I just don't get it. The Radeon 4850 and 4870 get glowing reviews, yet I read tons of posts where people are having issues in a lot of games. Crashing instability and whatnot. ATI still does not have 'official' drivers for either card available on their site. They do have a hotfix driver that has had limited success, from what I can determine.

Why hasn't this been an issue for reviewers? Why is no one making a HUGE stink over the fact that these cards were knowingly shipped and sold without stable drivers? Is this some kind of fan boy cover up?

I have read over and over about how much of a better value the ATI card is, but how can that be if it doesn't work in the games I play and ATI can't provide timely driver support. The last ATI card I owned was a 9800 pro and I loved it, but ATI has always been a bit lackluster in the driver department.

NVidia on the other hand seems to be very good with driver support. At least I have never really had issues running games on the NVidia platform.

Is ATI more for the 'tweaker' crowd of people? People who don't mind having to tinker with drivers and settings to get a game to run.

Honestly, I just want to play a game without crashing or other graphical issues. I would gladly take a card that was 5 fps slower, if it was stable in the games I play. I am still running at 7900 GTX, but I have never had a single crash in any game with it.

I am looking for an upgrade, but I would need a pretty compelling reason to switch to ATI at this point. From an outsider perspective, it just seems that they have good hardware with bad software support. Am I crazy?

I think you're overestimating the problem. Yeah I see a couple of 'Help, my 4xxx card isn't working!' threads every now and again, but I don't think it's that bad. Also take into account that almost as many people cry out for help regarding every other kind of card.

Also take into account that people who come here to Tom's are either hobbyists, enthusiasts or people who don't know much looking for help. However you look at it, those three groups of people will always have problems. Hobbyists and enthusiasts will have trouble making something work with a PC that they made because it's comprised out of so many different parts that you're almost bound to have problems somewhere along the line, even if you did everything perfectly. Factor in things like experience, OCing, age of components, bad parts, etc and you see what I mean.

Then for the people who aren't as tech savvy, they want the new and good stuff, but don't know much about it. So for those kind of people it's even harder to make things work since they aren't as up to speed on things and explanations from experts can only help so much.

Then among all those people you'll always have the fanbois, the people who never have problems, the people who always have problems, the people doing this crazy mod and the people doing this and that and so much more. There's really so many variables that it's hard to pinpoint the problem every time and even harder to pin blame on a specific product (i.e. HD 4xxx series).

You also have to remember that the HD 4xxx series is new. They only released like a few weeks ago, you have to give ATi some time. Doesn't help that ATi likes to use new technology too. You've got 55nm tech, GDDR5, a restructured architecture, a dual-GPU card w/ hardware scaling coming. ATI's got a lot of new stuff to deal with on their hands and you have to expect some problems and give them time to work it out, it's kind of how ATI's always been. Hell, I'm impressed with their progress given how much they like to fiddle with new tech. And I wouldn't say Nvidia doesn't have its fair share of problems either. Or perhaps it's more like for everything Nvidia is better at than ATi, ATi is better at some other aspect than Nvidia. So in the end, it sorta balances out anyway.

Yes you are. It isn't being made into a big deal because people with the cards must not feel it's a big deal. In fact, why did you even make this post. You have no experience with the ATI cards yet you make a post complaining about their drivers and say their is some fan boy cover up, but your whole post sounds like a massive nvidia fan boy whine.

As far as drivers go, I think both nv and ATI are even, but ATI does actually come out with new drivers every month unlike nvidia.

Valid question. Google and download Catalyst 8.7 Beta. No issues in Crysis, COD4, etc. Price/performance wise this is THE card to get. Why do you think Nvidia is dropping prices for GX260/280? And if you already bought one of them, they are giving you a refund check. So, this is serious business. ATI finally delivered.

I think it's because Ati rushed the cards, that's why it's always wise to wait before purchasing, getting caught in the hype will always mean paying more and having more problems.

But anyway, the problems are surely blown out of proportion too, the number of people having trouble with their 4xxx series musn't be that much bigger than with any other card.

