Just my experience, but I'll probably not buy an ATI again, or at least not in the next 5 years or so. The stock fan on my 9800XT is faulty, and the driver support is nowhere near as good as nVIDIA. Up until fairly recently, there were no official drivers from ATI for any 64 bit operating systems, Windows or Linux. I just wish I hadn't paid AU$700 for it two years ago... My old GeForceII is still a reliable stand-by and has been loaned out several times to see others through rough patches and even I resorted back to it a short while ago, its still pretty damn fine for day-to-day, and even was able to play GTA San Andreas on it (sort of). Other brands on my NO-BUY list: ATI SONY NETGEAR Brands on my AWESOME list: PIONEER SAMSUNG YAMAHA AMD
get Iomega Ati Catalyst driver for ati graphic card it's much more superiior than the one that comes with it.
"here were no official drivers from ATI for any 64 bit operating systems, Windows or Linux" - there still aren't for most hardware. Also, the fan doesn't come from ATi unless you bought an ATi board. The board and fan is the responsbility of the board maker, e.g. sapphire, powercolor, connect3d etc. If it is an ATi board then ATi are at fault, but ATi's boards have never been the cream of the crop. It's fine for people to have a no buy list, Epson, Acer and Benq are on my list, plus of course Qtec, who should be on everybody's list. I do stress though that I don't put a company on my no buy list if they sell me a faulty product. I've had to return a Viewsonic monitor (despite disgusting customer service) and they're not on my NBL, neither are Philips for a faulty CD player, or D-Link for a faulty router. Epson: Two faulty printers (One broke outside warranty, the other on end of warranty (Break-on-demand does still exist) Acer/Benq: Two faulty CDRW drives (one within two months, the other within two weeks) Sony are on my buy with care list, mainly because I don't mind the playstations, but building break-on-demand products and hearing stories of poor aftersales support, I'm a little wary.
NJman, I'm a DOD addict so you have my answer. I can't tell if DOD source is as good as the original until I have a card which lets me max out the settings. Tried to play with my 9800Pro but it just doesnt cut it. Lowered the settings but it's not the same. OZMick, Never ever had a problem with an ATI product including 3rd party manufacturers. From your not to buy from, Sony is high on my list also.
From what I have heard, practically EVERY 9800 Radeon is practically identical, regardless of the branding. The fan itself has a big ATi sticker on it, so every time I power on the system and the fan just hangs I get a big red reminder of who made it. That said, I know I can get replacement rigs for the heatsink and fan, but I've got a small form factor case, and nothing will fit. My MAIN gripe with ATi is the driver support, and although someone said that there still aren't for a lot of things, nVIDIA had beta drivers out almost immediately, and a lot of the others at least make information open source for drivers to be hacked together for Linux. ATi took probably over a year, with a message on the webpage saying something like "Coming Soon" the whole time. What a year of wasted visits to that webpage. Same gripe I have with NETGEAR, they just bury their head in the sand and pretend that any OS beyond 32 bit Windows XP doesn't exist. They don't even have the courtesy to say "Sorry, it might be xxx years", they just give you a blunt NO. I just like to live by the old proverb of "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."
if i need to get an extra fan or something to cool this card (radeon x800GTO, i found a fan i guess it is that goes into the PCI-express slow and ventalates air. would that be a good cooler for the car. i havent gotten the actually computer that im gonna put this just yet so i dont know how much room i'll have for fans and other things.
OZMick, I hear you loud and clear. I wasnt referring just to the 9800Pro only, I still have a 9200 running on a different system. My first ATI was a 8mb Rage Pro. As far as drivers are concerned for the past two or so years they are pretty good IMHO, they are releasing new ones every month. Also the Omega drivers offer a great alternative if the original have bugs.
Wow, so was mine! I started with an 8MB Rage Pro and not too long ago had a 256MB 9200 Atlantis. Now see my sig, and between the two ive mentioned in this post came a Sparkle 64MB GeForce 4MX440 (PCI as well!) The 9800s are the same chipset wise (ATi) but not the boards. They may use very similar cooler designs, but trust me, the cooling architecture is made by the board manufacturer themeslves (e.g. Sapphire). Why do you think only certain manufacturers make fanless versions of GPUs?
