drivers for 4870 are crap

[Dauphin de Viennois]

I've noticed some flickering light sources in a few games now and I haven't
tested many games because I only got the 4870 yesterday. It's really bad in
Gothic3 but I looked into it and that game gives lots of people similar
issues. In Il-2 1946 I see the sun reflecting on the water is bouncing
around a lot though and that is not normal. Also in Il-2 my gun flashes are
blue isntead of the correct yellow. I admit I am using tweaked DNA drivers
but doing some research on the web it seems these problems with 4870 and
4850 are common. Even Crysis shows some shimmering in some light sources
when you are close to them. Why don't the video card reviews ever mention
these types of issues? That would be more helpful to me than describing the
goddamn box and contents of said box.

 

[Dauphin de Viennois]

Did you try the ATI hotfix drivers for the 48xx series?

DNA ATi 8.6B for Vista is what I am using. I think those have the hotfix in
them already. I did some reasearch on these issues and it seems hotfix has
the same issues anyway. Should have known better to stick with Nvidia.

 

[Augustus]

ATI's Catalyst driver team is a world class organization. I know... I work
with
them on a daily basis. The developer talent has and will continue to
innovate and deliver on quality code, and the management team is
unbelievably slim for a company as large as AMD, i.e., they execute
relatively quickly. (Compare the driver release schedule to that of
NVIDIA's and you'll see some start differences)

Whatever IQ issues exist today will definitely be fixed. I'm not sure if
they have a person scouring newsgroups for these sorts of reports though.
And, like you said, there hasn't been any mention of these issues in the
top reviewer sites. So, in case AMD is not already aware of these issues,
it would be in your best interests to report this to the AMD/ATI asap.

Tony

The fact that ATI/AMD releases updated monthly drivers speaks nothing as to
the quality of the release and the maturity and stability of the drivers.
Your post then seems to infer from this premise that nVidia drivers are
therefore inferior to the ATI/AMD ones since they release WHQL drivers less
frequently. This logic escapes me. Both manufacturers have had and continue
to have ongoing driver issues. Consider the fact that it took from the 7.6's
until shortly before now to restore proper 3D function in a huge number of
currently manufactured AGP cards. 11 releases of Catalysts without a fix for
thousands of cards for a known issue doesn't speak highly of addressing
major issues.... from someone who claims to "work with them on a daily
basis" and have inside knowledge as to ATI/AMD's management team structure I
find your post hard to take seriously.

 

[Dauphin de Viennois]

DNA ATi 8.6B for Vista is what I am using. I think those have the
hotfix in them already. I did some reasearch on these issues and it
seems hotfix has the same issues anyway. Should have known better to
stick with Nvidia.

OOps, I'm using DNA 8.7B (based on ATI beta driver). And now that I have
installed these drivers they cause some bug where I can't go bgack to the
ATI hotfix driver. Tried installing it twice and even though it goes
through the install fine I can't get access to CCC because it reports there
is something wrong with the installation. Go back to 8.7B and it is fine.

 

[Dauphin de Viennois]

Relax. The card has been out for less than a month. When NVIDIA's
drivers leave the door perfect from day one then it will be a
different story. ATI's Catalyst driver team is a world class
organization. I know... I work with them on a daily basis. The
developer talent has and will continue to innovate and deliver on
quality code, and the management team is unbelievably slim for a
company as large as AMD, i.e., they execute relatively quickly.
(Compare the driver release schedule to that of NVIDIA's and you'll
see some start differences)

Whatever IQ issues exist today will definitely be fixed. I'm not sure
if they have a person scouring newsgroups for these sorts of reports
though. And, like you said, there hasn't been any mention of these
issues in the top reviewer sites. So, in case AMD is not already aware
of these issues, it would be in your best interests to report this to
the AMD/ATI asap.

Tony

8800GT drivers were perfect for me from day one of installing. I remember
that Omega had to fix an issue with FS2002 on 8500 because the official
ATI driver was NFG art the time. How come an amateur driver tweaker can
fix it but not pro ATI driver team? They did fix it on a later driver
release though. Probably thanks to Omega-Man.

