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How do AMD and nvidia divide their resources?

Anarchist420

Diamond Member
I hope I'm asking the right question.

I was thinking nv put the least amount of their resource into drivers (at least that would make sense for the past year to two years or so). I'm not just saying that because I don't like their drivers, however, as I'm sure AMD's drivers still wouldn't satisfy me.

As for AMD, it seems like (at least to me) they put by far the most into hardware development (due to constantly tweaking their architectures and being the first released with DX11 and DX11.1 parts). They also seem to me like they put a little bit more (but not a whole lot more) into drivers than nvidia does. I am, however, not an AMD user and haven't been in a long time so that should be taken lightly.

I was thinking nvidia puts the most into the salaries of execs and management or at least a lot more as a percentage of their resources than AMD does. Which is fine, but I'm suspecting that their execs get paid so much that it's taking away from the quality of their drivers. Adding to that, CA has draconian labor and tax laws, so nvidia doesn't sound incredibly resourceful (at least from what I heard).

One thing I've always liked about nvidia is that they've always put resources into their relations with the developers. Their hardware is better in every way than AMD's in my opinion (from GPU feature set to reference boards and using ball bearing fans rather than sleeve bearing fans), although they've released later than AMD has for the two most recent generations (DX11.1 and DX11).

I'm dismayed with nvidia's drivers for several reasons, and they've had forever to fix many thing but still haven't. The TDR bug has been going on starting with the first 28x.xx driver, they have some OpenGL issues, the AA profiles/compatibility don't work with recent drivers (from what I've heard), there are a few legacy functions they don't emulate, they don't allow forcing certain features available in hardware, and there are a few other issues. Due to the fact they've not fixed those long-standing issues, I'm not going to be more critical of AMD's drivers. In any event, I'm still going to continue to only use nvidia and just hope that they get their drivers together.
 
I believe historically NV puts a lot more resources into their drivers than AMD. JFF often refers to NV as a software company, not a hardware company. I'm sure AMD has invested a lot more in their drivers recently given how much they've improved, but I don't know if they've invested more than NV.

Neither has perfect drivers.
 
I used to do QA testing for AMD back in the 9x00-X800 days. Their driver team was quite small. I am sure its larger now, especially since they have a larger OEM presence, and are shipping APU's at a good rate. I can't comment on nVidia's driver development.

As for the WHQL certification, I could almost guarantee you it is not nVidia/AMD's fault. This certification can take months sometimes. I am sure nVidia/AMD gets preferential treatment compared to smaller companies, but it still can take quite a while.
 
Not sure about percentages, but if JHH is correct when he says nV has more SW than HW engineers, then nV probably has more software engineers than ATI has people including security guards and cleaning services.
Though I also don't know what % of SW people work specifically on drivers at either company.
 
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