My awful experience with the 4870X2

I think that many people here need a strong dose of reality. This guy's complaints are well-founded.

In the past, top of the line video cards could be passively cooled, but not anymore. Nvidia and ATI have to bite the bullet and put better cooling on cards, even if they cost a tad more, even if there are a little louder. End of story. The fan speed should be governed by the temperature of the card, in bios, no user setup required.

And yes, ATI's drivers are buggy and often difficult to install. Just because I'm used to pc computing doesn't mean I have to like spending my time troubleshooting because drivers don't properly install.

As someone else said, we should really expect more, we're certainly paying for it.
 
And yes, ATI's drivers are buggy and often difficult to install. Just because I'm used to pc computing doesn't mean I have to like spending my time troubleshooting because drivers don't properly install.
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No they arent.
Thats the problem whenever an ATi card comes out beating an Nvidia card we see "Good card but buggy drivers" And when a Nvidia card comes out beating an ATi card we see "No onthly WHQLed drivers"
Honestly this driver crap needs to stop.
Plenty of people use ATI drivers without issue including many hardware reviewrs.
Plenty of people use Nvidia Drivers without issue including many hardware reviewers.
I dont think one person has the experience with said drivers to call them bad/buggy

Lets not use ATi Beta Drivers that they dont recomend installing as the basis for difficult to install either.
 
ice-nine said:
I think that many people here need a strong dose of reality. This guy's complaints are well-founded.
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Agreed, he has a legit complaint, but as many have said, not everyone is having the same problems.

ice-nine said:
And yes, ATI's drivers are buggy and often difficult to install. Just because I'm used to pc computing doesn't mean I have to like spending my time troubleshooting because drivers don't properly install.
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I've had one problem where they didn't install properly as well, and I admit I had a flash of anger at the time. I went back a version and waited for the next release, which was about two weeks away, and never lost a night's sleep because of not running the absolute latest for a couple of weeks.

As for ATI drivers being buggy, I think it's all a matter of perspective... I think there are inherent challenges with a multi-GPU solution, and you will be reliant upon the driver team to optimize for the games you play for a couple of years if you go the Multi-GPU route, at least until most games support multi-core CPUs and GPUs from design inception. That's just how it is, unfortunately..
 
{NG}Fidel said:
No they arent.
Thats the problem whenever an ATi card comes out beating an Nvidia card we see "Good card but buggy drivers" And when a Nvidia card comes out beating an ATi card we see "No onthly WHQLed drivers"
Honestly this driver crap needs to stop.
Plenty of people use ATI drivers without issue including many hardware reviewrs.
Plenty of people use Nvidia Drivers without issue including many hardware reviewers.
I dont think one person has the experience with said drivers to call them bad/buggy

Lets not use ATi Beta Drivers that they dont recomend installing as the basis for difficult to install either.
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Admittedly, both red and green are worse under Vista than XP, but i will say this-- ATI's 8.7's and 8.8 have bailed on me whenever I do even a slight overclock on 1 or 2 4870's (flashed with Asus "Top Bios"), and seem to like to quit for no good reason in general at times. Therefore, I am running my 4870's at 770/900, so they don't freeze/crash when I play COD4 online. On my new system that I built, the 770 limit is the same.

In terms of installation, yes, for the most part they're good, but when I tried a 4870X2, the first time I tried to install the driver disk (8.52's written for 4870X2), after properly uninstalling and running sweeper/reboot/repeat, I got a black screen upon driver install and had to reboot to safe mode. From there, the card was good, but did not meet my expectations for COD4- 125 fps stable with most settings turned up.

I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to have issues with ATI's 4870 in terms of card or drivers, as borne out in thse forums. I know that ATI is kind of the little guy and has done great things for pc gamers with the 48** series, but let's stop pretending that many people aren't having issues-- they are.
 
I think that many people here need a strong dose of reality. This guy's complaints are well-founded.
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As stated for the upteenth time. No one is refuting his problem or denying its existence, or saying its not legit. Its the way he worded his post like a temper tantrum child. Dude just came here to vent and didn't ask for any help and whether purposely or not it became flame bait.
 