Anyway, I just posted to this thread that it is 8.7B driver I am using
and now I can't install 8.6 hotfix. It's not my system either as I have
read this is a common issue with 8.7b driver. I read that to fix it nyou
have to update the driver via device manager but that is not working for
me on Vista64 and it just says I already have the latest driver.

 

[Dauphin de Viennois]

The fact that ATI/AMD releases updated monthly drivers speaks nothing
as to the quality of the release and the maturity and stability of the
drivers. Your post then seems to infer from this premise that nVidia
drivers are therefore inferior to the ATI/AMD ones since they release
WHQL drivers less frequently. This logic escapes me. Both
manufacturers have had and continue to have ongoing driver issues.
Consider the fact that it took from the 7.6's until shortly before now
to restore proper 3D function in a huge number of currently
manufactured AGP cards. 11 releases of Catalysts without a fix for
thousands of cards for a known issue doesn't speak highly of
addressing major issues.... from someone who claims to "work with them
on a daily basis" and have inside knowledge as to ATI/AMD's management
team structure I find your post hard to take seriously.

Yea, he's just an ATI fanboi so is biased. We don't need bias we need
objectivity and the fact is the curretn ATI driver for 4800 cards is crap.

 

[Dauphin de Viennois]

Relax. The card has been out for less than a month.

Imagine if I bought a new TV and it didn't work properly and the
manufactuer told me to "relax" and it would work in a month or two properly
when they update the firmware. Would that be acceptable to you? Not me. Why
does the computer industry get away with shit that other industries would
get fried for?

 

[bandit]

OOps, I'm using DNA 8.7B (based on ATI beta driver). And now that I have
installed these drivers they cause some bug where I can't go bgack to the
ATI hotfix driver. Tried installing it twice and even though it goes
through the install fine I can't get access to CCC because it reports there
is something wrong with the installation. Go back to 8.7B and it is fine.

Must be a vista problem, cause I got a 4870 using the hot fix drivers
on windows xp and all works great here all games look great and run
faster and look better than the NVIDIA 7950 GT it replaced )

 

[Dauphin de Viennois]

I assume that you're not a complete novice and do understand the high
end PC industry. Assuming my assumption is correct, then you knew very
well the risks of being an early adopter of bleeding edge video card
technology.

Yea, well, I found out basicaly what the isue is. In Il-2 I went and bumped
up the pixel shader quality to it's highest setting by editing a .cfg file
no more flickering sun on the water. In Crysis I mostly fixed flickering by
using high settings instead of the settings I had it set to on my 8800GT.
In G3 I lessened it quite a bit by turning off pixel shaders completely.
That games is a crap programming job so will give ATI a break on that one.
It seems it is when you use lower quality shader settings that it will
cause light reflections to flicker. ATI needs to look into what their
drivers are doing at the lower quality settings as that is the root cause
of the issue. Most games run fine though and performance is good.

 

[Dauphin de Viennois]

Must be a vista problem, cause I got a 4870 using the hot fix drivers
on windows xp and all works great here all games look great and run
faster and look better than the NVIDIA 7950 GT it replaced )

Read my other post. These issues don't show up unless using lower quality
pixel shader settings. It causes light source flickering in some games if
you lower the settings. Could be the beta drivers I am using but it looks
like I am stuck with them anyway and I know the hotfix driver don't fix it
because I researched the issues on google and it is not just me that sees
these issues or is it specific to the beta driver. Maybe you are just not
as discerning a gamer as me?

 

[Man-wai Chang ToDie (33.6k)]

Relax. The card has been out for less than a month. When NVIDIA's drivers

leave the door perfect from day one then it will be a different story. ATI's
Catalyst driver team is a world class organization. I know... I work with
them on a daily basis. The developer talent has and will continue to
innovate and deliver on quality code, and the management team is

World-class? Official OEM driver is not ready during product launch....

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