Are you happy with your GPU vendor's driver support?

[BFG10K]

I've been a long time nVidia user and while the 7900 GTX drivers were superb (some of the best I?ve ever used in fact), nVidia really took a dump with GF 8xxx drivers. I have three main gripes:


Driver release frequency
Currently the last official WHQL driver for XP + 8800 Ultra is dated December 2007. It is now May 2008. Oh sure, there are betas but nVidia turns around and claims ?use them at your risk because we don?t support them?.

I?ve yet to receive an answer as to why ATi - bleeding millions of dollars per quarter - can still produce monthly WHQL drivers while nVidia can?t. What the hell is wrong with nVidia? Are their driver programmers really that poor and disorganized compared to ATi?s?

I?m tired of digging around through beta scraps like some mangy dog when I?ve paid nVidia serious money over the years including having their current single-card flagship. It?s just not good enough, not when five year old cards from ATi like the 9700 Pro are still enjoying the same monthly driver updates as their flagship cards.


Legacy game support
To this day there are numerous examples of driver problems in legacy games. They?ve fixed a lot since launch but unacceptable issues still exist. Red faction is unplayable due to rendering artifacts. Unreal 2 engine games stutter. Call of Duty/UO stutters with dynamic lights enabled. And the list goes on:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=21028

It should be noted I?ve tested Call of Duty/UO, UT2004 and Red Faction on my G33 motherboard?s crappy Intel GMA and all three games work perfectly from a compatibility standpoint. How embarrassing for nVidia that their flagship card has more trouble in TWIMTBP games than Intel?s subpar ?GPU? that every mom & pop has.


TWIMTBP
The TWIMTBP logo really irritates me because there are numerous examples of such titles having issues on nVidia hardware but not on other vendors. Case and point, the Unreal 2 engine stuttering on XP + 8xxx/9xxx since November 06; people switching to the ATi 3xxx series report perfect gameplay. So my question is what benefit is TWIMTBP to me when there are numerous examples of the competition running said games better than nVidia?s own cards?

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=63056
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=23904

I?m not saying ATi don?t have any issues but what they do have is (1) a clear and visible commitment to release regular supported drivers (better than monthly WHQL drivers since 2002) and also (2) overall have more consistent and robust support for legacy titles, especially TWIMTBP games which they often run better than nVidia. It?s a damn shame their hardware lags behind so much.

So anyway, I?d like to hear about your experiences (good or bad) with your current vendor.

Edit: fixed poll.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

I have a lot of recent games and haven't had any issues with any of them except BF2 + Transparency AA glitches.
I found a way around it, though.
Coming from a time that scaling didn't work at all on ATI's side, Nvidia is a godsend.

 

[HannibalX]

I have an ATi card in my main gaming rig but I don't use the ATi drivers so I can't really comment.

 

[taltamir]

i switched to nvidia years ago due to poor driver support in the ATI camp (it started improving the DAY that AMD bought them).
I will probably switch to AMD soon due to poor driver support in the nvidia camp.

The nvidia driver SUPPORT (not the drivers themselves) just keeps on getting worse and worse, while the AMD just keeps on improving in massive leaps.

 

[TC91]

i havent had a single good driver for my gts, all the new ones reset once in a while, but they dont reload the driver, they give me a bsod instead. there hasnt been an official WHQL since last year either for G80 cards, and the last WHQL has broken profile FSAA which is very annoying. definately going back to ATI for my next card.

EDIT: Also add in the non-unified drivers for nvidia, new drivers for the 9 series (G92) but not for the G92 8800 cards, when the G92 8800 cards obviously could have used those drivers, but were intentionally not provided for. reminds me of creative a little...

 

[schneiderguy]

ATI's drivers for me were buggy in XP. I had to disable/enable one of my monitors to force AA/AF from the control panel. In Vista they are great, though.

While I had my 7600gt/6800/geforce4 I never had any problems with nvidia drivers.

 

[secretanchitman]

ive never had any problems with any nvidia drivers (honest to god truth!)...ati's drivers on the other hand are an entirely different story.

 

[n7]

Absolutely not.
I have been unhappy w/ nVidia's drivers since i got my 8800 GTX a nearly a year ago now.

