AMD to overtake Nvidia in WHQL driver wars

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: MTDEW

ATI user here and I think Nvidia's drivers own ATI's.

This may change with R600, but ATi has the crappiest, most bloated drivers ever.

I always felt Ati's drivers were fine, i never had any real issues, the same as Nvidia's drivers.
It was just Ati's CCC that i HATED!
Im not too thrilled with Nvidias new control panel either, but its better than Ati's current CCC.

Do you still have to install the .NET framework to use the control panel? I'm using ATI Tool and frankly I find it kind of clunky. I can get it to do what I want but I really don't need 90% of the stuff it does and its options aren't really that intuitive to me.

 

[MTDEW]

Do you still have to install the .NET framework to use the control panel? I'm using ATI Tool and frankly I find it kind of clunky. I can get it to do what I want but I really don't need 90% of the stuff it does and its options aren't really that intuitive to me.

For Ati cards - YES
I found it was best just to install the latest net framework, and not each earlier version and its updates.
I'd restore my clean xp install image and then just install the latest net framework, then the ati drivers and CCC.

For Nvidia cards - NO , Net framework is not required.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: x80064
You see...I'm stuck with a problem. Ive never owned a Nvidia card. But all the reports of no drivers concerns me. I can get a 8800GTS now but I do not know if I should. I game at 1440x900. I would rather wait for the R600 cards ( XL and GT ) which may be comparable to the GTS. But most of the games I play is Quake 4, Doom 3 multiplayer. And other games that run better on NV. I have no plans on going with Vista until its been out for one full year ( just my rule of thumb for a new OS ). But like I said about the no drivers worries me.

I would wait to see what kind of performance R600 offers up in those games...it's not that far away. ATI has gotten better with OpenGL...not the best...but better. If you want a card RIGHT now (as I did around the time of the G80 launch) then no doubt a 8800 is the card to get.

The driver performance for me with my 8800GTS has been a bit hit and miss. With the first driver releases some of the newer games (like Splinter Cell: Double Agent) didn't work....I had to wait a while to play them. This current driver I'm using (97.92) has been pretty good. I just wish I could force some IQ settings and actually have them stick.

I have never actually had driver problems with ATI cards but some of that can be attributed to the fact that I never bought a new generation of a card at launch...which I DID do with the 8800GTS. One thing I DO like about ATI is that they have a monthly release schedule...which I hear NVidia is about to do as well. When I did have an ATI card, I would ALWAYS use the Omega driver with ATI Tray Tools to set IQ so I don't have to install CCC nor any .NET stuff.

 

[nitromullet]

I'm going to file this under 'wait and see'. NV's 8800 Vista (WHQL) drivers are definitely lacking, especially coming off of the XP 7-series drivers. However, I'm skeptical about ATI's drivers as well for the following reasons:

1) I just installed the Cat 7.1 driver + CCC for Vista (with an AIW X800XL) today, and while the drivers performed fine and the CCC is much zippier, the uninstall was ridiculous... It simply didn't remove the CCC, so it kept showing up when I'd reboot. Oddly, enough after I switched cards the CCC recognized that the video card was actually a GeForce 8800GTX! Long story short, I had to manually kill all the CCC processes (CCC.exe and MOM.exe) and manually delete the files in C:\ATI\. Not the most difficult thing to do, but it might not be as trivial a task for someone not very savvy. Besides, it's simply un-excusable that an app's own uninstaller can't find the app in its default location.

2) Seriously, can anyone remember the last solid ATI launch? All the high end X1800s and X1900s are great cards, but the X1800 launch was horrible and there weren't even decent XP drivers for the X1900s initially either. Look a bit further back to 2005, when both ATI and NV completely paper launched the hell out of X800 and the 6-series. Finally, Crossfire.... Well, that speaks for itself. The launch was horrible and lots of weaknesses were omitted in the pre-release PR.

3) If everything is going so smoothly, why is R600 launching almost 5 months after G80?

I'm seriously not trying to rip on ATI - they make great stuff... I'm just trying to put this into perspective based on history and my personal experiences with the latest Cats. Do I doubt ATI's ability to put out a sweet card and a great driver? no... I do however doubt their ability to do a smooth launch that includes great hardware; solid XP/Vista, DX9/10, 32-bit/64-bit, single card/Crossfire drivers; and availability of said hardware... There is just a lot going on right now, so It's only natural IMO that ATI (and NVIDIA) struggle a bit.

Hopefully, I'm wrong though, AMD will have been the best thing to happen to ATI, and they come out of the gate with R600 kicking and screaming. Chances are, I'll get one either way.

I just think that claiming victory for a card/driver that hasn't even seen the light of day is a bit pre-mature.

