5900 Ultra or 9800 Pro

[Spud1]

bouncin the point is that the problems shouldnt happen

its shoddy testing on ATI's part, they are releasing drivers that have problems with games. Its pot luck whether the latest game will work with the damn thing

[SilentDeath]

Spud1 maybe for you it is. noone else seems to be botherd. if you want to know why not all games are working fine its becuase different games need different fixes, and it doesnt work by giving each game differnt settings. if the fix for COD was applyed to all games, it might make them look crap or something - a good reson not to include it.
theres plenty of apps that you can use to try to fix it, although cant think of any apart from redline, which comes with sapphire cards - i think its available from sapphires site if you want to d/l it

[BlackSheep]

bouncin the point is that the problems shouldnt happen

its shoddy testing on ATI's part, they are releasing drivers that have problems with games. Its pot luck whether the latest game will work with the damn thing

you can't blame shoddy games development on ATI --- they have a hard nuff time testing on multiple platforms as it is, the sheer variety of devices on PCs makes it impossible to guarantee things will work with all devices, let alone with personal device settings ... Halo is just one example, by default ATI Drivers put texture quality to max - how can you blame ATI for poor development on Bungie's part for not testing with < full quality textures on ATI cards???

Besides you'll find issues with both sets of drivers, it's just that historically ATI have had more bad press for poorly written drivers - but if you look at the situation today you'll find that their drivers are extremely stable and updates are released on a regular basis to address any such games glitches - we are not dealing with consoles or Mac's here !

as a side note I haven't had any game that hasn't worked with ATI drivers - I have had a some very minor issues with a couple over the past year, but nothing major - and these have been ironed out within weeks anyway in a driver update.

[Spud1]

obviously the problems will not effect everyone, but you are missing my point

the point is that the Nvidia drivers do not throw up these problems - or at least not to the same magnitude. Nvidia driver problems are mainly perfomance related whereas ATis affect the playability of the games.

I recognise the ATIs current drivers are the most stable that they ever have been yet, and they are clearly gettin better but the point is that nvidia still have better drivers for their cards then ati do.

I don't want to continue arguing over this point, as everyone wil have a different view depending on their experiences so lets agree to disagree right? as we are clearly going off topic

[bouncin]

ive had a 5800 ultra ,5900 ultra and swapped out for my radeon 9800 pro first ati i ever bought due to people telling me about driver issues and stuff but im so glad i got it.

[chrisf6969]

I personally like Nvidia better, but all around performance the 9800 Pro seems to be a little stronger, mostly b/c its use 24bit vs 32bit Nvidia is using.

For me its a question of driver stability. I've NEVER had a problem playing any game from GF256, GF2 GTS, GF4ti4600, to currently fx5900nu. Where the driver/game bugs documentation on ATI's cards is usually pages long.

Being that you're on a 1024x768 moniter, you're going to have to turn up AA & AF to get high quality gaming. (in older games with high fps) ATI does seem to handle AA & AF better (more fps) Either card should do you fine, all the fanboy quibbling aside.

Its really just a matter of preference. The both have their weaknesses & strengths. Depends on the game, settings, driver, system, etc.

[SilentDeath]

imo its upto the game developers to get there games fixed before release. 9x00's were out before halo came to the pc, surely the developers of halo would have done some testing on decent hardware to ensure its working properly? - you cant blame the hardware manuf for dodgy coding. you certinly cant blame ati for a game that has problems on release, not only that fixes take time and can affect other games - in which case its probly bestf or the game to be pacthed instead of the drivers, if possible.
spud1 i am going to ignore your point. nvidias drivers are all they have left atm, and they aint THAT good to begin with. the performance of there cards has droped, i dont see any reson why over the next year there drivers wont drop too - i assume with dx9 gfx in games gets a lot more complicated and time consimung to test properly.

[SilentDeath]

"Where the driver/game bugs documentation on ATI's cards is usually pages long."

id like to see an example of that, show me 3 readme's in which ati cards have had a lot of mentions about bugs, where nvidia hasnt, EXCLUDING XBOX OR OTHER CONSOLE PORTS (xbox due to games being desinged around nvidia hardware with no thought of them ever running on ati cards - an example of this being splintercell - doesnt really have any problems apart form being a rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishe game in the first place, i think it used to crash before the game was patched, probly on all cards, and also any forced FSAA would make all the lights on the level shine thru everything. this was also proably all cards aswell. the shadows were probbably better on nvidia cards due to having extra option for more complex shadows, but thats about it iirc..)

[bouncin]

omg i havent tried splinter cell on the rad yet that could just change my opinion in the world of gfx cards lol