Back on team red...it's nice here.

[waffleironhead]

lol okay. Clear Sky RAGE, GTA 4, and other big games had more issues with AMD and you know it. with nvidia you can usually have one driver and never change for a long time. with AMD you will certainly have to go through multiple drivers or hotfixes if you are trying to play all current games. I never have trouble recommending AMD cards but from what I have seen that they do have more game issues.

I have to say that your line of thinking is a bit strange and you are coming to the wrong conclusion. You are pointing out the frequency of driver releases and hotfixes as proof of the amount of bugs.

If amd release 12 official driver packages per year, while nvidia releases 4 then amd has 8 more problems than nvidia? Sounds like one company is better at getting fixes out in a timely manner via hotfixes and frequent updates and another likes to leave their users sitting high and dry waiting and waiting.

You need to count the amount of fixes within each driver release, rather than their frequency.

 

[Obsoleet]

Bahahaha!...excellent!

If only AMD could release WHQL releases as good as Nvidia's. Once they catch up to NV's gold standard there, they'll be able to stop releasing all those hotfixes for the enthusiast community.

 

[nyker96]

actually I used to be 100% Green team myself, but after my Hd4850 experience, I'd have to say, I feel they are equal in my eyes now in terms of stability and gaming experiences.

 

[mkmitch]

you people claiming to NEVER have issues since the old 9000 series days are flat out liars or do not play many games. from what I have seen, AMD has more issues with games especially new releases. I am also on many game forums and it is hilarious seeing how many drivers and/or hotfixes AMD users have to go through sometimes just to get one game to work properly only to have to change to another driver for another game. yes that can happen for Nvidia too but it most certainly happens more often for AMD.

Wow unlike you I can only speak for myself, been using ATI/AMD since 2001 and still waiting on my first driver or other issue with them:biggrin: But thanks for speaking for all of us owners. :awe:

 

[hawtdawg]

My alienware laptop came with 280 GTX's at first. The motherboard is Nvidia. The Nvidia drivers were causing so many problems that Nvidia was never able to fix, that AW's final solution was to swap them out for 4870's. I've had no issues. There have been a few quirks here and there, but nothing major, and it was all mostly crossfire related.

Here's how I'd compare the 2 companies on drivers

AMD : releases drivers on a regular basis, sometimes there are bugs, but they're good about fixing them quickly, their drivers also almost always include performance increases.

Nvidia : Doesn't release drivers as often, meaning that there aren't performance updates as often, has a few small quirks here and there, but also occasionally has huge issues such as peoples fans not working, killing cards, or in the case of AW, can't even get drivers working properly even with it's own chipset, to the point that AW had to switch to ATI just to keep selling their product.

Both companies have had their share of issues, and AMD might require a little more upkeep due to the frequency with which they release, and improve their drivers, but no way in hell can you praise Nvidia, and shit on AMD over their drivers. Nvidia's drivers do not in anyway, shape or form justify using them over AMD, unless you think a more steady stream of improvements is a bad thing.

 

[Panopticon]

Hey hawtdog I remember the insane stuttering issues R1 owners had I ended up buying an M15x. Although I think Nv and AMD are equalin desktop parts I think AMD has the edge in mobile gpu parts they see to be less problematic. I had a 260m go up on me this summer for no reason.

 

[MangoX]

I've gone back and forth from Red and Green so many times over the last decade I can't remember many of the problems .. my memory is jaded. However, what really annoyed me to hell was how long it took AMD to fix the mouse cursor corruption in Starcraft 2. Then I had serious issues with my GTX295 and Folding@Home where the 2nd GPU would throw up errors non stop (don't remember what those errors are anymore - I don't have a Nvidia card ATM). Anyway, besides those I haven't encountered any other major driver issues from either camp in the last few years. I don't play those games which were mentioned with driver issues (ie: Skyrim, RAGE).

 

[Golgatha]

Yep I've never had issues with ATI drivers (I have had with nv drivers) and I have been using ATI on and off since a 9600XT so I always found it odd that people bashed their drivers. I however have NOT used XFire...and I think they have had issues with that.

Xfire is where I had all my problems (dual 3870, 4850, and 5850 owner). Single card configurations worked as advertised most of the time. Even with a single card, I still had random issues getting CCC to install properly to the point I would full disc image my system before trying to update.

Alternatively, I've used 8800GTs and GTX 275s in SLI and not had one single issue. nVidia driver updates have always installed without issue for me as well for both SLI and single card configurations. PhysX is kinda fun in Batman and Alice as well.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I have both vendors and I actually favor nVIDIA by having cleaner / less bloat drivers. The whole drivers package is more intuitive and there is also a nice "Clean Install" option coming with them. I don't like CCC much either (using ATI Tray Tool instead). AMD Hardware is good though, especially power consumption and m-display support.

But, CUDA is actually useful and is widespread. AMD's implementation hasn't really taken off yet (Bitcoin excluded).

AMD still has lots of work to do in the software/bribing department.

Speaking of the actual AMD drivers, I have often lost "features" only to regain them again in the next release. For example, DXVA. Not a big deal but still raises a question mark in their QA.

 

[nitromullet]

If only AMD could release WHQL releases as good as Nvidia's. Once they catch up to NV's gold standard there, they'll be able to stop releasing all those hotfixes for the enthusiast community.

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but you'll probably want to post this too...

http://gizmodo.com/373076/nvidia-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-2007

 

[m3t4lh34d]

I'm still happy with my Tri Fire 6970s, given the fact they perform identically to 2 7970s in crossfire @ stock (not after they're OC'd, then all bets are off).
I get 14k in 3dmark 11, and 2 7970s in crossfire with my same CPU = 14k so I think I'm good until kepler at least. I'm moving down to Crossfire just to keep things simple for a while but I'll still have the Tri-Fire setup until I'm burned out on BF3 (probably when I'm maxed rank)

 

[Leyawiin]

Screw Teams Red and Green. You should be Team "Me" when shopping for anything.

 

[GaiaHunter]

I don't understand the difficulties/problems people have to install the catalyst drivers - for both (2 different machines) my 4850 (almost 3 years of monthly updates) and 6850(over a year) always been a case of downloading-> installing, and occasionally it asks for reboots, although most of the time it doesn't.

About CCC, it seems to do what is advertised and most of the time it stays there, quietly in the background behaving as intended (or at least fooling me).

On the other hand I don't let windows install any of its updates, and instead install from fully updated images every 6 months or so (at least yearly).

 

[Rifter]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. ATI windows drivers are fine, they only run into issues with their linux drivers. If you only run windows you will be fine with either vendors drivers IMO.

 

[hectorsm]

I am also switching to AMD but I am only getting a 6870 (the 7970 is too expensive). That should give me ~50% boost compare to my GTX260+.

I think Radeon driver issues are a thing of the past (used to have Radeon Le and 8500LE). My son has a 5670 and it has been a very good card.

Brand is not important to me. Price/performance, and stability is what's important to me.