Taken by the Dark Side !!!

[Steph3dfx]

I gave my soul to the devil today !!!
I bought today an Asus A8N sli motherboard and a PCIE MSI 7600GT video card....ouch.
I allways hated NVIDIA for the way they treated the 3DFX crowd after the takeover, and the way they quickly killed the 3dfx brand/legacy.
But since the NF4 is the best 939 chipset, and for $260 canadian the 7600GT is king of the hill, I had no other choice but to surrender.
Forgive me.....
In the meantime ATI should rethink their midprice strategy, start to use quality fan/cooler on their product, and scrap the CCP/MS .net framework combo.
I hope to comeback to ATI next round.

[Rolo01]

Even the newest catalyst drivers are available with the old Control Panel :
http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=Files&go=cat&dwn_cat_id=18

[Steph3dfx]

Hi Rolo1,
to my knowledge these are not the official drivers from ATI, they may work very well tough. I would have tried them but it's too late now for me.
Anyway the ATI option for me was the new x1800gto, not available yet at $60 canadian extra, and the 7600GT is a better performer(from all the reviews I could find)

[Steph3dfx]

Well I guess I got off the Dark side a bit after all, I returned the MSI 7600GT card and picked a  Sapphire X850XT, here's the reason why :

1) The color saturation and sharpness are superior on the X850XT as well as on my previous X800XL agp. (using the analog out on a standard CRT LG monitor)
No matter what kind of adjustment with the Nvidia control pannel I did, the result was disapointing.
2) Roughly as fast as the 7600GT for $40 canadian buck less
3) Better performance in Oblivion (fantastic game BTW)
4) The Sapphire X850XT is not made by Nvidia !!!!!!!
I will hang onto this cheap card until the X1900XL price come down in Canada.

Thanks for the link Rolo01, I ended up using these new 6.4 Catalyst drivers without the damn CCC and MS program.