A new found love for my GeForce4 Ti 4600!

[mcortz_2000]

Hi one and all,

Well this is mainly a rant so please don't get all iffy on me.
I have been a gamer since way back when. The days of castlevania still ring true to my ears........

Personally I miss those days, the ramblings on between friends on games that made us the loyal devotees we are.
Then there was doom1, man how the pace increased...
My point is this.
That was then and this is now. I still remember the day I got my Diamond Monster Voodoo1 and how it changed the way we play games.(Graphically that is...)
And now we have reached a new era, or so we think.

I have been buying video cards because of games for a long time.
I commend Nvidia for producing some of the most stable Video cards, at least compared to the other cards on the market. Don't get me wrong, they have had their fair share of problems but in saying that things have gotten better.....

Now this moves me to the suppossedly fantastic Ati9700. At first this card had me so excited i was going to sell my Ti4600 for about $200 just so that i could get one.(with paying the difference of course)

I have done a full turn again and have a new found respect for my Visiontek Ti4600.

The list of problems that are cropping up in the Rage3d forums and other websites in regards to game compatibilities, motherboard compatibilities, etc...has got me thinking if this card with all its spendour is in fact worth the switch. Personally i do not think so whereas others will dissagree. To me the problems with the Ati9700 only seem to be getting worse not better, if not for the fixes that the Ati support guys have been providing to Ati community.

I will say Kudos to them for this support. This is definately a welcome sign.

The only thing is though that if I am splashing out $350 for a video card do I really want to put up with the level of problems that they have been experiencing....

I say NOT but then again this is my opinion so I will not force it on others. I just wish that these companies would concentrate on making sure that there are fewer problems even if it means slightly slower operating frequencies or whatever is causing it.

After all said and done this is just my opinion but I am sure that this is felt by many others. I will be keeping my Ti4600 and continue in gaming bliss in comparison to the boatload of problems that Ati is having to deal with.

Please feel free to post your comments/opinions on this matter...

[sancheuz]

nvidia is a more prominent and quality producing company

[saturnotaku]

I was in the same boat as you. I was contemplating selling my Ti4600 for a 9700. Being able to play games at 1600x1200 with FSAA and aniso was an intriguing proposition to say the least.

But, for the same reasons you mentioned, I will not be making this purchase. I have an Abit KR7A-RAID and more than one person has reported not being able to cold-boot their system with a 9700 installed. Letting the system warm up (so to speak) and hitting the reset button causes the card to work. Huh? Okay, I'm going to shell out $330-$400 for a card that won't work right when I first power on my system after letting it sit overnight.

And I sure as hell am not going to replace my motherboard and potentially my CPU just to get this video card to work. Sorry, ATI, you couldn't convince me with the 8500 and it doesn't look like you'll be doing so with the 9700. Almost had me, though - so close but yet so far. I hope they work with mobo companies and within their company to do some further investigation into these issues.

It will be very, very interesting to see if the NV30 has similar issues. But there's no use speculating right now. Right now my Ti4600 is working wonderfully with all my games and applications and that's the only thing that matters. :)

[mcortz_2000]

Thats it Saturnotaku,

Let us enjoy our wonderfully stable and fast Ti4600's and continue to do so until NV30 is released....

[FastM]

Originally posted by mcortz_2000
Thats it Saturnotaku,

Let us enjoy our wonderfully stable and fast Ti4600's and continue to do so until NV30 is released....

And tested ;)

Hey, speaking of Vid cards i just sold my Vanilla GF3 for a MSI TI4200 64meg. I know i should of got the 128meg but there was no stock left and i couldn't go a couple days with no Vid card :p. I'll be selling it anyway for an V30 :D . The upgrade only cost me 50$ Canadian and im pretty impressed. I gained IQ if anything and the FPS this thing puts out for the money is very impressive.

[volt]

Watch out for those 80 meg textures in doom3 hehehe :)

[sbp]

With the wide range and age of various setups out there, issues are bound to pop up anytime there is a videocard with a new architecture. Expect the same of NV30.

[ATI LoVeR 9700]

Don't rule the 9700 out. It's a fresh card. It has problems.

Saying that ATi has bad drivers is just plain stupid, the Radeon 8500 currently doesn't have bad drivers. All the issues have been sorted out, and now it's awesome, fast, stable card.

The NV30 will be buggy as well. Remember the Gefroce3? It was slow and buggy, that is until better drivers came out.

Don't put ATi down.

