Are ati drivers better at this point then nvidia?

[DeathReborn]

A lot of people have hit snags with AMD's latest drivers (and some older ones too) due to bad .net checks. Simply they try to install an older version in 10.7 than Microsoft released in May and it can cause issues upon installation.

Overall I have issues & have seen issues from both but it's the really simple issues that grate the most.

 

[Barfo]

Has there ever been a driver that caused ATI/AMD cards to fry, like with those Nvidia ones?

 

[Mem]

A lot of people have hit snags with AMD's latest drivers (and some older ones too) due to bad .net checks. Simply they try to install an older version in 10.7 than Microsoft released in May and it can cause issues upon installation.

Overall I have issues & have seen issues from both but it's the really simple issues that grate the most.

I have never had any issues like that and I have updated every month from 8.4s to 11.7s over the years.

 

[ZimZum]

That Vista chart is BS, you know that nvidia had daamit dominated in gpu sales during the vista years. That 3:1 spread is likely very close to the actual distribution of cards back then.

This argument is sooo old but.........

If you actually look at the market share numbers from the date of the survey you will find that this often repeated theory isn't supported by the data.

2007
Desktop GPU Market Share:

Intel: 41%
Nvidia: 31%
ATI: 22%

2007
Notebook GPU Market share:

Intel: 47%
ATI: 29%
nVidia: 22%


Cause of logged Vista Crashes:

nVidia: 29%
Microsoft: 19%
ATI: 9.3%
Intel: 8.8%

Nvidia accounted for close to 1/3rd of all Vista crashes. Thats over 3 times as much as ATI. Yet nVidia had only 10% more desktop market share than ATI in 2007. And thats if you completely ignore notebook market-share. Which lest we forget, Notebooks make up the vast majority of PCs sold. If you look at total market share they were basically even.

 

[Nemesis 1]

All companies have ups and downs with their drivers.

Good for you . I recently switched to NV . Because AMD started using NVs old marketing habits and NV switched to an intel type of marketing , Makes all the differance in the world on preception of a company. Look what happened to intel on the Larrabbee hype . Bad strategy that ended poorly for Intel and PAT. Best stategy here is for NV users to ignor the topic.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Best stategy here is for NV users to ignor the topic.

Why, will that somehow make their hardware run better?

RE Vista crashes, if people recall, Nvidia drivers on Vista initially were a complete disaster.

 

[Jionix]

Good for you . I recently switched to NV . Because AMD started using NVs old marketing habits and NV switched to an intel type of marketing , Makes all the differance in the world on preception of a company. Look what happened to intel on the Larrabbee hype . Bad strategy that ended poorly for Intel and PAT. Best stategy here is for NV users to ignor the topic.

I don't even know what this has to do with drivers. But I must commend you on your powerful use of the FUD.

P.S. May the FUD be with you.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Why, will that somehow make their hardware run better?

RE Vista crashes, if people recall, Nvidia drivers on Vista initially were a complete disaster.

No it won't . Its all about ya so you say . Have it your way and have a good day . Bye for now.

 

[sandorski]

3DFX had the best Drivers ever, probably due to Glide, but whatever.

That said, every Driver has some Issues. It is unavoidable and rather silly to judge every Driver from BrandX based upon running into one of these Issues. Depends on the severity of the Issue of course, but generally they are just annoying more than anything.

Reputations die hard though, so people still tend to think NVidia has better Drivers. This ceased being the case many years ago now, but old Opinions die hard.

 

[AdamK47]

When I was running triple 5870s it seemed like whenever a big budget game was released the current Ati drivers would have a problem of some kind. You would have to wait until the next driver release to get CrossFire working properly or other issues resolved.

nVidia has far less of these issues. In terms of compatibility and flexibility with multiple GPUs, nVidia wins. Ati maintains that they want their implementation to remain transparent to the end user. That means no UI to create or tweak CrossFire profiles. It's sad that they continue to ignore power users who are willing to use something like this. The only option you have is to rename an executable to something the Ati driver profile will pick up, or use a 3rd party tool that remains in memory and isn't guaranteed to work.

 

[AnandThenMan]

3DFX had the best Drivers ever, probably due to Glide, but whatever.

Imma gonna let you finish, but Matrox had the best drivers of all time!

No it won't . Its all about ya so you say . Have it your way and have a good day . Bye for now.

I, don't even...what?

 

[Rifter]

P.S. May the FUD be with you.

