I have now experience with Quadro 580 XGL (1 year) and ATI Fire GL 3100 (1 week). Now it looks like that Ati is more stabil than Nvidia. Quadro crashed SW 2005 SP5 at least twice a day, Ati has not crashed at all, yet.
How many Quadro cards did you test? How many ATI?
This is not the place to post that you got an ATI card to work more reliably than an Nvdia or any other card. Forget about even claiming that it works! I posted a minor zoom issue that I solved and it started an ATI bashing thread that is probably a hundred messages long.
I was called a liar when I said I got the card to function and I was even stalked by some nut case that searched 2 years worth of posts in order to find out my name and where I worked and if I even had a crash with my card. When he could not find any problems of me posting issues with my ATI cards he started undermining posts to other users where I offered help.
I am sure doubts about your finding will start immediately especially since you posted that you replace a "Certified" card and the problems seem to cease.
ATI has been under the gun to improve the reliability of their drivers by the application vendors and I heard rumors about a year ago that they were responding enthusiastically. Hopefully this will be a positive turning point for ATI. I have been using a FireGL Z1 at home and it has been working well with the newer drivers. Last time I tested the mobile FireGL product, the new push for quality drivers had not produced yet, so we went with NVIDIA due to limitations and graphics anomalies. Might have to revue them again when the time comes to spec a new PC.
Not to set off the lightship, but I wouldn't blow any horns after only a week. We can go for weeks with no crashes at all, then crash four or five times in a morning, with no obvious reason for the difference. On the other hand, if you really did have fairly consistent crashes a couple of times a day, maybe you're on to something. I would be more than happy to junk my card if I thought I could stop the crashes.
Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"
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