What creates a "fanboi?" (Brand devotion and regrets)

Argh.

So, earlier this year I finished building up my nice new gaming/main system that, if all goes as planned, should last me a few years. (My previous one did yeoman duty through two processor upgrades, a video card upgrade, an OS beta and upgrade, and is currently my media center - maybe not the most power efficient one, but it's still going strong. I just couldn't upgrade it any longer - can't get past an early Phenom for the CPU, and you can't find those now.) Four years of regular use, and I'm sure I'll get a few more out of it as a media center. Not bad.

Most of it went pretty well - I (reluctantly, I must say) jumped ship from AMD processors to the shiny new Core i7-860, which was my first sacrifice, actually - being a core 1156 (think I have that number right) processor, it costs less, memory (dual instead of triple channel) costs less, and it performs great (at lower power,) plus Win7 sees it as an 8 core CPU... but I will never, according to Intel, be able to use a six core processor with it. (Those reserved for the 13xx series sockets.)

I don't actually mind, TBH, as all I'm giving up are bragging rights. Very little actually uses multiple cores (Handbrake did max it out, which was just nifty to see,) and by the time games and apps generally do I figure I'll be ready to build another system (4-5 years or so.) Still, the multiple sockets, multiple upgrade paths and rapid socket obsolescence are things I'd held against Intel for a while - that and price.

I'll live with that, though. That's fine.

What I'm not all that happy with, though, is the other ship I jumped - from nVidia to ATI. (Yeah, I gave up AMD on one side and picked them up on the other, AMD, of course, owning ATI now.) In this system - partially to get ready for City of Heroes' "Ultra mode" in Issue 17 - I wanted to get a worthwhile graphics card. I'd initially specced out an nVidia 260/216. I'd waited to have one from XFX (great company, my last several cards have been from them) come around. But nVidia, for whatever reason, seriously cut supply. Part of it, apparently, was from the fabs, and part of it was waiting for Fermi (the newly released 470/480 indoor grills... er, cards.) Supply was *just not there.*

Now, I'd vowed not to buy ATI again back in the Radeon 7000 days. That, though, was mostly due to being infuriated at their support. It was a nightmare, mostly of being told (mutliple times) to do things I'd done before contacting them. (I do tech support, I do know how to troubleshoot, and gave them detailed information on *detailed* troubleshooting, removal, cleanup, etc. - all of which was roundly ignored.)

Well, with AMD buying them, the 5000 HD series getting good reviews (and being lower power users than nVidia,) plus having DirectX 11 support (futureproofing as much as I can,) I figured "What the hell." I ended up picking up a Radeon HD 5770 from XFX.

Now, let me say from the start this card *has* shown me good performance. For a sub-$200 card, it's hard to beat. However...

Yeah, always a but.

First was some expected problems. ATI has had issues with City of Heroes historically. There's a setting that fixes many of them ("Compatiblecursors -1") but still - going over enhancements = a jump to the other side, and there are other little things here and there that are just odd or irritating. But they're not gamebreaking - I could put up with them. People have for years, after all.

What's making me regret buying this card, though... the Grey Stripes of Death. Or sometimes just the Grey Screen of Death. See, I'll be playing... well, one of many games. Left 4 Dead 2 or Borderlands, most often - good, solid titles I've had no issues with, when all of a sudden, *WHAM* - grey screen. Or grey stripes. System totally unresponsive, can't get to the desktop, can't kill the game, all you can do is hard-boot the system... something I hate doing.

I've jumped through the hoops. I've fiddled with fan speed, with settings, I've reloaded drivers. I've unloaded, gone to safe mode, used DriverCleaner (nice little program, BTW,) grabbed the 10.3 drivers and loaded those... nada.

Waiting for the next steps from XFX, but... I'm really wishing those 260s had stayed out in quantity. So far this experience is doing nothing but making me want to give nVidia more money and send them an apology for ever trying ATI. And I can't blame XFX - this is an issue that's been going on with all ATI cards, apparently not even "just" the 5-series.

I'm not impressed - but it's definitely strengthening my devotion to nVidia as a customer.

(Now, as far as the title - no, I wouldnt' call myself a "fanboi" - I'll criticize nVidia as well when they screw up, like the current gen's 480/470 running so hot, being late, and what has been happening to prior-gen card availability. That's a massive screwup and can only hurt them. And I've been through the OS wars, arguing against NT, defending OS/2, lauging at Win95... yeah, that old, my current attitude being "use what works and what you like." But this sort of thing does nothing but strengthen those sorts of arguments - and brand loyalty.)