Realistic time frame for Fermi (not happy with 5870)

[Stevia]

Hello fellow members!

I was wondering if any of you could give me a relative time frame for fermi's release. Also what is the estimated price range? I am in a bit of a pickle here. Currently I own a 5870 and I am very unhappy with it. Powerful Hardware no question about that, unfortunately hardware is only half of the equation while drivers are the other half and this is where ATI fails. I plan to sell this Card before ATI lowers the price when fermi comes out.

This is my first time using ATI products, so prior to owning them I had heard all about the numerous driver problems etc...When I purchased this card many had claimed at this point that the ATI drivers were much improved and no longer had the problems that plagued there past drivers.

In my personal experience I find this to be untrue. Ati is constantly releasing drivers fixs(hot fix) and usually it fixes one thing and breaks 3 others. I am sick and tired of this and it's inability to force AA consistently, Vsync issue etc... while Nvidia drivers never had a problem in this area. Only after actually owning/testing the ATI hardware does it make me appreciate the Nvidia Drivers even more. My 6800+8800GTX was a dream to use, compared to my 5870. CCC is poorly designed period. This is not a question of getting used to ATI's different approach to driver interface. I learned all the ins and outs of CCC and still came away very unimpressed. Nvidia control panel is simplistic and straight forward. If it was not for ATI TOOLS I would have already lost it.

Anyways I am borrowing my brothers GTX260 for the time being. I want to be able to reserve or make a pre-order on the fermi card when retailers have the available information. I need to have an idea of how much cash I need to put aside. Right Now I have $500-CAN

[Revs]

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=148139

[hell_of_doom227]

Originally Posted by Stevia

Hello fellow members!

I was wondering if any of you could give me a relative time frame for fermi's release. Also what is the estimated price range? I am in a bit of a pickle here. Currently I own a 5870 and I am very unhappy with it. Powerful Hardware no question about that, unfortunately hardware is only half of the equation while drivers are the other half and this is where ATI fails. I plan to sell this Card before ATI lowers the price when fermi comes out.

This is my first time using ATI products, so prior to owning them I had heard all about the numerous driver problems etc...When I purchased this card many had claimed at this point that the ATI drivers were much improved and no longer had the problems that plagued there past drivers.

In my personal experience I find this to be untrue. Ati is constantly releasing drivers fixs(hot fix) and usually it fixes one thing and breaks 3 others. I am sick and tired of this and it's inability to force AA consistently, Vsync issue etc... while Nvidia drivers never had a problem in this area. Only after actually owning/testing the ATI hardware does it make me appreciate the Nvidia Drivers even more. My 6800+8800GTX was a dream to use, compared to my 5870. CCC is poorly designed period. This is not a question of getting used to ATI's different approach to driver interface. I learned all the ins and outs of CCC and still came away very unimpressed. Nvidia control panel is simplistic and straight forward. If it was not for ATI TOOLS I would have already lost it.

Anyways I am borrowing my brothers GTX260 for the time being. I want to be able to reserve or make a pre-order on the fermi card when retailers have the available information. I need to have an idea of how much cash I need to put aside. Right Now I have $500-CAN

I am in same pain. I have two of them in Crossfire and my experience with it is

[Stevia]

What a Pain in the ASS ATI's CCC has been. All I have gotten from the ATI community(rage3d) was weak excuses such as the game was never ment to have AA, the developer is Nvidia biased etc...with CCC you are always guessing. Also profiles are still a problem after all these years.

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by Stevia

What a Pain in the ASS ATI's CCC has been. All I have gotten from the ATI community(rage3d) was weak excuses such as the game was never ment to have AA, the developer is Nvidia biased etc...with CCC you are always guessing. Also profiles are still a problem after all these years.

Sorry to hear that you are having problems, but the 5870 is still a league better than the GTX 260. Nvidia's drivers are better, but without nhancer I'd give the edge to ATI.
Have you tried renaming the exe:s to UT3 or alt-tabbing out of the game and then enable AA? Which games are you having problems with?

EDIT: Forgot to mention this earlier - running d3doverrider seems to fix most of the vsync issues with ati cards.

[Johnny C]

Originally Posted by Stevia

What a Pain in the ASS ATI's CCC has been. All I have gotten from the ATI community(rage3d) was weak excuses such as the game was never ment to have AA, the developer is Nvidia biased etc...with CCC you are always guessing. Also profiles are still a problem after all these years.

Sorry but since you have a 5870 and it will run everything out there with decent frame rates and AA you can just force 4X SS AA on everything and run it fine....wth are you moaning about...

CCC is easier to use than NV control panel....the only, and I mean only thing better about nV,....is nHancer and it's ability to manipulate profiles which has abso****inglutely nothing to do with nVidia.

[Stevia]

Originally Posted by Johnny C

Sorry but since you have a 5870 and it will run everything out there with decent frame rates and AA you can just force 4X SS AA on everything and run it fine....wth are you moaning about...

4x SS destroys framerate in Stalker COP. 4X SS AA is a performance Killer in modern games. Also the ATI drivers have more issues with past games than Nvidia driver which I have not had any issues with. Plus even if you use SS some games refuse to work hence why ATI has to constantly issue Hotfixes. There was even a thread on Rage3d about the AA issues and how Nvidia was able to overcome them in driver while ATI just plain refused to do the same. While I agree Nhancher has made Nvidia drivers better, I have been happy without it, unlike ATI were it's necessary to have to USE ATI TOOLS just to get CCC to work properly.

