How are AMD's drivers?

[It's Not Lupus]

I've seen some general complaints about their drivers compared to Nvidia, but maybe this is an old issue. How are AMD's current drivers?

I was waiting for the GTX 960, and I'm somewhat unimpressed and considering a AMD GPU.

 

[jacktesterson]

AMD's drivers are great, IMO.

Old topic.

 

[Dankk]

The newest drivers (14.12) are great.

 

[Jhatfie]

In my experience from owning TONS of graphics cards from both camps and generally several from each generation, running SLI and Crossfire on multiple occasions, I personally have had very few issues through the years with AMD or Nvidia drivers. There of course have been some issues here and there, but overall I cannot say that one stands out as being worse than the other. Currently have a R9 290 in my son's rig and a GTX 980 in mine and both have been mostly problem free, only issues I had recently was with GTX 970's in SLI where one card was always under-volting causing instability sometimes.

 

[n0x1ous]

Radeon drivers are fine - R9 290 is best bang for your buck right now.

 

[Mem]

Good as Nvidia IMHO,I use both Nvidia and AMD cards in fact went from 560Ti to AMD 280x OC (got it cheaper then current 960 prices).

 

[xthetenth]

I've been hearing very good things about them from friends I've been asking, especially the recent performance boosts. It's my 970 that's been having driver issues.

 

[blake0812]

It was horrible back when I used an HD6870, but that was years ago.

 

[Mondozei]

They have been good for over a year now. After Omega, however, they've been great. My Crossfire 290s have zero frame stuttering. Both Sweclockers and Pcper.com have found that SLI have more frame stutter than Crossfire, which is a reversal of previous record.

And performance improvements are also really good. According to both TechPowerUp's and Sweclockers' performance index(take 9 games at 1080p and average scores for a bunch of cards), the 290X is now only 15% behind the 980. The 290 is 10% ahead of the GTX Titan.

And that wasn't the case half a year ago, so we've seen not just elimination of frame stuttering but also significant performance improvements.

 

[Vesku]

Only minor issues with the occasional driver in the 2 years of running this 7950. Most noticeable was one driver version producing a snow effect in Skyrim when AA was on, resolved by rolling back and waiting for the next revision. I recall I had some high 2D clocking and monitor sleep issues at the very beginning because I run two monitors at different resolutions but they fixed that at some point. (Note: My GTS 450 had similar issues with that type of setup.)

 

[SimianR]

I upgraded from a Geforce 760 to a Radeon R9 290 and didn't have any issues on either. Everyone's experience may be different but I didn't feel like I did anything special, I just keep my drivers up to date, I actually never do a clean uninstall and just install over the old ones and haven't had any issues. It's a pretty good time to grab an R9 290 - it's a fast card, has plenty of VRAM and the aftermarket cards keep it cool and quiet.

 

[Pinstripe]

If you're a single card user, they're great. If you want to use CFX, probably not so great...

 

[wand3r3r]

If you're a single card user, they're great. If you want to use CFX, probably not so great...

Based on what exactly, outdated hearsay?

XDMA crossfire has been demonstrated to be equal to or even better than SLI (especially vs. kepler). If you actually follow the topic you will find that you are indeed incorrect.

 

[Piroko]

No issues in at least three years now.

 

[fleshconsumed]

My recent experience has been positive. I've been rocking GTX260c216 for the longest time before finally jumping the ship in favor of 7950 and then to R9-290. I was very apprehensive initially, but 7950 was just a much better value than anything nVidia had at the time. I have not had any driver problems since the switch. Anecdotal evidence, but the general consesus does seem to agree.

 

[CaptainKangaroo]

I'm using a 6870 (Win7 64) and I'm still on 14.4 as 14.9 crashed CCC and the 14.12 (Omega) used to reset my extended desktop display making a disconnect and reconnect sound every time I turned my primary monitor off. Cant complain about 14.4 though.

 

[.vodka]

Had a 9600XT for a year and a half until lightning killed it, nothing out of the ordinary back then.

Had a 4850 a month from launch up to october 2010, 2 years. One single catalyst release back when they were monthly wouldn't recognise the card, but the next one did just fine.

Had a 6850 from october 2010 to last november (2014). No issues in that timeframe.

My 290 hasn't given me any issues either so far.


All on overclocked rigs, and overclocked themselves. I update the drivers as soon as they're released.




Neither had any issues with a GF2 MX that I remember of, neither did with a 7600GT. Maybe I've been lucky with both sides of the fence.

 

[Headfoot]

Single Card -- Both camps are pretty close feature and quality wise

Multi-monitor, single card -- I can't speak for nVidia, but I've had mostly good experiences with AMD until Omega which broke eyefinity in my config. I rolled back to earlier drivers and it works fine now.

Multi-monitor-multi-card -- Both vendors have the most issues here

Both companies modern drivers now are miles ahead of how drivers used to be 5-7 years ago. Single card single monitor is going to be nearly flawless for both. The only place where there are significant differences are in the Linux drivers

 

[Kenmitch]

Never had issues with any AMD card or drivers I've used or installed for others.

It's the constant BS peddled to this day about them that keeps people away.

Just switched to GTX a month or so ago.

I use hdmi so out of box I was blessed with crappy colors....Had to search for the fix as the fix driver wasn't released yet.

Possible memory allocation issue pops up....Brushed under the rug/denied so far.

1st NVIDIA card I've purchased since bumpgate!...Figured it was about time I tried a NVIDIA product again.

My luck the 970 memory fiasco will turn out to be true and resale value will plummet.
The grass isn't greener on the other side so far.

First time I'm interested in multi-card setup and thinking I'll go back to AMD. Needing a nicer monitor reinforces the thought.

 

[Sunaiac]

They are good.
Like any 300MB program.
Few bugs here and there.
Like nVidia's.

 

[formulav8]

If you're a single card user, they're great. If you want to use CFX, probably not so great...

Based on your current experience I take it?

Anyways, I've been using ATI/AMD cards for years without serious problems. I am using NVidia right now but the last time I used AMD things were perfectly fine.

 

[Silverforce11]

Based on what exactly, outdated hearsay?

XDMA crossfire has been demonstrated to be equal to or even better than SLI (especially vs. kepler). If you actually follow the topic you will find that you are indeed incorrect.

Based on the recent swarm of Ubifail games where CF scales poorly or is just broken. There's still no CF support in FC4 and unlikely to be since Ubifail has trouble fixing a plethora of other bugs first before they actually could be bothered to fix FC4 allowing CF support.

I've learnt since using CF, avoid NV sponsored games. Luckily the one NV sponsored title I did enjoy was WD and that works fine with CF & is broken on SLI...

 

[WittyRemark]

Just as good as NVIDIA.

 

[blastingcap]

Recent AMD NV and Intel drivers are all fine

 

[jacktesterson]

If you're a single card user, they're great. If you want to use CFX, probably not so great...

go ahead and ignore this answer. He's living in 2008.