The old "Who has better drivers?" debate

[nRollo]

While discussing PhysX and the addition of THQ to the developers who use it, Louisss brought up the point he feels NVIDIA driver quality makes PhysX irrelevant. (twice)

the 8800gt was my first shot at nvidia since 2004ish and i've gotten a ratio of about 5:1 beta/leaked driversfficial drivers. (oh and less nv4.disp BSOD's would be nice.)

and

there actually is a cost to it. nvidia RD will now have to devote even less time to their crappy drivers and put some more into developing that crap.

I didn't want to assist in derailing that thread with off topic discussions of NVIDIA drivers, but felt Louisss's assertions about NVIDIA drivers warranted response.

Louisss, the video editor of this site says in no uncertain terms that ATi's drivers, and driver release methods are inferior to NVIDIA's.

Derek Wilson, discussing the current state of ATi drivers

Maintaining a monthly driver release schedule is detrimental to AMD's ability to release quality drivers. This is not the first or only issue we've seen that could have been solved (or at least noticed) by expanded testing that isn't possible with such tight release deadlines.

We've been mentioning this as an issue in passing when it pops up and causes us problems, but this is starting to get ridiculous. It is one thing when previous fixes are broken or when older games fall off the grid and are neglected. But when a major title like Far Cry 2 is released to incredibly poor driver support, it is time to wake up and realize that something is wrong. This is not the first time we've seen issues with a newly released game, but the problems we've had with AMD drivers and Far Cry 2 are some of the worst we've ever experienced.

Though we tend to see problems a lot more frequently than end users, we do see a lot more issues with AMD drivers than NVIDIA. Even though not all those issues are things that we need to bother end users with, the probability of hitting a bug that will affect end users is much higher when you've got a higher number of bugs to worry about in general.

So, if there is contradictory evidence that has come to light since 11/21/2008, I thought this thread would be a good place to post it. That way we can all learn, and not have discuss this in the PhysX thread.



I think this thread has pretty much run its course and there's not much more to be had out of it besides more bickering. It's the holidays already -- go spend some time with family, chilling, loafing around, etc!

- AmberClad (Video Moderator)

 

[nosfe]

so ati has more driver problems with games that sport the TWIMTBP logo than nvidia? does that surprise anyone?

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: nosfe
so ati has more driver problems with games that sport the TWIMTBP logo than nvidia? does that surprise anyone?

Where does it say anything about the TWIMTBP logo in what I posted? (other than referencing issues with FC2)

Derek said:

Maintaining a monthly driver release schedule is detrimental to AMD's ability to release quality drivers. This is not the first or only issue we've seen that could have been solved (or at least noticed) by expanded testing

He didn't say it's detrimental to their ability to release quality drivers for TWIMTBP, he said "quality drivers".

Derek said:

we do see a lot more issues with AMD drivers than NVIDIA.

He didn't say they see more issues with TWIMTBP, just "a lot more issues".

It's clear that in his daily work as the video editor of AnandTech he encounters more issues with ATi drivers, across a variety of games.

Why do you say it's only TWIMTBP when derek didn't?

 

[chizow]

Prepare to be crucified haha.

You won't get an honest answer here, remember, this is the site that returned 100% satisfaction rate for ATI parts some months ago. I'm sure this has changed somewhat given the highly public ATI driver problems, and the fact people actually have a reason to buy ATI parts again, but I'm sure you'll get similar feedback and (dis)information.

Also you're missing quite a few quotes from AT on the topic. Anand has personally dumped on ATI's drivers quite a few times as well and some of Derek's most biting remarks have come in the comments sections of his blogs/reviews.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: chizow
Prepare to be crucified haha.

You won't get an honest answer here, remember, this is the site that returned 100% satisfaction rate for ATI parts some months ago. I'm sure this has changed somewhat given the highly public ATI driver problems, and the fact people actually have a reason to buy ATI parts again, but I'm sure you'll get similar feedback and (dis)information.

Also you're missing quite a few quotes from AT on the topic. Anand has personally dumped on ATI's drivers quite a few times as well and some of Derek's most biting remarks have come in the comments sections of his blogs/reviews.

