Hi T,
Glad you're happy. I was a Matrox fan for years but when they abandoned the
3D market I had to switch. After much research (ATI vs. nVidia) I decided
on ATI. Bought a 9500 Pro and haven't looked back. Matrox has always been
famous for their 2D stuff and beautiful display but I think that, at this
point, ATI is at least as good and of course light years ahead of Matrox in
3D. I think I'll stick with the 9500 Pro when I build my new box this
fall/winter and I'll upgrade when the ATI 10000 Pro is available ;-)
--
Happy Flying,
Ed F.

"T1000" wrote in message
...
Just wanted to drop the ATI newsgroup a line to say HI.

After 5 years with Nvidia cards I have made the switch to ATI, namely a
Powercolor Radeon 9800pro 128meg. This card is by far the most
exceptionally
stable, well rounded and best performing graphics card I have ever owned.

Not only is in benching far higher than the fx5900 I was playing around
with
originally.. notwithstanding benchmarks the real world performance is head
and sholders above anything in the Nvidia camp I have used. The framerates
are constant, rapid movement in 3d games is sikly smooth, and I can, for
the
first time, throw my old gaming res up from 1024x768 to 1280x1024 and then
on top of that, throw AA and AF and all the other eye candy into the mix
and
still get exceptional gaming.

I look at these 5900s... with their monster cooling solutions (even the
single slot cooling designs are ludicrous), cores running at 84c... loud
fans, huge size etc.. then I look at my simple, elegant and reasonably
sized
ATI card with a single fan and a modest heatsink and wonder why I waited
so
damn long to make the switch.

The catalyst drivers were always to my mind a bit flaky... but since the
release of Cat 3.X I've noticed that the drivers are rock solid and offer
everything a gamer could possibly need. The drivers I'm using with the
9800pro (Cat 3.6) are rock solid.

I upgraded my entire system during my Vid card upgrade.. and with the
fx5900
in it I was wondering if I had faulty Ram, mobo etc coz during heavy
benchmarking and burn-in I was indeed getting random crashes from time to
time. With the ATI installed I have run 3dmark 2001 for 8 hours straight..
and apart from a quite warm ambient case temp after the testing, there was
not a single hiccup.

Looking forward to spending some more time around here over the coming
months.

To any others resisting the switch to ATI so frequently spouted at various
sites, magazines etc... BELIEVE ME.. IT'S TRUE.. ATI OFFER A BETTER
SOLUTION.


Cheers,

T1000