Radeon Drivers

[Gillbot]

Are they still "that bad"?

NO, I'm not trying to start a flame war or battle but my past experience with ATi drivers has been far from stellar. Repeated BSOD's, updates, reinstalls of windows and i'd still get BSOD's and random lockups until I'd pull the video card.

Well, with my latest build it has started over. I got Win7 all set up and configured, ran through windows update and everything was humming along smoothly. Oh wait, 1 optional update? Update for Radeon 4800 series video card through windows update? It must be stable then right? WRONG!

After playing hell chasing what I thought was an OC or memory issue I pull the vid card on a whim and sure enough stable as a rock again. Now before fingers are pointed about not using the latest drivers via the ATi/AMD or whatever's website, I'd like to point out that the average user may not know this and would simply hit "YEAH SURE UPDATE!"

I've NEVER had good luck with ATi drivers. I think they make great hardware but after constant battles, I see that at least my luck with them has NOT changed. I was really tempted to pick up a 2nd card for some xfire play but now i'm not so sure.

 

[3DVagabond]

Are they still "that bad"?

NO, I'm not trying to start a flame war or battle but my past experience with ATi drivers has been far from stellar. Repeated BSOD's, updates, reinstalls of windows and i'd still get BSOD's and random lockups until I'd pull the video card.

Well, with my latest build it has started over. I got Win7 all set up and configured, ran through windows update and everything was humming along smoothly. Oh wait, 1 optional update? Update for Radeon 4800 series video card through windows update? It must be stable then right? WRONG!

After playing hell chasing what I thought was an OC or memory issue I pull the vid card on a whim and sure enough stable as a rock again. Now before fingers are pointed about not using the latest drivers via the ATi/AMD or whatever's website, I'd like to point out that the average user may not know this and would simply hit "YEAH SURE UPDATE!"

I've NEVER had good luck with ATi drivers. I think they make great hardware but after constant battles, I see that at least my luck with them has NOT changed. I was really tempted to pick up a 2nd card for some xfire play but now i'm not so sure.

Are you saying you didn't know this? Sounds like you did (or you do now, that's for sure). You still want to blame AMD drivers for this, even though you seem to understand that updating video drivers from Windows update is where you went wrong? It's Windows update that screwed your stability. I'd be curious to who you'd blame if you had DL'd an nVidia update from Windows update. Would you say the same things as you have in this post? Or, would you blame Windows update?

As far as running crossfire? If you can update your drivers properly, you should have no problems. You take your updates from Windows update though, and you'll likely screw your system again.

 

[GotNoRice]

Even with a quad-GPU config my setup has been rock solid since 2009.

I'm not sure how you can really blame AMD for drivers being pushed via windows update. The same kind of users who would install those probably installed their card using drivers on the CD that came in the box... in which case the windows update drivers probably are an upgrade.

 

[happy medium]

NO, they are much better than they used to be. Honestly.

Just dont be the beta tester. Wait till you need to upgrade the drivers, thats what I did/do.

There is a place to turn off optional windows updates also. Drivers and language packs and that sort of crap.

Edit: another tip...allways update all your drivers first before you even turn on windows update. I save mine to CD before I reinstall windows.

EDit 2: I also have my system back itself up with a external 1tb seagate drive, regulary updated. If something goes wrong ,I just plug in my external drive and restore it.

 

[Fallengod]

I bought(to test) a recent ATI card since I am fairly particular about the drivers. I didnt have any stability issues. My only issues with ATI drivers is, they have not yet figured out how to implement refresh rate overrides for specific resolutions. This forced me to run a third party app called ati tray tools which ended up being fairly wonky stability wise. I was also unable to alt-tab with catalyst drivers either, which I never had a problem with my nvidia card. I was forced to return the card and buy another nvidia card. I didnt have any stability issues with catalyst drivers themselves though.

I would also recommend never installing anything via windows update. I never use windows update, nor have I ever installed a driver via update.

 

[zebrax2]

1.) Did it work correctly after installing the drivers from the AMD site rather than the one from microsoft update?
2.) Are you sure that the card isn't the culprit? Maybe the card is already dying

 

[Red Hawk]

In my (relatively short) time using AMD graphics hardware, I've had very few problems. The only serious problem I had was that Catalyst 11.5 gave my PC a BSOD upon trying to install it. I did a clean install back to 11.3 with no issues, and once 11.6 came out I installed that with no issue.

I think you're wrong to put the blame on AMD in your situation. The fault lies not with the drivers themselves, but the way they were installed. And yeah, it would likely screw over an average user who looks in Windows Update and thinks "YEAH SURE UPDATE!" That's Microsoft's problem on Microsoft's updating service. In trying to make Windows foolproof and user-friendly, there's not much protection for the user when it turns out that Microsoft themselves are the fools.