Nobody should be crucified for responding to two off topic posts by creating a thread to address the question, that's just proper forum etiquette.

I haven't seen Anand or Derek's other comments on the subject, and think you should post them.

We're trying to get to the bottom of the "NVIDIA has crappy drivers" theory posted by Louissss, and I'm sure Anand and Derek's comments would be useful in the search for the truth.

Personally, I don't have any issues with NVIDIA drivers, but if Louisss has some info to back his claims, it should be posted.

 

[nosfe]

well, third link, "Derek Wilson, discussing the current state of ATi drivers", it's an article about far cry 2 which is TWIMTBP. No, he didn't say that it's in any way related to TWIMTBP(we need a shorter acronym for this) but there are a ton of games with that logo. I'd say it's safe to assume that those games come with better nvidia driver support(or the other way around, like i said in my previous post). Maybe i wasn't to precise, i didn't want it to sound like ati only has problems with games with nv logos on them, but the thing is, he didn't make a distinction between them. All i was trying to say is that if ati had a program similar to TWIMTBP with a ton of games developed under that banner we would see fewer problems with ati cards in games in general(not that i had any problems with either nvidia or ati drivers in the past, only with intel drivers)

I'd like for ati to do the same thing with game developers, even with those that are already with TWIMTBP(i hate this acronym) if at all possible as i'm sure it would improve their drivers for when those games come out

 

[Mem]

I feel I must reply to this thread as a long term gamer using both Nvidia and ATI cards,personally I have had less problems with ATI drivers then Nvidia,uninstalling Nvidia drivers caused me problems(never had this with ATi),I had problems with Nvidia and Java few years back as well ,I could also meantion 180 series but to be fair and unbiased these were modded drivers so'll leave these out.

Overal I give the edge to AMD/ATI,this is based on my personal experience and usage in general use and gaming.

I think AMD/ATI have improved the most over the years,Nvidia used to have solid reputation for drivers back when ATI had serious issues,nowadays Nvidia drivers are not as good as they use to be,to be fair the overall quality standard is still quite high from both companies.


End of the day you get different feedback from users based on their experience.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: nRollo
Nobody should be crucified for responding to two off topic posts by creating a thread to address the question, that's just proper forum etiquette.

I haven't seen Anand or Derek's other comments on the subject, and think you should post them.

We're trying to get to the bottom of the "NVIDIA has crappy drivers" theory posted by Louissss, and I'm sure Anand and Derek's comments would be useful in the search for the truth.

Personally, I don't have any issues with NVIDIA drivers, but if Louisss has some info to back his claims, it should be posted.

Well I guess the point is its just going to gravitate to finger-pointing about you being a paid Nvidia employee and how this forum is being invaded by Nvidia PR etc etc.

Then you'll get the not-so-public ATI loyalists spreading disinformation or knowingly holding back disclosure of any issues with their driver or hardware. Is there a point in asking for honest feedback on a forum that returns 100% driver satisfaction for ATI parts and 50% respondents (100 of 200) claiming they're going to buy a 4870X2 at launch?

I guess I can start digging up the links, they're really long though and so good I'd feel bad chopping them up for quoting haha.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Mem
I feel I must reply to this thread as a long term gamer using both Nvidia and ATI cards,personally I have had less problems with ATI drivers then Nvidia,uninstalling Nvidia drivers caused me problems(never had this with ATi),I had problems with Nvidia and Java few years back as well ,I could also meantion 180 series but to be fair and unbiased these were modded drivers so'll leave these out.

Overal I give the edge to AMD/ATI,this is based on my personal experience and usage in general use and gaming.

I think AMD/ATI have improved the most over the years,Nvidia used to have solid reputation for drivers back when ATI had serious issues,nowadays Nvidia drivers are not as good as they use to be,to be fair the overall quality standard is still quite high from both companies.


End of the day you get different feedback from users based on their experience.

Could be. The only problem I've had with either recently is the missing ground items in FC2 I reported on, so for me they've been about even.

I don't play as many games or use as many types of hardware as Derek and Anand though, so I feel their opinion carries more weight than mine on this topic.

 

[SlowSpyder]

That is the opinion of Dered, and he is welcome to it. Obviously he is better informed then most of us, so his opinion carries more wieght, but it is still an opinion.

