ATI brand (GPUs, chipsets, graphics cards) to be retired

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ The same can be said for a lot of companies' drivers.

HP not the least of them. I had Win7 get the network printer driver for my HP the last time. It doesn't include all the extra crap and actually works.

 

[Brent]

ATI really started realizing and getting their driver problems together during the Radeon 8500 series back in 2001, that is really where they started to turn... then it really set off once the Catalyst program started, once they committed to that 1 a month WHQL driver release, things turned around for them

Oh, and my very first "gaming" card I purchased in 1997 with my own money was an ATI Xpert@Play Rage Pro PCI 4MB card (upgradeable to 8MB!, yes it had an upgrade module to make it 8MB if you wanted to). The reason why I chose it was because it had the best 2D quality you could get, besides Matrox, at the time, and had superb MPEG-1 playback performance and image quality plus the ability to do 32bit color in 2D AND 3D, which was unique back then. I teamed it up with a Diamond Monster Voodoo 2 12MB video card in 1998 and had simply the best 2D and best 3D performance you could get at the time, it was the BEST combo IMO, and when you wanted to game in 32bit color (Glide only supported 16bit color in 3D remember) the Xpert@Play allowed this, though its OGL drivers were NEVER good, but I made up for that with the Voodoo.

Before that combo I had only some crappy 2D (and no 3D capable) Cirrus Logic or something, I can't even remember, been so long. I went through several cards the next few years, even used an Intel i740, had to try out that brand new shiny AGP slot I eventually replaced my Rage Pro + Voodoo 2 combo for an ATI Rage 128.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I had an S3 ViRGE, a Savage4, a Voodoo Monster, a Voodoo4, and then I leaped to a GeForce 3 128MB card. Man, that was so expensive when I bought it.

 

[Brent]

Oh, I did try a Voodoo Banshee and a Voodoo 3 3500 TV, in fact I still have my Diamond Voodoo 2 and my Voodoo 3 3500 TV, I really liked the Voodoo 3 3500 TV cause it did 2D and 3D plus had a TV tuner integrated. Oh yeah, I also tried a Riva 128, Riva TNT and Riva TNT 2 and an S3 Virge at some point as well.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

S3 ViRGE was a tremendous piece of shit. Card worked fine but performance was garbage. And no 3D support, obviously.

Remember when they used to slap "3D" names on cards that had no 3D capabilities at all?

 

[Amaris]

S3 ViRGE was a tremendous piece of shit. Card worked fine but performance was garbage. And no 3D support, obviously.

Remember when they used to slap "3D" names on cards that had no 3D capabilities at all?

Kind of like "Vista Ready".

 

[Arrqh]

I remember a few years ago the video card in my dad's PC died. So I pulled the old Voodoo 3500 out of the closet, stuck it in there and informed him that I had "fixed" it. The best part of that card was the massive dongle sticking out of it for all the video input/output plugs!

 

[Rii]

Folks with brand loyalty in the PC hardware space might as well be wearing a 'kick me' sign. Or buying Apple.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I remember a few years ago the video card in my dad's PC died. So I pulled the old Voodoo 3500 out of the closet, stuck it in there and informed him that I had "fixed" it. The best part of that card was the massive dongle sticking out of it for all the video input/output plugs!

I accidentally broke one of the capacitors off of my Voodoo4 once. I freaked out and had to hunt around to find it, which I finally did. I took a gamble and soldered it back on, and the damn thing actually still worked!

Rii is right about PC brand loyalty, though. There's so much ebb and flow in PC hardware manufacturing it doesn't make much sense to stick with one company for anything over a long period of time. I certainly don't have any loyalty to a particular hardware maker.

 

[TheBrew]

I had an S3 ViRGE, a Savage4, a Voodoo Monster, a Voodoo4, and then I leaped to a GeForce 3 128MB card. Man, that was so expensive when I bought it.

At this point, there isn't really any kind of reason to spend a lot of money on GPUs. You can buy last year's tech and save a ton of money in the long run even if you end up buying more GPUs.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I had an S3 ViRGE, a Savage4, a Voodoo Monster, a Voodoo4, and then I leaped to a GeForce 3 128MB card. Man, that was so expensive when I bought it.

At this point, there isn't really any kind of reason to spend a lot of money on GPUs. You can buy last year's tech and save a ton of money in the long run even if you end up buying more GPUs.

Yeah, pretty much. There's no need to be bleeding-edge anymore considering there are almost never games that require it.

 

[Brent]

My loyalty is to whatever is the best at a given time, if that's NV fine, if that's ATI/AMD fine, whatever is the best right now, so it changes

 

[Owain Taggart]

No, AMD bought them a couple years ago, I think. ATI was its own company for quite a long time. They used to have seriously shit drivers, but have improved quite a bit in recent years.

Yeah, they were a Canadian company before AMD bought them out a few years ago.

My first 3D card was a Diamond card with an S3 chip, and the performance was so bad, it actually slowed things down. I called it a 3D Deaccelerator.

 

[Amaris]

I'm using a Radeon HD4670 and love it.

 

[SPCTRE]

^ This is a nostalgia thread, shoo

My first 3D graphics card outside of onboard crap was a Creative 3DBlaster Riva TNT 2 Vanta (PCI).

 

[Amaris]

^ This is a nostalgia thread, shoo

My first 3D graphics card outside of onboard crap was a Creative 3DBlaster Riva TNT 2 Vanta (PCI).

I nostalgia'd all over the place, and now I'm trying to clean it up with some relevance.

 

[SPCTRE]

^

 

[tsforbeck]

I used to have an account...Dunno what it is now but I still Lurk...and since this is a nostalgia thread.....

Anyway my first 3d card was a 3dfx Monster3D made by diamond....beat that.
Anyway I eventually went to a Monster 2 for the original SLI.
Was great for running the 3dfx version of mechwarrior 2 Mercs.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I used to have an account...Dunno what it is now but I still Lurk...and since this is a nostalgia thread.....

Anyway my first 3d card was a 3dfx Monster3D made by diamond....beat that.
Anyway I eventually went to a Monster 2 for the original SLI.
Was great for running the 3dfx version of mechwarrior 2 Mercs.

I already beat you on that one--I had the same card (Diamond Monster.)

 

[Brolan]

My first ATI card was the Mach 32 in my Gateway 2K 486 DX2 66.