[quote]I just hope all these 5xxx sales will mean you ATI folks don't take so much time releasing future drivers. It's been my only gripe with ATI over the years.
For those that are not familiar with AMD graphics, we have a
monthly driver release schedule - the Catalyst driver releases are number according to the month, i.e. Catalyst 9.12 relates to the 12 release of the year, in December 2009; sometimes there is a "bonus" 13'th release in a year, dependant on how the driver schedules are looking. Occasionally we'll have "hotfix" drivers inbetween the planned, monthly WHQL releases that are designed to address specific things quickly.
The frequency of updates doesn't bother me, I skip half of nVidia's driver releases because of issues anyway. My main concern is the "breaking" of old games and while nVidia does this too frequently (Fallout 3 a recent example) I have been told ATI does it even more. Not having had an ATI card since 2003 I can't really comment but I know that is the reputation, earned or not. I know I spend a lot of time on the Steam forums helping people with tech issues and a lot of the time it seems ATI driver updates cause problems in older games, but this could just be a perception issue.
As I prepare to go ATI for the first time in years and years I know things I see like the complete lack of ability to play The Saboteur worry me. It just seems like when people have issues I see a lot of responses like "ATI drivers blah blah" when I see that said for nVidia much less often.
I am just being frank here, no hostility intended. I view it as likely being a perception problem as I said... PC gaming in general has a perception problem, lol.