Questions on ATI Graphics Drivers

[jgbishop]

I have a few questions concerning graphics drivers that I hope someone can answer for me.

1. I tend to see people discussing how ATI drivers seem to have various "issues" in various applications, while NVIDIA drivers tend to seem more stable. Am I picking up the wrong messages, or is this really the case?
2. How well do ATI drivers work with older programs/games? Having only owned NVIDIA cards, I have no experience with legacy support and ATI.
3. I am looking at moving to an ATI product in the near future. What is the best way to make the conversion from NVIDIA to ATI - i.e., what steps should I take to ensure everything is nice and clean? I would rather not reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything (since I just did that). Any simpler solutions?

Thanks to everyone for being so helpful. I have found this forum community to be among the friendliest and most knowledgable groups around.

 

[JonnyBlaze]

what games or apps are you concerned about?? the oldest game i have is q2. you talking older?

i allways had nvidia cards since geforce2, 3dfx before that. i have a 9800pro now. the only problem i have had so far with this card is call of duty, which still works most of the time.

everything else is good. ati's come along way with their drivers.

JB

 

[jgbishop]

Quake 2 games are probably as far back as I would go. I'm looking into getting Freespace 1 and 2 sometime, but that era of gaming is what I'm considering.

What kind of problems have you had with Call of Duty? That's a game I've had my eye on for some time, and I'd hate to have problems with it. I'm also looking at Splinter Cell.

Just for the record, I'm looking at getting a Radeon 9700 Pro.

Thanks!

 

[JonnyBlaze]

call of duty just has its random crashes. sometimes worse than others. lately hasnt been that bad tho. splinter cell is picky on what AA settings you use, but will work. i think it likes 4x as opposed to 6x.

quake2 is nuts on these generation cards. yes, i still play sometimes 🙂

quake3 runs faster than needed too. crank the settings all the way up on those games.

JB

 

[kylebisme]

splinter cell doesnt work with aa at all, this goes for both ati and nvidia.

 

[CJP]

For me, Call of Duty has the brightness level drop by half while playing multiplayer. Going into the menu and tapping the brightness bar restores it but it's still annoying. That's with the 3.10's, haven't tried the 4.1's yet.

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: jgbishop
I tend to see people discussing how ATI drivers seem to have various "issues" in various applications, while NVIDIA drivers tend to seem more stable. Am I picking up the wrong messages, or is this really the case?

Your picking up the wrong message.
They`re both as buggy and as stable as each other imo.
They are both good sets of drivers. From my experiance, the nVidia bugs arnt as "often" as ATIs, but nVidia bugs are very serious ones, where as ATI ones are more "often", but far less severe. Having said that though, ive never had any serious issues with either drivers in any game/app. It depends on your luck.

How well do ATI drivers work with older programs/games? Having only owned NVIDIA cards, I have no experience with legacy support and ATI.

Just as well as nVidia`s.

I am looking at moving to an ATI product in the near future. What is the best way to make the conversion from NVIDIA to ATI - i.e., what steps should I take to ensure everything is nice and clean? I would rather not reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything (since I just did that). Any simpler solutions?

1) Download Driver/CAB Cleaner & RegCleaner.
2) Uninstall ALL nVidia Drivers/apps.
3) Restart in safe mode.
4) Run Driver Cleaner, then run CAB Cleaner.
5) Run RegCleaner. Search for nVidia enteries, and delete them (remember to backup registray incase you mess up).
6) Shutdown PC. Remove nVidia card.
7) Put in ATI Card, Start PC.
8) Upon Boot, windows should come up with "Install Standard VGA Controller". Cancel that.
9) Install the latest ATI Catalyst Drivers (v4.1).
10) Play some games/benchmark to see if its working right.

Im 98% sure that the above will ensure that you have a trouble free swap.

Thanks to everyone for being so helpful. I have found this forum community to be among the friendliest and most knowledgable groups around.

