Potentially the longest thread in history...

[PP Mguire]

Man I really want a 7950 but I don't think I can ever get another ATI card. It's either that or an Asus DirectCU II 580, the triple slot monstrosity which I can get for cheaper.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I'm the exact opposite of you guys, I don't have a single Nvidia card in use anywhere in the house and am perfectly happy with it. All of the desktops are ATi and the laptops are 100% Intel.

I'm trying to find a decent deal on an Android tablet but sadly most of them are Tegra 2 powered. I don't actually care that Tegra 2 is an Nvidia product I just want to avoid to due to it's performance.

 

[Yami]

I'm a Nvidia guy just because they've always done me well and I've never had a reason to switch to AMD.

 

[PP Mguire]

I'm the exact opposite of you guys, I don't have a single Nvidia card in use anywhere in the house and am perfectly happy with it. All of the desktops are ATi and the laptops are 100% Intel.

I'm trying to find a decent deal on an Android tablet but sadly most of them are Tegra 2 powered. I don't actually care that Tegra 2 is an Nvidia product I just want to avoid to due to it's performance.

I have had literally 7 ATI failures since 9800XT. Hard to look past that.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I have had literally 7 ATI failures since 9800XT. Hard to look past that.

How many of those were overclocked or modded?

Most of the time any failure is the fault of the OEM with the exception of all of those defective nvidia mobile cards.

 

[PP Mguire]

X1900XTX Sapphire Toxic was factory OCed and the fan died outside of the warranty period frying my card. Was not OCed. 4850s after that would not play nice 90% of the time, and the other 10% had serious microstutter. Failure of drivers, not the cards but still sold them and went 9800GTX+ SLI. 4870s, same problem, went 280s after that. Fast forward a few years and hardware configurations and I wound up with a 4890. The board was a rev 2 from XFX with the non reference ****ty egg style cooler. It would NOT OC past 10mhz on the core so I had to leave it stock. Riddle with crashs due to instability I had to downclock it and then ran into several driver issues making some games unplayable for me. A simple swap to my trust 8800GTS fixed that issue. I then gave 2 5770s a try. I was late to the 5000 game so I got again, rev 2 boards from XFX. Every single one of them had problems and I RMAd both cards twice. They would not admit a board problem so it was back to the 4890 for me, then 8800GTS. That was when I acquired the 465 at Quakecon a few years ago. I admit, the 5850 I have in my gfs PC has given no troubles yet BUT it isn't in my machine and she doesn't game much on it. I'd rather not risk it when I can get a 580 cheaper used.

By failures, I don't mean each card failed on me. I mean every time I have tried to use an ATI product it becomes a failure in the end.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

X1900XTX Sapphire Toxic was factory OCed and the fan died outside of the warranty period frying my card. Was not OCed. 4850s after that would not play nice 90% of the time, and the other 10% had serious microstutter. Failure of drivers, not the cards but still sold them and went 9800GTX+ SLI. 4870s, same problem, went 280s after that. Fast forward a few years and hardware configurations and I wound up with a 4890. The board was a rev 2 from XFX with the non reference ****ty egg style cooler. It would NOT OC past 10mhz on the core so I had to leave it stock. Riddle with crashs due to instability I had to downclock it and then ran into several driver issues making some games unplayable for me. A simple swap to my trust 8800GTS fixed that issue. I then gave 2 5770s a try. I was late to the 5000 game so I got again, rev 2 boards from XFX. Every single one of them had problems and I RMAd both cards twice. They would not admit a board problem so it was back to the 4890 for me, then 8800GTS. That was when I acquired the 465 at Quakecon a few years ago. I admit, the 5850 I have in my gfs PC has given no troubles yet BUT it isn't in my machine and she doesn't game much on it. I'd rather not risk it when I can get a 580 cheaper used.

By failures, I don't mean each card failed on me. I mean every time I have tried to use an ATI product it becomes a failure in the end.

A lot of those are OEM issues like I thought, XFX specifically seems to have given you a lot of trouble.

So far all the ATi cards I have owned are still working without issue.

 

[PP Mguire]

Oh those cards worked besides the X1900XTX which met a horrible smelly end. The 4850s were Powercolor. 1 4870 was HIS and the other was Sapphire. My XFX issues were 4890 and 5770s. For the record, I have had Nvidia XFX cards before they jumped ship and no problems. They RMAd a bios modded, volt modded (physical), highly OCed 7950GT lol.

I should point this out, this is what the guy selling me the 580 said about his 7970s.

Well I can tell you this for gaming I still like NVidia better cause the drivers for my 7970's really suck. I get all kinds of Crap on my screen playing Dirt 3 and Skrym and L4D2. I am sure the next round of drivers will be better though. It is a hard choice.

Driver problems with AMD/ATI have always been my number 1 pet peeve and I have never had problems with Nvidia cards or drivers. The hardware issues kind of were the hammer to the nuts for me.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Driver problems with AMD/ATI have always been my number 1 pet peeve and I have never had problems with Nvidia cards or drivers. The hardware issues kind of were the hammer to the nuts for me.

Oddly enough my 8800GS had the worst drivers of any card I have ever owned.

 

[PP Mguire]

XFX replaced that 7950GT with an 8800GS. Worked perfectly fine for me.