4/30    ATI is teh suck.
        \_ Agreed. --michener
        \_ ATI has decent support. Driver/sw updates are easy to get.
           I have the ATI All In Wonder 8500 and I'm pretty happy with it.
           What's wrong with your ATI card?
           \_ 1. I bought a peripheral from them that refused to install out
              of the box because it depended on a DLL that comes with Visual
              Studio.  They had no support info on this at all and I had to
              figure it out myself.  They obviously never tested it on a
              'clean' machine.
                \_ what peripheral?
                   \_ Remote Wonder II
              2. They refused to provide me with updated drivers for my
              Thinkpad because that's Lenovo's job (which they told me they
              abdicated to ATI).  When I made a support inquiry, after making
              a support inquiry and proving it was possible to use reference
              drivers on a Thinkpad the guy still insisted they had no
              drivers, just a stub-EXE... which downloads reference drivers.
                \_ sounds like Lenovo is screwing you
                   \_ Maybe, but even after I got a hold of a generic driver
                      off their site (by using an unpublished URL) the tech
                      support troll insisted there was no such driver :-/
                      To flat out refuse to let me have their generic driver
                      is just lame.
                      \_ Well, support trolls are expensive. They are not
                         supposed to support laptop products. That's just the
                         way it is since laptop implementations are so varied.
                         So why would you expect the support troll to help
                         you with your Lenovo laptop?
              3. They don't support GL_ARB_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE, which makes it
              virtually impossible to use render-to-texture with shaders in any
              sort of high-performance way.
              4. They have high-performing $300-500 cards, but virtually
              nothing price competitive with NVidia in the $100-300 range.
                \_ use GL_ARB_TEXTURE_NON_POWER_OF_TWO
                   \_ No good.  Without GL_ARB_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE the GLSL
                      keywords sampler2DRect and texture2DRect are unsupported.
                      \_ can't you use sampler2D and texture2D?
                         \_ Those only bind non-rectangular textures, and I
                            don't think its worth the effort to rewrite a
                            bunch of code to workaround something ATI should
                            just fix.
                            \_ They don't only do that when using NPOT.
                               Between Nvidia and ATI, there are always some
                               stuff geared towards one or the other. Nvidia
                               pushes for stuff they happen to have implemented
                               and vice versa for ATI. You happen to be using
                               something Nvidia-centric I think.
                               \_ It's been accepted into the ARB.  ATI voted
                                  against it but lost.  They should suck it up
                                  and comply with the spec.
                                  \_ Nvidia doesn't support everything in the
                                     ARB either. Aesthetically the NPOT thing
                                     seems cleaner than the rectangle thing.
                                     So why do we need that? OpenGL sucks.
              4. They have high-performing $250-500 cards, but nothing
              price competitive with NVidia in the $100-250 range.
              -OP
                \_ maybe, but this doesn't hurt you does it? The X1600 Pro for
                   $100 is close to the 7600 GS which is a little more $$.
                   To be honest, for the latest 3D games the $100-250 cards
                   don't really cut the mustard. For example, Oblivion needs
                   a 7900 GT or X1800XT to break 30FPS at 1024x768. In this
                   fight the X1800XT is a fair bit better and can support
                   HDR + AA.
                   don't really cut the mustard.
                   \_ Well its another disincentive for me to buy another ATI
                      card.