Any tips for switching from NVidia to Radeon?

[Piroko]

What Communism wrote, who appears to be a Crossfire user, is not really unlike the typical AMD experience. However, most people ignore the small details and it doesn't bother them.

AMD drivers as a whole work pretty well, with little to be bothered with, however, AMD drivers have little annoying problems all the time. Those small issues which he mentioned would not bother most people, so you don't really see a large flood of people complaining, but these problems do exist.

My experience was that their drivers were actually fairly flawless for me - and that was with a lot of early day Vista handling. Not a single hiccup even though this system had to serve as a testbench for several cards, never needed to uninstall/fix drivers or CCC. And my drivers never lost any settings either *cough, cough*

I'm sure there are issues that I simply managed to avoid, but in all honesty I think that few people trip over the same issues that you guys found. Especially if you stay out of Crossfire woes (neither CF nor SLI strikes me as something desirable).

 

[bystander36]

My experience was that their drivers were actually fairly flawless for me - and that was with a lot of early day Vista handling. Not a single hiccup even though this system had to serve as a testbench for several cards, never needed to uninstall/fix drivers or CCC. And my drivers never lost any settings either *cough, cough*

I'm sure there are issues that I simply managed to avoid, but in all honesty I think that few people trip over the same issues that you guys found. Especially if you stay out of Crossfire woes (neither CF nor SLI strikes me as something desirable).

My issues were mostly in Windows 7, but also Vista early on and even XP earlier than that. It was also not the same issues Communism had. I had lots of Crossfire issues, Overdrive issues. V-sync not overriding (don't use v-sync a lot now with my 120hz monitor). And little things that changed from driver to driver. I typically stuck with the most complete driver I could find, with the fewest bugs, and use it for half a year, but not getting updates either, because various updates always had new bugs.

They were bugs that weren't unuseable, but I did not like them, and they added up. I don't even remember all the little bugs anymore. I just remember how they piled up until I'd get sick of it, and switch to Nvidia. While Nvidia's drivers were not bug free, they were fewer and there were usually more complete drivers that existed that were fairly recent. Mostly, I just never had the annoyances and I tend to fiddle with driver things far far less often (as in I'd go months without messing with drivers with Nvidia, but I couldn't go a week without messing with something on AMD setups).

 

[Tripperdude]

My issues were mostly in Windows 7, but also Vista early on and even XP earlier than that. It was also not the same issues Communism had. I had lots of Crossfire issues, Overdrive issues. V-sync not overriding (don't use v-sync a lot now with my 120hz monitor). And little things that changed from driver to driver. I typically stuck with the most complete driver I could find, with the fewest bugs, and use it for half a year, but not getting updates either, because various updates always had new bugs.

They were bugs that weren't unuseable, but I did not like them, and they added up. I don't even remember all the little bugs anymore. I just remember how they piled up until I'd get sick of it, and switch to Nvidia. While Nvidia's drivers were not bug free, they were fewer and there were usually more complete drivers that existed that were fairly recent. Mostly, I just never had the annoyances and I tend to fiddle with driver things far far less often (as in I'd go months without messing with drivers with Nvidia, but I couldn't go a week without messing with something on AMD setups).

Out of curiosity, what do you run now for a vidcard? I think you said you're using Crossfire, are they 7970's? Any opinion on the new R2xx's coming out?

 

[bystander36]

I used 5870 CF and 6950 CF. I use 680 SLI now (got them over a year ago, when they were cheaper and faster than 7970's).

 

[Teizo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zNdw4DaUM8



Warning issued for thread crapping.
-- stahlhart

 

[Tripperdude]

I used 5870 CF and 6950 CF. I use 680 SLI now (got them over a year ago, when they were cheaper and faster than 7970's).

680's...nice!

 

[Tripperdude]

[/QUOTE]While Nvidia's drivers were not bug free, they were fewer and there were usually more complete drivers that existed that were fairly recent. Mostly, I just never had the annoyances and I tend to fiddle with driver things far far less often (as in I'd go months without messing with drivers with Nvidia, but I couldn't go a week without messing with something on AMD setups).

I think the NV drivers overall are much less "buggy" than these Catalysts (which don't seem to me as stable as they ought to be), but I remember a learning curve in working with Detonators as well. It wasn't until GF-6600s rolled out (I passed on GF5 but had to switch for PCIe) that I felt comfortable working with them, so I know there will be a Radeon learning curve too.