Why Thank You! 😀

 

[BenSkywalker]

ATi has significantly more problems then nVidia, they tend to break at least one higher profile title with every driver release(this release, Tron 2.0 is broken). The ATi fans will try to deny it, but I listened to their lies and wasted a couple hundred bucks of my own money and I don't want to see you go in unprepared. You are going to have more problems running ATi then nVidia unless you get lucky enough to avoid their problematic games(which change based on the driver). If that isn't a big issue for you then you are likely to be quite pleased, if driver problems are a major issue to you then stay away from ATi. nV has issues also, but their's seem to always be considerably more minor. You are running nV now, so you should be quite aware of what type of issues they have. ATi frequently has hard lock bugs in their drivers, although the games it happens in changes based on what driver you are using.

What kind of problems have you had with Call of Duty? That's a game I've had my eye on for some time, and I'd hate to have problems with it. I'm also looking at Splinter Cell.

CoD has problems with ATi's boards(stability), Splinter Cell's highest quality shadows don't work on ATi's boards(can't be fixed, the game is XBox native and it uses some features only nV boards have).

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
ATi has significantly more problems then nVidia, they tend to break at least one higher profile title with every driver release(this release, Tron 2.0 is broken).
_____________________________________________________________________________________________


Yes I had a minor difficulty with Tron 2.0, but finished the game with a minor adjustment. Changing the resolution (I used a higher resolution) for half a level stopped the bsod problem. This with a 9700pro. The major problem with Tron 2.0 was whenever I updated a Bueno Vista Patch (which fixed multi player, I realized later), saved games are lost. Anyways if this is your definition of "broken" ... many titles have been broken using all cards I guess.

 

[BoomAM]

Ben.
We all know that you are heavily nVidia bias.

CoD runs perfectly on my 9700pro. Not a crash in sight.
The Shadow issue in SC, is cos UbiSoft could`nt be bothered redoing the engine enough to allow non nVidia cards to do the more exotic shadows. But the rest of the in game shadows work. Becides, the shadows missing dont remove much from the games gfx.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Yes I had a minor difficulty with Tron 2.0, but finished the game with a minor adjustment. Changing the resolution (I used a higher resolution) for half a level stopped the bsod problem. This with a 9700pro.

Try it with the 4.1s. You can deny the problem exists if you are so inclined, but ATi already said it was real.

BoomAM-

CoD runs perfectly on my 9700pro. Not a crash in sight.

If you tell me something, there is a very high chance I will remember it just so you know 🙂

Ive just brought CoD today. Im upto the first british mission, so no spoilers.

The good.
Upto now it seems very good.
And its the only game i own that ues the full 5.1 capibilites of my system. And not psudo sound either, proper sound placement. Its awsome. I just wish games where sound makes more difference worked that way, ##cough##Deus Ex 2##cough##

The bad.
Although it can stay perfectly smooth at 1280x1024@max everything w/16x performance AF, for some reason, every now and then, it`ll pause for a second or so, for no reason. And occasionally it crashes, for no reason. Hard Locks, so i have to restart my computer.

Link.

I'm nVidia biased huh? You start a thread offering critique of a game because of stability issues that are due to your graphics card drivers, then a short while later you deny that you were having problems. Thanks for illustrating what I was saying about ATi's drivers and some denial issues with users.

 

[Mem]

ATi has significantly more problems then nVidia, they tend to break at least one higher profile title with every driver release(this release, Tron 2.0 is broken). The ATi fans will try to deny it,

Here`s my personal experience with ATi,after being with Nvidia since TNT days and going over to 9700NP last summer ,I`ve found the drivers to be excellent,I`ve had no problems in any of my games & I always use Driver Cleaner , no I don`t have Tron 2.0 but have about 15 or so currently installed & have tested quite a few more,no I`m not claiming to test them all since that`s impossible for anyone.


As to my GF2 Ti which is in my backup PC ,the only problems I`ve had was the famous Nvidia Infinite loop error a few years back which was corrected after a driver updated or so (In my case).I also had just one bad Nvidia driver download that Nvidia fixed awhile back.

Gaming wise both have been excellent and I consider them equal on stability,ATi do have a lot more frequent driver updates ,while Nvidia seem to be like Creative a few years back where driver releases were very slow..

