ATI Dissapointment

[Radi0h3ad]

I recently upgraded from a 64MB Geforce 4 MX 440 to a Sapphire Radeon 9600 256MB. Now I was aware of people having a few problems with the 3.7 Catalyst drivers, causing a black boot screen, etc etc, but as later drivers were already out I decided to go ahead and purchase this card. Now at first things seemed very good, obviously the jump from GF 64MB to a Radeon 256 is quite large and the improvements could be seen straight away... however, after a few days the problems started to become apparent. Problems which have now ultimately forced me to roll back to the old GeForce.
I started getting the infamous black screen on boot up... on the occasions where this didn't happen, I managed to try a different set of drivers. I have used catalyst drivers both new and old, to maybe see which ones worked best for me, but the system just does not seem happy at all with this card. System crashes & repeated failures to boot had me at the end of my tether and I finally decided that although the improvements in game performance were impressive, they just didn't warrant having to put up with the other faults the card seemed to create.

I can't help but feel dissapointed. I'm wouldn't class myself as an 'advanced' user when it came to these things, but I am quite knowledgable, and I've tried everything I can think of. Funnily enough after I switched back to the GeForce, the system is fine again... albeit less able to cope with the more system hogging games being released...

Has anyone else had serious problems like these? It has left me with a bad impression of Radeon cards, and from now on I think I will be leaning more towards Nvidia in future.

[Rugor]

When you removed the GeForce, did you run detonator destroyer or any other program that removed the remnants of the Nvidia drivers? It's very common to see issues with ATI cards when they are installed right after Nvidia cards are removed. In a lot of cases, those problems are caused by the fact that Nvidia drivers are very hard to remove completely, and the remnants often cause problems when you install ATI cards.

Oddly enough, when Nvidia was fighting it out with 3Dfx for top spot it was often difficult to get 3Dfx cards to work stably after Nvidia cards were removed unless you did a complete reformat.

Nvidia drivers are insidious.

[gjimene2]

Nvidia drivers are insidious.

I second that.

[Radi0h3ad]

Originally posted by Rugor
When you removed the GeForce, did you run detonator destroyer or any other program that removed the remnants of the Nvidia drivers?

No, I was unaware that this was something that needed to be done. So if I were to reinstall the ATI card, after running Detonator Destroyer, there is a good chance I will see improvements?

[Rugor]

Yes, not knowing anything else about your system specs we can't really tell you that it's guaranteed to fix your problems, but yes there is a good chance that it will greatly improve your ATI experience.

If it doesn't work, post back with more information.

[Plaster]

I recently replaced an nvidia card with an ati card after using driver cleaner. It still had issues. I got everything working correctly with a repair install of XP. nvidia drivers are cancerous.

[ronach]

Try this before you install your drivers again. http://www.driverheaven.net/cleaner/ ,It did the trick for me when I upgraded from a GF3ti200 to a Radeon 9800np. ronach

[PacNW CE]

I ended up switching to a new OS to avoid issues when I went from GF4 4400 to R9500pro. I was apprehensive to get a Nforce2 based board due to my problems getting ATI to run on boxes with prior dets on them. That proved to be unwarrented, but the thought was their. You'd think Nvidia would be receptive to their preception by the uber geek world.....

[iceblue]

The problem with video card drivers leaving behind files that tend to conflict with other drivers is not limited to Nvidia alone, as I've encountered problems with users switching from ATI to Nvidia without thoroughly cleaning out previous drivers. Here's a utility that has worked real well: Nasty File Remover - it deals with both ATI and Nvidia survivors.