ATi vs nVidia drivers

[evolucion8]

When I bought the Radeon 9700PRO, it came with the 3.0 on CD, and they were released monthly, and ATi had never launched a non WHQL driver, except the hotfixes for games and HD 3800/2x00 AGP series.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: solofly
Before FX series came along Nvidias drivers were near perfect. After FX series they are getting worst by generation. I've been playing with computers for the last 27+ years but you won't find me complaining about nvidia drivers anywhere on the internet, it's time I start.

Picture below of BF2 was captured last night using driver 177.22 and an nvidia card...

http://img362.imageshack.us/my...age=nvidia17722ps0.jpg

Now this might not look bad at all but in reality (meaning as I'm playing) the whole thing flashes.

Texture flashing is common. Are you overclocking?

 

[solofly]

Not at all. I don't bench and a few frames isn't gonna make a difference. Simply put I don't like to abuse my hardware...

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

You aren't addressing the point. The point is you can't get WHQL just by paying money like you implied. You have to pass the tests first.

You aren't listening- the WHQL drivers NEVER worked on ANY platform. This was a rather huge debacle during Vista's launch. They weren't tested by anyone, they weren't even close to beta quality drivers, not only did they fail to ever get the device functioning, they caused massive data corruption. Any testing done at all would have shown this to be the case, it was the wrong build of a driver, stamped WHQL and shipped by MS.

With ATi I get fixes quicker in general

Sure, ask people about the aspect ratio scaling that they have just now fixed after YEARS of waiting. Sac has been six years and counting. Sure, you can say Sac is only a single game, the aspect ratio issue impacted thousands of games- ATi did nothing for years about it.

As for your game problems, you appear to have listed two: Sacrifice and WoW. I can list dozens of games that I've had mores issues on nVidia than ATi, going right back to 2002 with the 9700 Pro.

Why don't we try this, forget the dozens of games- shoot out all 200 games you have checked and how many active players they have right now. I'll put that up against WoW. We will assume that every single one of the 200 games does not work on nVidia hardware and we will see what will impact more gamers, sound good? 🙂

I can also list wide-spread issues that affected multiple games for months

How are the drivers working for you under Win 3.1 btw? A good deal of the issues you were talking about were solved on Vista rather quickly. Actually, we don't even need to go back to legacy OSs, fire up Linux and see which drivers run better. You want to limit to gaming oriented OSs and DX10 hardware then you should try running a DX10 OS and see how many problems stick around for you 🙂

So what is the issue then? If ATi can do it why can't nVidia?

Wait until you have been running ATi hardware a bit longer. Or, if you are so inclined, go back through their release notes for a while- ATi has issues with creating new bugs in games that they had fixed previously. You will get used to that. One month release schedule you can't test as thoroughly as you could otherwise, that is just a reality and it applies for everyone. Of course, that can be taken to an extreme, wait until every game ever released has been tested before posting drivers which could take many, many years(man I would pay for those though 😛) so it comes down to deciding at which point you want to be at. ATi and nV have picked differing points. In the games I play, nV is certainly more robust and hasn't had issues like no proper scaling support for years. In the games you are playing- ATi has proven more robust and hasn't had issues with the particular games you have tested that nV did have. Which one is right? From your perspective, ATi's would make sense, for me, I'd tend to go with nV.

This is the answer I always come back to on ye olde "who has better drivers?" debate.

Depends on what hardware/software/OS you're trying to run, and the driver revisions being compared.

Stating ATi's monthly WHQL with less games tested is better than NVIDIA's quarterly with more games tested ignores a lot of other factors, and doesn't do the question justice.

IMO this is just like the "HD4870 vs GTX260" or "HD4870X2 vs GTX280" question- you can't really say one is "better" because what's better is largely buyer specific. (e.g. BFG10K wouldn't consider a 4870X2 because of the multicard issues, I'd buy one in a heartbeat because I don't mind the issues. Neither perspective is "correct".)

People seem to have an overwhelming need to label things as "better" or "worse" though.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: nRollo

This is the answer I always come back to on ye olde "who has better drivers?" debate.

Depends on what hardware/software/OS you're trying to run, and the driver revisions being compared.

Stating ATi's monthly WHQL with less games tested is better than NVIDIA's quarterly with more games tested ignores a lot of other factors, and doesn't do the question justice.

IMO this is just like the "HD4870 vs GTX260" or "HD4870X2 vs GTX280" question- you can't really say one is "better" because what's better is largely buyer specific. (e.g. BFG10K wouldn't consider a 4870X2 because of the multicard issues, I'd buy one in a heartbeat because I don't mind the issues. Neither perspective is "correct".)

People seem to have an overwhelming need to label things as "better" or "worse" though.

