nVidia vs. ATI - Driver Quality?

[corfe83]

Looking to buy a new video card to go with Ivy Bridge. I've used nVidia for years, and generally trust their drivers. Used an ATI 1st generation Radeon (maybe ~10 years ago), and felt the drivers weren't... quite as polished as nVidia. Obviously that was a long time ago, though.

How are the ATI drivers now compared to nvidia? Is it similar in quality?

Also, what about linux - if you actually plan to do some gaming on linux, without looking at benchmarks of individual cards, would you lean toward nVidia or ATI as a brand?

 

[DeeJayeS]

Uh oh.

Get ready for an influx of:

"AMD drivers suck"

vs.

"AMD drivers are fine, wth are you talking about"

posts.


I fall into the "I've used AMD drivers before and never had a problem" camp myself.

 

[Fallengod]

I really dont know, ive seen people say Nvidia have better quality and ive seen people say AMD have better quality. Honestly, I dont care enough about quality to pay attention. I mean, who sits and stares at the trees and rocks in a game with movement going on, I dont. Quality means little to me, they are similar enough for me to not care.

Personally, running a AMD 5770 right now, I do prefer Nvidia drivers. AMD do have some differences that I dont particularly like, but for the most part they are still good. I will probably be switching back to Nvidia when I can find a decent budget replacement for my 5770. I only paid $60 for my 5770 used off forums so.....

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Afaik most people on Linux boxes prefer Nvidia drivers over AMDs.

That said outside of Nvidia having some nice features that AMD simply doesn't, on a single card there isn't going to be much of a difference between the two.

Once you get into multi-gpu configs Nvidia is a better software developer than AMD.

 

[Barfo]

Edit: I usually get the best bang for the buck, and I haven't had any drivers problems with either. As far as other software is concerned, I prefer Nvidia CP to CCC, though both are fine for my needs, especially since CCC does the profile thingie like nvidia has been doing for a long time now.

 

[Arzachel]

Windows, the drivers are more or less equal but Nvidia has a better control panel in my opinion. Linux drivers used to be horrid on AMD a while ago but are quite close to Nvidia's. That said, Wine seems to work a bit better on Nvidia I think.

 

[roedtogsvart]

I used an HD5850 for 2 years before upgrading to a GTX680. I have had no problems with either company's driver quality.

 

[E6700]

I've been with ati for past 6 years,but now i prefer nvidia. gl

 

[corfe83]

OK I should have expected a bunch of fanboy posts, and so far it's not as bad as it might have been, so thanks everyone for being cool

I'll look out for other posts, but so far I'm hearing "nvidia might be slightly better, but driver quality is not that big of a factor in the decision". That's good to hear, I want to be able to look at all the options in my price range without fear of a bad experience.

 

[blackened23]

*grabs popcorn

 

[jacktesterson]

AMD is fine. Dont be tricked.

 

[blackened23]

I fall into the "I've used AMD drivers before and never had a problem" camp myself.

Same here, This will be a heck of a thread though D:

 

[Don Karnage]

AMD is fine. Dont be tricked.

Amd drivers suck and yes i speak from experience.

 

[blastingcap]

For single GPU I have had few problems with either company.

I have heard many horror stories about multi-GPU with both companies, especially AMD.

 

[anikhtos]

For single GPU I have had few problems with either company.

I have heard many horror stories about multi-GPU with both companies, especially AMD.

well in my old athlon xp computer and a crt monitor

i had this strange problem with ati >amd cards
i could only pick the highest resolution for the monitor?!??!?!?!
if i choose a minor one
the card was still working at the max resolution and the monitor was showing a portion of the monitor and when the mouse hit the edge of the screen then i could scroll to the rest of it?!?!?!?!
but when i launched a game which of course did not use that resolution hahhaahha then i also saw th eportion of the screen but now the scrollign was locked so in many games the start button was in the out of the screen area!!!!!!!!!!!!
i took an nvidia card
problem solved
the same problem i had with a matrox card
sooooooooooo nvidia for me

 

[jacktesterson]

Amd drivers suck and yes i speak from experience.

hooray for you!

as do I...so what makes your opinion any more valid than mine?

 

[busydude]

AMD user here, no serious issues to report.

 

[chimaxi83]

I use both.

The only AMD issue in recent memory was overclocking got limited on my 7950, as in I couldn't extend anything past CCC limits (fitstworldproblems). Quick and easy workaround and its back to normal. That's it, in the past 3-4 years.

Haven't had any NV issues.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I just upgraded from a 5870 (AMD) to a GTX 680 (Nvidia), and honestly, the drivers are basically the same. The only area where either side has a clear advantage with regards to drivers is the broken Eyefinity support for Crossfire on the AMD 7970, and it doesn't sound like you plan on buying two bleeding edge cards and several monitors, so that doesn't affect you. The drivers are basically a wash; you should go with whatever you can get cheapest that runs the games you play most effectively.

 

[Hauk]

@ Barfo, love the Michael Jackson grabs popcorn.

I try to avoid the minefield, but feel compelled to report a generally poor multi-gpu experience with 7950 CF and latest drivers, particularly in Skyrim. 560ti 448 SLI in comparision yields an awesome experience at max settings. Sure it's one game, but to not have CF working properly with this title is FAIL.

7950 CF should be > 560ti 448 SLI
Reason it's not = drivers

 

[Despoiler]

The truth is that both companies have driver issues from time to time. Neither side is overall bad at making drivers. I've personally had driver issues with both companies albeit they have always been minor. I think people's individual rigs contribute more to crashes and stability issues than the drivers. All manner of bad or dying hardware is blamed on drivers. BIOS updates that should be applied aren't. Unstable overclocks. Bloated Windows installs. A lot of stuff gets blamed on drivers that has nothing to do with it.

 

[hawtdawg]

As far as actual functionality of the drivers:

I have a laptop with dual 4870m's and a PC with a 6950. There have only been 2 issues that bothered me the entire time I've used these cards. 1 was the bug in BFBC2 that made the maps load slower than they should have, and the other was a bug that would reset the overscan whenever i'd try to play BF3. These were both on the 4870's mind you.

Other than that, I've had no issues. I've not really even had any problems relating to crossfire.


However, I've had some issues with driver installation from AMD/ATI. There have been a couple of points where something got borked to the point that I wasn't able to install the drivers. Even after booting to safe mode and running driver sweeper and all that, the installer would not finish and give me a warning. I'd end up having to reinstall windows over it. This only happened a couple of times, and it's been a while since it has though.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

I had driver issues with both, none of them are perfect every time.

 

[3DVagabond]

@ Barfo, love the Michael Jackson grabs popcorn.

I try to avoid the minefield, but feel compelled to report a generally poor multi-gpu experience with 7950 CF and latest drivers, particularly in Skyrim. 560ti 448 SLI in comparision yields an awesome experience at max settings. Sure it's one game, but to not have CF working properly with this title is FAIL.

7950 CF should be > 560ti 448 SLI
Reason it's not = drivers

Were your results anything like this?

Skyrim is terribly bottlenecked. None of the dual GPU cards work.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I can get 120+ fps in skyrim.