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[tornadog]

This has to be a personal record. Owning a card for 2 weeks. My Sapphire HD4870, bought in last week of december has been replaced by the GTX280. This was my first ATI card in 4 years and sadly after this, I will be more inclined towards Nvidia products. The card itself is good but the drivers and poor overclockability leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[Schadenfroh]

While it is a shame that you are having trouble with your purchase, a few questions for you:

Did you fully remove all of your previous video card's drivers before installing the new ATI card and its drivers? IE running Driver Sweeper or Driver Cleaner after uninstalling from the control panel?

Did you use the latest WHQL drivers from ATI's website for the card?


I switched back to being nVidia exclusive after driver difficulties in Linux, but ATI's XP drivers seemed to be OK (other than the issues they were having with the newer AGP cards, but those were fixed via hotfix).

 

[Quiksilver]

I wouldn't call poor overclocking a con. Overclocking has always been YMMV...

 

[DaveSimmons]

I've been using a 4870 since July (my first ATI card after 6 generations of nvidia cards) and it's been problem-free, but I run everything at stock speed.

Your driver problems might be caused by unstable overclocking, especially if you're overclocking and overvolting other components.

 

[vj8usa]

What driver problems did you have, tornadog? I've been using a 4850 for a while now, and the only issue I remember having was a the weirdness with FC2.

 

[SlowSpyder]

No problems here on XP or Vista, and I'm overclocked pretty well. Everyones experience is different.

 

[error8]

Originally posted by: tornadog
This has to be a personal record. Owning a card for 2 weeks. My Sapphire HD4870, bought in last week of december has been replaced by the GTX280. This was my first ATI card in 4 years and sadly after this, I will be more inclined towards Nvidia products. The card itself is good but the drivers and poor overclockability leaves a lot to be desired.

Please, if you started this thread, at least use more words to describe your situation. What driver issues did you had, in what games, what type of problems? You haven't really told us anything, haven't you?

Oh and even though the card doesn't overclock like a monster, quite about any of the 4870s are getting past 810 mhz core clock and around 4 ghz on the memory ( except mine of course). If you didn't up the fan speed, then the card might have been totally unoverclockable.

 

[solofly]

Originally posted by: error8
Oh and even though the card doesn't overclock like a monster

Speaking of overclocking...

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1381983

 

[tornadog]

OK Overclocking is YMMV but the fact that it wasnt even stable with a 20 MHz overclock pissed me off somewhat. I reinstalled OS when I installed this card, so cleaning old drivers and stuff is out of the question. Biggest problem I had was with Bioshock, I would get vpu recovers every 5-10 minutes. It would pause for 30-45 seconds then resume the game. Farcry 2 crashed a bunch of times when I ran the action scene in the benchmark tool. Mirror's edge crawled sometimes which I found was my mistake, I had set Physx to On. CoD WaW crashed a few times with vpu recover or would freeze during multiplayer causing me to abandon that game for now.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Good thing Nvidia drivers are 100% perfect.

 

[adairusmc]

Originally posted by: tornadog
OK Overclocking is YMMV but the fact that it wasnt even stable with a 20 MHz overclock pissed me off somewhat. I reinstalled OS when I installed this card, so cleaning old drivers and stuff is out of the question. Biggest problem I had was with Bioshock, I would get vpu recovers every 5-10 minutes. It would pause for 30-45 seconds then resume the game. Farcry 2 crashed a bunch of times when I ran the action scene in the benchmark tool. Mirror's edge crawled sometimes which I found was my mistake, I had set Physx to On. CoD WaW crashed a few times with vpu recover or would freeze during multiplayer causing me to abandon that game for now.

Maybe a faulty card? Did you try to RMA?

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: adairusmc

Originally posted by: tornadog
OK Overclocking is YMMV but the fact that it wasnt even stable with a 20 MHz overclock pissed me off somewhat. I reinstalled OS when I installed this card, so cleaning old drivers and stuff is out of the question. Biggest problem I had was with Bioshock, I would get vpu recovers every 5-10 minutes. It would pause for 30-45 seconds then resume the game. Farcry 2 crashed a bunch of times when I ran the action scene in the benchmark tool. Mirror's edge crawled sometimes which I found was my mistake, I had set Physx to On. CoD WaW crashed a few times with vpu recover or would freeze during multiplayer causing me to abandon that game for now.

