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Anyone with a 48xx and Vista 64?

My X2 seems to have got totally screwed now. Had a massive BSOD crash most probably due to drivers and now immedaitely after i try and run a game the system crashes and restarts. But desktop is fine.
Reinstalling Vista or using different drivers does not help, nor does system all at stock speed. How much do you want to bet when i try my NV card it will be fine (again)...

Fed up of ATI crap. Been up all night reinstalling Vista and everything, which i've done about 4 times now since i went ATI.
First my 4870 goes back due to these joke Vista 64-Bit drivers, and the X2 has the same "display driver stopped responding" problem but way less, i could have lived with it... but now it seems these drivers may have broke the X2 somehow... either way it's not running anything 3D now.
Going back for a refund.

Seriously cannot wait intil NV release there 55nm GTX 280 shrink.

Right so, just installed a old 8800 GTS 320MB i got off my mate, works fine, no surprise there.

So to put this into perpective, i've now used in my own system (this is getting stupid):

Nvidia cards : 8500GT, 8800GTX, 9800GX2, GTX 260, GTX 280, and now 8800 GTS 320MB.
- All work perfect on Vista 64-Bit.

ATI cards : 4870, and 4870X2.
- Both have "display driver stopped responding" problem. The X2 also has this problem in another Vista 64-Bit system i tried it with.
Now X2 is basically dead and wont run anything 3D.

Then theres the little fact that i've been building and selling PC's for about 14 months now, have built over 100 of them, mostly with NV 8400 and 8500's (there cheap PC's) and all have been fine and worked properly with the Nvidia hardware. These are all different setups too, AMD/Intel, XP/Vista, Dual/Quad core.

Now i finally use ATI again since a 2900 (which had problems with Vista too for about 3 months after release), and i get all this trouble....



Nvidia = 106+

ATI = 0


Personally i hate both companies, but atleast NV release stuff that actually works on Vista. For XP ATI seems fine... but with Vista it's completely hit and miss.
 
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Personally i hate both companies, but atleast NV release stuff that actually works on Vista. For XP ATI seems fine... but with Vista it's completely hit and miss.

Funny as i remember that it took NV 6 months to get worthwhile drivers out for vista on the 8800.

I have been on vista from release using ATI and it has never been hit and miss for me as its a matter of timing that you just don't seem to grasp.
If you had gotten a 8800 at the wrong time then you would be worse off than you are now.

Jumping on the cutting edge is hit and miss that does not translate into that tech will always have problems from here on in or if that was the case then i would be having much more problems with 3x3870 , but i don't because of things maturing & if i do get the 48xx range i will benefit 2 fold as the drivers will be more mature & more problems ironed out just like the 37xx range before them & i will get it cheaper as well.

The NV cards after the 8800 had far less tech changes than the ati cards from the dx10 2900-4XXX so ATI will have more to redo driver wise.
The 3xxx is close to the 2900 so had less of a problem 3xxx-4xxx is a bigger jump than 2900-3xxx & the ati cards being overall technically more advanced except for the soon to be added physics.

NV 8800 to cards now is not really tech change but just die shrink & more of the same on it so have less re writing to do.

Constantly innervating will always bring more problems at first than just doing more of the tried & tested & the same goes for AMDs CPU range with going native quad first that brought them loads of problems where intel used tried & tested & slaps 2 duals together.
 
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Shame that you had to find out the hard way MR.B.

I've not had an ATI card in a while but it pretty much sums up my past experiences, when I think of ATI I think good cards, lousy drivers and horribly loud fans which is why I've been so reluctant to return in recent times.

I'd like to see ATI focus less on winning benchmarks and more on creating a stable set of drivers and a decent quiet cooling system, can't really fault their pricing but at the moment "you get what you pay for" is very much applicable.
 
Thing is not all ATI users have problems with the drivers, a select few like the above poster do, i put this down to bad hardware combination's or a poorly maintained OS, honest to god, i have never had a problem with ATI or NV drivers.
 
Shame that you had to find out the hard way MR.B.

I've not had an ATI card in a while but it pretty much sums up my past experiences, when I think of ATI I think good cards, lousy drivers and horribly loud fans which is why I've been so reluctant to return in recent times.