HD 4870 1GB is generally better than the GTX 260 and it's core 216 variant. Also the X2 is faster overall than the GTX 280 most of the time, when it has scaling issues, it's performance is under the GTX 280, pretty much the same performance that the HD 4870 1GB offers, which is a small margin, your opinion was great until you hit that point, it was a very bad comparison.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3415&p=10

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB is a better buy than both the GTX 260 and core 216 variant. AMD says MSRP is between $280 and $300, and a quick look at Google shows us that the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1GB is priced at $290

http://www.guru3d.com/article/...-4870-1024mb-review/13

The GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 then, interestingly enough the 1 GB 4870 definitely has the upper hand over the regular Core 216 versions. But if you look at some of our reviews, it's competing way more fiercely with the Core 216 pre-overclocked products like BFG and eVGA offer. And that's nice because both the 1024 MB 4870 and the pre-OC GTX 260 Core 216 models are priced roughly the same.

 

[sisq0kidd]

Wanna know what drivers are bad? Anything involving ATI and their "Wonder" series.

Try getting their HDTV Tuner to work properly. It's such a POS with EXTREMELY poor drivers for it. Their last update was in 2006 and it's still broken.

Also, try getting their Remote Wonders to work properly. 64-bit? Forget it.

Other than that, their video drivers seem okay to me. Nvidia's too.

 

[justinburton]

I agree with sisq0kidd.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

LMAO. The whole idea is absurd, eh? Tell me BFG, what would you accept as fact other than what is typed from your own fingers?
Waste of my time. Horse it too high.

Did you even read the article and my response? I don't think you read either so let me paraphrase both for you.

ATI couldn?t get WHQL certification because they were exposing geometry instancing in a non-WHQL fashion.

The solution was to disable geometry instancing (thereby not exposing at all) and allow users to enable it in CCC.

That's it.

They didn't "pay" Microsoft to change the tests, nor was SM 3.0 a requirement for WHQL certification.

Again, if SM 3.0 was a requirement for WHQL then any cards before the 6xxx and the X1xx lines couldn?t have WHQL drivers, and such a scenario is clearly false.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: nRollo

I thought it would because I don't think he has any reason to lie, and his description of the current situation clearly shows both methods have pros and cons.

What, so because I don't agree with someone?s opinion that means I'm calling them a liar? :roll:

Nice try, but please take your sensationalist PR elsewhere.

If they tested less games more frequently they might miss issues on the games not tested.

Who? nVidia you mean? Given their drivers are inferior to ATi?s in terms of robustness it?s obvious they need to adopt more of ATi?s tactics.

Back when NVIDIA was trying to get it's Vista drivers in order you were telling me they need to be fixing Red Faction and Serious Sam 1 and making that their priority. Those games were both well over 5 years old at the time. There's just not many people playing them anymore, but all the computers were beginning to be sold with Vista.

No, what I was saying was that I fully accepted the priority must be for Vista drivers but backwards compatibility shouldn?t be forgotten along with XP drivers. ATi had Vista drivers, XP drivers and backwards compatibility.

What was nVidia?s excuse? A PR statement ?we underestimated Vista? along with a promise deliver monthly WHQL drivers which never happened. That?s simply not good enough, not when ATi deliver monthly WHQLs for XP, XP-64, Vista 32 and Vista 64.

It's the equivalent being one of the last few guys with a black and white tv telling the tv stations that their shows don't look right on his black and white tv, and they better fix them. In business, you have to make decisions to cater to 99% of your market, not the 1%, because there is a cost/benefit associated with the time spent.

I?m not sure you fully understand the magnitude of the demand for backwards compatibility, even after the backlash against nVidia. There are a lot of people out there that enjoy playing old games on new hardware. Witness the new petitions against nVidia that have sprung up in just the last six months. People are getting tired of it.

Unless I'm misunderstanding Derek, they're testing 24 games at a time, not 90 or 200. You may be testing 90, but I don't think they are based on what Derek said.

Yep, and that?s my point. If ATi is testing less games than nVidia how is it they have less issues in legacy games? The only possible answer to that is that their drivers are more robust and conformant to standards than nVidia?s are.

Also I remember an interview a while back (maybe it was Richard Huddy) and it mentioned Terry Makedon (Catalyst maker) had a library of 500 games for testing.

I honestly don't think you're testing 90 games a month, and if you are, not thoroughly. Most people have to earn a living, have family, friends, other hobbies. (not too mention how incredibly monotonous it would be to maintain a one man vigil on the driver state of multiple companies) Testing 3 games a day thoroughly would be quite the investment of time, especially for unpaid work. Of course, beyond this, even your selection of games is a tiny fraction of the games available, so it's possible you're just missing the games ATi has issues with.

No, you misunderstand me. I don?t test 90 games a month because as you say that would be too time consuming. What I do is test all of my games whenever I buy a new GPU and then I note any problems. I then keep checking for a resolution for said problems each time a new driver arrives and I also check against the other vendor to rule out application issues. Also when I change video cards I generally benchmark 30-40 games which gives me a baseline figure for future comparisons.

While all of this is happening, I keep my entire gaming library under heavy play rotation which means at any time I could decide to play X-Wing, GLQuake, Crysis, or anything in between. When I?m sitting down and playing games start to finish I don?t want to run into issues and waste time troubleshooting so I need the drivers to be as robust as possible. I also need drivers that work beyond just delivering flashy benchmark figures.

