Hello again to all who replied,
I appreciate your time you spent writing your replies.
I did not write my perspective, not to affect any of yours. Here it goes:
When I bought my GeForce2 GTS, it was quite newly released. Drivers were
immature and I had quite a lot of problems with it. Though, hardware was
good, but not as good as advertised by nVidia, e.g., I never got to use "The
pixel shader" on that card, since the version was almost never supported by
any games. Yet, I always was happy with the nVidia's driver support, they
worked hard to fix the issues, ASAP. They had nice features for the time,
and their interface looked good, and was easy to use. In fact, I still have
this card, on my old machine, which now belongs to my wife
Then, when it was time to get a new computer, after deep research, I decided
to buy ATI 9700 Pro. Again, the hardware was the best of its time, but
unfortunately, it was hampered by its drivers (does this remind you
something? Like my experience with the previous card?
). The difference
was that, when I got this card, it has already been few months since the
release, I did not get it ASAP as my previous card. The drivers were still
immature, and what is worse, I found that so was the hardware! ATI had three
revisions of the card, and I had received the earliest build, and I was
having serious problems with it. I had to send it back to ATI, by paying
$400 more, even though it was credited back to me once they received my old
card. Not everbody can pay $400 extra, just like that!
Anyway, I received the new version, and the problem was still there!!!
Later, I found that it was due to FastWrites (as someone wrote into one of
the replies here). The problem is that, at the time ATI either did not know
this and/or they did not made this information easily available. So, my
major problem was gone, but the minor "stuttering" issue was still here (and
it still is in some games) for which I also spent considerable amount of
time.
Another problem I have with ATI is that they DO NOT SUPPORT CONSUMER STEREO
3D, AT ALL!!! Maybe not many people care about this, but I do.
Yes, ATI hardware is good, their hardware engineers are apparently beating
on nVidia, but the driver team needs to learn A LOT from nVidia.
ATI started the Catalyst Crew program and are supposedly trying to make
their software and drivers better, but they just can not seem to make it
work. They get lost in features like Catalyst Control Center, which is just
a joke, since it introduced more bugs and frustration than ease, and like
shader effects which no one uses, instead of fixing what is broken, and
providing features that people can actually use.
So far, it may sound like I am beating on ATI's driver team, HOWEVER, I
started hearing similar issues with the new nVidia cards and drivers. So I
wanted ask people, who has taken the plunge already, for their experiences.
I am planning to get a 6800 GT, since it looks like maybe it is not the best
performer, but it is the best-bang-for-the-buck-card currently available.
Yet, I do not want to go through the same frustration that I went especially
with ATI.
I know that buying a newly released hardware is, and always will be, a
little crap-shoot, but I am just trying to to the best I can to avoid
problems, as much as I can. Oh, one last point, I am not a technically
challenged user who knows not a thing about computers; I am referred to as
quite a 'geek' or 'computer wiz' by the people around me. I am using PCs
since 8086 days, and assembling hardware and installing OSs and software on
machines since 80486 days. PCs are my major 'hobby' and I think I am quite
good at it, too. So, please (this is especially for the disrespectful
youngsters who has nothing else to do but to surf the NGs to write BS) do
not bother sending insulting replies implying that I had problems, because I
did not know how to avoid or fix them, ok?
Thanks everyone.
There it is, my experiences with nVidia and ATI.
Take care, live well...
GT
