That's probably because most of the people involved with the enthusiast side of things, ie. those who'd actually buy a high-end card, have AMD systems. Not to say that there aren't many Intel users, obviously, but the general conclusion I get from looking at specs of people's pcs on just about every forum I visit is that most have AMD systems.

You dont NEED a intel based processor to run ATI...
give me some reliable information that supports your theory. and you counting threads and deviding them between AMD and Intel doesnt count as reliable, since theres all sorts of idiots on rage3d that moved over from nvnews that have no clue as to what they are doing.
and yes AMD is gaining in the enthusiast market, so you need to do a strategical analysis where you even the percentage of Intel and AMD users to 50% - 50% and then you can start assuming things.

I have been a part of the ATI community for the better part of 5 years and rarely have i heard something as ridiculous as "You need a Intel based system to run Radeons".

ATI on intel system introduce less problem is not true. It all depand on the motherboard, what chipset it uses. That is the most important.

LOL BS ... nvidia driver does nothing ...
it worked even without uninstalling NV driver !!!
the problem is I DID A FUCKING REINSTALL !!!
and now it does not work

but not directly ... from one day to the other it just give me those damn stupid 4bit

I always format now. When I bought my Radeon all I did was a simple NVidia uninstall and all hell broke loose and I had to backup my hard drives before formatting in 400-300 resolution

When I put it back all worked flawlessly. This Radeon is the best graphics card I've ever had.

I found this link: http://www.driversearch.com/forums/video/7189.html. Maybe it helps.

YOU ARE A LIVE SAVER
and what was the problem ... I forgot ... I did change one thing to my PC ... I set the RAID controller just to another PCI slot ... not the first one !!!!!
why I did that ... I wanted to max out performance giving each device one single PCI BUS part ... to eliminate resource conflicts without APIC mode in windows ...
I changed back the card and now its working again ...
what does this show ???
1. ATi sucks even more
2. THERE WAS NO RESOURCECONFLICT AT ALL!!!
3. ATi card did not work ...
4. what about drivers ... 4.2 works half ... 4.3 doesn't completely ????
driver is not loaded was the error ... but I was alble to play UT 2k4 and anyother game without a flaw ????
5. what was the first thing I got when reinstalling 4.3 on a working - ATi friendly config ????
A FUCKING BLANK SCREEN WITH \"OUT OF RANGE\"
damn my monitor does support 120Hz whatz damn value is set by ati that it does shut down my monitor ???
next time I will thing at least 100 times before buying ati again ...

and btw
WHO EVER NEED TO UNINSTALL nVidia driver for updating ????
on ATi its essential

I used to uninstall the NVidia ones because it asks you to do so after version 4x.xx.

ATi is really annoying me ...
now that I did not want all this trouble I though of reinstalling with SP2 RC1 integred ... and voila its done ...
first everythign worked fine ...
the cat integrated into SP2 is just like on nvidia a light version ... giving basical support but not real 3D features not a control panel ...
but after restart ... BANG 16 colors again ...
I really was shortly before destroying the ati card if it would ne have cost me 300€
so I tried some things ... what have I installed that may interfear with cat. ....
I removed numerous autostarts ... added them again installed apps ...
and so on and so on ...
in the end nothing helped
because there is simply no app causing this ...
but hey after deinstalling daemon tools it works ?
cool that may be the new version ...
NO ITS no after next restart 16 colors again ...
in the end it showed up that the 16 color bug is totally random ...
it follows no rules ...
I did around 30 restarts .... whithout changing anything ... just boot up and click start --> restart ....
sometimes it worked sometimes not ... the not working thing was more often ...
sometimes 3 restarts worked the next not
SO WHAT THE FUCK IS THE PROBLEM ???
A resourceconflict ??? LMAO
softwareproblem ??? LMAO
ATi YOUR DRIVERS SIMPLY SUCK !!!

now I installed Omegas drivers and UP TO NOW !!! it works ... lets see how things devellop ....
BUT PLEASE ATI GET THIS F***ING THING FIXED

btw
the out of range thingy is because ... ati detects my monitor to handle Hz up to 160 ... this my be possible in 300x200 but not in 1024 !!! how can a driver be so stupid not to know that the highest refresh rate cannot be applied to any resolution !?!?
THIS IS REAL NOOB PROGRAMMING !!!

If you ATi guys are not going to fix at least the refreshrate bug this is definitiv my first and last ATI card
nVidia I am coming back home

oh and PLZ give your driver some reasonable version numer not this BS ... 3 or more diferent versions ... + the catalys version having nothing to do with the internal version
JUST GIVE THE FILES ONE DAMN version number and keep those internally there is no way to .... for example ... see what Cat is integrated into SP2
That is just unprofessional and confusing

oh mertsch,

ur talking our of my soul !!!!
as i wanted to install the Cat 4.4 there was the same prob like ever

like i said at beginning
with the omega the installation was fine

Maybe it's due to a different installation routine. The ATI drivers run a couple of tests after the first initialization (the first reboot). If there fails something (whatever the reason is) the drivers don't get loaded and the non-accelerated windows standard driver is used instead.

You could extract the driver from the self-extracting archive and install it manually via the .inf files after you deinstalled any previous driver stuff. Then you don't have SMARTGART installed which checks your system for potential problems. Maybe there's a reason why ATI has a special SMARTGART uninstaller utility on their website.

hmmm this may be right .. BUT
the problem is not that it does not work in general ... it just works or work not based on luck so there is no real problem making it not work ... I mean if ya do a fresh install can there be any problem ?
the first time initialisation works without any problem ...
and as said ...
stid is a real bug because ...
1. when the driver is not installed I am not able to go into standby mode ... but it always works with cat installed 4bit or not
2. 3D games like UT2k4 work without any performance lost ... so driver is not loaded ??
and why does 4.2 differ from 4.3 / 4.4 ???
it is definitivly a software bug ... and up to now omega is working ... how long will show up some reboots later ...

I just bought my 9600xt and started off with deltting my nVIDIA drivers using detonator destroyer...then installed 4.2 cat.. WORKS FINE.....but wait ..installed 4.3 cat....WORKS FINE.... and now i put in cat 4.4 and take a guess.....WORKS FINE!! lol you know what hto i was reading through all of those posts....I found out the problem...AMD SUCKS!!!! lol j/k guys...I like amd also....but maybe there is some truth to that....maybe ati and AMD dont get along...I mean 60% of AMD mobo's are....well....nforce !
Please dont get mad at this post...I hope i didnt offend anyone...if you do however find this post offenesive please click the back button now, as you should probably not be usin the net on your mommy's puter

hey I am going through that cats since 3.5 and everyone worked - IF I ONLY LOOK AT THIS PROBLEM HERE !!! - perfect ... but whooo from one day to the other it gave me that bug ... as I said there is
NO logical reason for this ... I have no hardwarechanges and reinstalled windows so there couldn't be any hardware/software trouble

Lucky you that Ati detects you monitor correctly and does not set it beyond its possibilities ... but some time ago there was also a topic about ppl. getting their monitor killed since it does not support shutdown on to high refresh rates

and most important ITS RANDOM so if there really is any problem it has to apper any time not maybe this boot or maybe next
that changing the RAID card helped was just bad luck ...

Maybe I did have this problem....I dont know I have reason to believe I have a good monitor. It's an NEC Multisync FE950 ...maybe if someone has a higher end monitor they dont see this bug? Just a thought.