Originally Posted by Manny

I had an ATI card once. brand new, top of the line (at the time, at least. can't remember which series.)

I loved how it looked for the most part. And i had alot of time to admire it... especially when it would freeze up when tasked with the responsibility of rendering such graphically intence areas as:

The South Western Corner of the Burning Steppes! Behold the graphical extremes of those grey hills that you see everywhere else in the zone! roving crystal spider which you see in at least 3 other places in the game!

Inside the horde tower that leads into the frostwolf base in Alterac Valley!: OHEMEFFGEE! It's a round tower with wooden steps! I mean... where else has my video card seen that? (Besides the 5000 other times I walked into identical round towers with wooden steps.)

10 feet inside Chromaggus' Room in Blackwing Lair! I don't know how Nvidia beat ATI in the race to be able to render large empty rectangles with a door on one end, and a ramp on the other.

Nefarions Throne Room! (if you could get through Chromaggus' room, of course.) 3 walls! 2 pillars! 1 Throne! Open skies!

I used to LOVE ATI cards... my first video card was an old ATI rage card. I specifically demanded a slightly less powered ATI card than the Nvidia card that was offered with my computer. (they even charged me more for installation.)

I lost all respect for ATI when i called them up and asked them if there was any forseeable resolution to the problem. 'Maybe' they said.
So i asked them if they knew what the problem was. 'Yeah, we don't know, update your drivers.'
So i told them my drivers were as updated as they could be. 'Why not buy a better ATI card?'
So I asked them if they were serious.. They expected me to pay 400 bucks to upgrade to a card that was only nominally better than the one I had now?
"Yeah... people with the newest card haven't had that problem"
So I told them thanks.

Next day I went out and bought an Nvidia card. It's green and blue inside my case, and i had to buy a second cooling fan for it, but it hasn't broken my game like ATI did.

Hey......I've been an Nvidia fan for years. My next card will be an Nvidia. So you can imagine my frustration at my 7900GTX causing the WinXP equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death. The tech forums did indicate this was a rare but known problem with this series card. What I'm eyeing now is the 8800 GTS (640 MB)...while waiting for the refund on my 7900GTX.