Return Ti4400, get Radeon?

[Dyne]

Hello,
I just recently finished setting up my new system, specs below, and after seeing all the benchmarks, the news, and all the great reviews of the Radeon 9700, I was wondering if I should return my Visiontek GF 4400 and get a Radeon 9700? I still have the 30 day return time (12 days left now about). Also, on Hard OCP and other sites, I heard about Visiontek going under, another consideration. Do you think it would be worth it to me to return this card and get a new Radeon for about $140 more? Right now I have the option of returning it and getting a Radeon, I'm just afraid I might regret having this card later.

[Charger]

Very nice system by the way!


If you're a gamer, then I'd keep the Ti. Juast because Visiontek went under doesn't mean the card is going to die. How much support do you get from a company anyhow? If you're like me, you'll be getting another card next year anyways. I'd say run it hard this year and upgrade next year. Something better will always come along.

If your into video, then I hear the Radeon is a better choice.

[RJ]

Yes, the Radeon 9700 outperforms the GeForce 4, but I think it's not on the market yet until September.

RJ

[Colb]

Well, at ATI you can buy the card, but does not say when the shipping date would be. Plus is comes with Remote Wonder, which I probabily will never use, so I guess I will just wait untill the 9700 is offered by itself for a lower price.


P.S.
My Radeon 7500 is still for sale at $50, shipping included.($65@newegg)

[mikeheitz]

Personally, I'll never spend another dime on an ATI card. Can't stand their support (and from my experience, you'll need it). I ahve the MSI GF4 Ti4400... VERY nice card. I haven't had a single problem yet in the two months that I've had my sytem together. With my old ATI if I had a problem with the video driver in one game, I'd wait and wait for an updated driver from ATI, install it, and it would fix one problem, but then things that worked just fine before suddenly would stop working. Not what I want to see from updated drivers.

[HAL9000]

Old news mikeheitz.... ATI has redeveloped their driver scheme with the Catalyst suite. They have now promised driver updates 8 to 10 times per year to keep up with nVidia. So far, 2 updates in 2 months puts them ahead of schedule.

As for "needing" their support, I think you exaggerate a bit. I've been building with strictly ATI for a distributor from 1998 to 2000, then for a retailer for the past two years and have had excellent results.

[Furius92]

Yeah mike, my guess is that you didn't uninstall old drivers and such before installing new drivers. If you don't follow proper procedure, you'll always have trouble.

[Colb]

you didn't uninstall old drivers and such before installing new drivers.

I have never uninstalled drivers to install newer ones.

[Dyne]

The performance on that new Radeon just blows my mind. The Radeon came out yesterday, and is available via ATI right now. I figure that $140 now would justify all the performance that the ATi 9700 PRO would give me, especially the DX9 features. Does anyone think that the $140 would justify the performance gains? I do watch a good bit of DivX video and would like to watch DVDs on it, as well. Also, the anistropic filtering sounds pretty sweet.