In my case I've used both AMD and Nvidia cards as well as both AMD and Nvidia chipsets. Overall both have been very good as far as video cards go. I've had problems with Nvidia when Alt + Tabbing out of a game in the past. I've had zero issues thus far with my AMD card. Both were great overall.

Again I've had absolutely zero issues what so ever with my AMD chipset board. On my last Nforce board I had a problem with the Nvidia firewall corrupting data. No biggie, I turned it off, a minor issue, but an issue non the less.

Really, I can't complain about either companies drivers as my issues are minor to non-existant. But, that's just my case.

 

[PingSpike]

I actually never really had many problems with either company. Scratch that, I had similar problems with both companies. Fixed aspect ratio scaling wasn't an available option on any ATI parts until this summer, a retardedly long time considering the popularity of widescreen monitors. Nvidia's scaling was basically broken on and off for everyone for different driver revisions for a long. It still doesn't work for me, since whatever there implementation is doesn't work with my viewsonic monitor. I don't expect it to ever get fixed at this point. I jumped ship the moment ati released the 8 catalysts that fixed the problems on their end. I won't go back to nvidia until I get a confirmation that some one with same monitor has it working. I fucked around with that for too long now.

Backwards compatibility in old games has gone to pot for both companies. With the switch to dx10 hardware old dx games have washed out colors on both ati and nvidia cards. Its missing a relevant piece of hardware. That said, nvidia broke this in the 6 and 7 series (within the drivers I think( while ati still had it working on x1xxx parts. This is annoying, but I do acknowledge these are old games.

I'm not really a fan of ATI's CCC, it seems clunky although functional. And I hate having to install the dotnet framework to install drivers.

But honestly, I've never had a lot of trouble with newer games with either companies parts. I don't generally use AA though, which I seem to see a lot of bug complaints about.

 

[zod96]

I've had both Ati cards and Nvidia and both have had troubles with drivers they both suck at times and both are good at times

 

[CP5670]

They're roughly equal as far as I am concerned, generally working well but having some room for improvement. They both run modern games well for the most part. Beyond that, my experience has been that Nvidia cards have more old games with serious problems (one that is especially annoying me is a texture memory leak bug in Battlezone 2, which apparently only occurs on the XP drivers), while ATI cards have more minor but widespread issues (such as taking too long to open games that run at a higher resolution than Windows, resulting in longer loading times). Alt-tabbing is a crap shoot either way, and they both have different games that they work or don't work on.

Both companies' default control panels are quite useless and third party programs are essential, but I like the fanmade programs for Nvidia better than what is available for ATI.

As Mem said, you'll get a wide variety of opinions depending on what games people play and settings they use. There is no objective answer to this question.

 

[dguy6789]

As of late, I haven't had a driver issue with either company

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Drivers for my 8800GT and my uncle's FireMV 2400 have both been flawless. No BSODs or anything, repeated uninstalls didn't f' the systems up. The only complaint I have is the new 180.xx drivers were causing major stutters in L4D.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I can say that I haven't had any issues with any driver I've installed from either team. The only thing that turns me off from ATi right now is that their focus is on a multi-gpu solution that brings scaling issues with it. That can have some driver issues especially with new games. You may not have the full power of the card at your disposal with that freshly opened copy of whatever game you intend to play.

 

[dguy6789]

They(AMD) need to hurry up and offer some kind of basic universal crossfire functionality for all games like Nvidia does. Especially since they now seem to be quite focused on using multiple gpus for their high end instead of one.

 

[MarcVenice]

Nrollo, it's weird, but I've been playing DOZENS of games with my old nvidia card, and roughly no problems I can remember. I had the occasional crash, but I doubt it was videocard related. Usually I would get the latest drivers, beta or not. But, I swapped my nvidia card for one of the red team, and, still no problems. So far I've had a few glitches in GTA IV, but that's it. And I did revisit quite a few games.

Derek making a statement like: it's detrimental yada yada yada, sounds cool and important, but what evidence does he have to back this up? I for one disregarded that statement as sensationalist journalism, and that's it. I think neither videocard manufacturer has perfect drivers ( although neither has giving me much problems at all ) but tbh, I don't see anybody backing anything up with clear evidence. Clearly AMD nor Nvidia is going to publish figures about support related to driver problems, but what else do we have to go on, then a hunch?

