drivers for 4870 are crap

"Augustus" wrote in message
news:hCpek.4041$1o6.3883@edtnps83...

ATI's Catalyst driver team is a world class organization. I know... I
work with
them on a daily basis. The developer talent has and will continue to
innovate and deliver on quality code, and the management team is
unbelievably slim for a company as large as AMD, i.e., they execute
relatively quickly. (Compare the driver release schedule to that of
NVIDIA's and you'll see some start differences)

Whatever IQ issues exist today will definitely be fixed. I'm not sure if
they have a person scouring newsgroups for these sorts of reports though.
And, like you said, there hasn't been any mention of these issues in the
top reviewer sites. So, in case AMD is not already aware of these issues,
it would be in your best interests to report this to the AMD/ATI asap.

Tony

The fact that ATI/AMD releases updated monthly drivers speaks nothing as
to the quality of the release and the maturity and stability of the
drivers.

Monthly driver releases, and therefore a minimum of 1 full QA pass per
month, speaks to the discipline and "maturity" of the development process,
which ultimately leads to a better driver.

Your post then seems to infer from this premise that nVidia drivers are
therefore inferior to the ATI/AMD ones since they release WHQL drivers
less frequently. This logic escapes me.

I simply acknowledged (to support my statement that they execute relatively
quickly) an apparent difference in the driver development and release models
between the two organizations. You spinned that into me implying (not
"inferring") that NVIDIA drivers were necessarily worse - your logic, not
mine.

Both manufacturers have had and continue to have ongoing driver issues.
Consider the fact that it took from the 7.6's until shortly before now to
restore proper 3D function in a huge number of currently manufactured AGP
cards. 11 releases of Catalysts without a fix for thousands of cards for a
known issue doesn't speak highly of addressing major issues.... from
someone who claims to "work with them on a daily basis" and have inside
knowledge as to ATI/AMD's management team structure I find your post hard
to take seriously.

Unfortunately, regressions are common in complex hardware/software matrices.
It doesn't help that the hardware/software matrix grows as the new hardware
release rate exceeds the rate at which previous gen hardware is EOL'd.

Tony

"Dauphin de Viennois" wrote in message
news:TMsek.97786$gc5.40464@pd7urf2no...
"Tony DiMarzio" wrote in
:

Relax. The card has been out for less than a month.

Imagine if I bought a new TV and it didn't work properly and the
manufactuer told me to "relax" and it would work in a month or two
properly
when they update the firmware. Would that be acceptable to you? Not me.
Why
does the computer industry get away with **** that other industries would
get fried for?

I assume that you're not a complete novice and do understand the high end PC
industry. Assuming my assumption is correct, then you knew very well the
risks of being an early adopter of bleeding edge video card technology.

Also, Aunt Sally and Uncle Fred are neither capable nor interested in
updating firmware for their television or their camera or their toaster.
They represent a completely different market than that of high end PC gamers
and enthusiasts. That said, if you and your peers scream loud enough (read
as don't buy $$ them) then the market will eventually react. So, why does
"the computer industry get away with **** that other industries would get
fried for?" - it's because people keep buying the stuff which means that the
positives, for them, outweigh the negatives.

"Tony DiMarzio" wrote in
:

I assume that you're not a complete novice and do understand the high
end PC industry. Assuming my assumption is correct, then you knew very
well the risks of being an early adopter of bleeding edge video card
technology.

Yea, well, I found out basicaly what the isue is. In Il-2 I went and bumped
up the pixel shader quality to it's highest setting by editing a .cfg file
no more flickering sun on the water. In Crysis I mostly fixed flickering by
using high settings instead of the settings I had it set to on my 8800GT.
In G3 I lessened it quite a bit by turning off pixel shaders completely.
That games is a crap programming job so will give ATI a break on that one.
It seems it is when you use lower quality shader settings that it will
cause light reflections to flicker. ATI needs to look into what their
drivers are doing at the lower quality settings as that is the root cause
of the issue. Most games run fine though and performance is good.

bandit wrote in
:

Must be a vista problem, cause I got a 4870 using the hot fix drivers
on windows xp and all works great here all games look great and run
faster and look better than the NVIDIA 7950 GT it replaced )


Read my other post. These issues don't show up unless using lower quality
pixel shader settings. It causes light source flickering in some games if
you lower the settings. Could be the beta drivers I am using but it looks
like I am stuck with them anyway and I know the hotfix driver don't fix it
because I researched the issues on google and it is not just me that sees
these issues or is it specific to the beta driver. Maybe you are just not
as discerning a gamer as me?

Relax. The card has been out for less than a month. When NVIDIA's drivers
leave the door perfect from day one then it will be a different story. ATI's
Catalyst driver team is a world class organization. I know... I work with
them on a daily basis. The developer talent has and will continue to
innovate and deliver on quality code, and the management team is

World-class? Official OEM driver is not ready during product launch....

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (Xubuntu 8.04) Linux 2.6.25.10
^ ^ 12:32:01 up 10 days 15:49 2 users load average: 1.00 1.02 1.00
? ? (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...ub_addressesa/