ATI's drivers start to suck again

[creedamd]

Originally posted by Hanners
No, he hasn't, his last card before the Ti4400 was a Radeon 8500.

To be honest I think even I'd be singing nVidia's praises after moving from an 8500 to a Ti4400. :p

Yeah, I did too, I had an 8500, though not having many problems except minor stuttering, was happy to go to the 4400. Even though I hated giving up on the AF. But the 9700pro quickly fixed that problem. :)

[EMunEeE]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
I told you so :D

Of course ATI drivers is getting worse and I am not very surprised it left long list of problems for quite a long time and other games very long time with no fixes. I think ATI are really very lazy not to put all the problems on high priority to do list so I think ATI will never fixed many of these problems, ATI should sorted out VESA 2.0 problems with upgraded to VESA 3.0 3 years ago, it looked like ATI are still strucked with VESA 1.2 standard and Nvidia cards already had VESA 3.0 compatible for years.

I played almost all of these games on the to do list on my Geforce 4 Ti 4600, none of it had issues or shutter and also played many old DOS games as well playing arcade games on MAME emulator.

This is what to do list ATI should done few years ago to avoid drivers problems is to never ever borrowed Radeon 8500 drivers codes into Radeon 9700 base codes, it should been written from scratch but of course it will take very long time to make new drivers from scratch.

If ATi drivers are getting worse...I guess nVidia's drivers are already in the *****ter. I have only two issues over my lifetime in dealing with ATi hardware (dating back to the Rage IIc/Rage 128 Pro):

1) Madden 2003 weather bug on the Radeon 8500 that was fixed
2) Counter Strike ESC bug that was fixed

So as you can see ATi is 2-0 in my department. ATi drivers are getting better with every release. With that said I also have not had any problems with nVidia drivers when I had my GF4 MX 420. Of course nVidia offered its low end user no compelling reasons to upgrade their driver..when at the rare chance they released a WHQL driver. :D

[The Baron]

So as you can see ATi is 2-0 in my department.
Whoa, you're the only one. ATI is something like 2-7 in my department from my days with the original Radeon...

[DaveW]

The problems with Counterstrike have not been fixed. The fixed one problem, only to cause two more. Read the list. If ATI's driver team can't fix issues on a game engine that is 5 years old, what are the chances they can get their stuff to work on Doom 3 or Halflife 2?

Its been the same old story with the Catalyst team, they fix one problem and cause another. I don't think they understand their own code. To save costs they probably fired all the original coders and now there are a bunch of guys in india who don't speak a word of english working on it. The way they just tweak a few things and cause as many problems as they fix with each release, it just smells like voodoo programming. I wish I could see their source code because I bet its a mess.

[5150 Joker]

Originally posted by DaveW
The problems with Counterstrike have not been fixed. The fixed one problem, only to cause two more. Read the list. If ATI's driver team can't fix issues on a game engine that is 5 years old, what are the chances they can get their stuff to work on Doom 3 or Halflife 2?

Its been the same old story with the Catalyst team, they fix one problem and cause another. I don't think they understand their own code. To save costs they probably fired all the original coders and now there are a bunch of guys in india who don't speak a word of english working on it. The way they just tweak a few things and cause as many problems as they fix with each release, it just smells like voodoo programming. I wish I could see their source code because I bet its a mess.


CS works fine, I just ran it to confirm. Don't hate on the Indian workers.

edit by StealthHawk: no personal attacks.

[reever2]

Originally posted by DaveW
The problems with Counterstrike have not been fixed. The fixed one problem, only to cause two more. Read the list. If ATI's driver team can't fix issues on a game engine that is 5 years old, what are the chances they can get their stuff to work on Doom 3 or Halflife 2?

Its been the same old story with the Catalyst team, they fix one problem and cause another. I don't think they understand their own code. To save costs they probably fired all the original coders and now there are a bunch of guys in india who don't speak a word of english working on it. The way they just tweak a few things and cause as many problems as they fix with each release, it just smells like voodoo programming. I wish I could see their source code because I bet its a mess.

Newsflash. Engineers in India are some of the best in the world, the education system far surpasses that of the US

[PreservedSwine]

Originally posted by reever2
Newsflash. Engineers in India are some of the best in the world, the education system far surpasses that of the US

You don't have to tell me, all my engineering courses were taught by proffessors from India, Japan, or China:(

[Sazar]

Originally posted by reever2
Newsflash. Engineers in India are some of the best in the world, the education system far surpasses that of the US

lets just say the tehnical institutes are superior wot :)

I am sure the ENTIRE nations educational system is not superior.. but the engineers as well other technical personnel/doctors are quite abundant in india :)

IIT == probably the best such institute in the world...

[-=DVS=-]

Originally posted by DaveW
The problems with Counterstrike have not been fixed. The fixed one problem, only to cause two more. Read the list. If ATI's driver team can't fix issues on a game engine that is 5 years old, what are the chances they can get their stuff to work on Doom 3 or Halflife 2?

Its been the same old story with the Catalyst team, they fix one problem and cause another. I don't think they understand their own code. To save costs they probably fired all the original coders and now there are a bunch of guys in india who don't speak a word of english working on it. The way they just tweak a few things and cause as many problems as they fix with each release, it just smells like voodoo programming. I wish I could see their source code because I bet its a mess.

your opinnion is not correct 5 year old game was made on primitive engine its harder to code for it and its less compatible with new hardware is hardly DX5 game for crying out loud :lol:
HalfLife was released at around Voodoo 2 time ;)

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by DaveW
The problems with Counterstrike have not been fixed. The fixed one problem, only to cause two more. Read the list. If ATI's driver team can't fix issues on a game engine that is 5 years old, what are the chances they can get their stuff to work on Doom 3 or Halflife 2?

