Account reactivated? No thanks, free? No thanks.

shader functionality in SL is brought on almost exclusively through compilations with nvidia's shader toolkit 'cg' (you can even find raw cg shader files in the SL folders)

many of those have known bugs in regards to ati, its not ati's fault, its jus not the way cg shaders are 'meant to be played'

[edit]

which is why they shouldn't really be used in my humble opinion

for more info on multiple LL caused ati 'bugs' look over to my ati petition threads... theres 5 major long standing 'ati' bugs, three of which are definately caused by the SL code, and the other two may have been 'caused' by ati drivers, but LL *COULD* implement workarounds for them relatively easily

Eltee, maybe it's just your mouse drivers?

its not the driver thats the issue.. its some part of the SL client rendering code thats activated for the mouse events (generally like in the cursor projection calculations probably, aka so SL knows what you click on)...

the SL codebase is simply altering the way stuff is rendered to accomplish this... a very slight alteration compared to NOT havin the mouse on screen.. but its most assuredly that alteration thats causing the ATI cards to FSAA blackout.

Its actually probably something as simple as *ONE* line of code thats doing it but it doesn't matter because even though they KNOW it now, they won bother to fix it because they have more important things to do like screw with how i'm allowed to sit

I have a 256 bit 256mb ATI 9800 PRO with a gig of PC4400 DDR ram and a 3ghz P4 prescott, i run with things turned on and up. No problems what so ever, Im also using latest Direct X and Catalyst Drivers. Never had any problems with ATI, Iv owned nVidia.. and both companies, IMO, make great products. I just prefer ATI, heck they used to be the cheap "joke" of a 3d card, now look at them.

holy shnikes... didnt even look at the date. Sorry to revisit this ancient issue I was looking for something else when i saw this =P

ATI's drivers have matured nicely over the last year, if you were wondering. 5.3 is far superior to 4.1.

I've been afraid to update my ATI video drivers for awhile now, since it seems every time I did so it would break things horribly. The driver version I was using was not too hot either though... I would crash SL 4-5 times a night.

Well, I had a different problem with my computer and had to clear out and reinstall my video drivers. I installed the latest drivers (as of like 2 weeks ago) and since then things have been great! No crashes/hangs like I used to get so frequently. *knocks on wood*

ATI Athelon 1.99mHz processor
1GB RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 (in non-AGP mode)

-Ghoti

Just thought I'd throw in my experience with the ATI 9800 Pro. Have been using it since July, and with options on, of or any combination thereof and have never had a problem related to video. I did find a HUGE performance gain when going from 512G of ram to 1 GB.

I've had an ATI Radeon 9800 XT since they came out and have never experienced any issues with SL or any other game.

I have everything cranked up on SL except local lighting and that because it used to kill me (big time lag) at crowded club events.

SL overall performance and graphics on my main PC (the one with the ATI) compared with my PC at work or laptop is far superior, even though they have comparable CPUs and memory.

I am running the latest ATI drivers.

I am not trying to defend SL or ATI. But SL is without a doubt a very hardware demanding game and I believe you need the right combination of CPU, Graphics Card, Memory, Bandwidth, Drivers and Operating System for optimal performance.

Tito

Bleh. ATI still sucks. Never had anything but problems with the card I had. Now I'm using two NVidia cards and ATI can BITE ME! lol

OK I'm not 100% genuinely saying ATI sucks....they're probably making better hardware than NV. But without compatibility, what good is it?

BTW I like "Nvidiots"...LOL! The "ATI is run by a bunch of monkeys" post is great too, hehehe!