After sticking with nVidia since I had my last ATI (an X800XT plat, which incidentaly died), I've avoided ATI like the plague. I work as a tech in a PC shop and have seen more ATI cards fail on a regular basis than I've seen crappy rainy weather, and I live in the west cost of Scotland...

After having been away from my PC for a couple months I returned to it to find my PSU had blown and taken my precious PNY GeForce 285 with it. I was obviously gutted and after 2 months of withdrawl symptoms I took the only option I had that would get my PC up and running without a 2 week delay (waiting for Return/RMA to the distributor). So I put balls to the wind and got myself an ATI 5870, reading good reviews for it and going in contrast to my gut feeling that all ATI cards are unreliable pieces of crap.

3D performance, pretty good, but can't say that it's much better than the 285, considering how much newer it is. However..... 2D performance? F**ked. The RAMDAC is typically for ATI (in my experience), faulty as a faulty thing. So, I'm back to having to do a SECOND F**KING RETURN, all because I didn't use my own experience and instinct.

Moral of the story? Like I've been saying for years. ATI suck at making reliable GFX hardware.

So, honestly, how many of you have had ATI cards that failed or had a fault develop over the last few years?

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

Not once.

Not one return ever, or one develop artifacts/tearing/glitching because of the crappy PCB layout that leads to the "amazing" quality memory on them burning out anytime after 12months (most often around 18months)...?

Do you ever keep the same card for 2 years or more?

I quite literally had to do RMA's and returns for EVERY SINGLE (not a hint of exaggeration) X1*** card we sold in the shop and gave up entirely on ATi when the 2*** series starting coming back from customers aswell...

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

My card is not old enough to have real hardware issues. Im pretty fed up with the drivers though.

ATI cant make their drivers update the version number in the control center correctly.
They cant make an installer that works on a fresh Win7 installation. You have to install some framework from !2003! yourself to make the installer work.


Next card will be Nvidia again.
Even with the coolers turning off.

I had an ATI once couldn't even play FEAR on it and that was on it's lowest settings. Can't remember which ATI it was but I thought I'd try it and FAILED. But that was in my laptop which was very expensive and supposed to handle games like that.... obviously all lies. I could play Half life on it... again on low settings...

...then I bought myself a real PC and stuck an NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ in it and never looked back

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Classy is when a woman has everything to flaunt, but chooses not to show it!

Cooler problem was fixed within 24hrs, ATi drivers are still doing my head in, almost more than they were six years ago...

I'm even trying the beta for 10.3a but finding I have no love for it. If it were a physical object I may set fire to it.

Once this is returned I'm borrowing a GeForce250 (just to keep me going) until the 3XX series from nV are out.

When I was fitting this 5870, I was actually quite excited and hopeful that it would make me change my mind about ATI...

I'm getting tearing in IE, Chrome, the START menu... I mean F F S !!!!!

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

Had a x850xt, lasted like 5 years. Then had a 3870, which was good, but not powerful enough. Switched to Nvidia just because it was the best price/performance ratio at that point. So, I haven't really had problems with either manufacturer.

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

So this is exactly my problem:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1460275

I've now replaced what I thought was a faulty card with another identical. Same problem.

Well done ATI/AMD driver team. You fucking suck huge grim balls you useless fucktards.

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

You are an nvidia fanboy planting FUD.

The screentearing issue got fixed with a hotfix before last the last driver. I'm assuming its packed in the new release.

Tried:
9.11
9.12
10.1
10.2
10.3a beta
All the same.

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

I should point out that there's absolutely no screen tearing when It's in full 3d. It only appears in windows (doing absolutely anything, even the start menu) and during the Menu sections of certain games. Going to try a new Mobo to see if it's a chipset incompatibility glitch...

Hard to be a fanboy of any brand when you work in IT and see everything change every few years. I was here doing tech work before there was an nVidia. I remember putting a Matrox Millenium (2d card only) in my 2nd PC to replace my "awesome 2mb" S3 Trio (i added the extra 1mb, wooooo, lol). So I was genuinely hoping ATi were going to prove my gut instinct wrong...

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

Running ATI for years now. One card failed after being 4 years old, but the overall system was buggy back then. My current 1900 XT is now a couple of generations old, runs still fine and now starts to be to old for the new games.

Go buy a 480 if you're such a NV fanboy.

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SaintK: I'm completely lost

At least it will lower your heating bill.

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Ok, so it's all confirmed... I've escalated this into the upper realms of AMD/ATi Europe, who have no solution.

It's pretty much all users of 5850/5870/5890, using Win 7 and a dual monitor setup.

It happens as the memory speeds change between the 6+ different power settings. Every change causes massive tearing, which is why when you actually play a game and the speeds are stable, there's no tearing.

I've tried with CCC profiles and MSI Afterburner (rivatuner) to solve this but none fixed it.

The eventual solution (after massive amounts of time wasted trying about 40 different other fixes) was to save my 5870 bios onto my PC, open it with RadeonBiosEditor and manually set the various memory clocks to the default gaming speed (1200/1250mhz), re-save the file and then flash the 5870 bios.

This has fixed it, but makes the card idle at a stupidly high temperature and will obviously shorten the lifespan of the memory, but at least I now have a stable image...

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

Well, that's a bit ridiculous

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

My sister bought a fucking 5770 from ATI, its a total piece of shit.
It just crashes your pc randomly for no reason.
The whole 5000 series seems to have this problem with no official solution, at least thats what you find when you google a bit. Often it runs without a problem but sometimes you can just kick the card in the trash.
Never again will I touch an ATI unless an Nvidia melts my face!