Toss of a coin imo. And we should leave it at that, unless someone can throw in some real numbers.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Nrollo, it's weird, but I've been playing DOZENS of games with my old nvidia card, and roughly no problems I can remember. I had the occasional crash, but I doubt it was videocard related. Usually I would get the latest drivers, beta or not. But, I swapped my nvidia card for one of the red team, and, still no problems. So far I've had a few glitches in GTA IV, but that's it. And I did revisit quite a few games.

Derek making a statement like: it's detrimental yada yada yada, sounds cool and important, but what evidence does he have to back this up? I for one disregarded that statement as sensationalist journalism, and that's it. I think neither videocard manufacturer has perfect drivers ( although neither has giving me much problems at all ) but tbh, I don't see anybody backing anything up with clear evidence. Clearly AMD nor Nvidia is going to publish figures about support related to driver problems, but what else do we have to go on, then a hunch?

Toss of a coin imo. And we should leave it at that, unless someone can throw in some real numbers.

It's long been my position this question has no single answer; that "who has the best drivers" depends on the revision, app, hardware config and OS being considered.

However, Louissss seems to think NVIDIA drivers are "crap" and that the "5:1 betas" cause "BSODs".

I couldn't address those assertions in the thread he made them in without posting off topic and risking vacation, so his posts forced me to start a thread and link what I've read recently on the topic.

Part of being in the group is responding to what appears to be FUD, part of your TOS involves not derailing threads.

So, here we are.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
They(AMD) need to hurry up and offer some kind of basic universal crossfire functionality for all games like Nvidia does. Especially since they now seem to be quite focused on using multiple gpus for their high end instead of one.

I agree. One thing that swayed me to the current GTX280 that now resides in my system was the fact that CF didn't work in everything. Sometimes you got lower performance with a x2 than a single card. It made me think about the possibility of my rig having the issues that pop up on the forums from other users. I decided a single GPU that gave me it's best in every game was preferred. It may not hold the crown but it will work at full potential in every single game, barring any glaring holes in the drivers.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice

Derek making a statement like: it's detrimental yada yada yada, sounds cool and important, but what evidence does he have to back this up?

Yeah what does he know? It's not like he does it for a living or anything.... :roll:

A lot of problems have popped up lately and a lot of "hot fixes" have been issued. The monthly cycle the red team maintains could easily be cause of these cramps.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: MarcVenice

Derek making a statement like: it's detrimental yada yada yada, sounds cool and important, but what evidence does he have to back this up?

Yeah what does he know? It's not like he does it for a living or anything.... :roll:

A lot of problems have popped up lately and a lot of "hot fixes" have been issued. The monthly cycle the red team maintains could easily be cause of these cramps.

Maybe, I don't know for sure myself. Like I said, I installed the latest driver be it beta or no for every card I've had. It never had issues. Although people do like to come in forums and count every game that loses or gains 2 or 3 fps...that type of thing doesn't bug me in the least. Personally I'm not at all interested in gaining 2 fps in any game. Having said that, I never did experience BSODs or crashes that could be related to drivers. Not once in all of my time as a PC gamer...going back to the GeForce 2 GTS.

 

[deerhunter716]

Never had 1 issue ever with ATI drivers; BUT have with Nvidia. Red all the way!

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: deerhunter716
Never had 1 issue ever with ATI drivers; BUT have with Nvidia. Red all the way!

Way to add to the thread...not.

 

[TC91]

From my experience with ATI and Nvidia, I have never had my ATI drivers crash on me, and never had the bluescreen stating that the display driver took too long to respond/timed out that I got often with my 8800GTS 320mb. However, I do find that my 8800GTS performs a lot better in older games when compared to my 4870 1GB (notably higher min fps and less variable fps). Nvidia also has the advantage with 3rd party driver programs; I miss using nhancer. I also wished that ATI would implement individual game profiles. Overall from my experience I will say that I find ATI display drivers to be more stable, but Nvidia display drivers have better functionality and better performance in older games.