ATI - Drivers always buggy?

[Glydme]

A few years ago, I bought the very first ATI All-in-Wonder card when it first came out. The driver and software was never quite stable over the lifetime of that card and I have avoided ATI cards since that time. Now ATI releases another card with unstable drivers that I am considering purchasing (for the dual-monitor ouput). My question is: In the past few years, has ATI been turning out highly stable drivers and software? ie Will the 8500 *eventually* get good support or will it always suck?


Thanks

 

[Matisaro]

It is possible, they have promised to commit to make their drivers very stable and fast. They did release not fully functional, and in the case of xp and 2k, very unstable drivers on release.

ATI has a track record of poor drivers, and it is really up to you to decide if you wish to trust them or not.

~Matisaro~
"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
~Tbird1.3@1.5~

 

[bront]

Actualy, the Win2K drivers have been quite stable. The only instability I ever had with mine was to turn on Fast AGP Writes, and that was only with 1 app. Other than that, my Radeon 8500 has been more stable than my old Geforce 2 MX. However, I have changed out other hardware since then too, so that may have more to do with it than anything else.

60 FPS, 70 FPS, 80 FPS Crash!
Daylight comes and I have to go to work :frown:

 

[reapur]

That's really why I won't buy ATI. You're observations about their drivers is correct. They're not really committed (IMHO) to quality drivers. Ever since they lost their market to Matrox way back when, they've been trying to grab the market at any cost.
Ever since I D/L coolbits and got the refresh rate fix, I haven't had any complaints. My GF2Ultra never crashes and it's fast and looks awesome. I'm not a benchmark person, I don't really care about charts, as long as it's fast for me.... I just upgraded from a voodoo2!!!
I'll sacrifice a few winmark points for better reliability, but I'm funny like that