[Kazan]

j3vr6: that they don't want to admit they have bugs? absolutely not - some companies like ATI are willing to admit bugs are present and fix them [promptly

[J3Vr6]

Problem, is, you don't know what they aren't telling you.  You're basing your argument on the premise that people actually do what they claim they do.  

I'm just debating, here, so don't think I'm just being argumentative.  I was aiming for a 9800 when I read somewhere here that they're coming out with their next generation cards anyway, so I might as well wait.

What that article showed me is that all graphic cards are basically different and if you get only one you'll always have to sacrifice something.

[.::Tin Can::.]

Well you know... every time a new game comes along a new problem arises, so they have to fix something for THAT, and then another problem and something for THAT, and then THAT and THAT, and then oh, this software crashes, so we gotta fix THAT, and its just one big download fest. Of course, the strain it puts on my 56K modem is great, so Im stuck downloading one thing at a time in a period of abot half an hour to an hour.

[ChronoReverse]

@Kazan

Oh there's plenty of bugs in the nvidia drivers.  However, generally, you don't have to swap drivers to get certain games to work.


That is, the bugs seem to be of a different type (broken HQ AF mode, broken Texture Sharpen, broken image quality).

[Kazan]

ChronoReverse: if you think having games not getting along with certain driver revisions is purely an ATI thing then you're grossly mistaken

yes there are _three_ bugs there btw.. maybe four i would need to look again

[ChronoReverse]

Oh I'm perfectly aware that some driver versions of nvidia's break games.  However, it still remains that the ATi ones tends to break another game when they fix one.

They almost got everything working with the 3.x drivers.

Then they released the 4.x drivers and it all began again.



And come on, I know perfectly well that nvidia cheats and lies to the consumers.  They still generally have somewhat better drivers if (and a big if) you don't take into account the cheats.

Too bad they do cheat (albeit they've removed most of them in the newest drivers).

[Kazan]

You know that's often the game authors fault

[ChronoReverse]

You could say the same about nvidia drivers breaking games (not counting the cheats), but it doesn't matter since there *exists* a driver set that can run the game perfectly.

Who knows, maybe the catalyst drivers for the X800's will have this ironed out.

[J3Vr6]

Why can't a set standard be made that the graphic card manufacturers can use?

[Liberator]

There is, it's called the Reference Driver.  When you DL a driver directly from Nvidia or ATI that's what you get.  The VC manufacturers are unreliable at best and often lag two, perhaps three version behind.  It's also hard to get drivers from them when they seem to have forgotten that they ever made your specific card.

[ChronoReverse]

We ARE talking about the reference drivers (who uses the drivers that come with the card) and these are the drivers with bugs galore.

[.::Tin Can::.]

Can anyone name a product that, at some point, hasn't needed in any way shape or form an update of any kind? In this case I dont mean one out of an assortment of products, im talking about on particular form of product in general.

[Kazan]

there is a standard - it's called VESA, the current revision is 3.0 and supports up to 1024x768x32bpp - but no hardware accelerated openGL or directX

current microsoft ignores VESA beyond <1.X support - hence why you get 640x480x8bpp when it cannot find the driver - but you can use the generic VESA3 reference driver on linux and get 1024x768x32bpp easily -- VESA 3 also supports higher resolutions but they're not required to be supported by the card for it to be VESA3 compliant

Card manufacturers need to make up VESA4 specs that allow for the OpenGL and DirectX interfaces tot he card to use a generic instruction interface


then M$ needs to stop ignoring VESA

[IceFire]

Whats the problem with a driver update?  If people need it they get it.  Personally I'm on Catalyst 4.1 which are absolutely splendid drivers with no problems at all, no inconsistencies, no performance problems, and nothing I can complain about at all...so wheres the BS about ATI not making good drivers?  Sure there are some lemons and some that aren't as good as others but with an update schedule like theirs there are bound to be a grouping of really good driers.  The 3.4, 3.7. and 4.1 are all excellent examples of some of their best drivers and feature sets.