Are ati drivers better at this point then nvidia?

[skipsneeky2]

Decided to test drive 280.26 nvidia drivers this evening with bc2 and idk what to think anymore.

Are nvidia drivers going to [redacted]? Would amds latest be any more stable cause i'm about fed up after playing a couple bugged to hell rounds of bc2 this evening and i had to ragequit which isn't something i do period.

Currently using a gtx 560 non ti which only has a handful of official supported drivers and the last time i tried a amd driver was with a 6990 that went south.

So has amd picked up where nvidia has slacked as of recently?

Been considering a gtx 580 but if nvidia is gonna make nothing but but craptastic drivers ill just buy a 6970 or a ps3 at this point.


No profanity in the tech forums, please.

Moderator jvroig

 

[Red Hawk]

Probably. I hang around BioWare's tech support forums and I can't tell you how many times someone has come in with a problem that was caused by newer Nvidia drivers and was solved by reverting. Nvidia's latest drivers even caused a 100% reproducible crash in Dragon Age II. General bugs are still pretty much unavoidable with either chip designer's drivers.

 

[AnandThenMan]

This thread will not end well.

Anyway, lately Nvidia's drivers are downright terrible, I don't know what happened but yea they are simply bad. But on balance, I honestly think both AMD and Nvidia make very solid drivers, considering the vast variety of hardware/software combinations out there, they do pretty well. I've always thought that ATI/AMD is a more stable driver (unless you go way back, ATI was crash city), Nvidia tends to push things a bit more for the sake of speed, but that's just my experience others may have a different take.

 

[skipsneeky2]

This thread will not end well.

Anyway, lately Nvidia's drivers are downright terrible, I don't know what happened but yea they are simply bad. But on balance, I honestly think both AMD and Nvidia make very solid drivers, considering the vast variety of hardware/software combinations out there, they do pretty well. I've always thought that ATI/AMD is a more stable driver (unless you go way back, ATI was crash city), Nvidia tends to push things a bit more for the sake of speed, but that's just my experience others may have a different take.

Didn't really intend this thread to cause issues or anything just not sure what to think.

Been playing BC2 since december and the last 3 months have been god awful and i love that game to death but tonight it was like wow.

Some people might not experience 280.26 issues but for me it was a performance hit that had me dropping my settings and in game it was skipping all over and locking up at random.

Could go back to 275.33 but those aren't that much better just curious to know if amds recent drivers are any better at this point as i'm planning a upgrade.

 

[Fallengod]

My advice would be to stop updating drivers just cause new ones come out. I know some of you are obsessive compulsive when it comes to updates but.... I find stable drivers I like and probably never even check for updates again for a while. I cant say ive ever had a lot of issues with nvidia drivers personally.

On the other side of things, I recently (temporarily) purchased an ATI 4670 cause my 9800GT died and I was considering the possibility of switching to ATI. First time with an ATI card and ive spend at least 3 days trying to iron out issues with setting my refresh rate and having issues with monitor now not correctly detecting certain refresh rates for certain resolutions. I was actually just sitting here seriously debating of tossing out the idea of goign ATI due to how epically bad they are at managing color profiles and refresh rates. Nvidia drivers have all this stuff incorporated, why is ATI so far behind...

I also cannot alt-tab out of games with catalyst drivers as I could with nvidia drivers. I have to completely kill the process when I alt-tab. I tried today in both TF2 and left4dead2. Managing gamma changes that I need for my CRT are also fairly buggy and dont seem to work all that well with the ati tray tool I am forced to use because of refresh rate issues that arnt handled by cats themselves.

Anyways, there you go.

 

[toyota]

Fallengod, I believe that is a game issue not a driver issue. I have bitched about not always being able to alt tab out of most Source games for years and I was and still am using Nvidia.

 

[Arkadrel]

@skipsneeky2

Bad time to invest in a 580.

When 7xxx series is out (soon, month(s) only), the 580 is gonna drop from its current 440$ ish cost --> 250$. Because mid range cards are probably gonna give it competition and go at that cost.


If you take the 6870 as a exsample, its selling for like 155$ (but was around 200$+ at launch).

However if you take that 6870, and add say 60% performance (from going from 40nm->28nm), you end up with a 7870 thats faster than a 580.

So wait a month or two before any upgrades, esp in those price ranges.
(just so you dont buy a 400$ product, and watch it 2months lateron sell for half its price)

 

[Crap Daddy]

@skipsneeky2

Bad time to invest in a 580.

When 7xxx series is out (soon, month(s) only), the 580 is gonna drop from its current 440$ ish cost --> 250$. Because mid range cards are probably gonna give it competition and go at that cost.


If you take the 6870 as a exsample, its selling for like 155$ (but was around 200$+ at launch).

However if you take that 6870, and add say 60% performance (from going from 40nm->28nm), you end up with a 7870 thats faster than a 580.