 

[OnEMoReTrY]

I have owned a 9600XT, X800 Pro, 6600GT, and my current 8800GTS 512MB, and while I haven't ever really had a driver problem persay, I really wish ATI's hardware catches up soon because their monthly release schedule of rock solid drivers is something I really miss =/. ATI even got the naming scheme right on the money, wtf is w/ all this 174.44, 175.XX, etc. I hate dealing with all this beta driver crap with the last "official WHQL" being december..

 

[DarkRogue]

I posted a similar question on the nVidia forums a few days ago, but I didn't get any meaningful replies.
I was wondering why the drivers for my 8800GT were still from back in December '07, when everyone on the forums, regardless of what card they had, were using the 17X drivers. Turns out the entire 17X driver line is a beta and won't show up on the normal driver search.. So, I'm stuck using the 169 drivers until they release the 17X stable.

 

[Sylvanas]

I have had had nearly every generation ATI card since the 9600pro and have never had any problems with the Catalyst drivers...and thats after installing a new driver set every month. When I had my 8800GTX, when OC'd on the core I'd get the infamous nvklm not responding BS which really pissed me off when the card was clearly at a stable clockspeed playing a game but then randomly would just dump to the desktop. In my experience, ATI's drivers/support have and still are top notch, Nvidia still has something to learn. My 2c.

 

[Continuity28]

As a 7900GT user, it's about 50% for me.

The drivers are good enough for modern games on both XP and Vista, 174.74 in particular. For older games, the last good driver was 9x.xx, which only exists for XP, same deal with video playback.

The issue I have with the 7900GT is that the 1xx.xx drivers don't seem to sync correctly in these old games and even video files. I get a solid broken sync line that moves a little up and down that's constantly visible. It's too distracting. I get it on DVI and VGA, but in different positions. I'm sure this is likely a 7900GT issue overall, since this card was broken from the beginning. Still, 94.24 and older drivers remove the issue, and that leaves me to use these older drivers.

Once nVidia started making drivers for the 8 series cards and unifying the 7 series card drivers with them, that's when the issue began. It's like they don't know how to keep compatibility.

I'm sure if I had an 8 or 9 series card, I wouldn't have this issue, but I may get completely different issues.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: taltamir
i switched to nvidia years ago due to poor driver support in the ATI camp (it started improving the DAY that AMD bought them).
I will probably switch to AMD soon due to poor driver support in the nvidia camp.

The nvidia driver SUPPORT (not the drivers themselves) just keeps on getting worse and worse, while the AMD just keeps on improving in massive leaps.

It was approx 2 years before AMD bought them that their Drivers were dramatically improved.

 

[Mem]

I'm happy with both ATI and Nvidia drivers,however I wish Nvidia would release new official drivers more frequently.

Laptop companies especially in my case with Dell are very slow to release new video drivers ,however the recent 175.12 modded Nvidia drivers for my Dell Vostro 1700 which has a 8600m gt are awesome,got to love LaptopVideo2go when it comes to trying out and finding new modded drivers.

 

[sisq0kidd]

I've had the following cards:

ATI: Radeon 7000, 8500LE, 9200, 9600pro, 9800pro, 9800 AIW x800XL, x800GTO, x800PRO, x1800XL AIW, X1800XT 512mb, X1900 AIW, X1900XT 512mb

Nvidia: TNT2 Vanta, Geforce2 MX200, MX400, Geforce3 Ti, Geforce4 Ti4200, Geforce FX5200, Geforce 6600GT, 6800NU, 6800GT, 6800Ultra, 7600GT, 7800GT, 7900GS, 7900GTO, 7950GX2, 8500GT, 8800GTS 320mb, 8800GT 512mb, 9800GTX

Out of all those cards I've had, the only substantial problems I have run into, driver wise, were for the the x1900 AIW and x1800XL AIW. Essentially those two cards were the same, but they have given me a tremendous amount of problems. They use to give me the GPU recover screen thing during gaming. Most of the problems I had though came from the remote control as still to this day, ATI has yet to make their Remote Wonder II install with ease. Other than that, I can seriously say I haven't run into any substantial problem to make note of with any of the manufacturers.

I am currently running an 8800GT 512mb on Windows XP 64-bit and don't notice anything wrong.