A friend of mine was a die hard Nvidia fan but decided to take a chance & went over to ATi (9600XT) after seeing how I have had excellent stability with my 9700np card(which at the time Nvidia had nothing to equal it on price to performance which was the deciding factor for me) and guess what? He has had no problems so far 🙂.

Lets be frank here,I can find people from both sides that have had excellent stability or even the opposite,in the end it`s what you are happy with that counts, but you should respect other peoples hardware and opinions , just because you may have had problems with a particular brand doesn`t mean that other people have.After reading all the anti-ATI threads I`m glad I decided to take a chance which paid off for me 🙂.

Bottom line is ATI drivers have come a long way from their old days,would I buy ATI again? Sure would,as to Nvidia?Yes I would.In the end choosing between two brands is better then one in my books any day.


Well I`m off to play" Deus Ex:Invisible War" now,that`s why I have my video card, which`s to game not to flame 😉.Btw my comments are not targeted at at anyone in particular,just my honest view and take on the subject.

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Yes I had a minor difficulty with Tron 2.0, but finished the game with a minor adjustment. Changing the resolution (I used a higher resolution) for half a level stopped the bsod problem. This with a 9700pro.

Try it with the 4.1s. You can deny the problem exists if you are so inclined, but ATi already said it was real.

BoomAM-

CoD runs perfectly on my 9700pro. Not a crash in sight.

If you tell me something, there is a very high chance I will remember it just so you know 🙂

Ive just brought CoD today. Im upto the first british mission, so no spoilers.

The good.
Upto now it seems very good.
And its the only game i own that ues the full 5.1 capibilites of my system. And not psudo sound either, proper sound placement. Its awsome. I just wish games where sound makes more difference worked that way, ##cough##Deus Ex 2##cough##

The bad.
Although it can stay perfectly smooth at 1280x1024@max everything w/16x performance AF, for some reason, every now and then, it`ll pause for a second or so, for no reason. And occasionally it crashes, for no reason. Hard Locks, so i have to restart my computer.

Link.

I'm nVidia biased huh? You start a thread offering critique of a game because of stability issues that are due to your graphics card drivers, then a short while later you deny that you were having problems. Thanks for illustrating what I was saying about ATi's drivers and some denial issues with users.

touche!
Forgot about that.
Anyway, i started again on it a week ago, and i had no problems whatsoever.
My previous problem, If i recall correctly, the problem was with my Bit-Torrent program hashing the DLing files every few mins.

Anyway, i dont want to get into an arguement without you ben.
I was merely pointing out that different users have different experiances different things with diffrent drivers. You must have had alot of ATI Probs, where as i have about as many as i did with my GF3.

 

[Mem]

jgbishop,here`s
link for Driver Cleaner ,just follow the instructions in the readme file and you should have no problems.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

Originally posted by: jgbishop
I have a few questions concerning graphics drivers that I hope someone can answer for me.

1. I tend to see people discussing how ATI drivers seem to have various "issues" in various applications, while NVIDIA drivers tend to seem more stable. Am I picking up the wrong messages, or is this really the case?

1. 
   This is the case. Lots of annoying issues exist with ATI's drivers. Most common are AA not working in some games, graphical artifacts in a few games and gamma settings in OGL not sticking in games and/or upsetting desktop gamma settings. Then they're are the performance issues that still crop up, both Wolf:ET and Max Payne 2 performance are down considerably w/ the 4.1's.
   

   [*]How well do ATI drivers work with older programs/games? Having only owned NVIDIA cards, I have no experience with legacy support and ATI.

   Older games is where ATI really has problems. Performance issues, refresh rate issues, and even more AA issues.
   

   [*]I am looking at moving to an ATI product in the near future. What is the best way to make the conversion from NVIDIA to ATI - i.e., what steps should I take to ensure everything is nice and clean? I would rather not reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything (since I just did that). Any simpler solutions?

Thanks to everyone for being so helpful. I have found this forum community to be among the friendliest and most knowledgable groups around.

