Any bad experiences going from Nvidia to ATI (drivers/game wise?)

[poohbear]

Hey all, looking to upgrade my vid card to a 4870 (my price to performance sweet spot, GTX 260 way overpriced & performs the same). i've been going back & forth from nvidia to ATI for the past 10 years depending on which card hits the sweetspot, but have'nt owned an ATI for about 2+ years now. Anyone know of any driver issues or problems with ATI in general compared to Nvidia (especially AA & AF), inparticular the following games w/ ATI:

Dawn of war 2
Fallout 3
Empire total war
Witcher EE (noticed w/ latest nvidia drivers all kinds of graphics anamolies )
World in Conflict


Those are the games i play the most. Thanks in advance.

 

[TemjinGold]

I haven't had any problems. I've played 3 of those games through (DoW2, Fallout 3, and Witcher EE.) Never tried the other 2 but can't imagine there being a problem. ATi's overscan solution was actually better for me than nVidia's.

 

[Genx87]

If you start having driver crashes and errors watching windows media player. Uninstall CCC.

 

[poohbear]

If you start having driver crashes and errors watching windows media player. Uninstall CCC.

erm, are crashes known to happen w/ CCC? is it common?

 

[MrK6]

erm, are crashes known to happen w/ CCC? is it common?

No, not at all. 99% of them are due to user error. Just make sure you completely uninstall the old NVIDIA drivers (safe boot and use driver sweeper if you want), and then install the ATI card and Catalyst drivers.

 

[tboo]

Only problem I had was I couldnt get ARMA to play when I switched over to my 5970. I do hear there is a beta patch out that would fix my problem, though.

 

[Genx87]

No, not at all. 99% of them are due to user error. Just make sure you completely uninstall the old NVIDIA drivers (safe boot and use driver sweeper if you want), and then install the ATI card and Catalyst drivers.

Try again.

 

[Genx87]

erm, are crashes known to happen w/ CCC? is it common?

Seems every time somebody comes in here complaining about driver recovery issues in Vista or Windows 7 and event viewer errors while watching movies it is a result of CCC. I have personally witnessed this with my 4850. I had nothing but troubles with the card until I stopped installing CCC.

And my machine doesnt have NVidia drivers left on it either. I rebuild my machines when I switch out major hardware. I am not saying this will happen to you. But if you start seeing those issues. Try uninstalling CCC before pulling your hair out in frustration.

 

[Seero]

Hey all, looking to upgrade my vid card to a 4870 (my price to performance sweet spot, GTX 260 way overpriced & performs the same). i've been going back & forth from nvidia to ATI for the past 10 years depending on which card hits the sweetspot, but have'nt owned an ATI for about 2+ years now. Anyone know of any driver issues or problems with ATI in general compared to Nvidia (especially AA & AF), inparticular the following games w/ ATI:

Dawn of war 2
Fallout 3
Empire total war
Witcher EE (noticed w/ latest nvidia drivers all kinds of graphics anamolies )
World in Conflict


Those are the games i play the most. Thanks in advance.

Uninstall all video related drivers. Boot into safe mode and remove all Nvidia/ATIdirectories. Reboot and run registry cleaner. Reboot again and run the latest ATI driver.

If it still doesn't work, then one or more OS files may be modified by older version of drivers and must be replaced. Bring out the window disk and repair it.

 

[Spike99]

FYI,

I recently upgraded to ATI 5870 from 8800ultra. I had some reservations being this was my first ATI card... but I'm rather pleased.

But what I'm most pleased is about how cool it runs. My room temp would increase dramatically with my old 8800ultra but no so with 5870. Maybe because the 5870 is much faster and doesn't have to work as hard as the 8800ultra ? Not sure... but I'm rather pleased that I don't have to open my window to cool my room.

 

[MrK6]

Try again.

Yah, 99.5% would be more accurate. My bad.

 

[poohbear]

ok cool, from what im reading seems like ATI has their stuff together.

 

[Mem]

ok cool, from what im reading seems like ATI has their stuff together.

I use ATi drivers and CCC with Vista/Win7 x64 ,no issues with gaming or even Windows Media player which I use a lot btw,yes they are at least as good as Nvidia IMHO(my other PC has Nvidia video card).

I did have a minor issue of Nvidia drivers not uninstalling cleanly(3 Nvidia video dll files were still trying to load at desktop after uninstall ) when I went over to ATI ,this was with DriverSweeper and uninstalling in safe mode,however nothing Regedit could not remove or fix.