 

[JPB]

Originally posted by: Zebo

Originally posted by: x80064
You see...I'm stuck with a problem. Ive never owned a Nvidia card. But all the reports of no drivers concerns me. I can get a 8800GTS now but I do not know if I should. I game at 1440x900. I would rather wait for the R600 cards ( XL and GT ) which may be comparable to the GTS. But most of the games I play is Quake 4, Doom 3 multiplayer. And other games that run better on NV. I have no plans on going with Vista until its been out for one full year ( just my rule of thumb for a new OS ). But like I said about the no drivers worries me.

How is the 8800 drivers in XP right now ? Are they up to par with everything else in this OS ? If so, then it may not be a problem to go with a GTS now.

Any opinions on this is greatly appreciated.

BTW....Yes, I am an ATI fanboy. I will admit that. But I have NO problem going with Nvidia if it'll make my games run better. Because at fast FPS games in multiplayer, I need the smoothest experience possible.

You own a 19" monitor only capable of 14x9 you don't need anything from nvidia ATM, ATI has you covered with 1950GT on up. You don't need anything from ATIs March launch either until dx10 games come.

Yes, I do need a better card. And the 1950 GT is basically what I have now. I must have forgot to mention im going to be purchasing a bigger monitor. And this one goes to my wife.

 

[aka1nas]

I wouldn't say that ATI's drivers have gotten that much better, just that Nvidia's driver quality has gone downhill of late.

So far the 7.1 Cats are working great in Vista 64. Performance isn't noticeably different from XP, except in the one OpenGL game I currently play. The CCC is a little finicky about opening, but that's not a deal-breaker at this point.

With the exception of a radeon 9700 a few years back, I've been pretty much an Nvidia guy for the last 7 years until this card. I'm impressed enough with my X1900XT and it's drivers that I will probably get an R600 derivative unless ATI seriously botches things.

 

[postmortemIA]

nvidia has trouble keeping up with drivers for all their products, that is obvious by dropping vista support for nforce2 and nforce3. Other companies and older chipsets have good support: intel's, VIA's chipsets old ~3 yrs have drivers for them.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: gersson

gersson, tell me that application/game that your ATI can run/play and my Nvidia can't. I bet I can run all you can run, plus more (dx10), with at least 50% speed improvement (CPU limited).

Dude there are tons of complaints on this site about issues with G80 and SLI, etc in vista and even in XP. I was just balancing out wreckage's post

There were and are tons of complaints on this site and others about CCC dragging ass and crashing. Does that mean people should have never ever bought ATI cards.

Based on the reviews, the number of 8800's selling and listed in people sigs, it seems more just ATI "supporters" who are complaining the most about it.

Spreading pure FUD, by saying the card does not work at all is just sad. From what I have seen it's working a hell of a lot better than some mythical card that may be out sometime in the distant future.

I merely replaced ATI with nvidia and I'M spreading FUD?

"he's as blind as he can be, just sees what he wants to see"

 

[BFG10K]

Of course if the ATI drivers do suck (which is very possible) you would have waited 6 weeks (or almost half a year since the 8800 launch) for nothing.

XP G80 drivers still suck and by all accounts Vista drivers are even worse.

Furthermore XP users still don't know where they stand with nVidia's driver schedule while ATi has been pumping out monthly WHQL drivers since 2002 and looks to be concurrently supporting Vista and XP in such a manner.

There were and are tons of complaints on this site and others about CCC dragging ass and crashing. Does that mean people should have never ever bought ATI cards.

If you don't like CCC don't install it and use any of the great third party utilities out there.

Based on the reviews, the number of 8800's selling and listed in people sigs, it seems more just ATI "supporters" who are complaining the most about it.

I'm a firm supporter of the G80 architecture (including the best AA/AF we've ever seen from a consumer card) yet the G80 drivers are the worst I've ever used for a video card, especially the first two releases.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
1) I just installed the Cat 7.1 driver + CCC for Vista (with an AIW X800XL) today, and while the drivers performed fine and the CCC is much zippier, the uninstall was ridiculous... It simply didn't remove the CCC, so it kept showing up when I'd reboot. Oddly, enough after I switched cards the CCC recognized that the video card was actually a GeForce 8800GTX! Long story short, I had to manually kill all the CCC processes (CCC.exe and MOM.exe) and manually delete the files in C:\ATI\. Not the most difficult thing to do, but it might not be as trivial a task for someone not very savvy. Besides, it's simply un-excusable that an app's own uninstaller can't find the app in its default location.

I suppose that's better than it used to be.

Back in the days of the ATI Rage Fury, if you swapped your card out without removing the ATI drivers, you were pretty much screwed. The ATI uninstaller would not remove the drivers if there was no ATI card present, and there was no reason to have the ATI drivers loading if you'd removed the card. Catch 22.

There were no unified drivers at the time, and the drivers' control panels didn't take very well -- we're talking error/warning messages on every boot, or extra memory being used up, etc. -- to being installed without their respective hardware. Tech support's solution at the time was a long email with instructions on searching the registry to clean ATI drivers.