I think it was more of a "buyer beware" message, and I've certainly seen more immature and less constructive posts out there than this one. There's plenty of reviews out there talking about the 4870X2 as "the world's fastest consumer graphics card", so it seems to me some balance is in order.

That said, I will say to OP, an early adopter's path is often filled with adventures like this, so try to show some patience.
 
ice-nine said:
I think it was more of a "buyer beware" message, and I've certainly seen more immature and less constructive posts out there than this one. There's plenty of reviews out there talking about the 4870X2 as "the world's fastest consumer graphics card", so it seems to me some balance is in order.

That said, I will say to OP, an early adopter's path is often filled with adventures like this, so try to show some patience.
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I have seen more immature posts from this forum but they get deleted and poster banned. No need for the gray area double talk. he either is being constructive or he isn't.
 
I think the bulk of people who buy the 4870 X2 will be quite pleased with it. It's a great card. I'm having issues making it work correctly in just one machine. In the other it works fine. So I've experienced both sides of the coin. I don't think the buyer needs to beware anymore than he or she would with any other card on the market today.
 
kadozer said:
I have seen more immature posts from this forum but they get deleted and poster banned. No need for the gray area double talk. he either is being constructive or he isn't.
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Original poster indicated what problems he had, as well as the steps he took to try to correct them, and how he's had no joy with the card (yet). Pretty typical of what's happening with quite a few people, so the post is a bit redundant, however, he's peeved and beefing about his card. Can you blame him?

He got a little out of hand later on in the thread, but by post 3 you were already teeing off and blaming him for typical problems that (again) tons of people have had or are having. Not very fair or accurate imho.

OP's main point was that the HD4870 isn't a good choice if someone expects to buy a card to throw in, install drivers, and forget about it. I think he's right. But if your experience and technical expertise makes you feel entitled to rag on him for not knowing about fan settings, which is not described in the manual, or about diagnosing pc problems, by all means, flame away.
 
ice-nine said:
Original poster indicated what problems he had, as well as the steps he took to try to correct them, and how he's had no joy with the card (yet). Pretty typical of what's happening with quite a few people, so the post is a bit redundant, however, he's peeved and beefing about his card. Can you blame him?

He got a little out of hand later on in the thread, but by post 3 you were already teeing off and blaming him for typical problems that (again) tons of people have had or are having. Not very fair or accurate imho.

OP's main point was that the HD4870 isn't a good choice if someone expects to buy a card to throw in, install drivers, and forget about it. I think he's right. But if your experience and technical expertise makes you feel entitled to rag on him for not knowing about fan settings, which is not described in the manual, or about diagnosing pc problems, by all means, flame away.
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Yes to your first question, and for the love of sweet jesus this is the last time I'm going to say this: Its not about him being a noob, uninformed, having a defective card, being a republican, a democrat. Its the way one presents his post plain and simple. I help people all the time with the most basic questions. Where do you people come from? Is it that hard to comprehend?
 
The title got me curious and a little nervous since my 4870x2 is coming. After reading OP post, I realized that he's just missing some info.
 
ice-nine said:
Original poster indicated what problems he had, as well as the steps he took to try to correct them, and how he's had no joy with the card (yet). Pretty typical of what's happening with quite a few people, so the post is a bit redundant, however, he's peeved and beefing about his card. Can you blame him?

He got a little out of hand later on in the thread, but by post 3 you were already teeing off and blaming him for typical problems that (again) tons of people have had or are having. Not very fair or accurate imho.

OP's main point was that the HD4870 isn't a good choice if someone expects to buy a card to throw in, install drivers, and forget about it. I think he's right. But if your experience and technical expertise makes you feel entitled to rag on him for not knowing about fan settings, which is not described in the manual, or about diagnosing pc problems, by all means, flame away.
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And I think your wrong. We only hear from people with issues here at H. Be it with Nv or ATI cards. There are many more people out there who are not having these issues. Just because a user has an issue with his card, doesnt equate to everyone having that problem.

