I've got the Radeon 7500 and there are no driver issues that I've come across.

Besides...what do you want? Driver updates every week?

Anyway, Nvidia has shown that drivers make a huge difference to the card's performance. ATI is slowly following suit, but I don't think they're going to catch up to Nvidia. Oh well....that's a shame. That industry definitely needs more competition so that they can stop charging $500 + (CDN) for a video card.

 

ATi Powa!
http://service.madonion.com/servlet/...=6&cCriteria=1

 

I have the ATI All In Wonder 128 for my Windows box, and all the TV Tuner stuff does not work on Windows 2000, or XP. I cannot fix it, and the divers off of the website have been worthless. I will have to regress back to Windows 98 for my hardware to work, or just put it in my Linux box, and replace it with a new card. ATI is not my favorite at this point...

 

one thing to note about the Nvidia TNT2 cards is that they had a problem with the fan that is on the chip. It has early failure which causes the chips to overheat and then die. At work we had 8 machines all lunch their cards after about a year of being on all the time... the cards were replaced at no cost by the guy we bought them from.

In one other case these cards were also shipped by Dell and my co-worked had his fail after a while as well. Dell replaced it for free.

Apparently they added this FAQ to their web page shortly after failures started to show up (so I was told, no proof of it here):

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20011121_5909

In any case, you might want to check the fan... it is hard to hear if it is dying/dead over the other fan(s) in the case.

Ooops... just saw you are getting the card replaces... good. I'll post this for other folks that might have a TNT2 card.

 

I was going to check it. but it doesnt have a fan. damn thing was hot tho really hot.

 

you have to remember that most consumer computer hardware is made to last less than 4-5 years - where would be the business sense in making your printer last longer than that?

i have an mid-high range nvidia card and couldn't ask for a better servant.

what ever the choice - ati or nvidia (not bloody matrox by the look of the reviews) - i reckon you'd be very unlucky to have problems with either - sure it happens but they are both pretty much the state of the art in consumer graphics cards.

i have to argue the negative - nvidia cards do not suck, broken nvidia cards suck

 

You can't really "design" electronics to last a certain age. The rule of thumb is if your device doesn't fail within the first 2 weeks of owning it, it'll bascially work forever. Now, notice this is electronics, i.e. stuff with circut boards, etc. Hard drives and stuff like that have moving parts, so they can fail more frequently than solid-state electronics. That's why there is a supposed "burn-in" process you should do when you get new computer electronics.

 

Yeah thats what i have been told. If electronics dont fail with in the first couple weeks. they are good to go. but anyway here are the pic of my screen.




Oh yeah i dont think every Nvidia cards suck. i was just pissed at the time.

 

Oh yeah forgive me on the dark pics. i work in a ******* hole. pos office.

 

My office is now (as of last friday) a tanning booth. They put in some freaky bright *** bulbs, they are crazy bright!

Anyways, it looks to me like it's a driver issue with XP. I've had similar problems with video cards that just boiled down to the wrong drivers... Now, if it just started doing it out of the blue, then it would have to be something else.

 

So if its driver problems. how come it just started doing this. xp has been on this for about 2 months. can they just stop working. anyway im going to see if there are updated drivers for it.

 

Alright d/l a new driver nothing. i also see the same thing in safe mode and also in my bios setup screen.

 

Hmmm... well it sounds like a heat issue for your vid card then since you decided it wasn't the monitor. It's probably something that heat already damaged, so it's probably time for a new card....

 

yep its fried oh well not my computer. but im really getting tired of looking at it. thx everyone for the help.

 

How is the 2d/3d performance? Any problems? I understand that one of the reasons you bought that card was the tv-tuner, but im sure theres a way to fix it. Have you tried www.rage3d.com ? They have some 3rd party drivers on that site. Check it out. My Radeon 64 VIVO has served me very well over the past 2 years. I just ordered the Radeon 8500 128mb for $154 from www.buy.com