In light of all of this, since the 9700 Pro days I have consistently found ATi?s drivers to be more robust for my needs than nVidia?s. Every time I move back to nVidia the number of issues I have swells in comparison to ATi?s and I spend more time fighting the card to get it to play the games I want to play.

And then there's that whole issue of "How much does it really matter if Red Faction has an issue, it's eight years old, most gamers have long since moved on."

Yes, they have moved on; those that want to play the game have moved on to ATi. Your own forum is riddled with examples of people jumping ship and until nVidia takes them seriously they will continue to lose customers.

Sure- for those two ancient games very few people care about anymore. I had to Google Project IGI, didn't even know what it was.

Had nVidia?s drivers worked as well as ATi?s you wouldn?t have to google the game and we wouldn?t be having this conversation.

Does ATi "support" them, or do they just happen to work with ATis drivers?

Do such semantics really make a difference if the game works?

If ATi is supporting them, are there more pressing issues they should be addressing, like the current games you need to rename the executable on to get AA?

I would agree that they need to get AA into more modern games but then you?re making the assumption that nVidia?s drivers work properly in all modern games. Quake 4 is a 2005 title and since Nov 06 it has been flickering on nVidia DX10 hardware so it was current at the time the problem started. I don?t get any such flickering on my 4850.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

You aren't listening- the WHQL drivers NEVER worked on ANY platform. This was a rather huge debacle during Vista's launch. They weren't tested by anyone, they weren't even close to beta quality drivers, not only did they fail to ever get the device functioning, they caused massive data corruption. Any testing done at all would have shown this to be the case, it was the wrong build of a driver, stamped WHQL and shipped by MS.

So obviously an error occurred with the WHQL certification process in that instance. But again nobody claimed WHQL drivers are always perfect and have no issues.

What was claimed is that you can?t get WHQL just by paying money (i.e. the tests need to actually pass) and that I?d take an officially supported WHQL over a random unsupported beta any day.

Sure, ask people about the aspect ratio scaling that they have just now fixed after YEARS of waiting. Sac has been six years and counting. Sure, you can say Sac is only a single game, the aspect ratio issue impacted thousands of games- ATi did nothing for years about it.

Again nobody claimed ATi?s drivers don?t have issues, just they were more robust then nVidia?s. Six years for Sacrifice, or four years for potentially any game to randomly decide to slow down until an alt-tab was issued, or in some cases, quitting the application as alt-tab didn?t work.

Why don't we try this, forget the dozens of games- shoot out all 200 games you have checked and how many active players they have right now. I'll put that up against WoW. We will assume that every single one of the 200 games does not work on nVidia hardware and we will see what will impact more gamers, sound good? 🙂

If you have issues in WoW then they need to be fixed. Most definitely. As does Sacrifice.

Just curious, have you tried posting your issues at Rage3D? A bunch of guys are asking to bring back 16 bit dithering for old games and to fix the Thief slowdowns, and Sireric has submitted their request to the driver team.

A good deal of the issues you were talking about were solved on Vista rather quickly. Actually, we don't even need to go back to legacy OSs, fire up Linux and see which drivers run better. You want to limit to gaming oriented OSs and DX10 hardware then you should try running a DX10 OS and see how many problems stick around for you 🙂

You made the point about WoW impacting more people? Well XP has by far the largest OS market-share, far larger than Vista. The market-share for Linux and Win 3.11 is miniscule compared to XP.

Wait until you have been running ATi hardware a bit longer. Or, if you are so inclined, go back through their release notes for a while- ATi has issues with creating new bugs in games that they had fixed previously.

I ran a 9700 Pro for 18 months and a X800XL about nine months. Compared to their neighboring 6800 Ultra and 7800 GT cards that I had, the ATi cards were pure bliss. The X800 XL in particular was passively cooled and it would routinely hit 95C but despite this it was still one of the most stable video cards I?ve ever used.

In the games I play, nV is certainly more robust and hasn't had issues like no proper scaling support for years. In the games you are playing- ATi has proven more robust and hasn't had issues with the particular games you have tested that nV did have. Which one is right? From your perspective, ATi's would make sense, for me, I'd tend to go with nV.

I agree with your assessment completely. 🙂

My main beef is when people start claiming backwards compatibility isn?t important and I really take issue to that.

 

[apoppin]

well, i was officially informed about "political correctness" at ATF Video and will make my final observation without political reference:

If Nvidia committed itself to release monthly WHQL drivers, they would be actually getting the fix/improvements later than their current beta release driver schedule.
--Their reasoning involves the fact that WHQL drivers won't make any changes in the last 2+ weeks because that's how long it takes to run the test, fix any failures, and get a signature back from Microsoft.

My suggestion to them says to continue with their beta releases - which quickly fix specific issues [much like AMD's 'hotfix' drivers] .. BUT to ALSO commit to a monthly schedule for the consumer end-user *perception* that Derek Wilson and i see - that REGULAR drivers APPEAR to address issues better

i do not see this "improvement" costing Nvidia anything other than a mild reschedule of the way the do things.

. . . but then i am Not CEO 😛
- just a humble analyst who believes in perception and image