I would think long and hard about that decision. I honestly can't comment on the current state of Nvidia drivers, but you will likely run into issues with ATI's drivers. I've owned my 9800 for a good while now, and though I haven't run into anything show-stopping with it, I wouldn't call it trouble-free. Also (and this is really my main gripe with ATI), the attitude of the driver developers seems to be rather non-caring over most issues. As long as something runs, correctly or not, it seems to be good enough for them. Nvidia has 'the way it's meant to be played', ATI seems to be stuck on 'just be grateful you can play it at all'. They also don't give a crap about features users want. They'll respond to such requests saying they don't rank high on their priorty list, but from the quality of their driver releases I am left to wonder just what does. I'm strongly considering getting a 5900 knowing I'll take a performance dip from my 9800, but if it will get rid of all these annoyances I've had to learn to live with with this 9800.

 

[BoomAM]

Originally posted by: Gonad the Barbarian

This is the case. Lots of annoying issues exist with ATI's drivers. Most common are AA not working in some games, graphical artifacts in a few games and gamma settings in OGL not sticking in games and/or upsetting desktop gamma settings. Then they're are the performance issues that still crop up, both Wolf:ET and Max Payne 2 performance are down considerably w/ the 4.1's.

The games that AA dont work in, also dont work on nVidia cards.

I'm strongly considering getting a 5900 knowing I'll take a performance dip from my 9800, but if it will get rid of all these annoyances I've had to learn to live with with this 9800.

The 5900s are good cards, but unless you want to have to update again after a pixel/vertex shader games become common, an ATI DX9 carrd will be the better option. The FX 5xxx`s struggle with DX9 shaders.

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Yes I had a minor difficulty with Tron 2.0, but finished the game with a minor adjustment. Changing the resolution (I used a higher resolution) for half a level stopped the bsod problem. This with a 9700pro.

Try it with the 4.1s. You can deny the problem exists if you are so inclined, but ATi already said it was real.

So where did I "deny" it? And where does ATI say it is "broken"? Anyways most reviews I have read, seem to suggest that ATI drivers are good. Personally I would buy based on price.

 

[BenSkywalker]

So where did I "deny" it? And where does ATI say it is "broken"? Anyways most reviews I have read, seem to suggest that ATI drivers are good. Personally I would buy based on price.

Should have used an emoticon there huh? They talk about issues with current games in their driver release notes. They finally fixed the Halo reboot issue with older Rads, but they introduced the W:ET performance problems and issues w/Tron 2.0 under XP.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

The games that AA dont work in, also dont work on nVidia cards.

That's not correct. ATI's AA doesn't work in FarCry, apparently Nvidia's does. Also ATI's AA tends not to work in 16-bit color, so all these old games that you can't force to 32 bit don't get AA either. These aren't the only examples, for all the potential problems you get with an ATI card just browse the driver forum at rage3d.com.

 

[Rogodin2]

I've owned:

1. tnt2 m64
2. geforce 2 mx 400
3. geforce 2 gts
4. geforce 4 gainward ti 4200
5. geforce 4 msi ti 4400
6. geforce fx 5900 U evga
7. ati 8500LE
8. ati 9700 pro
9. ati 9800 pro.

My imressions with games (as old as quake 2- and playing COD very very much) is that it's a draw (I had the infinite loop problem with the g2 bigtime) with nvidia becoming worse and ati becoming better-the bilinear hacks in ut2003 have turned me off with the 5900 (AA sucks badly, and AF not any better unless you flight sim through tunnels doing barell rolls on the 5900), I've had some strange issues with RSC too on my nvidia cards (still have most of them)-NWN had some issues (on the ati cards ) with water (but this was a game dev problem)-and the obvious bilinear filtering limit on the 8500 (which didn't bother me because it looked better and ran better than it's rival (g3 not ti).

Personally I'd stay the heck away from nvidia until the vn40-and I take this to heart and haven't sold a nvidia based board for 5 months (and sales are up ;😉 to any of my customers.

Rogo

 

[titananandtech]

Originally posted by: jgbishop
I have a few questions concerning graphics drivers that I hope someone can answer for me.

