As some of you may read, I recently got a Radeon HD 2400 agp 8x from visiontek. If not, heres the summary: The card I have shouldn't be. Visionteks website doesn't mention the card at all and ATI's drivers won't install for it. whats happening? Well, whenever I try to play Empires or I assume any source game(I haven't tested my theory because I'm lazy.) it locks up and I need to restart my system. Enabling ATI's infinitely useful(read: 'breaks everything') 'Catalyst A.I.' provides endless amount of different fuckups.(locking when loading the MoTD website, locking on 'retrieving server info...' and 'Sending server info...'). The video card itself also fails at playing half-life, I get better performance from my IBM ThinkPad T21 in software mode then when running this machine in Directx mode. Though, it can run any other game just fine. I've ran the Bioshock demo, Oblivion, and Guild Wars without issue.(other then my CPU bottlenecking, but thats a whole other story.) I've tried re-installing the drivers, uninstalling any trace, then installing again. But that had no effect. I'm prety much resigned to takeing it back for a refund, or getting an 8x APG card from one of Nvidias models made by preferably BFG Tech. I want it to work.... But it doesn't look like it's going to happen.
Chapter 2 of what is quickly beging to look like a suicide note. Sooo.. I got the card exchanged for ATI Radeon x1650. Because it looks like it'll be a tad more stable. When I install the 7.8 drivers I just downloaded a few days ago, things already start fucking up right off the bat. So, thinking that there may be something in the cd that maby the online drivers missed(Would be a first for me, I've always just been able to download and go) I install those on top of the current drivers. Beings 2 version behind, I was going to dump a new download of 7.8 on top of it, no big deal. right? Well, the Catalyst Control Center doesn't want to load anymore, so, I have to toss on new drivers. But things seem to be working. So I start up empires to see if the issue disappeared. But lo and behold ITS STILL FUCKING THERE. I pretty much did a horizontal upgrade from a x800 for some $200 AND THIS ISSUE STILL EXISTS. But wait! theres more! I'm looking near the box for something that may help me, whats this? ITS A VISIONTEK LOGO! If I had a loaded gun, I'd use it right now. The logo was cleverly concealed in an obscure little part of the box. THANKS assholes! So yea, I'm pissed. I'm going to adhere to a strict no ATI directive. Too many shoddy companies that make what they shouldn't be. Sad thing is, I can't go Nvidia because I don't have PCI-E. I want my x800 back. It may be old. But it was made by ATI(that I know of) and despite everything, it runs things just fine. I guess I have to wait untill I can mass a few k to get what amounts to a completely new system. *sigh*
Trade in for two MSI Radeon X850s, no problems at all. As it goes with my experience, quality differs, but I never go with anything other than; - Standard ATi - MSI - CLUB3D - Sapphire
Yea, it is, maby. But if the website cant even follow up on its own products, or even have a working forums, I doubt they'll be of much Help. "Whats that? No forums?" You say? well.. there is one. It's one of those free forums you can get from the interwebs somewhere. The sad thing is, theres more botting/spam then there are actually useful posts. Thanks for the heads up Slith, I'll look for those makes, but Best Buy doesn't like to carry anything decent. I wish there was a Fry's around here... You'd think that being in a fairly medium sized city, there'd be one around here. But thats not the case.
I avoid ATI due to driver fuck ups. Honestly, they have the *worst* drivers on the face of the earth - worse than Creative IMO. Just grab a new mobo and proc with PCIe, shouldn't be that much...? Also, I just use NewEgg for my shopping needs. Subscribe to their newsletter, you get tons of free coupons on stuff - some of them useful.
You should get a Gecube x1950XT, it isnt that expensive (less than 150€) and is the best you can get for AGP. They work pretty well for me.
yeah, I've never had a problem with ATI drivers (or with the Omega ones I'm now using) They certainly aren't the worst. I bet you still have some of the drivers from the 2400 hanging around your computer somewhere, and they're causing a mixup, or source hasn't configured itself to your new hardware.
Nah, no leftover drivers, I used ati's software uninstall. Unless it actual does leave things behind... Anyways, got my old x800 back. But then a hard drive kept dying... it sounded like a "ker-click" when I could hear it spin down. After a mild case of depresion, I started to work out which drive it actualy is. The thing is, I eventualy got all 3 drives running at the same time without a single problem. No idea how that happened, but at least I don't get to deal with a dead hard drive. I don't have SM3, but shit works now. So I'm happy. Oh,and yea, I hate ATI's drivers... not the drivers themselfs, but the bloatware they're packaged with. Do they seriously believe a simple image is going to accurately portray image quality? So much waste... at least after a few clicks I get most of the options in one window... but still. It's bulky and mostly useless.
Consider yourself lucky. Tons of people come asking me why they can't play games, and then describe BSODs happening all the time. After a few minutes of digging for custom ATI drivers, they are stable again.
I met maybe 5 people that were completely unable to play with ATi, where are you pulling your rabbits out of?
College, friends, etc. And I see people complain on forums often enough. Some ATI drivers work fine, some others (well, it seems the majority) are junk. People with ATI cards have learned to not update drivers unless they need to... whereas updating nV drivers is awesome, because often you get a performance advantage.