So wait a month or two before any upgrades, esp in those price ranges.
(just so you dont buy a 400$ product, and watch it 2months lateron sell for half its price)

I so much like the kind of high expectation from a new series of GPUs that end in the dust. The 7xxx series will be out at the end of the year so there's at least 3 months to go. But on the other hand the 580 is not worth now the price. The best card in my opinion for the price is the GTX570 but I cannot fully recommend it since I had some nasty stuff going on with mine and it seems that I'm not alone in the boat. On the other hand I really don't understand why people keep jumping on the latest driver since you have a system that's working fine. In games that are running OK you'll probably get an insignificant amount of better FPS at the expense of ruining something else. I run BFBC2 with no issues whatsoever, steady 60FPS vsync on all max 32xCSAA on 1680/1050 with the 275.33. I really don't care about the AMD drivers but from my part and the games that I play never had one single driver related problem with Nvidia and the CP is simple to use. I only have installed the driver and the physx.

 

[Borealis7]

like i always say, drivers from both companies are equally bad.

 

[nemesismk2]

like i always say, drivers from both companies are equally bad.

I second that

 

[dajeepster]

I second that

can't we also say that they are equally "good"? :hmm:

 

[VulgarDisplay]

can't we also say that they are equally "good"? :hmm:

That's what I was going to say. I used nvidia cards for about 8 years, and just recently switched to AMD. I have never had a problem with drivers for either company.

I would wager that the majority of people who complain about drivers are running xfire/SLi.

 

[Mem]

like i always say, drivers from both companies are equally bad.

Or equally good .


I use both however I use AMD drivers for gaming due to my main PC being AMD based,never had any real issues with either,normally its a minor bug you find that is fixed via forums or driver/game update.

End of the day no driver is perfect hence updates just like its very rare to find a perfect game.

 

[badb0y]

I jump ship frequently between GPU upgrades and over the years I have never had a driver issue with either of them so I vote they are equally as good.

 

[Keysplayr]

All companies have ups and downs with their drivers.

 

[nemesismk2]

can't we also say that they are equally "good"? :hmm:

I will second that too lol

 

[Grooveriding]

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

 

[n0x1ous]

I have been running triple sli 260's for about a year now and i always ugrade to the newest whql drivers and i have never had one single problem everl No crashes and sli has worked beautifully in all the games i have played over this time....metro 2033, crysis 2, bfbc2, dnf

 

[96Firebird]

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

Also
<snip>Most mis-used image when it comes to this topic</snip>

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.

 

[Rifter]

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.

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.

 

[-Slacker-]

Fine time to be switching to nvidia *shakes fist at god*...

 

[SlowSpyder]

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.

And it has also been pointed out that the graph he listed is not just discreet cards. Intel had, by far, the most graphics drivers out there, probably as many as AMD and Nvidia combined. Yet Nvidia has caused more crashes than Intel or AMD put together. Both Intel and AMD also had chipset drivers, and Intel had other drivers as well.

I wish people would stop trying to discredit this data just because they do not like what it says.


As far as drivers today, I cannot say I have any real problems with AMD drivers. It seems that there are more Nvidia driver threads as of late around here. But as another poster mentioned, I don't upgrade just because a new driver is out. If I have a driver that works, unless a new driver has a feature I really want, I stick with the driver that works.

 

[bryanW1995]

like i always say, drivers from both companies are equally bad.

Maybe I'm just unbelievably lucky, but I've had great experience with drivers from both comapanies for >10 years. I've had geforce 2 gts, 9800 pro, 6200, 6600gt, 7600 gt, x1950xt, 3870, 4850, gtx 260, gtx 460, + a couple of others that I don't really use for gaming like 9600gso and 7300gt fanless. With every single one of those cards, the only time I've had anything like driver problems was when I bought 4850 @ launch and had to jack with launch drivers and a new architecture, but even that cleared up within a few months. Of course, I don't compulsively upgrade, and I'm often 1 yr+ behind on driver updates b/c I just find a driver that works for my current games and don't mess with it.

 

[bryanW1995]

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

snip image

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.

And it has also been pointed out that the graph he listed is not just discreet cards. Intel had, by far, the most graphics drivers out there, probably as many as AMD and Nvidia combined. Yet Nvidia has caused more crashes than Intel or AMD put together. Both Intel and AMD also had chipset drivers, and Intel had other drivers as well.

I wish people would stop trying to discredit this data just because they do not like what it says.


As far as drivers today, I cannot say I have any real problems with AMD drivers. It seems that there are more Nvidia driver threads as of late around here. But as another poster mentioned, I don't upgrade just because a new driver is out. If I have a driver that works, unless a new driver has a feature I really want, I stick with the driver that works.

I can't speak for others here, but I have no love at all for Nvidia. They, like amd, are just a company that I sometimes buy stuff from.

That chart is brought out every time somebody talks about "nvidia gpu drivers", not when people question their chipsets. And AMD has a LOT more experience writing chipset drivers than nvidia has (had), so it is reasonable to assume that nvidia had some vista-related chipset issues on top of gpu-related problems. Regardless, unless M$ decides to give us a more accurate breakdown of which specific part/driver caused the vista-related failure, AND we can magically get the exact &#37; of nvidia discrete gpus vs ati discrete gpus during the "vista era" then we'll never know. And on top of that, last time I checked, vista is only 9.3% of the total market, so you might as well optimize for os X while you're at it.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I never had a problem with either one. I've owned a ton of recent gpu's (5850,GTX 460, GTX 470, GTX 480, GTX 580.

BF2 runs flawlessly for me on my 580 humming along at 80-100 fps with everything maxed at 1080p.