ATI vs. nVidia - software/hardware quality poll

I am looking to build up a new system and would love to get some opinions. I am currently running an ATI All In Wonder X800XT.

Over the years, I have been frustrated at times with the quality of the drivers and software from ATI. Enough that I have in the past swore to switch to nVidia the next time I upgraded.

Well, upgrade time is here, and most of the reviews I've read have me leaning in the direction of an HD 4850.... ATI again.

I don't want to start a flame war... but I would like to hear opinions about ATI quality in general... has it gotten better over the last couple of years?

Thanks

ATI is fine now...

They are competing well with Nvidia which is good for the buyers...
Wish the same thing was happening in the cpu department need more competition

They release driver updates monthly.

I've also been happy with ATI lately and have almost exclusively been using their cards in builds for the past few months.

Lefty, what did you have problems with? The cards and drivers have been fine for quite some time. I suspect you've had issues with the AIW part of the card, which could still use some "polish". I never had any issues with my 9600pro, 9700pro, or x1800XT. I just now (as in the last hour...) switched sides and I'm testing my "new" 9600GSO/8800GS. Can't really say I see any difference between these cards, though I'm not happy with how much stuff the Nvidia drivers have added to my startup.

Yeah, having gone both sides over the years I'd say just go with the best price/performance. As others have said, they have all had good days and bad days. Normally there is a large difference when one is way ahead of the other hardware wise. For example, when ATI had the 2900 debacle NVidia drivers became rare and poor. Then when they fall behind, they all of the sudden start releasing good drivers (like that one they just released). ATI does monthly, however often they don't add a ton. Recently they've been doing better, and more recently they promised a new performance driver to help fight NVidia's new driver. Since they are both about even right now and the new card aren't due for a while, you can expect some major effort on drivers for a while.

Thanks for the opinions so far...

@474... my previous 3 products have been ATI, including an ATI TV Wonder (poor me) several years ago... in general, the software always seemed to be a bit subpar... and on a previous vid card, the ATI control panel for managing multi-monitor support, good god... just terrible... my AIW is fine now, but I'm also no longer using it for any of the AIW extra features... and my (older) system is tried and true... still running WinXP and not living on the bleeding edge updating drivers every time there is a new drop. I've just been out of the game for a while, and was looking to know if things had improved... it sounds like maybe they have.... which is good to hear.

Both ATI and nVidia have worked fine for me; my X600 worked fine, my 2600XT works fine, the X1300 in our family computer works fine, and the GeForce 2 in this old Dell that I'm using now is working fine, too.

I've also had no problems setting up dual monitors using the ATI drivers.

The only issue I had with my ATI card/drivers was I sometimes couldn't get CCC to load in advanced mode. A reboot always took care of this problem however. Never had the issue in basic mode. (I've always used XP, I've never dealt with Vista.) Judging by what people complain about on the forum, the problem with the 4xxx series of AMD cards is heat/temps/fan speeds. I really haven't heard to many people complaining about anything else.

price/performance is key and i think right now the 4850 is a good choice. i wouldn't say drivers are the weak point in cards these days; now it's mostly keeping these things cool; which they seem to have no problem at stock settings.

plus, buying an ati cards gives amd more money to help catch intel; support the cause, there needs to be competition in the cpu market.