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Okay The Real Question in here!

EnderXi

EnderXi

EnderXi

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Joined
30 Mar 2009
Posts
404
So I have 2x 5870 MSI Lightnings, now frankly im getting sick of the ****ty released that ATI call drivers, I have had no end of troubles with them so I am considering selling the 2x 5870's and buying 2x 460/470 going back to the green!

Opinions and ideas, I know I am going to loose money on what I paid but seriously I have had so many crap issues with their useless drivers that I am really really regretting having bought the bloody things in the first place!

What would you say is the good nvidia card currently to compare with 5870 and which is the brand of choice?
 
Care to expand on the issues that you're actually having? I know ATI drivers are very difficult to install (all the clicking next and that).

People are often too quick to claim drivers are at fault, you could even have caused the issue yourself in a case of PEBKAC. It could be related to something else completely, you could have a dodgy PSU.

Have you tried the cards separately? What have you done to trouble shoot and eliminate the issues?
 
yeah it does seem that way, why is crossfire/SLI so damm buggy, the previous generations didnt suffer from this crap, I had 8800GTX sitting happily in my system, friends have the 260 GTX in SLI no issues same with the 4 series ATI cards they dont seem to be as bad as the current gen
 
im waiting for him to appear.........

until that time

what problems are you having exactly ?
as ive said before ( this week infact in a very very similar thread lol ) driver sets have not been an issue for my and my xfire setup, as kylew said, people are too quick to complain, yet the real issue can be something you least expect.
for the fisrt week of having my xfire setup i was not a happy chappy, laggy as hell, missing frames in games, put it down to drivers, then discovered by chance that afterburner and ccc running at the same time was causing this problem.
since then ive not really had a single issue with my cards
 
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I have tried both cards seperately (fine and dandy) I have voltage checked the PSU and its rock steady very little fluctuation (within tolerance and comparable to the reviews I have ready) I have tried over clocked and un-clocked, I have done clean windows installs, I have memtest 86 all my memory and its fine and dandy, basically my system shows no other instabilitys or problems what I get everytime I try and upgrade is the following:

Firstly I get a BSOD when installing over the drivers as recommended
Removing the drivers rebooting and reinstalling results in the same as above
Removing drivers using uninstall, rebooting into safe mode driver clean will allow me to update to 10.8 but i get the below problem:
Backlight on the monitor goes 70% dimmer (screen is dark and colours look washed out)
Crash to desktop on starcraft 2 and bad company 2 that only show up with any other drivers than 10.4

Drivers i have tried and their status:

10.1 - worked but issues
10.2 - worked but issues
10.3 - BSOD
10.4 - stable and best drivers so far trouble free apart from known bugs
10.5 - cant install at all
10.6 - works but crash to desktop on games
10.7 - same as above
10.8 - BSOD, crash to desktop

All drivers show the "decrease in screen brightness" issue if I change from the driver I first installed the screen just goes dim and washed out
 
I think it's fair to say you will have less hassle with SLI than you would with xfire IMO.
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Honestly thats what I am thinking and if I want to sell the 5870's now is the time before the 6000 series come out and push prices down even further
 
You know what I have had more issues with ATI cards since I did the switch than I had with 4 years of using nvidia cards, honestly when I have looked around at the forums I have not seen as many issue posts as I have on ATI cards.

Maybe its my perception but I am honestly VERY unimpressed with how ATI are handling their software development, its all well and good having the fastest hardware but if your software is a pile of crap then how can anyone be expected to actually USE your hardware.
 
EnderXi said:
Honestly thats what I am thinking and if I want to sell the 5870's now is the time before the 6000 series come out and push prices down even further
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Have you actually tried all this on a new windows install?

Additionally, you have checked the PSU with a voltage meter? Have you did this while loading the graphics cards? Because the voltages can drop while in usage rather than simply idle.

If you're having trouble just installing the drivers, I'd say your problems lay else where really, and also, driver sweeper/cleaner can just make things worse.

A fresh install of windows is something that you should do.
 
so whats wrong with sticking with the best drivers out of the ones you have stated ? 10.4's.

thats what im on here.
 
EnderXi said:
You know what I have had more issues with ATI cards since I did the switch than I had with 4 years of using nvidia cards, honestly when I have looked around at the forums I have not seen as many issue posts as I have on ATI cards.

Maybe its my perception but I am honestly VERY unimpressed with how ATI are handling their software development, its all well and good having the fastest hardware but if your software is a pile of crap then how can anyone be expected to actually USE your hardware.
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ATi have sold A LOT more cards than nVidia this gen and last, that's why you see more people with problems on ATi cards than nVidia ones.

But, for the most part, all these problems people are having is either user error, hardware issues, or various other problems that aren't actually driver related.
 
CaptainRAVE said:
A typical response from Raven :rolleyes:. I have had the same number of issues with SLI that I have with Xfire. The grass is always greener as they say ;)
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I think anyone neutral would agree SLI is less problematic than xfire going by all the issues peps have with xfire compared to those with SLI. Look around all the hardware forums, it's very apparent.
 
I did a fresh windows install and started with version 10.4 as 10.8 wasnt out, basically your saying I need to reinstall windows everytime I want to update my graphics drivers??

Really doesnt sound right, in terms of testing the PSU under load No I dont have the ability to do that, I used a power supply tester which means I have to disconnect the sockets from the board to test them, I dont have a voltage meter and I cant afford to buy one just to check one power supply.

If it was a power issue I would expect to see issues with my overclock and other devices in the system as I have experience no other power issues and I can rack up 100% load on CPU and graphics card with 0 errors or random shutdowns or crashes with particular drivers installed it does seem to be software, I only get problems when i try to change drivers if I stick with 10.4 the system is solid as a rock.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
I think anyone neutral would agree SLI is less problematic than xfire going by all the issues peps have with xfire compared to those with SLI
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Who exactly around here is neutral and how isn't my post? I have experienced issues with both ATI and Nvidia multi GPU setups - usually related to simple issues such as driver/hardware conflicts. Definitely try kylew's suggestions - some of those have fixed my problems in the past.
 
Honestly I find it pretty condescending when everyone blames the user rather than the software, its clear that there are issues with the drivers or there would not be so many people bitching about it everywhere, I am not a n00b to this I have been building systems since I was 14 years old (thats 16 years (showing my age I know) and I can troubleshoot my way through a problem.

Everytime I have an issue its only when I choose to change drivers, basically the added features and bug fixes are un-available to me and countless others because of some esoteric hardware configuration that we have that causes a problem with these graphics cards on certain systems with certain hardware configurations which no one can seem to identify or suggest which bit of hardware it is that causes the issue.

Personally I am thinking of trying 32bit windows again to see if its a 64bit issue which is what I think it could be, it does seem truly random though as some people have no issues and others have loads
 
Originally Posted by EnderXi View Post
I only get problems when i try to change drivers if I stick with 10.4 the system is solid as a rock.

there is your answer then
its not as if any of the other drivers give massive improvements over .4's is it
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I know but there are performance enhancements and bug fixes that I would honestly love to use but I cannot and this is highly frustrating after having spent £600+++ on a pair of these cards to be stuck using 4 month old drivers with known issues because thats "the best" the company can come up with says to me they need to spend more time working on their software
 
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