody blame it on? Dell, HP, Gateway, or what have you. That's bad publicity. Joe Somebody tells his friends that his <insert manufacturer> could not run his printer and Ms. Everybody says, "Well then I'm not buying an <insert manufacturer>." Hence, <insert manufacturer> decides not to support the OS until that older hardware is retired through planned obsoletism. Get what I'm saying? x64, as of now, is only for people that are already apt with computers. For everyone else, it's a big headache. You, I, and everyone else with x64 knew that there were risks in going with it and knew they couldn't blame someone else for the issues experienced. OEMs don't have that convenience ("Well, you sold it to me!?!").

Though I havent booted into it since I installed Vista, XP x64 Pro is probably the most responsive, stable OS I have ever used.

Thank it's Server 2003 daddy. It's unfortunate that Server 2007/2008 is based on Vista instead of the other way around.

It always seems that either software or some piece of hardware is ahead of its time and it takes a while for everything to catch up. A good example is the video card I have in my system. I'm using the EVGA 8800GTX ANS3 768MB card with the option to go SLI. I haven't found and wont for some time any game to bring this card to its knees. I run everything on maximum settings and get no lag at all.

It's very hard to hate Nvidia for bringing such a great product and setting new standards to the market for us to have a choice to spend our hard earned money on. This is the 1st Nvidia card I have ever purchased for my main rig so I am not a hater of ATI. I still have my ATI850XT 256MB AGP card in my secondary rig with the Intel Presler 940 CPU. Just like AMD there are still a lot of great products out there for the money and performance range you are looking for. As someone else here said, high end products are not the driving force of the market so its long from game over as of yet.

The bottom line as to what I am trying to say is, how can you hate AMD for bringing 64bit to the market, setting new standards with dual core cpus that everyone eventually will be writing code for (some already are) and will be a market standard for all products in the future? If that be a reasonable thing to do then damn Nvidia for bringing the 8800GTX card to the market and making it possible to smoke any game I install on my system.

(One more thing)... For the general public that doesn't want and can't spend 700.00 on a video card can get an ATI 1950 video card that smokes Nvidias comparable card for the money. This is the same point Ian was trying to make that depending on a persons budget one company can be better than the other depending on thier needs and thier budget. Then it is our job to educate them on this. This will level the playing field for a bit longer.

I also installed XP Pro 64 bit trial version for 30 days and was the smoothest install I've had as of yet. No driver problems at all. Call me lucky I guess...

Now excuse me while I go anhialate some boogie monsters on Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

FordGT90Concept said:

Yep, its pretty much the same OS with features disabled.

Mainstream products based off corporate products are always gonna be better.

My first ATI was a all-in-1turd that kept dying while under warranty. So I stayed away from ATI for a few years. Since we were having problems getting lower end Nvidia cards for awhile when PCI-E came out, we tried X300 and X600 cards. Right out of warranty (it seemed) every X600 died. Some of the X300s still work, some don't. In all those years, I've had just 3 Nvidia cards die. 2 were 6800 Ultra OCs that a DFI motherboard killed with voltage spikes, and the other died of old age (3 yrs wasn't too bad).

Then there's the whole Vista with Nvidia driver problem. Its all over google. Seems a good number of Nvidia/Vista users are getting popups saying their driver has recovered from a major disaster and is now recovered. Except in some cases recovered doesn't really mean recovered. And in some cases the popups are followed quickly by a black screen that can only be recovered from in safe mode and disabling the Nvidia drivers. Problem there is that reinstalling the drivers brings the black screen right back. So we can have the chicken or the egg, which came first debate. Did the OS kill the card or are the drivers the problem? Who knows at this point, but I'm leaning toward the OS is broken since a fresh install of the drivers (any version) doesn't fix anything. The worst part of this scenario is that its been going on for months with no reply from Nvidia about a fix. Nothing new there really, as Nvidia support has always been terrible.

So far, my 7900GTX hasn't had the problem (knock on wood). But like DublinGunner, I rarely use Vista. In fact, I have yet to activate it. I'm happy to do the cmd hack for 4 months and reinstall it if I don't get back to it in time (which is usually the case).

I really don't have a preference for Nvidia or ATI. I just want hardware that works, preferably for a few years. I hope both companies survive so there's always competition. But right now I think both have some serious issues.

Nehalem is going to start a new trend with integrated graphics. Lots of issues to work out there before integrated graphics can replace gaming cards, but definitely something for ATI and Nvidia to think about.

God I love the computer industry. Never a dull moment!

Dark, I rarely use XP

I just about exclusively use Vista.

Sander Sassen said:


Lets not go there Sander. X1800XT delivered what it was supposed to. I appreciate the fact that you still have some praise for ATI cards....but lets be professional.

wwk-tmo said: Dual cores are just another way AMD jumped the gun. It was a cheap way for them to outclass Intel if only for a little while. In consumer PCs, one core is plenty under most circumstances. In fact, releasing dual-cores might be hurting AMD more than helping. Because of all this truth, but not the whole truth, about dual cores, there has been a boom in demand making single cores pretty much scrap. Yet, people expect the same price. This means that, per chip, Intel and AMD are making about half the money as they were with single cores. In any case, more than four cores have no place, and probably never will have any place, in the consumer market. The heat is definitely an issue and then you got to find something that you do frequently that can even utilize that many cores.

Your card will be showing it's age in less than a year. Remember, developers don't develop for the best hardware out there, they develop for the mainstream hardware (where the money is at). Actually, games that strain a 8800 series are fairly inefficient because the software is designed to scale. Code the same software for an 8800 series to begin with and watch the framerates soar (the developer can actually use all that onboard memory).


Oh, and I have yet to have an ATI or NVIDIA card kick the can on me (TNT2, Radeon 32MB PCI, X800 XL, 9800 Pro, 8500 GT, 7950 GT, Radeon 7000, I don't remember the rest). None were ever overclocked (except the X800 XL for a few hours) and all are fairly well cooled.