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I currently have a Radeon 5970- Its my first ATI card out of many nvidia cards in the past. I will never, ever, EVER get a ATI card again. While it might be fa

I currently have a Radeon 5970- Its my first ATI card out of many nvidia cards in the past. I will never, ever, EVER get a ATI card again. While it might be faster, the driver support is so horrible its not worth it. Crashes, lousy bugfixes, catalyst control panel sucks, etc.. Also, now that nvidia has their own eyefinity support, the only reason I had to try ATI in the first place is no longer relevant. My next card will definitely be a nvidia card. I dont care if its marginally slower than the better ATI card. Its worth it to have not hacked together software/drivers. ATI should focus on better software/drivers/etc.. and less on getting 1 extra FPS over the nvidia cards.

devtesla 16y ago
One note: catalyst control panel just got a major redesign that is actually usable. For those who don't know, in the past CCC first showed you an ad when you started it up, then made you open a menu to choose a vague sounding option, then click a tab etc. etc. Once of the most annoying pieces of software I've ever used. Now it's the standard list of categories on the left, options on the right, and the world is finally at peace.
aphexairlines 16y ago
Driver support for what? I don't see either company supporting kms, gem, wayland, etc.
- Tuna-Fish 16y ago
  AMD does help the development of the open-source radeon driver that uses kms, has been modified to use the gemified ttm (which is assumed to be a step in moving to gem support once everything fits), and certainly supports wayland. AMD also makes and supports the non-foss fglrx driver, which they cannot open-source due to licensing restrictions. The open-source driver is not yet even near to fglrx in functionality or speed, but it does seem to be slowly catching up. Some features will probably never work with the open-source drivers -- notably the video decoder, because AMD is afraid that if they release it's specs, the HDCP key embedded within can be stolen. (That this point is completely moot as HDCP is broken doesn't seem to matter to them.)
  - vetinari 16y ago
    I've always considered ATI's excuses for not providing access to certain parts of hardware to be bullshit. In past, they tried to avoid publishing specs for TV-out, due to Macrovision (or so was the excuse). In the end, it was reverse engineered, later TV-out got obsolete and today, nobody cares. ATI however grew an user base that will not purchase ATI card again. Today, they make life more difficult to those, who want to use UVD. UVD is quite simple functionality, basically you provide compressed buffer and the card decompresses it. You can put the result back to system ram, into texture, whereever, it has nothing common with the output (In theory, it may flag originally AACS-ed buffers and enforce secure video path for them, but in practice nobody cares, the pirates have better ways to capture content anyway). So they again are losing those who want to build video players for the living room due to the theoretical attack that nobody cares about. So they think Zacate will be more popular that Atom+Ion? I doubt it and quick look at xbmc forums confirms my opinion.
blastek 16y ago
Agreed. You only own ATI once.
- Silhouette 16y ago
  The trouble is, many of us can make similarly bold claims about NVIDIA, who also aren't above shipping unstable drivers, fudging benchmarks, or more recently just outright crippling the performance of their regular cards to make the workstation-class cards that cost an order of magnitude more seem more attractive. They're also heavily promoting their proprietary CUDA technology over open standards, yada yada. If a credible third party competitor came along, whose cards were fast enough and whose focus was on quality and support rather than winning every benchmark they can, I would be happy to try their kit instead of either AMD or NVIDIA next time I put together a machine. Unfortunately, as long as there are only two serious players in the game, the attitude of "never again" just means you can never build more than two PCs, which doesn't really get us anywhere.

devtesla 16y ago

One note: catalyst control panel just got a major redesign that is actually usable. For those who don't know, in the past CCC first showed you an ad when you started it up, then made you open a menu to choose a vague sounding option, then click a tab etc. etc. Once of the most annoying pieces of software I've ever used. Now it's the standard list of categories on the left, options on the right, and the world is finally at peace.

aphexairlines 16y ago

Driver support for what? I don't see either company supporting kms, gem, wayland, etc.

Tuna-Fish 16y ago
AMD does help the development of the open-source radeon driver that uses kms, has been modified to use the gemified ttm (which is assumed to be a step in moving to gem support once everything fits), and certainly supports wayland. AMD also makes and supports the non-foss fglrx driver, which they cannot open-source due to licensing restrictions. The open-source driver is not yet even near to fglrx in functionality or speed, but it does seem to be slowly catching up. Some features will probably never work with the open-source drivers -- notably the video decoder, because AMD is afraid that if they release it's specs, the HDCP key embedded within can be stolen. (That this point is completely moot as HDCP is broken doesn't seem to matter to them.)
- vetinari 16y ago
  I've always considered ATI's excuses for not providing access to certain parts of hardware to be bullshit. In past, they tried to avoid publishing specs for TV-out, due to Macrovision (or so was the excuse). In the end, it was reverse engineered, later TV-out got obsolete and today, nobody cares. ATI however grew an user base that will not purchase ATI card again. Today, they make life more difficult to those, who want to use UVD. UVD is quite simple functionality, basically you provide compressed buffer and the card decompresses it. You can put the result back to system ram, into texture, whereever, it has nothing common with the output (In theory, it may flag originally AACS-ed buffers and enforce secure video path for them, but in practice nobody cares, the pirates have better ways to capture content anyway). So they again are losing those who want to build video players for the living room due to the theoretical attack that nobody cares about. So they think Zacate will be more popular that Atom+Ion? I doubt it and quick look at xbmc forums confirms my opinion.

blastek 16y ago

Agreed. You only own ATI once.

Silhouette 16y ago
The trouble is, many of us can make similarly bold claims about NVIDIA, who also aren't above shipping unstable drivers, fudging benchmarks, or more recently just outright crippling the performance of their regular cards to make the workstation-class cards that cost an order of magnitude more seem more attractive. They're also heavily promoting their proprietary CUDA technology over open standards, yada yada. If a credible third party competitor came along, whose cards were fast enough and whose focus was on quality and support rather than winning every benchmark they can, I would be happy to try their kit instead of either AMD or NVIDIA next time I put together a machine. Unfortunately, as long as there are only two serious players in the game, the attitude of "never again" just means you can never build more than two PCs, which doesn't really get us anywhere.