Farewell to ATI, AMD to Retire the ATI Brand Later this Year

[treemonster]

You just confirmed exactly what I said, I didn't' say amd forums specifically. You see people complaining about ati, nvidia and anything in between in tech forums. Are you really that naive? Take the blinders off and don't bother posting such useless garbage.

those forums are also open to nvidia users, and guess what, nvidia has more hardware in the wild than ati. so going by market share you'd expect there to be more complaints about nvidia hardware and drivers. but there isn't.

are you really that defensive about your precious ati? i'd wager if you did have problems you'd ignore them and fanboi away anyway, because they must be perfect. or something like that.

take the blinders off. ati drivers are ****.

[ViperAFK]

ati is not precious to me and I have both ati and nvidia cards in my computers. Everything you are saying is baseless assumptions and straw-man arguments.

You can search google and see tons of nvidia issues too. I have some small issues with ati, true, but I have also had some with nvidia. Does that mean I think all nvidia cards are bad? No. Do I post ridiculous garbage on forums about it? No.

Seriously linking to a google search result as proof that ati drivers are 'bad' is the most laughable evidence there is.

[Knife Party]

*sniff :(

[treemonster]

ati is not precious to me and I have both ati and nvidia cards in my computers. Everything you are saying is baseless assumptions and straw-man arguments.

You can search google and see tons of nvidia issues too. I have some small issues with ati, true, but I have also had some with nvidia. Does that mean I think all nvidia cards are bad? No. Do I post ridiculous garbage on forums about it? No.

Seriously linking to a google search result as proof that ati drivers are 'bad' is the most laughable evidence there is.

i linked to a specific widespread issue. did you look at what i linked to at all?

ati fanboys hate when it's brought up, and claim they never had it. and yet it was all over teh place for months until it was fixed.

i like to keep up on widespread issues for both brands.

niether brand is perfect, but i hear more about ati drivers than i do nvidia drivers. and that's why i say ati drivers are ****. and really what do you expect when they release them once per month good or bad.

[Nagisan]

niether brand is perfect, but i hear more about ati drivers than i do nvidia drivers. and that's why i say ati drivers are ****. and really what do you expect when they release them once per month good or bad.

Maybe that has to do with ATI releasing more drivers per year than nVidia (stable driver releases, not beta)? Sure nVidia may have more hardware in the wild, but ATI pushes themselves to release a new driver EVERY MONTH. Due to that schedule and a full official release which requires WHQL signing, which can take up to a week if not longer on its own, ATI has on average 3 weeks to work on issues before the next release. This is why you often see hotfixes release within days of an official release, or a public beta driver release thats release both before but NEWER than the official driver release.

Sure, both brands have their issues, but ATI is pushing themselves to give their customers regular updates. If nVidia were to do the same I guarentee you would see just as many if not more nVidia driver issues than ATI.

ATI could easily improve the quality of their drivers by slowing down the release dates, but instead they would rather push new features and updates to their customers faster, even if it means slightly lower quality drivers.

[Andre S. Veteran]

I've yet to see a Vista/7 install where the nvidia driver doesn't "stop working but has been recovered" at least sporadically (and that's when it doesn't crash the OS outright) . Have been running ATI drivers since the Radeon 9600 and just experienced my first crash ever 2 weeks ago.

Does that prove anything? Not much more than your "I hear people complaining more about ATI drivers" bull****.

really what do you expect when they release them once per month good or bad

That made me laugh. At least ATI never released a driver that fried video cards, did they? And having over a year to prepare their Vista drivers didn't stop Nvidia from being the main cause of Vista crashes at launch did it?

[Andre S. Veteran]

Anyway, back on topic. I'm a bit sad to see the ATI brand go, but that was to be expected since the company was acquired by AMD. AMD has since then been trying to simplify their naming scheme (ATI used to have cards named like ATI Radeon X1950XTX), so cutting the "ATI" bit just makes sense.

[ViperAFK]

i linked to a specific widespread issue. did you look at what i linked to at all?

ati fanboys hate when it's brought up, and claim they never had it. and yet it was all over teh place for months until it was fixed.

i like to keep up on widespread issues for both brands.

niether brand is perfect, but i hear more about ati drivers than i do nvidia drivers. and that's why i say ati drivers are ****. and really what do you expect when they release them once per month good or bad.