 

[Grinja]

I've had the following cards: Geforce 1, Geforce 4 TI 4200, Geforce 6800GT, Radeon X1950pro.

I never had any issues with Nvidia drivers back in the day running XP 32.

Moved to ATI when I upgraded my rig a about 10 months back and have had no issues running XP or Vista 64...

I update my drivers around every 3 months just for the sake of staying current (I doubt my aging 1950 is gaining anything from the newer drivers). Have to say it is nice to know that there will always be a driver waiting each month.

 

[Keysplayr]

BFG, what card do you still have in your rig? And why?

List reasons here:

I have UT2003. Does this game fall under your incompatability profile? If so, I'd be glad to try it out.
I actually disliked the game, but willing to try it out and see if I can observe what you are talking about.

I have CoD, but not UO. Is UO the only way I would see your problem? If so, I'm sure I can pick it up in the bargain bin somewhere.

I'd talk about this more, but I'm busy right now playing Diablo II on SLI'd 9800GTX's on Windows Vista32.

 

[magreen]

Wow. So as of now it's 7:1 happy:unhappy for ATI and 6:9 happy:unhappy for nvidia.

So 88% of ATI users are happy with their drivers, and only 40% of nvidia users are happy, as of this sampling.

Of course, it's still early in the poll. Not sure it's statistically significant yet.

 

[Avalon]

I wasn't particularly swayed with ATI's drivers back in the 9500/9700 days. They were sufficient and generally worked well with few quirks, but the cards were so kick ass it didn't matter. I had a long run with Nvidia after that until I got my X1950pro two years ago. The drivers for that were excellent. I moved over to Vista 3-4 months after its release with said card, and the drivers there were also very stable. Performance was decent as well, and by now is on par with XP drivers. I moved to an HD3850 a few months ago, and drivers/support for that have been solid as well. I'm pretty happy with them.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
BFG, what card do you still have in your rig? And why?

List reasons here:

I have UT2003. Does this game fall under your incompatability profile? If so, I'd be glad to try it out.
I actually disliked the game, but willing to try it out and see if I can observe what you are talking about.

I have CoD, but not UO. Is UO the only way I would see your problem? If so, I'm sure I can pick it up in the bargain bin somewhere.

I'd talk about this more, but I'm busy right now playing Diablo II on SLI'd 9800GTX's on Windows Vista32.

Don't bother dude- the UT2004 issue with XP is an old issue with this game and the unified shader NVIDIA cards.

It's fixed in Vista, and will be fixed in the 177 series of drivers for XP.

BFG is just angry NVIDIA didn't close the office and work round the clock on this issue because he wants them to, so he's exercising his freedom of speech to complain.

 

[Modelworks]

Just be happy that Nvidia and ATI release drivers to the public now.
I remember the early days of both companies where you had to go to the card manufacturer to get a driver.
Oh what a headache that was.

 

[Tempered81]

i enjoy the newest beta drivers on my nvidia products..

Im on 175.12 right now, about to upgrade to 175.63 XP 32bit. I've never had any issues that have caused me to revert to older drivers. The only reason i have rolled back is when the performance has not increased with the newer driver

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: nRollo

Don't bother dude- the UT2004 issue with XP is an old issue with this game and the unified shader NVIDIA cards.

The stuttering issue also occurs in other UE2 games like Red Orchestra

 

[JPB]

Here are my cards back as far as I can remember

Voodoo 3 3000
ATI 8500 ( 0 problems )
ATI 9000 ( 0 problems )
ATI 9600 ( 0 problems )
ATI 9800 Pro ( 0 problems )
ATI X800 Pro ( 0 problems )
ATI X1800 XL ( 0 problems )
ATI X1900 GT ( 0 problems )
EVGA 8800 GTS ( Crashes with S.T.A.L.K.E.R )
BFG 7900 GTX ( 0 problems )

Go figure with the 8 Series.

And when the new gen is launched, I will be going back to ATI.

 

[Lithan]

I never had problems with anyone's drivers and I used ATI cards when ATI had "bad" drivers and nvidia cards when nvidia did. As far as I'm concerned the "bad" drivers are a mix of guys who have to find something wrong with whichever manu has better cards (fanboys) and PFBKC's.