Ouch.

Of course, that was a design problem. I've had lots of uninstallers for other software complain about not being able to find their own logs.

Stardock software is notorious for this: I've never had a full Object Desktop installation without some piece of software flaking out, failing to uninstall/update, or conflicting with newer versions of other ODNet components. The last year has been a series of perpetually incompatible betas of various components with the game being to find a working combination of versions that have the least unacceptable unresolved bugs.

But I'm going off topic here...

 

[BroadbandGamer]

Force V-Sync = Broke
Flat Panel Scaling = Broke
Custom resolutions = Broke
Custom game settings = Broke

I'm sure there's more but these are the ones that are really pissing me off.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: BroadbandGamer
Force V-Sync = Broke
Flat Panel Scaling = Broke
Custom resolutions = Broke
Custom game settings = Broke

I'm sure there's more but these are the ones that are really pissing me off.

At least they are there :laugh:

 

[terentenet]

Originally posted by: BroadbandGamer
Force V-Sync = Broke
Flat Panel Scaling = Broke
Custom resolutions = Broke
Custom game settings = Broke

I'm sure there's more but these are the ones that are really pissing me off.

BG, I'm sure you're not doing something right. What OS are you talking about? Drivers for XP or Vista? Because in XP V-Sync and Custom game settings are working great. I don't know about the other 2, I don't use those.
In Vista Custom Game Settings are working for me (I can force SLI, disable it for specific titles, AA, AF, V-Sync). Force V-Sync also works. Again, I don't use the other 2 options and I'm preety sure you're right about Flat Panel Scaling being broken.

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Of course if the ATI drivers do suck (which is very possible) you would have waited 6 weeks (or almost half a year since the 8800 launch) for nothing.

XP G80 drivers still suck and by all accounts Vista drivers are even worse.

Furthermore XP users still don't know where they stand with nVidia's driver schedule while ATi has been pumping out monthly WHQL drivers since 2002 and looks to be concurrently supporting Vista and XP in such a manner.

Hello BFG10K??? That link is about 97.02, dated Nov. 11. It's 21st Feb 2007 and current drivers are 97.92 and are working good. The only downside I see is that I can't enable 8xSSAA, just MSAA. Other than that, I have no complaints.

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
No surprises here. ATi > nVidia for WHQL drivers, and IMO drivers in general.

Are you serious?

Although I hope AMD will restore the current state of lopsided competition, I am not understanding the point of this topic at all. I mean, R600 doesn't even officially exist yet let alone its drivers? I'm not disputing anything here, just questioning. I want to know what's being discussed. Is it:

1. Quality of DX9 drivers between R5X0 vs G7X under XP? Or,
2. Quality of DX9 drivers between R5X0 vs G7X under Vista? Or,
3. Quality of DX9 drivers between R600 vs G80 under XP? Or,
4. Quality of DX9 drivers between R600 vs G80 under vista?
5. Quality of DX10 drivers between R600 vs G80 under Vista?

Well, first of all we can't even begin to talk about #3~5 since we don't have R600 yet. If it's about #1/2, then I'd think there isn't much new to talk about, either.

What am I missing?

 

[BFG10K]

Hello BFG10K??? That link is about 97.02, dated Nov. 11. It's 21st Feb 2007 and current drivers are 97.92 and are working good

All of those issues are for 97.92 but I can't edit the thread title.

Scroll down my original post and you'll see it mentioned there.

 

[terentenet]

Looks like R600 might be delayed. Linkie. That's nasty. I was expecting ATI to come up with R600 and Nvidia with 8900GTX. ATI's delay might postpone 8900GTX as well. Nasteeeh

 

[Gamingphreek]

Who in the world decides this? Not only that, this whole argument is stupid.

Nvidia's XP Drivers are untouchable when compared to AMD's (Granted AMD's have gotten A LOT better over the years). Neither company has great drivers out for Vista. Both are having their problems because it is A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM.

All these morons with class-action lawsuits are just that, morons.

People need to calm down and stop being the first to point blame at one company or the other.

-Kevin

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: terentenet
Looks like R600 might be delayed. Linkie. That's nasty. I was expecting ATI to come up with R600 and Nvidia with 8900GTX. ATI's delay might postpone 8900GTX as well. Nasteeeh

I think what we're seeing here is the lack of ATI's ability do be properly prepared for a launch combined with AMD's desire to launch things the right way... I hate to say it but, when it comes to video products both ATI and NV have learned that even a half-assed launch is better than a launch that is too late to be competitive. We'll see how this strategy pans out for AMD. I really want R600 to do well though because I get the impression that ATI's high end gpu program is fighting for its life within AMD, and a poor showing might just bring it to an end.

 

[BFG10K]

Nvidia's XP Drivers are untouchable when compared to AMD's

Not for the G80 series they aren't.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

inq is still 60% BS to me...

i can't believe they said single-fire as opposed to crossfire