You honestly think nvidia cards don't have "widespread issues" too? Are you living under a rock? Nothing you posted proves anything, you are just trying to incite response and I will not dignify you with any further replies.

Anyway, back on topic. I'm a bit sad to see the ATI brand go, but that was to be expected since the company was acquired by AMD. AMD has since then been trying to simplify their naming scheme (ATI used to have cards named like ATI Radeon X1950XTX), so cutting the "ATI" bit just makes sense.

Yeah their naming scheme used to be soo bad lol. So glad they changed it starting with the 2xxx series or else by now we'd see XTX4970GTXT :pinch:.

[treemonster]

Maybe that has to do with ATI releasing more drivers per year than nVidia (stable driver releases, not beta)? Sure nVidia may have more hardware in the wild, but ATI pushes themselves to release a new driver EVERY MONTH. Due to that schedule and a full official release which requires WHQL signing, which can take up to a week if not longer on its own, ATI has on average 3 weeks to work on issues before the next release. This is why you often see hotfixes release within days of an official release, or a public beta driver release thats release both before but NEWER than the official driver release.

Sure, both brands have their issues, but ATI is pushing themselves to give their customers regular updates. If nVidia were to do the same I guarentee you would see just as many if not more nVidia driver issues than ATI.

ATI could easily improve the quality of their drivers by slowing down the release dates, but instead they would rather push new features and updates to their customers faster, even if it means slightly lower quality drivers.

i agree. i'd rather have fewer driver relases that were stable than more frequent releases that have more issues and need hotfixes.

I've yet to see a Vista/7 install where the nvidia driver doesn't "stop working but has been recovered" at least sporadically (and that's when it doesn't crash the OS outright) . Have been running ATI drivers since the Radeon 9600 and just experienced my first crash ever 2 weeks ago.

Does that prove anything? Not much more than your "I hear people complaining more about ATI drivers" bull****.

That made me laugh. At least ATI never released a driver that fried video cards, did they? And having over a year to prepare their Vista drivers didn't stop Nvidia from being the main cause of Vista crashes at launch did it?

ati had/has those exact same problems with vista and the TDR thing. just look at the thread in the amd forums about it for example. as for the driver that fried video cards, yep it happened, and nvidia pulled it quite quickly iirc. unlike bad drivers from ati that sit up for download until the next driver is up no matter how good or bad they are.

[Rigby]

I wish they would bring back the Rage brand or go to something new. Radeon is a stupid name even if they are great cards.

[clotz2000]

wow, it makes sense, but never thought that I would witness the end of the ATi brand. I remember my first ATi card - X600 Alli-in-Wonder, had that for a really long time in one of my pc's never bought a nVidia until the GTX series. I am planning on getting a 5870 here soon for the pc I just built.

[Denis W. Veteran]

ATi drivers are still ****. and they do weird stupid stuff in them

I'm not sure I'll ever buy an ATi card again just based on their retarded default uderscan/overscan setting, which to top it off is hidden in an almost impossible to find place in the driver CP. and even when you find it, when you launch a game at a different res or refresh, then it's back to the stupid underscan again... which is even more difficult to adjust since as soon as you jump out to the driver, it's back to windows settings. so you need to know exactly what the game runs on then, adjust windows to that THEN adjust it.

I thought I was the only one with a silly underscan/overscan issue with my HDTV. It doesn't help that the control panel is pants and confusing (said underscan/overscan setting is buried by clicking the down arrow beside your monitor and selecting properties or customize... but why not put it under "Displays" in the main control panel?)

[Ayepecks]

IMO, this won't be a huge deal to people on the forums and other tech sites, but for the common consumer I don't understand the logic. In the processor market, people view AMD as inferior to Intel, even though they have strong products. If you were to say "AMD" to the common consumer, they'd probably equate it to "lesser" Intel lines like the "Celeron" (even though Celerons really haven't been that bad for quite some time). ATI, on the other hand, has a fairly good brand image. Consumers are just like that.

[S7R1K3R]

Goodbye Ati...