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Nvidia Drivers vs ATi Drivers

O

OVerLoRDI

Diamond Member
Forgive me if I step on anybody's toes with this question, but has ATi's drivers caught up to NVidias? In the past I have had pretty bad experiences with ATi's drivers and am not a fan of their control panel. Then again I haven't used ATi's drivers since the 9700pro era (which by the way was a sick card for its time, freaking blew away anything Nvidia had). Right now I'm looking at grabbing an ATI 4890 to replace my 8800gts, are drivers a reason that should stop me from going red? (or I guess it might be green now)
 
I've used both had a 4890 and a GTX285. I think both drivers are good. Never had a problem with either one.
 
Drivers should not be a problem. I haven't had any driver problems with ATI cards for the past couple of years (ATI 9600XT, X800XL, X800GTO2, X1800XL, current 4870). The only problems I remember was with an ATI Rage128 All-inWonder card I had more than 10 years ago. I don't use their control panel though...I use ATI Tray Tools for over/underclocking and IQ settings.
 
I had pretty much never-ending driver issues in Vista with my 8800 GTX & GTX 280, over countless driver sets over the last couple years.
If it wasn't one game, it was another, & new drivers would introduce old issues previously fixed, etc.

I've had zero issues with AMD cards in Vista.

 
I've had equal problems over the years with both companies. Even when nVidia makes a quality driver, they seem to have trouble getting it on a system.

ATI seems to drop support for legacy cards quicker than nVidia, while nVidia, supports them when they get around to it, but is more than likely to break them when they release a new version.
 
owned a FX 5700 LE & 7950GT and don't recollect any issues with them (other than the FX 5700 LE just outright dieing one day)

own a 4870 512 close to release and have experienced BSODs related to atikvmag.dll when CPU is OCed, but no BSODs when CPU is not OCed. no idea why it's like that. can't blame RAM since non-OC RAM settings are actually at a faster speed and timing than OCed RAM settings.
 
I generally haven't had problems, but lately I feel that NVIDIA drivers may have gotten a little worse. With the introduction of the 190.xx drivers, it's the first time I can recall that I've actually not just been happy with the latest WHQL.

The 190s introduced an issue with profile settings not working, a serious stuttering issue in Fallout 3, and for some reason the driver STILL doesn't detect Steam apps as installed apps. Steam has be around for how long now...? Revert back to 186.xx, and the Fallout 3 stuttering goes away and profile settings work again too. What's up with that?

I can't really comment on ATI drivers, since I haven't had an ATI card since the 48xx cards first came out.
 
Bad ATI drivers is a thing of the past. With that said, both ATI and Nvidia's drivers and control panels have it's quirks, though I think I like Nvidia's a little bit more.
 
I don't know if its Nvidia drivers or whatnot but for me, when I try to play an MPEG file on windows media player, I get a blue screen. I never had this with ATI drivers. Could be an isolated incident.
 
ATI drivers are more stable than Nvidia drivers. Look at the Vista crash reports that got released, and Nvidia drivers were the number one cause of Vista crashes.
 
Originally posted by: Xcobra
I don't know if its Nvidia drivers or whatnot but for me, when I try to play an MPEG file on windows media player, I get a blue screen. I never had this with ATI drivers. Could be an isolated incident.
Click to expand...

could be a codec issue. i had this happen to me once or twice when i got a corrupted install of the k-lite mega pack a couple years ago.

ed: as for driver issues with either, i havent had any serious issues in ages, and anything i did have was fixed by picking a different version, none of this go through half of their driver library until i find one that works crap. the only issue i have had at all was trying to get my 2900PRO 1gb to play FEAR without crashing every 5 minutes, but i just swapped it for my HD4670 which was equally fast if not faster in that game, and it all went away so it was a non issue. i dont even have the 2900 anymore
 
i think you will find people with horror stories from both companies.
as for me, i've owned an ati card since the original radeon and never had a single driver issue

 
Man I used to lose a week of my life a year struggling with ATI drivers for my All-in-wonder cards. I have had a 4850 for almost a year and an 650 TV Wonder for longer with no issues at all - and I update every month.
 
In Windows, both nVidia and ATi drivers are equal, but in Linux...

I tried to use an ATi 4850 in Ubuntu Linux with the latest drivers at the time (Catalyst 9.7) and couldn't get dual monitors to render two individual displays (only one cloned display). With nVidia, I was able to get the configuration I wanted.
 
yeah now that i recall i think those all-in-wonder cards were more problematic. i think it was the vivo part of it that was always quirky for whatever reason

 
I'm generally quite pleased with nVidia's drivers right now and have been since I got my GTX260+.

I?ve also found several instances of ATi slipping a bit lately.
 
Back in the bad old days ATI drivers and CCC sucked horribly. But that was the past. I think ATI/AMD got the message. I use both ATI and nVidia cards and have had no problems with either. However, I am under the impression ATI trails nVidia in multicard (SLI vs X-Fire) configs. I have not done either so my knowledge is only second hand and from reading the Anandtech reviews.
 
ATI drivers have been great overall, but I still don't care for CCC. ( using ATT instead )

Nvidia drivers are okay for the most part, but they don't offer a driver only install. Also Nvidia drivers don't seem to fully uninstall some files after running the uninstaller, which personally I don't care for.
 
Originally posted by: SSChevy2001
ATI drivers have been great overall, but I still don't care for CCC. ( using ATT instead )

Nvidia drivers are okay for the most part, but they don't offer a driver only install. Also Nvidia drivers don't seem to fully uninstall some files after running the uninstaller, which personally I don't care for.
Click to expand...



I found that out the hard way, you would think Nvidia could make drivers that uninstall cleanly,I had to use regedit to remove 3 stubborn Nvidia dll files,I guess Nvidia did not want me to use an ATI card 😉.

 
Originally posted by: Mem
Originally posted by: SSChevy2001
ATI drivers have been great overall, but I still don't care for CCC. ( using ATT instead )

Nvidia drivers are okay for the most part, but they don't offer a driver only install. Also Nvidia drivers don't seem to fully uninstall some files after running the uninstaller, which personally I don't care for.
Click to expand...



I found that out the hard way, you would think Nvidia could make drivers that uninstall cleanly,I had to use regedit to remove 3 stubborn Nvidia dll files,I guess Nvidia did not want me to use an ATI card 😉.
Click to expand...
Well I actually found that my ATI AA Filter setting didn't work after uninstalling my Nvidia card, so I wouldn't put it past them, but reloading the ATI driver fixed the problem.
 
Originally posted by: BFG10K
I'm generally quite pleased with nVidia's drivers right now and have been since I got my GTX260+.

I?ve also found several instances of ATi slipping a bit lately.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised that you would say this... When I'm 'quite pleased' with something I generally don't contact the manufacturer to have them look into an issue for me, but I guess I don't have your clout either. I might put NV on speed dial, but I doubt they'll pick up for me.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2328376&enterthread=y

Originally posted by: BFG10K
This isn't simply an nHancer issue because if it was, it wouldn?t be nVidia?s problem and I wouldn?t have reported it. From what I?ve seen it also happens with nVidia?s own control panel as well.

Interestingly enough, OpenGL games work fine for me with nHancer, which is why I didn't initially notice the problem (I?m currently replaying Doom 3).

Global settings will work, but not in games that require special AA flags such as Unreal 3 titles. Well not unless you set the flags manually yourself.

I've contacted nVidia and they are looking into it for me.
Click to expand...
 
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