Anyway, in a few months the drivers will be more stable and the cards will be cheaper, so no big deal IMO.

Easy there Pedro... I thought the OP brought up a valid question. I have seen numerous posts here with people having problems with the new ATI cards. I'm sure that's true for all hardware, but it is always something to think about when you're about to make a purchase.

You are overstating the driver issues. The cards work, so you are way off base to say they don't. Also, you will find some fools who don't bother to upgrade their drivers.

If you buy a brand new graphics card, you have to expect that the first few driver releases are going to iron out some bugs - it is mandatory. That is part of the BENEFIT of buying a new card, you know that you might see performance increases of 10 or 20% across the board. On occasion you will see performance increases of much much higher as drivers are optimized.

If you don't want to deal with that, buy the same old cr@p from nvidia and you will be getting a card that has been sorted for the last 2 years. I believe they are rebadging the 8800GT as the 9800GT (and increasing the price), so that is always an option.

BTW - the 4850 is the card to get. If you go with nvidia because you believe their drivers are better, you are crazy. Nvidia has problems, just like everyone else. Buy the faster card (the 4850) and make sure you use the latest driver bundle.

One look, One Look, I dont think so!

No you are not crazy..... (Well I can't say that I don't know you plus I may be crazy so... If I am you are

ATI has the hotfix but waiting for 8.7 to support the 4800 series.

1Haplo

It is great that a leaked beta driver is now available that solves the issues. However didn't the 4850 hit shelves like a month ago? What drivers shipped in the box? It is one thing to ship a product and then discover that there are compatibility issues, but it is entirely different to ship a product knowing that it has issues.

From what I can gleen, some reviewers used old drivers that may have disabled some of the newer functionality when reviewing these cards. Other reviews used "press drivers", I guess I would like to have seen reviewers forced to use the driver that came in the box.

I work in the software industry, and I just found this to be disturbing. Granted, it seems to be a growing trend.

To the flamer, the reason I am posting this is that based on reviews I ordered a 4850. I then found out that it was having issues in several of the games that I played. It was only then that I discovered the driver issue (or lack there of). This prompted me to send back the card unopened. I decided that I would just stick with my current card and see how things play out.

The bottom line is that I feel like reviewers have a responsibility to alert consumers to issues, serious or not. Again, perhaps the only way this will be possible is to only review off the shelf products and use the drivers that shipped with them. Reviewing a card sent from the manufacturer with drivers they provide may lead to results inconsistent to what a consumer would have.

i have the 4850. playing GRID and COD4 smoothly, with no single crash down. im happy with it. n im using the hotfix drivers.

Yes, creating an account to post this, you bet.
Verges on a troll thread to say the least, especially with the 'official drivers' cry of the nVidiot who survives on Betas, made even more comical considering your assumptions and lack of knowledge/experience.
And that you ask for no graphical issues and say you run a GF7900 makes me laugh.

Yet the most major look at driver quality found nVidia to be lacking in a far greater number than anyone one else, even when potential install base was factored in;
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/po [...] ivers.html
If you have something similar from a neutral third party supporting your claim, I'd be more than happy to see it.

Well, and there are people in the forums who've never 'really' had issues running ATi platforms.
Personally I have had issues with both, which to me means I'm doing more with them that you are, but may that's my perception of the issue. And your running a GF7900 without noticing or knowing about the problems associated with the platform leads me to believe our levels of tolerance or even LOD are different.

To answer the underlying question to anyone reading your thread, BOTH the GTX2xx and HD4K series have their early issues, the main reasons there's more HD4K complaints than GTX2xx complaints is the same reason there were more GF8 complaints than HD2K and HD3K complaints.... more owners/sales.

I have 2 4850's in a crossfire configuration. Here are the issues I ran into while installing

1.) Nvidia's POS drivers did not uninstall correctly, which means I had to manually uninstall their drivers. The first time I tried to install the ATI drivers, I apparently did not completely remove the Nvidia drivers and ran into a number of problems.

2.) Used Driver cleaner programs to get the last bit of nvidia's drivers off of my system.