As an example, I think many here will regard the R300 as one of the best GFX cards in history if not the best, but my best friend will never buy an ati card again after 2 of his ATI radeon 9700s gave him no end of problems while mine is still working today in my son's PC.

You see ? Someone's exp with a GFX card should not be used to rate all of them simply due to soo many variables that come into play with PC hardware/software.

My friends issues with the 9700 were his PC and I told him that but he was too hard headed to want to understand. He always buys cheap stuff. Cheap PS, cheap mb with the damned via chipset...thats what his real issues were..not his video card. I could of prolly sorted it out for him, but he never gave me the time. Anyways, hes been with NV since LOL

Oh and btw, his problems didnt magically go away with NV iether...he eventually had to get a better PS and MB hehe....I could of told him that...he could of listened...but alas..no matter what you do...some people need to learn the hard way
 
ice-nine said:
Admittedly, both red and green are worse under Vista than XP, but i will say this-- ATI's 8.7's and 8.8 have bailed on me whenever I do even a slight overclock on 1 or 2 4870's (flashed with Asus "Top Bios"), and seem to like to quit for no good reason in general at times. Therefore, I am running my 4870's at 770/900, so they don't freeze/crash when I play COD4 online. On my new system that I built, the 770 limit is the same.

In terms of installation, yes, for the most part they're good, but when I tried a 4870X2, the first time I tried to install the driver disk (8.52's written for 4870X2), after properly uninstalling and running sweeper/reboot/repeat, I got a black screen upon driver install and had to reboot to safe mode. From there, the card was good, but did not meet my expectations for COD4- 125 fps stable with most settings turned up.

I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to have issues with ATI's 4870 in terms of card or drivers, as borne out in thse forums. I know that ATI is kind of the little guy and has done great things for pc gamers with the 48** series, but let's stop pretending that many people aren't having issues-- they are.
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after all the problems I had with my GTX280, this makes me feel better. (kind of small of me I know) However dan is right, most people, the vast majority, probably do not have issues with their new cards. Most of the people posting issues have been 1. User error, sorry that is still number one, 2 hardware conflicts. the latter seems to be prevalent on the higher end computers. And if we need a reality check on what "high end" is we should go look at the steam computer users. I was recently reminded of this working on some friends computers, he shit when he saw mine. and I considered mine mid range at best.
 
I also have problems with my 4870X2, havent been able to use the DVI output in Vista Ultimate x64. I tried all tricks but none works.8.52 drivers here. Oh that plus coil noise.
 
MustRotate said:
I also have problems with my 4870X2, havent been able to use the DVI output in Vista Ultimate x64. I tried all tricks but none works.8.52 drivers here. Oh that plus coil noise.
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You are experiencing the EDID problem. I never could get around that on my Viewsonic VP201s S-IPS display. That problem has always existed and continues to exist to this day. From the X1800XT to the 4870 X2 there has never been a fix for that.
 
I was curious what "EDID" stands for so I googled it. One of the first results mentions removing/blocking up certain pins on the connector, but that was with a VGA cable.
 
MustRotate said:
So what should i change? Display,OS,graphics board?
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I had to use a different display. You can get around the issue by going analog if your monitor can do that but that sucks. The image quality isn't there using analog.
 
I'm curious is the EDID problem you are experiencing mean that the card doesn't turn on the display when booting up the computer? I had a problem with a Shuttle X100 back in the day with their ATI X1400 GPU that would never turn on using the DVI, but when I used the converter DVI-ANALOG plug it would work. I had a Samsung 24" LCD Monitor at the time.
 
3DChipset said:
I'm curious is the EDID problem you are experiencing mean that the card doesn't turn on the display when booting up the computer? I had a problem with a Shuttle X100 back in the day with their ATI X1400 GPU that would never turn on using the DVI, but when I used the converter DVI-ANALOG plug it would work. I had a Samsung 24" LCD Monitor at the time.
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The display works fine for BIOS and everything outside of Windows. When it loads the device driver and gets into windows the screen blanks out and you can't use it in DVI mode. At least that's how it works for me.
 