 

[T2k]

erm, are crashes known to happen w/ CCC? is it common?

Never seen anything like that (we have around hundred VGA cards here, 20+ ATI and 20+ Nvidia.)
Sounds like another silly nonsense, typically rooted from some ignorant post somewhere on the internetz...

 

[T2k]

Seems every time somebody comes in here complaining about driver recovery issues in Vista or Windows 7 and event viewer errors while watching movies it is a result of CCC. I have personally witnessed this with my 4850. I had nothing but troubles with the card until I stopped installing CCC.

And my machine doesnt have NVidia drivers left on it either. I rebuild my machines when I switch out major hardware. I am not saying this will happen to you. But if you start seeing those issues. Try uninstalling CCC before pulling your hair out in frustration.

As I wrote above...

 

[solofly]

I used to slam ATI drivers and now I slam nv's... (for example the little glitches I had in BF2 which I demonstrated while back don't exist on my ATI hardware, boy how times change and I've been at it for 27+ years)

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I switched from an 8800gts to a 5850. The performance is great but I do miss NVidia's drivers. ATI's CCC is terrible to navigate and individual game profiles can be a pain to setup. Also things like forcing Vsync via drivers or triple buffer seems to not work in certain games. I prefer the NVidia drivers for the menu setup and the options, but ATI's actual drivers are fine, just avoid CCC.

 

[thilanliyan]

I use ATI Tray Tools instead of CCC (allows me to undervolt and underclock my card at idle) and have no complaints but I don't know if there are any indepth features missing from Tray Tools.

 

[Absolution75]

It took me 8 years to switch from nVidia (geforce 4 ti 4600, 6800 gt, 7800gtx, 8800gt, 9800gtx) back to ATI after my awful experience with their first series of radeon and expert 128 cards.

I don't regret it one bit.

The only thing I miss would be being able to set AA/AF values for a specific game, but this is only an issue for older games which don't support ingame settings (ex hl1).

 

[toyota]

I switched from an 8800gts to a 5850. The performance is great but I do miss NVidia's drivers. ATI's CCC is terrible to navigate and individual game profiles can be a pain to setup. Also things like forcing Vsync via drivers or triple buffer seems to not work in certain games. I prefer the NVidia drivers for the menu setup and the options, but ATI's actual drivers are fine, just avoid CCC.

yeah I couldnt get vsync forced on from CCC in some games either. btw triple buffering doesnt do anything for DX games from the CCC. that is only for OpenGL games.

 

[Genx87]

As I wrote above...

I know, awful offering personal experience and possible solution to driver problems when the OP asked about any possible problems related to drivers. Perhaps spending less time trolling and more time reading the actual thread would help you.

 

[Mistwalker]

Upgraded from an 8800GTX to a 4870x2 just over a year ago.

Aside from not liking how things are laid out in the Catalyst Control Center, it's never given me problems or crashed (and I update the drivers every month as they come out). Drivers and game performance have been just fine.

Of the games you listed I've played through Witcher EE and Fallout 3. Performance was great, no issues with the former and the latter's crashing every 5-60 minutes was not, as far as I could research, due to anything but simply being "Fallout 3." When it wasn't crashing, it looked and ran fantastic.

 

[solofly]

It took me 8 years to switch from nVidia (geforce 4 ti 4600, 6800 gt, 7800gtx, 8800gt, 9800gtx) back to ATI after my awful experience with their first series of radeon and expert 128 cards.

I don't regret it one bit.

The only thing I miss would be being able to set AA/AF values for a specific game, but this is only an issue for older games which don't support ingame settings (ex hl1).

ATI drives sucked up until AMD bought them out and now they rock!

As for as AA/AF goes, open up CCC, in the upper right corner click on Options and then choose Profiles...(there's nothing to miss, anymore)

 

[VashHT]

I haven't had a problem in any of those games, but I haven't played Empire Total War so I can't comment on that. I've been using both ATI and Nvidia cards for like 7 years (switching back and forth or sometimes I'd have two separate machines) and I honestly have had more problems with nvidia's drivers than with ATI's.

Also, right now I'm running a 5870 in win7 x64 and the only problem I've had is with Flash 10 and hardware acceleration. If it's turned on it crashes the drivers, but other than that I haven't had any problems with WMP like some other people here mentioned.

 

[Maximilian]

Not really no, my x1900xt ran hot was a noisy POS and then died but apart from that my old 9800 pro and current hd 5850 have been great!