A Bios flash, and new drivers will make that card kick ass.

nVidia can't do magic and make perfect drivers, their NV2X architecture is old, and has been worked on. If ATi did that same thing with it's cards, that ATi would have "bug free" drivers on release too.

[netviper13]

I'd hardly say the GF3 was buggy when it came out...a little slower than the GF2 Ultra for a little while, but everything worked out of the box. And nVidia solved the problems with a driver release a little bit later.

[ATI LoVeR 9700]

Originally posted by netviper13
I'd hardly say the GF3 was buggy when it came out...a little slower than the GF2 Ultra for a little while, but everything worked out of the box. And nVidia solved the problems with a driver release a little bit later.

6 Months later, and it was buggy, really buggy. I remember that. Most people know.

[thcdru2k]

buggy really buggy? no.

[volt]

Personally I'm not putting ATI down but by reading some of the comments made by 9700 owners made me wonder a bit more about this card: aniso performance, incompatible APG 8x mobos, power problems. Now this maybe due to early drivers, and if it isn't than I feel kind of sorry for those people who bought it and regret it. Thank god ATI will replace your card if it's not compatible with one of those mobos heh, that's a nice move, but if ATI could have waited 2 more months they could really iron those bugs out dont you think? My 0.02 ;)

[mcortz_2000]

Originally posted by ATI LoVeR 9700


6 Months later, and it was buggy, really buggy. I remember that. Most people know.

Actually no, and let me think about it .... NO......
There were problems but nothing to the magnitude of what Ati is dealing with......

[SnakeEyes]

Originally posted by ATI LoVeR 9700


6 Months later, and it was buggy, really buggy. I remember that. Most people know.
ATI Lover, I really want to respect your opinion, but this sort of thing makes it hard to do. I bought GF3 within a month of its release, and I play a LOT of different games (well, tried a lot, play a few..). I can't recall any bugs with anything I tried (and trust me, there were many that weren't in the popular list of benchmarking games / apps that are commonly seen around the net). Performance issues with some things, sure.. at least compared to the numbers I recall seeing posted by GF2Ultra owners, but no bugs.

Heck, even the features that aren't supported now, or have still gone totally unused except maybe for tech demos (the tesselation support is NOW turned off, not because it was broken, but because DX's attempting to use them to emulate ATI's TruForm stuff caused massive performance hits. Then there was volumetric textures, which we didn't know about at the initial GF3 release [free feature;)], but was enabled with the arrival of GF3Ti) weren't buggy.

Later drivers fixed most of the performance issues too.

So far as I have seen, ATI is the company with the history of true bugs. :p

[mcortz_2000]

Thanks snake eyes, I totally agree with what u say. This is going to stay the same until Ati improves its track record and keeps it that way....

[saturnotaku]

Originally posted by ATI LoVeR 9700
6 Months later, and it was buggy, really buggy. I remember that. Most people know.

Would you care to provide some evidence either from your own experience or referring to sites on the net that says the GF3 suffered from bugs six months after its release?

Sure, it had problems when it initially came out with some things, but it was not on the order of magnitude of the 9700. Hell, when you put a GF3 and even an 8500 for that matter in your system you could at least count on it giving you a display when you powered on your machine from a cold boot.

Speaking of bugs, I bought my GF3 3 months after it came out. I installed it with the 12.90 drivers and never had a single problem playing games. Everything was top-notch. And there are plenty of other people here and even those trolls at Rage3D who will say the same thing.

I bought a Radeon 8500 6 months after it came out. I had 4 sets of drivers handy: latest official from Gigabyte, latest official from ATI, latest beta from ATI and Omega's drivers. All of them were stable in that the card never caused my system to lockup or cause my games to crash but every set I tried suffered from graphical glitches and anomalies that never existed with my GeForce3. The biggest problems I had were 1) I could never get PowerDVD to work properly with that card (and that's what shipped with my Gigabyte 8500), 2) UT suffered poor performance and glitches in OpenGL and 3) no support for 3D in Linux. I might have been patient had I bought the card immediately upon its release but this was 6 months after the card had been available and having experienced these issues (and others) was simply unacceptable.

I understand that your experience has been different. However, making a blanket statement that the GF3 was buggy six months after it came out, offering the reason as "Most people know" without providing any additional information is pretty ludicrous.

[FastM]

Originally posted by SnakeEyes

ATI Lover, I really want to respect your opinion, but this sort of thing makes it hard to do. I bought GF3 within a month of its release, and I play a LOT of different games (well, tried a lot, play a few..). I can't recall any bugs with anything I tried (and trust me, there were many that weren't in the popular list of benchmarking games / apps that are commonly seen around the net). Performance issues with some things, sure.. at least compared to the numbers I recall seeing posted by GF2Ultra owners, but no bugs.

