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NVIDIA drivers Vs AMD drivers

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Gregster

Gregster

Gregster

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One thing I have noticed recently is that both the 7970 and 680 are great cards but one thing that rarely gets mentioned is Drivers. I always remember having major issues with my Gigabyte 560TI 1GB having problems which was reported as "The driver has stopped responding and has recovered". Now I always put this down to drivers and was getting angrier at the constant game crashes however it turned out to be a lack of volts going through the GPU and a quick bios flash sorted that out.

Often, it is reported by users that they had problems with drivers (both NVIDIA and AMD), so it would be good for guys to give thoughts exactly on how the drivers perform for themsleves.
 
NVIDIA
My 7900GT, 8800GT, 9800GT all overheated due to fan control getting broken in driver updates. I am of the opinion that NVIDIA intentionally cause older cards to brick themselves after 3 years (warranty) to get you to replace them. That's why BFG's 10 year warranty didn't work. If you replace your card regularly this is less of a problem.

AMD
I owned my 5870 for about a year before the driver support for it was really ready. This seems to be a common trend for new cards that are released. After that initial problem I've had no problems at all. So I'd say check out the driver support before buying the current generation, or take the discount on the previous generation. I also wish there was an option to add a custom resolution in the control panel, NVIDIA has this and it's essential if you want to run a game in fixed-window mode at a custom size (e.g. fill the screen but don't cover the taskbar).
 
Only ever had problems with ATI drivers when I was running a 4850 crossfire set up. They weren't great. But dual card set ups weren't that common then so I put it down to that.
 
6ed02b5fc6d4068c6243780b090bc432.jpg


Both have problems/niggles/downright shoddiness, anyone who thinks differently wears appropriate coloured lenses.

If one had as bad a set of drivers as which no doubt is going to be portrayed in this thread, then they wouldn't sell very many gpu's at all to the AIB partners involved be it discrete, onboard, igp's, consoles, laptops, tablets or whatever else they are used with.

Out with the forum, when you go to respected Aib's/Nvidia/AMD forums they are all plagued with driver problems be it pebkac or actual driver faults.
 
I love the way a thread asks for driver problems and you post that pic...Very helpfull Tommy. This thread could help people buying a new GPU and can see what the current users think.

I am soon looking to upgrade my other comp, as it is still on Dual proc and 8800GT. I was liking the price of the 7850 to go with new mobo/cpu and was hoping to see a few AMD owners saying no probs or easily sorted probs.
 
4870 crossfire - didn't work without a bios flash
5770 crossfire - gray screens of death without a bios flash

GTX 460 / 560 SLI - worked perfectly out of the box.

Skyrim - Zero day SLI support added as an SLI profile by Nvidia, AMD crossfire didn't work, produced negative scaling, AMD blamed Bethesda.

NVIDIA drivers support driver level FXAA, adaptive vsync, 3d vision and physx. Only one of those is an NVIDIA exclusive, AMD drivers still don't support the other 3.
 
bhavv said:
NVIDIA drivers support driver level FXAA, adaptive vsync, 3d vision and physx. Only one of those is an NVIDIA exclusive, AMD drivers still don't support the other 3.
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Which one?

3D vision or PhysX?


The problem being gregster, from past threads with this topic, the thread explodes, literally, hence the pic.

If everyone gave an honest answer then all would be peace on heaven and earth, but it's not going to happen in here, just look at the post above.

Doesn't take a genius to see what's going to happen.

I buy bbfb every time, I used to listen to the drivel spouted about drivers and always stuck to Nvidia even when they were more expensive and getting a kicking from ATI until I was given a 4870 from work and found out for myself.

I can understand folks not liking any particular brand out of bad experience in the past, but the sheep element comes into play regarding your op.

If you are at all capable(which you are, you fixed your 560ti problem) then any card will perform as it should most of the time.
 
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tommybhoy said:
The problem being gregster, from past threads with this topic, the thread explodes, literally, hence the pic.

If everyone gave an honest answer then all would be peace on heaven and earth, but it's not going to happen in here, just look at the post above.

Doesn't take a genius to see what's going to happen.

I buy bbfb every time, I used to listen to the drivel spouted about drivers and always stuck to Nvidia even when they were more expensive and getting a kicking from ATI until I was given a 4870 from work and found out for myself.

I can understand folks not liking any particular brand out of bad experience in the past, but the sheep element comes into play regarding your op.

If you are at all capable(which you are, you fixed your 560ti problem) then any card will perform as it should most of the time.
Click to expand...

Way to miss my question....

I am interested to see what people who have owned/own either or better still both have to say on driver support. I am quite capable of finding my way round a computer but it has been so long since I owned an AMD card, I can't even remember.

This thread has the potential to show interested buyers the ease of both AMD and NVIDIA drivers (this is what I am hoping for anyway). I am not interested in a slanging match and TBF you jumped in and are trying to turn the thread into bashing already.
 
I've haven't had many problems with AMD drivers, nothing that I couldn't eventually fix anyway. My experience with Nvidia drivers has been better, but I'd still be happy to buy an AMD gpu and use crossfire again.
 
I'm in no way bashing anything gregster, just pointing out the obvious, on what is going to happen in the thread, but more so that both drivers aren't bulletproof.
 
StonedPenguin said:
I've never had any problems with ATI or Nvidia drivers.
Click to expand...

I have and those problems have only been with Ati drivers. Poor video playback when buying both a 4850 and later 5770 which for both cards was resolved after a few more driver releases and catalyst failing when the PC was used for remote desktop connection (occured each time so easily reproducible). I reported it as a bug to Ati but because it was crucial to me it was one reason I sold that particular GC quickly.
I've been an early adopter of products of companies from both companies and intial Nvidia drivers are always better, more fully developed.
Towards the middle or end of a products life I expect drivers from both companies are pretty similar, relatively bug free and stable. Whether they are fully optimised to the hardware,nobody really knows the answer to that.
 
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ATI Rage pro/All in wonder 1998.

Not bad. TV tuner would lock up the PC a lot in Windows 98 but was sorted later.

Nvidia TNT Riva 1999.

Pretty awful really. Very unstable.

Nvidia Geforce 2 MX 64mb 2001.

Problematic from the beginning with strange lines appearing at random intervals during gaming. Was terrible in Unreal 2.

ATI Radeon 8000 2002

The worst drivers I ever used. Used to lock up my PC with a beep from the motherboard speaker. Took around 6 months to finally get a driver that stopped the lock ups.

ATI Radeon 9200 pro 2003

Very good card and great drivers. Only had it 7 months but worked flawlessly during that time.

Nvidia Geforce FX 5950 Ultra 2004

Terrible Doom 3 performance for a month then revised driver sorted it. Good for the last six months I had it.

ATI Radeon 1600 pro 2007

Good drivers no issues for the year I had it.

Nvidia Geforce 9800GT

Driver was terrible at first lots of crashing. Sorted eventually though.

Nvidia Geforce GTX 280

Driver stopped the fan card blew up.

ATI Radeon 5770 XF

Terrible Crossfire support, profiles did not work in 30% of games tried.

Nvidia GTX 470

Flawless drivers. Absolute perfection.

GTX 295 / ATI 3870x2 test systems

Terrible support for both.

AMD Radeon 7970

We're back to 2001 ! Rubbish drivers due to botched rushed release.

Nvidia GTX 480 SLI

Marvellous, thanks to drivers and EVGA SLI enhancer.
 
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