Maybe a faulty card? Did you try to RMA?

RMA'ing to Sapphire requires you to spend more money(They charge RMA fees).

 

[adairusmc]

Originally posted by: Quiksilver

Originally posted by: adairusmc

Originally posted by: tornadog
OK Overclocking is YMMV but the fact that it wasnt even stable with a 20 MHz overclock pissed me off somewhat. I reinstalled OS when I installed this card, so cleaning old drivers and stuff is out of the question. Biggest problem I had was with Bioshock, I would get vpu recovers every 5-10 minutes. It would pause for 30-45 seconds then resume the game. Farcry 2 crashed a bunch of times when I ran the action scene in the benchmark tool. Mirror's edge crawled sometimes which I found was my mistake, I had set Physx to On. CoD WaW crashed a few times with vpu recover or would freeze during multiplayer causing me to abandon that game for now.

Maybe a faulty card? Did you try to RMA?

RMA'ing to Sapphire requires you to spend more money(They charge RMA fees).

Yes, but he could at least sell the replacement if he hasn't already to offset the cost of his new GTX280 and the RMA fees.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: tornadog
OK Overclocking is YMMV but the fact that it wasnt even stable with a 20 MHz overclock pissed me off somewhat.

Hmm, you do know that if the card is 100% stable at stock, but unstable with a 1Mhz overclock, that its still a 100% functional product within spec's right?

I've had a HIS 4870 since July and its been trouble free. The closest thing I had to a problem was the busted Powerplay on the first 4870s where the fan wouldn't spin about 10%. But ATI resolved that with a later revision of Catalyst by adding manual fan control.

ATI's windows drivers have been superior to Nvidia's for a few years now, but it takes a very long time to shake a stigma.

 

[SSChevy2001]

Sounds like your having cooling problems. What temps are recording while you get VPU errors?

 

[solofly]

Playing Bioshock as we speak and not one single crash of any kind... (that's with 3 GPUs on top of it)

 

[nOOky]

I went from an nvidia to an ATI card. My 4870 overclocks very well, it hums along at 780/1000 all day long. Some games are more prone to crashing and are sensitive to overclocking than others. The Orange Box and L4D and Bioshock seem to be pretty sensitive to overclocking. I had similar problems with my 8800GT, overclocked via Rivatuner. I can say having both brands the past few years, neither companies drivers are perfect, but neither companies drivers are that bad either. I'm not an nvidia basher even though I had a bad 8800, I just rma'd it and the new one worked purrfectly.

 

[Genx87]

Control center is garbage. After uninstalling it my 4850's driver issues got much better. But this will be my last ATI card for awhile.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: tornadog
OK Overclocking is YMMV but the fact that it wasnt even stable with a 20 MHz overclock pissed me off somewhat. I reinstalled OS when I installed this card, so cleaning old drivers and stuff is out of the question. Biggest problem I had was with Bioshock, I would get vpu recovers every 5-10 minutes. It would pause for 30-45 seconds then resume the game. Farcry 2 crashed a bunch of times when I ran the action scene in the benchmark tool. Mirror's edge crawled sometimes which I found was my mistake, I had set Physx to On. CoD WaW crashed a few times with vpu recover or would freeze during multiplayer causing me to abandon that game for now.

No need to explain yourself, if you're used to Nvidia parts being overclocker friendly its totally understandable that you'd be disappointed with an AMD card.

 

[Pelu]

I was thinking on getting two 4850 or maybe just leave the 8800gtx until a new model is on the street like the 5xxx... I know all my ATIs usually get mess up and stop working to quick... but nvidia cost too much

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: tornadog
OK Overclocking is YMMV but the fact that it wasnt even stable with a 20 MHz overclock pissed me off somewhat.

Hmm, you do know that if the card is 100% stable at stock, but unstable with a 1Mhz overclock, that its still a 100% functional product within spec's right?

I've had a HIS 4870 since July and its been trouble free. The closest thing I had to a problem was the busted Powerplay on the first 4870s where the fan wouldn't spin about 10%. But ATI resolved that with a later revision of Catalyst by adding manual fan control.

ATI's windows drivers have been superior to Nvidia's for a few years now, but it takes a very long time to shake a stigma.