Originally Posted by Johnny C

CCC is easier to use than NV control panel....the only, and I mean only thing better about nV,....is nHancer and it's ability to manipulate profiles which has abso****inglutely nothing to do with nVidia.

No way, Nvidia has always had a better driver set than ATI and it's more straight forward. Now if you feel that CCC is better than I will respect your opinion but it's one I will not share until ATI rewrites there driver set to be on par with Nvidia. I don't Think ATI's drivers are crap, but I sure as hell expected more considering what Nvidia has been able to produce. Simply put, CCC has alot more issue than Nvidia's Forceware. You can say that I am incorrect but I spent alot of time reading the problems over at Rage3d and experiencing them myself.

Originally Posted by Toss3

Sorry to hear that you are having problems, but the 5870 is still a league better than the GTX 260. Nvidia's drivers are better, but without nhancer I'd give the edge to ATI.
Have you tried renaming the exe:s to UT3 or alt-tabbing out of the game and then enable AA? Which games are you having problems with?

EDIT: Forgot to mention this earlier - running d3doverrider seems to fix most of the vsync issues with ati cards.

Agreed, as I said before the 5870 is very powerful hardware no question about that. What good is this power if I can't get certain elements of it to function properly. I am tired of having to wait and see if ATI fixes it in there next driver when I can use a GTX 260 and have it all work right off the bat.

AS for Vsnyc I am aware that the 2 current options are to use; the D3Doverider from rivatuner or use ATI TOOLS which also forces Vsync.

Ultimately I think it's only fair for people to know that when moving over to ATI do not expect the same driver quality that you were getting from Nvidia. Overall for most new games the 5870 does function well, and ATI is quick to patch bugs etc... Just I have had to many issues that I expect to work since Nvidia seems not to be having those problems.

[hell_of_doom227]

Since i own two of these HD5870 i played only one game Mass Effect 2 with no AA, that's how good gaming experience is with them. By the time they released Crossfire profile for Mass Effect 2 a game was like two months old and already beat it. Bottom line -> absolute garbage.

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by hell_of_doom227

Since i own two of these HD5870 i played only one game Mass Effect 2 with no AA, that's how good gaming experience is with them. By the time they released Crossfire profile for Mass Effect 2 a game was like two months old and already beat it. Bottom line -> absolute garbage.

Would someone ban this troll already? You just needed to rename the me2.exe to ut3.exe in order to enable AA. Guess your IQ didn't allow you to do a simple google search. Also you need to enable catalyst AI to enable crossfire so I'm guessing you don't really have two 5870 at all.
Btw. nvidia didn't have an sli profile for ME2 either when it launched and there was a lot of people who had problems with SLI AA(nhancer took care of it though).

[hell_of_doom227]

Originally Posted by Toss3

Would someone ban this troll already? You just needed to rename the me2.exe to ut3.exe in order to enable AA. Guess your IQ didn't allow you to do a simple google search. Also you need to enable catalyst AI to enable crossfire so I'm guessing you don't really have two 5870 at all.
Btw. nvidia didn't have an sli profile for ME2 either when it launched and there was a lot of people who had problems with SLI AA(nhancer took care of it though).

I know that i could rename me2.exe to ut3.exe but i simply don't want to cause i paid ****ing $800 expecting from AMD/ATI to make it work without doing hacks. AI is enabled, i am saying that you couldn't do a ****ing thing with crossfire profiles, pretty much wait for ATI to release a fix. Now they have these updates on Crossfire which is still useles, they don't even say for what games and also their profiler is joke.

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by hell_of_doom227

I know that i could rename me2.exe to ut3.exe but i simply don't want to cause i paid ****ing $800 expecting from AMD/ATI to make it work without doing hacks. AI is enabled, i am saying that you couldn't do a ****ing thing with crossfire profiles, pretty much wait for ATI to release a fix. Now they have these updates on Crossfire which is still useles, they don't even say for what games and also their profiler is joke.

Well crossfire worked in ME2 from day one while SLI didn't. AA also didn't work in SLI mode(neither did it in crossfire, but ATi released a ME2 hotfix in Jan in order to fix it).
Also you'd have to be freaking lazy not to rename one little shortcut to UT3.exe instead of playing the game without AA.

[Xion X2]

Originally Posted by Stevia

Hello fellow members!

I am sick and tired of this and it's inability to force AA consistently, Vsync issue etc... while Nvidia drivers never had a problem in this area.

No offense, but I grow weary of those who expect ATI and the CCC to function just like the Nvidia control panel.

In regards to AA "not working" for Nvidia guys who have migrated to ATI...

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...66&postcount=7

AA works in most games just fine for ATI, but there's a certain way you have to set your options in the CCC. It doesn't work like the Nvidia CP where you can simply force it from the control panel in every application. ATI and Nvidia are two entirely separate companies with separate applications/implementations for graphics settings.

If you want to switch camps, that's fine, as Nvidia has some nice drivers and products. I'm just giving you the heads up that it's probably some settings that you have wrong. I've very rarely had an issue with ATI not running AA in a game or not being able to get vsync to work (no vsync is a side effect from forcing AA in the CCC when it's not supposed to be, by the way.)

In all fairness, it's not entirely the user's fault. ATI should have some sort of readme or instruction file in the driver set that explains how their AA works.