I had a Radeon 7200 and a Radeon 9600, and my experience was that ATI drivers were absolutely horrible at the time. They sometimes would refuse to install because it didn't detect the card, or updating the driver would cause a massive drop in frame rate (original Counter-Strike went from a solid 60fps to maybe 20fps after updating the 7200 drivers). For the past couple of years, I've been sticking with Nvidia cards just because I like the drivers so much.
Right now the 4870 has my attention, but I really need some feedback about the drivers. Are the drivers any good? Has ATI fixed those issues where it says the card doesn't exist? Are there still wild discrepancies between driver versions such as getting 20fps with driver A then 60fps with driver B then 40fps with driver C?
Aside from whether the drivers actually work or not, do ATI drivers have any neat gimmick features? Example: the Nvidia ones have the option of not scaling the video when the game resolution does not match the desktop resolution, so a game at 1280x800 will appear as a box in the middle of the screen, and the rest of the monitor space is filled with black. Does ATI have something similar?
Right now the 4870 has my attention, but I really need some feedback about the drivers. Are the drivers any good? Has ATI fixed those issues where it says the card doesn't exist? Are there still wild discrepancies between driver versions such as getting 20fps with driver A then 60fps with driver B then 40fps with driver C?
Aside from whether the drivers actually work or not, do ATI drivers have any neat gimmick features? Example: the Nvidia ones have the option of not scaling the video when the game resolution does not match the desktop resolution, so a game at 1280x800 will appear as a box in the middle of the screen, and the rest of the monitor space is filled with black. Does ATI have something similar?