Dan_D said:
The display works fine for BIOS and everything outside of Windows. When it loads the device driver and gets into windows the screen blanks out and you can't use it in DVI mode. At least that's how it works for me.
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O.k. yeah, that's exactly what happened to me with the ATI X1400 Mobility in the Shuttle X100. Shuttle claimed that the card's BIOS didn't support my monitor and it needed some profile in the BIOS to work. I called BS on that.
 
3DChipset said:
O.k. yeah, that's exactly what happened to me with the ATI X1400 Mobility in the Shuttle X100. Shuttle claimed that the card's BIOS didn't support my monitor and it needed some profile in the BIOS to work. I called BS on that.
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What actually happens is that the EDID information is being incorrectly read by the video card/and or its' driver and therefore sets things up incorrectly and for whatever reason it doesn't allow you to change things and set it up properly. On my VP201s it read the monitor's EDID as being capable of 1920x1200 at 72Hz which is a load of crap. It actually does 1600x1200@60Hz. However no amount of tweaking would get the display working in DVI mode. I had to deal with the blank screen or hook up the monitor in analog mode. I wasn't about to use $1,000 worth of graphics hardware for gaming on an LCD in analog mode. I ended up getting a different display which I ended up not really all that pleased with (Viewsonic VX2025wm) and then switched that out for the Dell 3007WFP I have now.
 
Dan_D said:
I wasn't about to use $1,000 worth of graphics hardware for gaming on an LCD in analog mode.
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I would have been beyond pissed, seriously Dan, you have more patience than anyone I've ever had the privilege to meet...and that includes your frustrations w/ the x2 mated w/ your skulltrail
 
Dan_D said:
You name it, I did it and it didn't work. Though what they are talking about in the thread seems different than what I experienced.
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it was different then what I experienced as well. but it did fix the problem for me once I got it to works. the fix basically overrides the drivers and forces a set resolution. That is why I was wondering if it would not work for your issue.
 
Valset said:
it was different then what I experienced as well. but it did fix the problem for me once I got it to works. the fix basically overrides the drivers and forces a set resolution. That is why I was wondering if it would not work for your issue.
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Editing the values in the registry didn't work for me.
 
I have the same issue with my newly built rig.

Q6600
Asus P5Q Pro
2x2gb Geil
visiontek 4850
sceptre x20 nagaIII

I used this monitor in dvi mode for a long while now. Frustrating. I'm using it in analog right now, but, I am pissed.
 
ice-nine said:
Admittedly, both red and green are worse under Vista than XP
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I ALMOST stopped reading there. Where does the Vista crap keep coming from? I've never had a driver problem in Vista that didn't involve either signing (64bit only allows signed drivers) or Creative, and I've been using Vista 64bit for over a year now. NV drivers, INCLUDING the betas have treated me well.

That said, the only problem with my GTX280 is due to my own forgetfulness - I forced AA for one game in the control panel to 8xQ, and then ran Crysis and wondered why my perf was in the shitter.

I can't/won't speak for the 4870X2, as I don't own one...but in past, I have LOATHED ATI drivers.
 
yang88she said:
I would have been beyond pissed, seriously Dan, you have more patience than anyone I've ever had the privilege to meet...and that includes your frustrations w/ the x2 mated w/ your skulltrail
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Yeah while working on that the bottom two PCI-Express slots started to flake out and the onboard audio fried. :eek:

I've decided on the Geforce GTX 280 OC 3-Way SLI setup. However I want to throw the 4870 X2 on the new board and try it out just in case. I wouldn't mistake patience for curiosity. I love a good puzzle but there are times where I get really pissed at this hardware.
 
rampantandroid said:
I ALMOST stopped reading there. Where does the Vista crap keep coming from? I've never had a driver problem in Vista that didn't involve either signing (64bit only allows signed drivers) or Creative, and I've been using Vista 64bit for over a year now. NV drivers, INCLUDING the betas have treated me well.