This is almost sig worthy

 

[Aikouka]

1000% this, why do they keep putting up that picture?

Guess what if you have 3 times the crashes but 10 times the market share that means thats your drivers are STILL BETTER.

I purchased an 8800GTX the day it came out (mistake #1) and used it with Vista (mistake #2 through &#8734. I think I would rank that as my #1 worst computing experience. I had to literally tip-toe around areas in games because entering them would cause the computer to lock up. I could also never open up two DirectX layers at once, which meant playing a MMO on one monitor and opening a video on another monitor would freeze my computer. To not sound like a complete negative Nancy, nVidia did seek me out to try and figure out what was going wrong. So, I have to give kudos for the outreach by non-support personnel (one was a PR guy, other was a SW project manager).

In all fairness, I think part of my woes may have been the actual card itself. I recall how there was that big issue with the 8800GTX prior to being released, and I wonder if it actually got fixed. Combine that with eVGA's ludicrous 30-day registration period (if you don't register in the first 30 days, you lose your warranty) and I just gave up on both companies (eVGA and nVidia).

I still do keep an eye out on the "originally green side" though. If they get an obvious edge in performance without requiring me to get a second job to afford it (aforementioned 8800GTX cost me $650), I'll give it a shot.

 

[notty22]

Lot of fud in here.
Here let me throw some AMD data in.
The 5 series was plagued with the GSOD.
HARDOCP - Dongle and GSOD Issues

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/video/ati-5800-series-grey-screen-death-gsod-hotfix/

ATI 5800 Series Grey Screen of Death (GSOD) Hotfix | Hardware Canucks


http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/video/ati-5800-series-grey-screen-death-gsod-hotfix/


ATI Grey Screen of Death fix coming soon

Here is Charlies putting a good spin on it, blaming Microsoft. Maybe that was the main problem with Vista ? A change made deep within Windows ? LOL

 

[Grooveriding]

Has there ever been a driver that caused ATI/AMD cards to fry, like with those Nvidia ones?

No, not that I know off.

Nvidia released those drivers that caused the fans to stop spinning on 8XXX and I believe 2XX cards and they roasted.

The exploding and burning up 590s I would say are not so much a driver issue. The 590 is poorly made with cheap power circuitry and they had to use drivers to throttle the card to keep it from exploding. Not so much the drivers that killed the cards as it is the card design, now patched via drivers to throttle the card.

 

[ieatdonuts]

Imma gonna let you finish

comment fail

As an AMD user for years I have yet to encounter any problems at all. I really don't know why everyone complains about drivers, I can't recall ever seeing an issue with any program.

I will, however, complain about Intel GMA, it's a piece of crap.

 

[Saico]

Lot of fud in here.
Here let me throw some AMD data in.
The 5 series was plagued with the GSOD.
HARDOCP - Dongle and GSOD Issues



ATI 5800 Series Grey Screen of Death (GSOD) Hotfix | Hardware Canucks





ATI Grey Screen of Death fix coming soon

Here is Charlies putting a good spin on it, blaming Microsoft. Maybe that was the main problem with Vista ? A change made deep within Windows ? LOL

You forgot to mention, that GSOD occurred only on 0.15% of all newly crafted higher-end 5xxx series. I'd call it a failed black PR attempt by Nvidia.

 

[-Slacker-]

Speaking of crap drivers, has anyone encountered the bug where the monitor looses it's image and goes dark for a few seconds? The one with that "the display driver has recovered from a whatever in the whatever (can't remember the exact words)" message?

It happened to me today twice while I was browsing in firefox. (although it was using hardware acceleration without my knowing - turned it off when I realized that).

I'm using the latest forceware driver - downloaded it yesterday after a clean format an windows installation.

Do I need to replace it with a previous version?

 

[SlowSpyder]

Lot of fud in here.
Here let me throw some AMD data in.
The 5 series was plagued with the GSOD.
HARDOCP - Dongle and GSOD Issues

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/video/ati-5800-series-grey-screen-death-gsod-hotfix/

ATI 5800 Series Grey Screen of Death (GSOD) Hotfix | Hardware Canucks


http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/video/ati-5800-series-grey-screen-death-gsod-hotfix/


ATI Grey Screen of Death fix coming soon

Here is Charlies putting a good spin on it, blaming Microsoft. Maybe that was the main problem with Vista ? A change made deep within Windows ? LOL

There very well may be FUD in this thread, but what you posted has nothing to do with that FUD. I never have seen the GSOD issue personally, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen to others. Also AMD has had a lagging mouse pointer issue if I recall. But since I haven't seen anyone post that AMD's drivers are perfect I don't see what FUD you are trying to refute..? This looks more to me like an attempt at deflecting.