And now it looks like I may be helping ATi UK to solve this problem (though they haven't even officially acknowledged it yet...).
Hopefully they'll offer me a stunning big bucks job! More likely another graphics card... Doh! Heheh

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

I have had ATI exclusively for 7-8 years now. Have never had a problem.

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<@Howard_s> usa just has a made up economy - they can't really go broke

JuncoPartner: I could barely hold it up for long.

So many ATi owners say...

I used to use ATi up until the X800 which was my last.

Gotta remember that I work building and fixing PC's in a shop, and I've seen the ratio of failed ATi cards in comparison with nVidia, and it's just not funny...

Which utterly sucks. The point is we'd ALL rather buy ATi if they were cheaper AND better, but cheaper plus better usually means worse in some other area... In this case it's reliability.

The other thing to consider is that when you read a review from a website or a magazine, they haven't been running the card for 12+ months, my customers have... That's a HUGELY important factor. I was already skeptical of ATi because of the first batch of 9500/9700/9800 series cards that started to get returned to the shop anytime after a year of the customers having them. At that point ATi were giving a 5 year warranty with their cards; as soon as the next generation came out the warranty "mysteriously" dropped to 2 years, and then to 1 year for many manufacturers... I don't know about you, but that lack of confidence in their own hardware was a bit of a telling factor to me!

The 5*** are amazingly fast for their price, I in no way deny that. I do however say that their drivers and long-term reliability both blow goats.

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

x850xt rocked my socks

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Yeah my X800 was actually a downgraded 850XTE, just needed a BIOS flash to unlock the extra goodies and it flew!

Well, it flew for about 2 years, by which time I'd sold it on to a friend and it failed on him

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

I have my very first ATI PC with 785G and 5750. And I love it. Its cool, fast, stable. Just like Nivida. So what the heck with this fanboyism and flamerish? If ATI would blow cock that much (I would have bought it earlier) it would have vanished from the market long ago.

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ATI 5000 series problems reported since late january

ATI Radeon Graphics
19 threads on first page, they are at most 1 day old, 4 seem to be directly related to the above problem, 3 are no real problems or upgrade questions, leaves 12 for other problems.

GeForce Graphics Cards
First 19 threads, 1 day old at most, only 7 with problems.

Taking these small samples and deducting anything about the quality of any company is left to the reader.

Yeh and every firmwareupdate blows up the x360, ps3 and wii. And I heard if you put your pc into a refrigerator it will bake vanilla ice for you.

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Furbys can say your name if you thrown them into your bathtube filled with water.

You guys are entirely missing the point.

I'm a retailer and IT technician. I sell components and build PC's with the components that are the best value. I make more money that way.

We sold ATi and nVidia when I started. After the GeForce3 series, we mostly sold ATi. Then when nVidia did the 6000 series we sold a lot of both manufacturers and then by the time the 7000 series came out we were selling almost nothing but nVidia because of the failure rate of ATi's (we were losing money because of returns and refunds, that's not clever business I think you'll agree).

I went back to ATi on this (my 2nd) 5870, because the price to performance ratio was/is excellent. However my experience with it and now having spoke to ATi management (who almost refused to acknowledge it as a problem), led me to rant about it here.

I'm not a fanboy of any brand, I simply go with what's the best product for my needs or for the customer, on the market at the time.

I used AMD processers from the K6-2 up until the Core2Duo came out, why? Because they were better performing chips (per £) than Intel were making during that time. However the Core2 was enormously better than AMD's multi-cored processors at that time, so I've stuck with Intel. I wasn't an AMD fanboy in those years, and I'm not an Intel fanboy now. My next CPU may well be AMD because they have nice overclockable chips for a great price.

The people who react to this saying I'm an nVidia fanboy are almost all ATi owners right now by any chance? Your reactions to my simple statements of fact and conclusions, show me that it's you people who're the fanboys, no?


:So quick list of every card I've had in my own system:

TNT2, GeForce2 GTS, GeForce2 Ultra, GeForce 3 Ti200, GeForce 3 Ti500, GeForce 4800, GeForce 4600, Radeon 9500pro, Radeon 9700pro, Radeon 9800pro, Radeon X800, Radeon X850XTE Platinum, GeForce 7950, GeForce 8800gts, GeForce 9800, GeForce 260, GeForce 285, Radeon 5870 (two of).

Does that like the history of a fanboy or is it (and it is) someone buying the best product on the market at the time?

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

Mate. Sometimes shit just fails. I've got to replace a washing machine that's less than a year old. Does my fuckin' nut in but it's just the way things are.

When it comes down to it, some parts last forever, defying logic and reason, and some just don't. I have an 8800GT that I never expected to go the distance but it's still there. Hell, I've got an Xbox 360 from 2006 that by all logic should have died on me a long time ago. ATI might make shit cards but nothing is set in stone. Crappy architecture doesn't always fail.

Woohoo, RMA's my 2nd 5870, got a GeForce 470 for many £'s less, got a stable system again; quiet and displaying properly and somehow even getting more performance in all the games I've tried so far... (actually they may all be PhysX enabled, so that would explain the higher performance in them)

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Six weeks -by- Third Rail ...Please share...

My ATI system is still running quiet, low power and fast.

And there are about 5 PhysX games ever released.

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