That said, the only problem with my GTX280 is due to my own forgetfulness - I forced AA for one game in the control panel to 8xQ, and then ran Crysis and wondered why my perf was in the shitter.

I can't/won't speak for the 4870X2, as I don't own one...but in past, I have LOATHED ATI drivers.
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because all the newer drivers are for vista, and vista still has some bugs and such. My GTX280 gave me a few days of hell before it worked right. XP was was better in that it was less complex and had been around forever. everyone had everything worked out pretty well.

now that you mention it I have a global 4x setting and that might explain why crysis does not run as well as I would like:eek::eek::eek:
 
Valset said:
because all the newer drivers are for vista, and vista still has some bugs and such. My GTX280 gave me a few days of hell before it worked right. XP was was better in that it was less complex and had been around forever. everyone had everything worked out pretty well.

now that you mention it I have a global 4x setting and that might explain why crysis does not run as well as I would like:eek::eek::eek:
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Sure Vista has bugs, but getting my GTX280 running was simple: Fresh Vista install, install NV drivers (for an 8800 no less) swap in GTX280 a week later, boot, install new drivers, reboot, be happy.
 
rampantandroid said:
Sure Vista has bugs, but getting my GTX280 running was simple: Fresh Vista install, install NV drivers (for an 8800 no less) swap in GTX280 a week later, boot, install new drivers, reboot, be happy.
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I had the complete reverse, I had a good working 8800GTX, uninstalled everything and did driver sweep and installed new card, new card would not display correctly for love or money. kept putting me 16:9. would do lesser resolutions but not my native. I wont go into it again but it was a pain in the ass. I am far from the only person that has had this issue.

Don't get me wrong, I am quite sure that ATI has there fair share of problems as well
 
Well with the 8.522 drivers supplied with the board and Vista x64 Ultimate i tried everything from EDID disable,powerstrip,disconnect vga during vista and replace with dvi,boot with 640x480 with dvi,8.54drivers. Nothing worked.
I filled a ticket with Ati/Amd and Sapphire, Sapphire recognized the fault and they said that i should also contact Ati/Amd and Microsoft and that they are working on this.
I will try in the next days the other 19" TN display that i've got(Benq FP93GX+) and with WinXP Pro.
 
MustRotate said:
Well with the 8.522 drivers supplied with the board and Vista x64 Ultimate i tried everything from EDID disable,powerstrip,disconnect vga during vista and replace with dvi,boot with 640x480 with dvi,8.54drivers. Nothing worked.
I filled a ticket with Ati/Amd and Sapphire, Sapphire recognized the fault and they said that i should also contact Ati/Amd and Microsoft and that they are working on this.
I will try in the next days the other 19" TN display that i've got(Benq FP93GX+) and with WinXP Pro.
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The OS shouldn't matter. At least it didn't in my case. However the monitor makes all the difference.
 
No he was refering to me switching from Vista x64 to XP Pro.
I switched to my Benq display and this also does a series of black screens after the Vista splash logo but i have image on DVI. Also the monitor shows a "Inexistent mode" message.
But Vantage still artifacts/reboots my system with the 8.520 drivers that came with the board and with the latest 8.8(8.522) drivers that are on Ati's site.
 
Orangey said:
What a bunch of smarmy, smug douchebags.

Yes, I've read all the threads on RivaTuner. I researched and read and read and read. In the end the problem was down to ATI's shitty software.



This is a dumb bug which should not exist in a retail product. And just because you didn't experience any problems, doesn't mean you're super-leet, it just means you're lucky.
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No, it means he knows how to operate a computer, something you lack.
 
himmy said:
No, it means he knows how to operate a computer, something you lack.
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I see you only managed to get your E6300 to 2.4.. based on this shall I assume I know how to "operate a computer" better than you then? :rolleyes:

Or maybe it just means you experienced some unsurmountable problems with your setup...

Get my point?
 
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