I'd like to see ATI focus less on winning benchmarks and more on creating a stable set of drivers and a decent quiet cooling system, can't really fault their pricing but at the moment "you get what you pay for" is very much applicable.

That because you choose to change at just the wrong time & that tends to happen allot when people change gfx brand & jump on in the teething stages at release because they see wow reviews just like when the NV8800 came out & people suffered for 6 months on vista but its cream cheese now.
 
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Thing is not all ATI users have problems with the drivers, a select few like the above poster do, i put this down to bad hardware combination's or a poorly maintained OS, honest to god, i have never had a problem with ATI or NV drivers.

Allot of what you say is about right as enthusiasts love to play until they unknowing bork something & its never their fault & on top of that jump on to early & pay the price in cash & headache.
 
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Yup - to confirm I've had 2 of these black screen blips/ driver stopped responding crashes also since last Thursday, and this is on a totally clean install of vista 64. Both times have been when i was just on the desktop.

Have to say I'm a bit woried about this, and having been with nvidia for the last 5 years or so, I'm also very worried about the quality of ATI's drivers. They seem like a bit of a shambles having done some more investigation. I can't believe they've released a flagship card like this and haven't released a set that works properly, and nails everything. (I've tried the ones on the CD that came with the card and am now on the 8.8 betas.)

NVIDIA have experienced the same issues...stop over dramatising it.
 
Vista x64 and 4850 dual monitor setup here too and I've also been experiencing the atikmdag.sys crashes. These had been fairly infrequent but ramped up a lot after installing the 8.8 Catalysts last week. Based on some of what I've read here I've disabled Aero and installed the KB953186 hotfix, after a clean install of Windows. Still running the 8.8 drivers with CCC installed. Touch wood it hasn't crashed yet.
 
Works fine

Sapphire 4870 overclocked to 790mhz and 1000mhz running on Vista X64 Ultimate. Not had a problem at all. Used 8.6, 8.7 and 8.8 drivers. Connected via DVI to Samsung 206BW. Great card, fast and beautiful. S1 accelero installed with 120mm fan and Thermalright rear cooler 33c idle 38/40c load.

Came from an 8800GTS 512mb. Used to have ATI X1800 then switched to Nvidia 8800gts 320mb then 8800gts 512mb. Always preferred ATI but even way back when with the X1800 people still complained about ATI drivers over Nvidia.

What has been said before though is ATI always seem to offer newer versions quicker than Nvidia not saying thats a good thing but would generally suggest ATI will release fixes quicker as and when made whereas Nvidia save them up for a major release. Maybe just down to release schedules.
 
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I'm getting fed up on the whinging so I'm clicking unsubscribe.

Any of you lot actually had the presence of mind to log a bug report with ATI?
 
I'm not overdramatising anything, just telling my experience. I didn't have this problem with nvidia. End of story.

You are when your generalizing ati have bad drivers & your lack of ATI experience over the previous 5 years & based everything just on your short experience & one new tech generation & ignoring all the problems that others have with NV over the years like it never happend.
 
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Funny as i remember that it took NV 6 months to get worthwhile drivers out for vista on the 8800.

I have been on vista from release using ATI and it has never been hit and miss for me as its a matter of timing that you just don't seem to grasp.
If you had gotten a 8800 at the wrong time then you would be worse off than you are now.

Do you work for ATI or what? Your always defending them... coming up with some excuse, and having a go at people who have this problem, as if it's there fault ATI cant make working drivers.

And i had a 8800GTX from Vista release, and the drivers caused crashes for about the first 2 weeks, then a driver update fixed this issue for me and many others, and everything was fine. Like i said, i've made 100+ system with NV cards since Vista since release, no problems (apart from GTX for first 2 weeks).
 
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You are when your generalizing ati have bad drivers & your lack of ATI experience over the previous 5 years & based everything just on your short experience & one new tech generation & ignoring all the problems that others have with NV over the years like it never happend.

All I'm going off is MY OWN experience. What else am I to base my user opinion on, you clot.
I haven't said it's the same for everyone, and I have no brand loyalty, I just buy the supposed best at the time, which for the last few years just happens to have been nvidia.
 
Can i ask some of you who also have this problem, to fill in the Windows Vista Driver Feedback form on the AMD site (top of page. i've done it already).

I'm sure ATI are well aware of this issue, it's been around so long and enough people have it... but every bit helps i guess.
 
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