Im amazed there isnt a Yank out there that hasnt filed a suit yet...not that it wouldnt be without merit...if you bought a car and they kept giving you parts to your car AFTER you bought it..would that be acceptable? yet with computer software...we accept it...doesnt really make much sense...

9 months after purchase...'oh heres your gas pedal, we finally got it molded'

Something tells me that ATI's recent 'sloppiness' is related to AMD. I had an old friend of mine email me last month after the announcement of AMD dissolving the ATI name about it causing some serious upheavals at ATI. Apparently, (and this is not confirmed, since I have no way to confirm it) a lot of people at ATI are just as unhappy about the name change/retirement.

Take that for what you will. I haven't had many problems with the recent drivers on my HD5770, HD4870, HD2400, X850PRO or my X600m (which is a bitch to install being mobile), but I've been sticking with the 10.5's for now... *shrug*

=-Rigs-=

noman wrote on Sep 15, 2010, 20:07:
It's not about ATI forgetting to include patches. The main problem is their insistence on releasing monthly WHQL drivers. To get the certification, they need to get the drivers to Microsoft about three weeks before the release, if not earlier.

When the 10.8b hotfix had come out, 10.9 were already done and in Microsoft Labs. That's why they quickly put in a patch for 10.9 to include the same fix. 10.10 WHQLs should have these fixes.

And by the way, the bug was only in 4850x2 and 4870x2 cards. Crossfire setup consisting of two 4870s or 4850s didn't have this problem, neither did other X2 cards.

I think, ATI should move to a 3-4 month release cycle and line that with major updates such as support for new OpenCl, DirectX or OpenGl APIs. They already have capability to patch in support for games independent of drivers (through the application profiles). A combination of profiles and occasional hotfixes would be lot less confusing than the current situation.

That explains a lot. ATI moved to forced monthly patches so they could hype up their patch schedule and try and keep gamers happy, previously they had fairly long times between patches.. Instead they should do once every two months or some such. Stop forcing the driver team to release drivers when they are NOT READY. Set a reasonable deadline, commit to mostly following it, and if it slips occasionally, its ok.

They could even use this fiasco about the crossfire issues with every patch since 10.5 or so to explain why they want to stop the monthly release.

BTW, just because I'm pointing out issues with ATI, that doesn't mean that nvidia is pure in this area. They've had problems too such as the card killer from disabling fan driver. However it just seems to me for a good chunk of this year ATI has been egregious in this area.

Ozmodan wrote on Sep 15, 2010, 21:26:
Best thing to do with AMD drivers is wait a couple months after a version is out before install it.

Or like me, keep the one that works. I haven't bothered to upgrade since thing seems to work. I will get to the upgrade one day or never. Heh. I'm still on v9.7 for my Radeon 4870 in XP Pro. SP3!

Best thing to do with AMD drivers is wait a couple months after a version is out before install it.

Heh, what fun the poor ATI users must be having. Not like Nvidia is with out fault though.

It's not about ATI forgetting to include patches. The main problem is their insistence on releasing monthly WHQL drivers. To get the certification, they need to get the drivers to Microsoft about three weeks before the release, if not earlier.

When the 10.8b hotfix had come out, 10.9 were already done and in Microsoft Labs. That's why they quickly put in a patch for 10.9 to include the same fix. 10.10 WHQLs should have these fixes.

And by the way, the bug was only in 4850x2 and 4870x2 cards. Crossfire setup consisting of two 4870s or 4850s didn't have this problem, neither did other X2 cards.

I think, ATI should move to a 3-4 month release cycle and line that with major updates such as support for new OpenCl, DirectX or OpenGl APIs. They already have capability to patch in support for games independent of drivers (through the application profiles). A combination of profiles and occasional hotfixes would be lot less confusing than the current situation.

Yeah, ATI is getting slopppy. This is why I still use v9.7.

This is just sad. They forgot to enable both GPU in games in 10.8 so they had to release a hotfix, and didn't bother to integrate the fix in 10.9 so they had to re-release the hotfix for 10.9 too. Sad. From everything I've heard and read, ATI has shot themselves in the foot and mouth repeatedly since about 10.4 release, and most of the releases since then have screwed up crossfire performance and stability among other things. Then when hardocp pointed out some issues with crossfire performance, ATI said "oh wait we screwed up on those 2 maps you tested so here's a fix for that" when really its entire games they've screwed up, they only fixed those couple maps since their problems became more public than they desired. PLUS, they claimed they never knew about the problems and that no one told them about it, which is patently false, since people have been screaming on the official ATI forums for months about crossfire issues.