Heck, even the features that aren't supported now, or have still gone totally unused except maybe for tech demos (the tesselation support is NOW turned off, not because it was broken, but because DX's attempting to use them to emulate ATI's TruForm stuff caused massive performance hits. Then there was volumetric textures, which we didn't know about at the initial GF3 release [free feature;)], but was enabled with the arrival of GF3Ti) weren't buggy.

Later drivers fixed most of the performance issues too.

So far as I have seen, ATI is the company with the history of true bugs. :p

Ditto, got my Hercules GF3 about a month after they were released. Cant remember EVER having any kind of problem with it or some sort of imcopatability, I CAN remember getting all excited everytime a new Det was leaked and watching my 3dmark score climb and climb and climb.

[porksoda]

I'd like to clear some stuff about ati on how ppl think ati SOLVED thier problems by drivers or bios updates... first of all.... when you buy a car it doesnt come with a warning... dont go over 120km/hr.... or when you go over 120 it doesnt stall and go up in smoke and you are not suggested to not go over 120km/hr by the manufacturer... its like promising user a product... and not delivering...

like you dont go to order a big mac combo... and the restaruant gives you half the burger saying.. sorry it couldnt be helped.

Ati's new bios that fixes the problem.. simply in a way clocks down the card with memory... and disables the second display.

Ati was smart to overclock thier retail cards to get "artificial" performance... knowing the 4x loophole wiht via boards... now that the via boards support 4x agp in xp with 4in1 4.4.1 ati cant help crashing... only way ONLY way you can stabilize a 8500 is to CLOCK IT DOWN. and i refuse to do so... thats why i got rid of the card.

clock it down by bios update (ram timing changed to crap)
or use older drivers that did not support 4x.

there are a lot of people who will say ok.. to stabilize the card its ok to DOWN clock my card...

but if the box said 275/275. I aint clockin it down.

And i wondered why my company dropped ati for thier graphics cards/chips.

[volt]

Why do I have a feeling this thread will be closed ?

[porksoda]

Why should it be closed? its not like im making this stuff up... just stating the facts...

Originally posted by d1rX
Why do I have a feeling this thread will be closed ?

[volt]

I'm not pointing fingers. Most of those discussions end with flames and name calling. Just a warning.

[nin_fragile14]

I didn't read through this whole thread, but I am now running a 9700.

Haven't had any problems. Works perfectly. I was worried too after reading through Rage3d, but if you know how to properly set up a computer (which apparently so many don't), this card works great.

I uninstalled Geforce 3 drivers, put in Radeon, installed drivers, rebooted, and everything works fine.

[saturnotaku]

TRAITOR!!! Time to rally the lynch mob. :D

j/k - Glad to see the card's working well for 'ya nin. How's the IQ and performance with FSAA and aniso? I know what the review sites say, now I want to hear it from someone who switched from NVIDIA. :)

[ATI LoVeR 9700]

6 Months later, the drivers were fine. In the beginning, it gave me problems. Like lock-ups, freezes, graphic glitches, it was bad. The later drivers made it better. The IQ did not live up to the Radeon 64MB VIVO though.

The 8500, when I first bought it gave me no bugs. I was fine. That High-Poly bug didn't affect me. It was all good.

The 9700 is a good card. You guys act like ATi will never make a good product. Do you guys realize that ATi's driver department is better than ever and is only going up? And Do I need to mention the engineering department, they've owned nVidia all their lives.

Saturn, go to Best Buy, buy the card, test it for 13 days, and on the 14th day(the last day to return it), return it with no restock fee! Post what you think about it.

BTW, I have a 2001 Saturn SL2(in addition to the 3 Bimmers, 87 325i is back, my 95 525i, and my 2002 M3 which I saved up for for 11 years), that I bought for 8,000 after it was in an accident. Can I put any performance parts on it? I mean, I DON'T WANT TO RICEBOY IT! I mean real performance, not Hochikacha toys. Know any sites that sell parts? I like that car, it's just a little, weak.

So can you help out Saturn? I'm in Illinois too, so local shops are fine if you know any.

[nin_fragile14]

Originally posted by saturnotaku

How's the IQ and performance with FSAA and aniso? I know what the review sites say, now I want to hear it from someone who switched from NVIDIA. :)

I posted my impressions here (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1716)