Morgana~ is quite right, my complaint is about the ATI drivers and their "management" software.

My 10 hours was my first bad experience with ATI a few years ago. I built a gaming box for a kid, and he insisted on this top of the range ATI card. His machine kept producing intermittent faults such as Morgana~ described. I checked and double checked everything, and because the fault was intermittent, this took quite a time, as did testing with spare components and testing the suspect components on other boxes.

The card was the latest, and the drivers were only 4 weeks old! so I didn't think of that..........when I did, I found that there were new ones only 2 weeks old................it worked OK after that

This is not just my experience, friends and colleagues have reported exactly the same.

I have not noticed any significant hardware problems with ATI cards in comparison with other brands.

When you act as an OEM or a repairer you have to guarantee your work, so any additional work is at your own expense, and you have to pay for returning failed components. Also, it does not make you look good, even though it is not your fault!

I have worked in engineering CAD support environments such as Morgana~ describes. I would never install or upgrade the software onto kit that was not on the suppliers' approved list. The main reason for that is that if you call them for support the first two questions are "have you got the latest version" and "what hardware are you using"? If you are not up to date and approved, the conversation ends there.

Cheers

PS. This machine has a Radeon 7500 with the latest drivers. Every now and then it will change the screen size and/or distort the image. My "work around" is to change the refresh rate from 85 to 75, then change it back...............that fixes it for some reason!