I certainly agree that ATI's drivers have gotten much better, and I'm actually one of the few people that likes CCC. When I have an ATI card I actually use the CCC, but I use nHancer with NV cards. However, having recent experience with a variety of ATI and NVIDIA cards and drivers, I simply can not see the basis for a claim that ATI's drivers have been superior to NVIDIA's for a few years. They both have good drivers, but NVIDIA tends to be faster with getting updates out when a new game is launched. ATI may have better legacy support for older games, although I don't generally play old games, so I wouldn't know.

Even AT doesn't support your claim, especially in regards to SLI vs. Crossfire: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3498&p=9

Comparing NVIDIA to AMD, it's clear that NVIDIA has recaptured the halo product at least in the majority of tests we ran in this snapshot of performance. We are noticing a trend that has some games heavily favoring one architecture or another, which makes general recommendations harder than usual. But the advantage this time around is certainly with NVIDIA. The Radeon HD 4870 1GB still hangs on competitively, but SLI wins out over CrossFire.

Though we are using the 8.12 hotfix that improves game performance and (as far as we've noticed) stability on Intel Core i7 systems, we can't be sure when this hotfix will make it into a WHQL driver. We've spent a good deal of time being hard on AMD for their driver support lately. As we've said since the launch of the R700, the success or failure of AMD's new direction for their highest end parts depends entirely on the ability of their driver team to make sure the experience and performance are top notch on single-card dual-GPU platforms. This includes having support in at least beta driver as the launch of new games and having high quality support for all new hardware platforms released. It is also imperative that all fixes in any beta or hotfix driver make it into the very next WHQL driver.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: tornadog
OK Overclocking is YMMV but the fact that it wasnt even stable with a 20 MHz overclock pissed me off somewhat. I reinstalled OS when I installed this card, so cleaning old drivers and stuff is out of the question. Biggest problem I had was with Bioshock, I would get vpu recovers every 5-10 minutes. It would pause for 30-45 seconds then resume the game. Farcry 2 crashed a bunch of times when I ran the action scene in the benchmark tool. Mirror's edge crawled sometimes which I found was my mistake, I had set Physx to On. CoD WaW crashed a few times with vpu recover or would freeze during multiplayer causing me to abandon that game for now.

No need to explain yourself, if you're used to Nvidia parts being overclocker friendly its totally understandable that you'd be disappointed with an AMD card.

C'mon Chizow, you can troll better then that.

Here was the last Nvidia OC thread I replied to. Where is that monster Nvidia OC again? And before you compare 4870 overclocking to GTX260 overclocking, be fair and compare a 4850 since both of those GPU's (the 4850 and GTX260) are just lower clocked/less enabled parts of their big brothers.

 

[videogames101]

My HD4870 hits core 800Mhz np and easily breaks 1100Mhz memory.

(it's all a matter of how high your fan is, I have my fan at 65% and the card idles at 38C with 790mhz core and 1100mhz memory. Never goes above 48C full load.)

So, wtf are you talking about?


(Do the math, thats a 22% OC on the memory, and is 48C under full load! I haven't even tried pushing it either, and barely have even touched the core!)

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Originally posted by: videogames101
My HD4870 hits core 800Mhz np and easily breaks 1100Mhz memory.

(it's all a matter of how high your fan is, I have my fan at 65% and the card idles at 38C with 790mhz core and 1100mhz memory. Never goes above 48C full load.)

So, wtf are you talking about?


(Do the math, thats a 22% OC on the memory, and is 48C under full load! I haven't even tried pushing it either, and barely have even touched the core!)

Good gawd man how can you handle the noise at 65%. :Q

 

[adairusmc]

Originally posted by: WaTaGuMp

Originally posted by: videogames101
My HD4870 hits core 800Mhz np and easily breaks 1100Mhz memory.

(it's all a matter of how high your fan is, I have my fan at 65% and the card idles at 38C with 790mhz core and 1100mhz memory. Never goes above 48C full load.)

So, wtf are you talking about?


(Do the math, thats a 22% OC on the memory, and is 48C under full load! I haven't even tried pushing it either, and barely have even touched the core!)

Good gawd man how can you handle the noise at 65%. :Q

Good question. My heatpipe sapphire card in my tri-fire setup is loud at 40%.