AMD's drivers aren't perfect for everyone, probably far from it. But Nvidia has released some real doozies over the last few years and there seem to be more Nvidia-driver threads I've seen as of late than AMD-driver threads.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Do I need to replace it with a previous version?

I would, there is a good chance your problem will go away, assuming the card itself is not failing.

 

[Nintendesert]

I have never had any problems with either, but my last ATi card was a 9600. Was a very long time ago...



Way to use the image that is very misleading, and this has been pointed out every time it is used. Nvidia had a dominating lead in market share during the Vista era with the 8-series, 9-series, and less-so with the 200-series. And lets ignore the fact that they also had motherboard chipset drivers during the Vista era.

They had more market share than Microsoft or Intel?


That being said, I've not had too many problems with either company beyond small issues. There were problems with my 570 and crashes with World of Tanks, but the newest drivers fixed that.

The 5870 has been pretty stable though and I haven't had many issues. Only issue really is needing to completely clean all traces of previous drivers when I upgrade or CCC won't function at all.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I use cards from both vendors and never had glaring issues of one over the other, until, anything released by nvidia since their 270.61 WHQLs. Just look at the nvidia driver forums lately

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=213

People asking questions like 'Is it safe to update ?' Maybe they lost some of their driver team or something recently.

So OP I would agree with you, nvidia drivers have been terrible since the 270.61 release, tons of SLI issues, buggy game issues in BFBC2, Crysis 2 and Witcher 2 among others.

Can't speak to AMD drivers of late as I only have one AMD card in a system I don't use myself much. But never had these sorts of problems when I was using my 5870s.

Also

Since the gtx 560 non i purchased started off with the 275.33 as its first supported driver, just appears unless they make a stable driver this will be the worst purchase i or anyone else has made

p.s love the pie chart wow a whopping 28% for nvidia thats crazy glad i jumped the vista train when beta 7000 of windows 7 came out.

 

[notty22]

Since the gtx 560 non i purchased started off with the 275.33 as its first supported driver, just appears unless they make a stable driver this will be the worst purchase i or anyone else has made

Why , you haven't proven that. You have a unstable system, there may be some other driver or piece of hardware possibly failing or installed incorrectly.
Its the same as me saying, who has never had a problem with 2 video cards in SLI, that things are absolutely perfect and problem free, and the only way to go.
Nvidia makes workstation drivers for similar hardware up and down the product line, and stability is key for productivity. Thats what I feel I'm getting with my purchase.

 

[Fallengod]

As stated earlier, I wouldnt say I have any actual in-game stability issues or anything with ATI drivers thus far, but installing an ATI card within the past 3 days I definitely have noted some issues related to some lacking features and usability that were not there with nvidia drivers....

Here are my current ATI issues.

1) No refresh rate override in drivers. Had to install a third party app that seems a bit clunky to do refresh rates.

2) Somehow Catalyst drivers conflict with how my monitor has recognized some of its max refresh rates in some resolutions. Very strange issue, but this was never a problem with nvidia. (normally I can do 150hz at 800x600 but now it wont let me go past 120hz even after reinstalling monitor drivers)

3) I know some others have noted they even have this issue with nvidia drivers, but I never have. With this ATI card, I cant alt-tab out of a variety of games now. I have to kill process just to get out of an end-less window flop loop.

4) I used riva tuner with gamma settings for specific games. With these Cats, changing and using custom gamma profiles seems fairly buggy. I have had many games where the adjusted gamma value just disappears if you go try to change in-game gamma. Managing this stuff is definitely more buggy and not as easy as it was with nvidia.

 

[Grooveriding]

Speaking of crap drivers, has anyone encountered the bug where the monitor looses it's image and goes dark for a few seconds? The one with that "the display driver has recovered from a whatever in the whatever (can't remember the exact words)" message?

It happened to me today twice while I was browsing in firefox. (although it was using hardware acceleration without my knowing - turned it off when I realized that).

I'm using the latest forceware driver - downloaded it yesterday after a clean format an windows installation.

Do I need to replace it with a previous version?

I would try a rollback to 270.61. Have no issue like that. The only thing close to that is I cannot alt-tab out of source engine games, I just get a black screen and have to open task manager and close the game process.

But this has always been my experience with nvidia drivers and source games.