 

[munkle]

I had lots of driver problems on my 6850. Sc2 pylons weren't fixed for like 3-4 months. Then the drivers were fine till 11.6 and I got bsod's hourly, always was the ati driver the card works fine, sold it a friend and he has had no problems. I upgraded to a 570 and have had no problems.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Only driver i had issues with was the first released drivers for a 6990 i owned which gave worst then gtx460 performance with the occasional performance spike.

But single card wise their drivers have been good my last card being a 6850 didn't give issues but i went nvidia for folding.

Didn't care for crossfire with ati drivers but single card wise i don't think you should worry at all.

 

[Madcatatlas]

ATI drivers are still shit, why? because an Anandtech ADMINISTRATOR said so.

I mean like.. hell, if even an Anandtech Administrator cant vouch for ATI drivers, they must be just terrible, in fact they are WAY worse than Nvidia drivers.

Nvidia as the only other competitor to ATI in discreet cards is just gotto be incredibly good to make such good drivers.


Anyway Gillbot, welcome to 2011, its AMD not ATI. That also goes for drivers.


Conflating a member post with that of a moderator's title is an unacceptable Mod Callout.

Please reconsider your approach to the thread, as well as the OP, in future posts.

Idontcare
Super Mod

 

[Red Hawk]

I've actually heard of more problems with recent Nvidia drivers than AMD drivers.

 

[at80eighty]

No

 

[munkle]

I've actually heard of more problems with recent Nvidia drivers than AMD drivers.

It's weird because I have the exact opposite experience, I guess that's why computers suck

 

[happy medium]

ATI drivers are still shit, why? because an Anandtech ADMINISTRATOR said so.

I mean like.. hell, if even an Anandtech Administrator cant vouch for ATI drivers, they must be just terrible, in fact they are WAY worse than Nvidia drivers.

Nvidia as the only other competitor to ATI in discreet cards is just gotto be incredibly good to make such good drivers.


Anyway Gillbot, welcome to 2011, its AMD not ATI. That also goes for drivers.

uhhhh ooooo.:\ Jeeez...........

 

[Red Hawk]

I can tell he's in a trolling mood right now...

 

[happy medium]

I can tell he's in a trolling mood right now...

Bars just closed? :thumbsup:

 

[3DVagabond]

I guess that's why computers suck

+1 ...and herein lies the real problem. :thumbsup:

 

[badb0y]

The short answer is "no."

To elaborate I think AMD drivers are now stable then ever before but video card drivers in general are still very volatile. When you updated through the Windows Update you probably ended up with a bad install of the drivers. Over the years I have learned video card drivers are something I would rather not mess around with if I have a working build and that has saved me a lot of time and trouble. Always go for latest drivers from the site, this cannot be stressed enough regardless of what company you card comes from and never update through any other procedure than getting the new drivers from the AMD/nVidia website.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Did have issues with 180.26 nvidia drivers but only with BC2 but reinstalling the game for some reason fixed all my issues there.

Been folding and zero issues there so idk but i am considering a 2gb 6970 maybe in october so hopefully when all the fanboy's are done attacking simple driver software we could have some real answers from those who buy performance not brands....

 

[SlowSpyder]

I really haven't had much in the way of a better or worse experience with either AMD or Nvidia drivers, personally.

 

[darckhart]

honestly, it's never 100% solid for both sides. even when they're good, I still have to use 3rd party programs to tweak things. the one thing i like about ati though is that they split up the dl so you can grab just the video driver if you want (or just other components) without needing to get the whole package. While neither camp can give a true "set and forget" experience, they are getting better in general. although lately they both seem to be moving a step back for every step forward.

wrt the latest 11.8, i got new probs which did not occur with the older set. see my post here if interested. these are the kinds of probs that just shouldn't be occuring by these two mature companies.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=32192479&postcount=42

 

[Mem]

ATI drivers are still shit, why? because an Anandtech ADMINISTRATOR said so.

I mean like.. hell, if even an Anandtech Administrator cant vouch for ATI drivers, they must be just terrible, in fact they are WAY worse than Nvidia drivers.

Nvidia as the only other competitor to ATI in discreet cards is just gotto be incredibly good to make such good drivers.


Anyway Gillbot, welcome to 2011, its AMD not ATI. That also goes for drivers.

So if an AT Adminstrator said the earth was square you would believe that person?

My REAL personal experience with both retail games and beta games testing for many years is they are fine ie good as Nvidia at the very least and I do use both Nvidia/AMD for gaming.
Btw I will say the main issues I've seen over the years are to do with factory overclocked cards from both sides ie not stable at factory OC setting,causing issues like random freezing /glitches etc...

 

[Gikaseixas]

drivers from Nvidia or AMD are always the best option IMO

 

[Mem]

drivers from Nvidia or AMD are always the best option IMO

I do miss Matrox,shame no longer a three way horse race since it was more fun back in those days .

 

[skipsneeky2]

This thread is gonna get nasty i sense a admin might close it up pretty soon.

When people buy something,they have to protect their purchase till the death.

Feel these amd vs intel threads are the most personal topics period in all of anandtech when they come up,look out.