1. I tend to see people discussing how ATI drivers seem to have various "issues" in various applications, while NVIDIA drivers tend to seem more stable. Am I picking up the wrong messages, or is this really the case?
2. How well do ATI drivers work with older programs/games? Having only owned NVIDIA cards, I have no experience with legacy support and ATI.
3. I am looking at moving to an ATI product in the near future. What is the best way to make the conversion from NVIDIA to ATI - i.e., what steps should I take to ensure everything is nice and clean? I would rather not reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything (since I just did that). Any simpler solutions?

Thanks to everyone for being so helpful. I have found this forum community to be among the friendliest and most knowledgable groups around.

Head over to Rage3d.com and look through the forums there. ATI's latest drivers have a lot of [mostly small] bugs, especially with OpenGL games. Nothing like XGI or S3, but they do have some problems.

I wouldn't say ATI's drivers are so bad you should avoid them. If you want a Radeon 9600 then it is a good choice. Personally I'd get a 5900 for $200 because I hate any little driver bug and it performs great, but if you don't want to spend that much you have to be a pretty big nvidia fan to not get a Radeon instead given the strong price/performance of the 9600... A year ago I might have said avoid ATI because of their drivers, but ATI's sure come a long way. Their drivers are very good, but a small step behind nvidias (perhaps a large step in OpenGL applications, but hopefully their FireGL line will push them in the right direction).

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: jgbishop
I have a few questions concerning graphics drivers that I hope someone can answer for me.

1. I tend to see people discussing how ATI drivers seem to have various "issues" in various applications, while NVIDIA drivers tend to seem more stable. Am I picking up the wrong messages, or is this really the case?

1. 
   NVidia's aren't godly, either...and many of these games have problems with both. I haven't been able to mess around with any new games as of yet, but I have no complaints, and have had a few with many Detonators in the past. In fact, newer ATi drivers have gotten several old ATi cards (such as a Rage 128 AIW) working better than they did when they were new. To be truthful, since the fall of 3Dfx, there haven't been any perfect drivers (and then they were 'good' for all the wrong reasons).
   

   [*]How well do ATI drivers work with older programs/games? Having only owned NVIDIA cards, I have no experience with legacy support and ATI.

   SInce you ask, I shall install...and Tribes and Quake2 work fine. That's as far back as I can go with Win32 🙂.

   [*]I am looking at moving to an ATI product in the near future. What is the best way to make the conversion from NVIDIA to ATI - i.e., what steps should I take to ensure everything is nice and clean? I would rather not reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything (since I just did that). Any simpler solutions?

If you're running Win2k or XP, uninstall the NVidia drivers from add/remove programs. INstall ATi's. But try the drivercleaning method...after I went the other way, direct3d got FUBAR (NV->ATi->NV->ATi).

Thanks to everyone for being so helpful. I have found this forum community to be among the friendliest and most knowledgable groups around.

Yeah, me too.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I had the infinite loop problem with the g2 bigtime

That was a Via bug, not nVidia(feel free to look it up, you should study your tales more carefully).

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Yes I had a minor difficulty with Tron 2.0, but finished the game with a minor adjustment. Changing the resolution (I used a higher resolution) for half a level stopped the bsod problem. This with a 9700pro.

Try it with the 4.1s. You can deny the problem exists if you are so inclined, but ATi already said it was real.

i can deny it, works just fine on my setup. 😀

 

[Mem]

That was a Via bug, not nVidia(feel free to look it up, you should study your tales more carefully).

Hmmm that`s wrong,

Motherboards: Various models using the following chipsets: VIA Apollo KT266, KT266A, P4X266, P4X266A, AMD761, SiS735, Nvidia NForce 420D and Intel845/845D based motherboards. Video cards: Various models of GeForce 1 standard, GeForce 2MX/GTS/Ultra, GeForce 3/T1200/Ti500, GeForce 4MX, Voodoo 5, S3 Savage 4, integrated NForce, ATI Radion 7000. The loop error can be replicated on any combination of video cards and motherboard when using faulty components, incorrect drivers, insuffient power supply, over agressive settings or overclocking.

If this is not a VIA chipset issue, why is the VIA Arena team spending so much time on the issue?Simple - it's affecting our customers and we believe they should get what they paid for - a working reliable system

.





Link ,

I do remember guys with Intel,SiS boards getting the same problem.