"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.

Hey T, I own both ATI (all made by ATI) and Nvidia (1 Asus, 2 PNY, 2
Creative Labs). I can tell ya now that the PNY cards are pretty much
pure reference boards, and my FX5900 isn't anything like you say yours
is. What brand and model is it?
The next vid card on my list to get isn't even on the shelves around
here (Houston). The stores can't get either ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256 meg
cards or FX 5900 Ultra 256 meg cards. The stores say they have em in
stock (some of the stores do) and when I get there, they are 128 meg
cards.

The ATI cards, as fas as I can see right now are all .15m die and the
FX5900's are .13m die. They seem to run about the same temp too. Both
have variable fan speeds. And the FX5900 has a very nice and quiet
radial fin fan with open heat sink. It's very nice actually.

I want to skip the FX 5900 Ultra 256 and get a 9800Pro 256 for myself.
Both seem to retail for $499 US.

But I'd rather see the ATI board in .13m die.

And I haven't had any problems running either ATI or Nvidia cards on my
systems....so far. You may well have had a card with flakey ram.
McG.

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