FFS, in a market with only two real contenders, it's inevitable that quality (especially of drivers) will suffer. Everything is rushed to market because there is such an unbearable pressure to be the best and to be the first.
nVidia by no means have decent drivers. By the time they released their TNT their drivers were horrendously bloated (RAM usage of 30+MB back in the day when 256MB was considered mainstream). Nothing has changed.
I can't directly comment on ATI because I've never owned their hardware (apart from a Rage AGP which I never used and can't quite remember how I obtained).
To summarise the whole graphics card situation, it's all marketing bullshit. Top-end kit is grossly overpriced in order to limit the market. Essentially using the big-spenders as public beta-testers. High-end kit gradually filters down to the mid-range (after tweaking) whilst drivers are honed to kill the most horrible bugs. By the time the general public can afford the kit, it's been through a revision or two, several thousand users have ensured bugs are not too noticable and the cycle continues.
The 1GB 'G92' cards will be £550+, run hot (I bet anyone £5 on this) and we will not see mid-range versions for a good 3 months after release. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of failures, especially if they use next-gen GDDR.
I want an 8800GTS but I'm going to wait until the 9800GTX comes out and everything else devalues.
nVidia by no means have decent drivers. By the time they released their TNT their drivers were horrendously bloated (RAM usage of 30+MB back in the day when 256MB was considered mainstream). Nothing has changed.
I can't directly comment on ATI because I've never owned their hardware (apart from a Rage AGP which I never used and can't quite remember how I obtained).
To summarise the whole graphics card situation, it's all marketing bullshit. Top-end kit is grossly overpriced in order to limit the market. Essentially using the big-spenders as public beta-testers. High-end kit gradually filters down to the mid-range (after tweaking) whilst drivers are honed to kill the most horrible bugs. By the time the general public can afford the kit, it's been through a revision or two, several thousand users have ensured bugs are not too noticable and the cycle continues.
The 1GB 'G92' cards will be £550+, run hot (I bet anyone £5 on this) and we will not see mid-range versions for a good 3 months after release. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of failures, especially if they use next-gen GDDR.
I want an 8800GTS but I'm going to wait until the 9800GTX comes out and everything else devalues.