3) Uninstalled ATI drivers, ran driver cleaner program again to remove ATI driver remnants. Rebooted, reinstalled Catalyst 8.6 and then the Hotfix.

The cards have been working fine, albeit there is still room for improvement in the drivers for these cards. Hardware also plays a role, as my 5600+ seems to be holding these cards back quite a bit.

And to the OP, sorry I had to laugh when you said Nvidia had good driver support. True, there was a time when Nvidia would release updates monthly, and it was great when they did that. For the last couple of years, however, Nvidia's driver updates (for my old hardware, at least) had been few and far between. My AMD 590 SLI, for example, got one driver update in 8 months, and it fixed very little. If you do a search, you will find allegations that Nvidia simply stops writing driver updates for their older products to encourage people to buy new cards (specifically the G92). I have no idea how true this is, but I have seen this first hand with my 590 board and the 8800 gts 320. As soon as newer hardware comes out, your hardware stops geting driver updates.

I used to be a stuanch Nvidia supporter, but since the driver problems with Vista, the lack of support during that whole issue, and the lack of support in general, I am switching over to AMD for this round. From what I've seen so far, I made a good choice.

Wait a second.

You sent back the card because of supposed issues with the games without even trying it first?

I'm also have a 4850 and it has been rock solid. I just made two profiles in Catalyst Control centre to control fan speeds. One for idle and one I have manually set the fan to 65% for gaming. Haven't had a single problem with this card and I have all settings maxed for every game I have (Crysis, Mass Effect, Assasins Creed, Grid). Granted I'm still using WinXP Pro but still works awesome.

Any person who knows a computer is not just a wizard inside a case knows that you NEVER use the drivers that come with the card. I'll be a flamer too because you are being totally illogical and biased. My first build EVER was with a 7600 GT and I had unfortunately used the packaged drivers and pretty much nothing worked on the card, guild wars, oblivion, FEAR, Doom 3, Quake 4, and HL2. Everytime I build a computer the software packaged with the video card is always one of, if not THE, earliest releases regardless of how old the card is. ATI is not shipping out cards that knowingly do not work, they are shipping cards that are slightly harder to get working, like ALL new cards. MOST of the problems people have with the 4850/70 is that they either do not have the cooling or power to run the card, or they did not completely uninstall and then totally erase the old drivers before installing new ones, NOT ATI'S FAULT. It is only your dumb fault that you sent back a 4850 unopened, if you would have put a leash on your Nvidia fanboy side then you would have had no problems in FIXING whatever compatibility issues that MIGHT have arises. Considering your entire post I actually doubt you ever even ordered a 4850, surely no one could send back a card because of RUMORED issues and not first TRY the card, no one is that foolish surely. Oh, by the way I just built a system for a friend with a 4850 and it plays everything from Fallout to Age of Conan, without ANY problems. His system specs:

E7200 @ 3.4 with an Xigmatek HDT-s1283, Abit P35, HIS 4850, 4GB Mushkin DRR2 800 Mhz RAM, Corsair 550HX 550w, Cooler Master 590, Samsung 500GB Spin point F1.

Yeah, I sent back the card without trying it because it had an exchange for the exact same card return policy. The only way I could get a refund was to send it back unopened.

Valid post and I thank you for it. I like reading all of the responses to it too. The 4850/4870 drivers are an issue and the cards do run hotter (80c - 90c) leading me to question how long they will last before it cooks itself to death. Other ATI cards run hot and some Nvidia cards run hot too. This is the sole reason I have not ordered a new build as of yet. I realize a lot of enthusiast like to replace a GPU every two years anyway so for them, no big deal. But we should not have to replace the card in 2 years due to heat and card failure. I like to run a build all of 4 years before replacing it.

Bifford - enlighten us.

What were these "games" it was supposedly having problems with?

What card are you running now?

Are you paid by nvidia?

LOL !! OWWww my RIBS !!!

You really are ignorant of nVidia (especially the GF8 series) aren't you? Betas, Fixes and Lawsuits, Oh my!

Seriously troll, you're gonna have to do better than that.