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John Carmack says NVidia drivers are 'consistently superior'

mmj_uk

mmj_uk

mmj_uk

Caporegime
Joined
26 Dec 2003
Posts
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https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/352860181488611328

on a hardware level, AMD is often as good as or better than Nvidia, but Nvidia drivers are consistently superior.
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As a user of various models of each brand over the years it comes as no surprise to me but it seems to be a recurring myth that AMD drivers are "not as bad as they were before" and anyone who says NVidia drivers are better is wrong.
 
The topic for discussion / thread creation is fine imo. It's the manner in which people express themselves in later posts that could and quite often does get a thread locked.
 
shankly1985 said:
Just Look at this - Nvidia Driver burning out the GPU because it was OC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRo-1VFMcbc&list=FLf3qrmLynVBz4OOdzStcwdw&index=2
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Never mind the fact you had to manually disable the hardware limiter designed to stop the card doing that to make it do that :P

mmj_uk said:
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/352860181488611328



As a user of various models of each brand over the years it comes as no surprise to me but it seems to be a recurring myth that AMD drivers are "not as bad as they were before" and anyone who says NVidia drivers are better is wrong.
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I think his perspective is a little skewed by the fact that most of the engines he has worked on are based around Open GL and nVidia have for a long time had better Open GL support... however ask most developers who have had anything to do with GPU drivers over the last few years or so regardless of what rendering API they have worked with and they will for the most part tell you something fairly similiar.

EDIT: Another thing to keep in mind is that JC isn't talking about the consumer experience side of the drivers but rather which is the most reliable and documented/thought out to program for at a low level - this does have a knock on effect in terms of consumer experience tho.
 
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jimfowler_82 said:
Carmack is a legend but needs to release something decent again soon otherwise he loses his "halo" with me :)
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At the end of the day hes an engine programmer rather than a game designer and I think has got to comfortable at id software hes brilliant but thrives on a challenge.
 
Couldn't care less tbh, both have had their ups and downs lately and in the past.

As soon as nvidia stop trying to kill overclocking I'll consider buying their cards again.
 
Even people like Carmack parrot old information, not saying he is in this case but plenty of high profile individuals fall back to received wisdom when asked an off-the-cuff question.

Obviously it's twitter so he can't go into detail, but I would like him to back up his statement.
 
mmj_uk said:
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/352860181488611328



As a user of various models of each brand over the years it comes as no surprise to me but it seems to be a recurring myth that AMD drivers are "not as bad as they were before" and anyone who says NVidia drivers are better is wrong.
Click to expand...

Talk about putting word in his mouth.

He did not say that AMD drivers are as bad as they always were, he did not say that AMD drivers have not improved, he said that NV drivers are better.

He is also looking at it from a programmers perspective and there is no doubt that NV has been better in that area, but that may soon change.
 
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arc@css said:
The topic for discussion / thread creation is fine imo. It's the manner in which people express themselves in later posts that could and quite often does get a thread locked.
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This.

I've always found it hard to believe that people argue and make conclusions over
code to which they've never seen or had any experience of developing yet make conclusions from a front user perspective based on performance and benchmarks only. The results of which are effected by other factors. :confused:

oh well.. watching thread..
 
Final8y said:
He did not say that AMD drivers are as bad as they always were, he did not say that AMD drivers have not improved, he said that NV drivers are better.
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TBH its one of the biggest causes of conflict around here that a small number of people (from either side) can't seem to see this topic in shades of grey but rather black and white. Carmack in no way says that AMD drivers are bad or that nVidia drivers are flawless but thats how many people are going to read it.
 
Rroff said:
TBH its one of the biggest causes of conflict around here that a small number of people (from either side) can't seem to see this topic in shades of grey but rather black and white. Carmack in no way says that AMD drivers are bad or that nVidia drivers are flawless but thats how many people are going to read it.
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Sadly yes.
 
I remember him talking to Ryan Shrout from PCPerspective. On the subject of hardware / drivers from both teams, he said he wasn't concerned about the hardware "at all" but that he does worry about the drivers "a lot".
 
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To be honest, I have an extreme amount of respect for AMD over Nvidia. Sure nvidia may be leading but only just, AMD are good on their tail even if it may be a bit late. The amount of R&D nvidia have compared to AMD and the pressure that's on AMD at the minute to succeed is very high. AMD may even be my next choice of cards...
 
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