What problems? I haven't had any problems except the esc bug. The stuttering issues are the fault of the HL engine.

[Hellbinder]

For the Record The clasic *Stuttering* issue with the 9700pro was caused by AGP Bus Stalls. That is why the Stuttering issue only affected certain people with certain Motherboards. I Personally have never experienced the Stuttering issue on my i850EMD2 board.

There is a resurgence of Old Fassioned *FUD* in this thread. The ever so common tactic of posting Wild Generalizations and Half-Truths with nothing to back it up except vague references to *everyone*...

The Catalyst drivers are about as far as you can get from *getting worse*. Yes they screwed up on the OpenGL side here recently a time or two but it was not that big a deal. D3D Drivers are hands down the best in the industry. Very stable, very good performance and more Feature Rich in many ways than Nvidias Curent offerings. Like for instance ATi has Floating point Cube maps, Volumetric textures, Multiple Render Targets among other things that are very beneficial to developers.

Wait till you'all see the next set of cats.. *wow*.. Is all i can say.

[Skuzzy]

Seeing how ATI managed to grab the lead DirectX engineer from Microsoft (the guy responsible for the change in programming philosophy that occurred in DX8), I could see why the DX drivers have gotten so solid.
I hated to see him leave Microsoft as he did a bang up job on DX8/9, but kudos to ATI for that hire.

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by Hellbinder
Wait till you'all see the next set of cats.. *wow*.. Is all i can say.

Are you say Catalyst 3.6 *wow*? :o

The new driver is just as bad as 3.5, on the release note ATI resolved NeverWinter Nights game issues so everybody found it still hasnt, more of the same with 3.5 issues. Also 3.6 is still yet create a new sets of problems like 3D Mark 2001's Nature crashed with blue screen. I heard it all before. :rolleyes: No wonder NeverWinter Nights is 1 year old now, ATI hadnt managed to fixed the bugs, I think ATI find it so difficult to tackle and reproduce bugs to iron out bugs, if ATI will be unable to fix the bugs in the near future so then they will dump the unresolve bugs priorities in the bin that future drivers will still have bugs forever.

In 2001, lots of people complained about Creative's Audigy drivers was as bad as ATI drivers now, Creative acknowledged about the problems with the drivers and setup new driver teams to began worked on new driver code base from scratched. The first driver on the new code base was released 1 year later in end of July 2002. The new drivers is the best I ever seen.

Creative wrote the driver from scratch once, 3dfx wrote their driver from scratch twice and now Nvidia will write the driver from scratch twice this time with upcoming Detonator 5. What about ATI? They never wrote from scratch, I think they are too scared if the new code base will not worked or broken down or take too long to create drivers but Creative took 1 year to made perfect driver is not so bad, it wonderful. ATI should follow Creative's example to make perfect driver as Creative, Nvidia and 3dfx did.

:fanboy:

[Miester_V]

It sucks. All my 'constructive' criticisms are back at the Rage3D forums. I think I'll mindlessly vent in here...it sucks.

[-=DVS=-]

Gee if you guys so HORRIBLY unhappy why not buy Other card and shut up :o

Seriously whineing always don't like it don't use it , many people have no problems why ? maybe they doing something different :rolleyes:


:nutkick:

[Hanners]

Originally posted by Hellbinder
Wait till you'all see the next set of cats.. *wow*.. Is all i can say.

Well, they weren't really that exciting after all, were they? ;)

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
Creative wrote the driver from scratch once, 3dfx wrote their driver from scratch twice and now Nvidia will write the driver from scratch twice this time with upcoming Detonator 5. What about ATI? They never wrote from scratch, I think they are too scared if the new code base will not worked or broken down or take too long to create drivers but Creative took 1 year to made perfect driver is not so bad, it wonderful. ATI should follow Creative's example to make perfect driver as Creative, Nvidia and 3dfx did.

Have you actually got any evidence that ATi have never rewritten their driver codebase from scratch, or did you just make it up?

[AthlonXP1800]

Originally posted by Hanners
Well, they weren't really that exciting after all, were they? ;)



Have you actually got any evidence that ATi have never rewritten their driver codebase from scratch, or did you just make it up?

I remember just over 1 year ago, about 3 months before the launch of Radeon 9700 Pro, here was ATI interview, the question asked what will ATI do with all the drivers problem, will the problems repeated with Radeon 9700 Pro what it did with Radeon 8500. ATI will worked very hard to ensure it wont happened with Radeon 9700 and they decided it no need to rewritten the driver from scratch because it will take long time, they instead choose some codes from 8500 code base such as Direct3D and OpenGL lines into R300 code base that ensure it has very good compatible and stable without cause problem. It will be alot easy to write new codes for R300 path only rather than write same code for both R200 and R300 to avoid problems.

[Deathlike2]

AthlonXP is correct... it was stated in some reviews regarding the Radeon 9700 Pro... even though they have broken older driver code (8500 and below).. it was to make things easier to the ATI Driver team on the whole.. possibly Terry could comment on it.. but I believe this is fact.

It could've been in some interview as well.

The MIGHT be the root cause for other issues to come up.. it isn't always the case though..

[garikfox]

Originally posted by -=DVS=-
Gee if you guys so HORRIBLY unhappy why not buy Other card and shut up :o

Seriously whineing always don't like it don't use it , many people have no problems why ? maybe they doing something different :rolleyes:


:nutkick:


Touche ! :)

My Opinion is ATi Rules !

[-=DVS=-]

Originally posted by garikfox
Touche ! :)

My Opinion is ATi Rules !

I share same opinion like you , lets be friends :tongue2: