I've been examining the reaction with the new 30.30 drivers on all of the different forums. It's very surprising to see the results for many people as a mixed bag. Some people with blazing processors got significant increases while some got decreases and still some got no increase at all. Same goes with ddr memory and different video cards. I am the unfortunate one with no increase with speed or IQ. In fact, since the 28.90s, every new driver version, leaked and official, has decreased performance, then leveled off.

I see ATI has the new Radeon 9700 launched and I will be in the market for a new card this late fall. I am not happy with the driver support released for my 4600, especialy in regards to optimization. I feel like I have been tossed a good card with a three speed trans, but paid the price for a 6 speed tiptronic. I am going to be looking at the support ATI and Matrox provide with their new driver releases with their new cards including other downloads offered and will include my decision not only with the card, but also support. What do you guys think about my strategy?

i wish idid my homework before buying htis KT333 msi/via mobo, but im also i the same boat as you i got a crappy, GF 2 Mx 400 64 mb and i also went ot atis site and should be hearing back soon on a price for thier 9700 only hting im afraid of is as you mentioned the driver prob they have, but from what i herd they are trying to do a unifed driver thing, with thier catalyst or somethign but its only for radeons, my note book has a ati 7000 ddr and it dont work so im not sure whats the deal with ati, but then ahgain thier drivers never been that good,,i have a chance to buy a GF 4 Ti 4200 should i ?? $250 i think,

Save the cash and buy a Radeon 9700 for 399$.
It´ll be out in 30 days.

is that the us price or CDN?

Well, if you think NVidia's driver support is bad, I would ask you what other companies are making better drivers.

Since I've never used Matrox, I cannot really comment on it.

On the other hand, it is well-known about ATI's driver issues. I read from an article on Anadtech site which says the Radeon 9700 driver is made from scratch, because of the new architecture. (thus, no UDA driver, although ATI is saying from 9700 on, there will be ... )

Think about the "first" people who bought ATI Radeon cards from 2000. How long they had to endure for driver woes?

Maybe we are looking for something that does not exist; people has been criticizing about "software" quality since the 80's, yet very little seems to have changed in this industry.

Of course, that's my own biased opinion; no offense to anyone.

The price is $399 U.S. dollar.

Maybe you remember when Radeon 8500 first came out, it was $399, too.
I guess we can reasonably predict the price change on this product, from past experience.

Or better wait that "GeForce 5" or what the hell it will be called or Radeon9700 better version will be released

well JOE it doesn`t metter if u go w/NVIDIA, ATI or MATROX they all will have bad and good drivers, for my system(PIV2.53 on TH7II and PC1066 and GF4 Ti4600) 30.30 perform like 29.20, didn`t get any points increase or better IQ but I`m still hopping for det.5(just remember when DET.4 come out and people were getting very big boost) to come out soon, u just have to be a little patient as for RD9700 it will be faster then GF4 but I will wait for NV300..