Never really had problem with either though I've only owned 1 Nvidia card compared to a handfull of AMD ones. One thing I did notice earlier re drivers though, where I'd been installing new ones over old ones I had a directory full of old setup files etc taking up over 1.5GB of space!
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Are Nvidia drivers really better than AMD?
- Thread starter opethdisciple
- Start date
You never removed the legacy 6850 driver though.
Should have been:
1. Uninstall Cat 12.1's, Uninstall 6850 through device manager ,and power off.
2. Remove 6850, Install 6950 and power on.
3. Install Cat 12.1's and reboot.
Driver sweeper removed the 6850 legacy driver which you failed to do.
12 hrs lost is down to user error or as I said, Pebkac(which I am guilty of too from time to time
)!I should have clarified. I used the "uninstall al AMD driversl" option via Device Manger when removing the Cat 12.1's. This should have removed everything incl CCC, HD Audio, 6850 drivers etc..You never removed the legacy 6850 driver though.
Should have been:
1. Uninstall Cat 12.1's, Uninstall 6850 through device manager ,and power off.
2. Remove 6850, Install 6950 and power on.
3. Install Cat 12.1's and reboot.
Driver sweeper removed the 6850 legacy driver which you failed to do.
12 hrs lost is down to user error or as I said, Pebkac(which I am guilty of too from time to time
Everything was removed according to AMD unistall wizzard, but AMD left some clingers within the registry that caused problems. This was not user error (not this time anyway
). After owning almost every middle to top end AMD and NVidia graphics cards made over the past 10 years, I know how to remove drivers through device manager.
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It's not just graphical bugs you need to look at, but features as well. Back when I had a 4870X2 you could not enforce vsync for D3D in the drivers and profile support was that terrible they might as well not have bothered.
Both of the above features worked like a charm when I swapped the X2 for a pair of 480's.
Both of the above features worked like a charm when I swapped the X2 for a pair of 480's.
12 hrs lost is down to user error or as I said, Pebkac(which I am guilty of too from time to time
Bull.
Uninstalling via Add/Remove should do it all.
Clean Uninstall works for nVidia just fine without removing base OS drivers.
As some have already said most problems originate from the user, drivers are pretty damn good on both sides IMO. I only game with a single gpu on a single monitor, so i think i wont get many problems. Crossfire/sli and multi screen systems tend to have more problems. I have a nvidia card now but had ati for the past 4 years or so. Had a few vsync problems with ati, and sometimes problems due to me experimenting with flashing bioses, and had a few minor problems with nvidia drivers too.
No, i'd say it's about 50/50. Personally I prefer the monthly cycle instead of getting them as and when the company bother, but it's hardly a dealbreaker.
Back in the days of the nVidia GF8000 series i'd have said ATI though, no question. I bought an 8800GT that would just NOT work properly with any drivers around at the time, i'd get texture corruption and crashes, yet it'd work fine in another machine.
Back in the days of the nVidia GF8000 series i'd have said ATI though, no question. I bought an 8800GT that would just NOT work properly with any drivers around at the time, i'd get texture corruption and crashes, yet it'd work fine in another machine.
I'm on AMD at the moment but I have to say that I prefer the layout and implementation of the nVidia drivers. Then again, I like the monthly release schedule of AMD as it makes it much easier to know whether you're up to date. I had some Crossfire / drive issues with recent games - RAGE and Skyrim - but nVidia has had its fair share of issues as well. They're pretty well balanced to be honest.
However, to me the drivers are pretty irrelevant. I go for the card that offers the best value at the time. I've gone from Voodoo (Banshee), to S3 (Savage) and back and forth between AMD (R7500, R8500, X800XL, X850XL, X1800, HD5970) and nVidia (TNT, TNT2, 8800GTS, 8800GT). I'm not a great fan of what nVidia did with PhysX and the way it used the TWIMTBP sponsorship to deliberately limit the performance on AMD cards but it wouldn't stop me buying an nVidia card.
However, to me the drivers are pretty irrelevant. I go for the card that offers the best value at the time. I've gone from Voodoo (Banshee), to S3 (Savage) and back and forth between AMD (R7500, R8500, X800XL, X850XL, X1800, HD5970) and nVidia (TNT, TNT2, 8800GTS, 8800GT). I'm not a great fan of what nVidia did with PhysX and the way it used the TWIMTBP sponsorship to deliberately limit the performance on AMD cards but it wouldn't stop me buying an nVidia card.
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One thing I have never seen form AMD, which Nvidia seem to do quite frequently is post drivers that advertise 45% improvment in Skyrim.... etc
Nvidia seem to do a lot more performance drivers than AMD's firefighting.
Is this just very clever marketing?
Nvidia using their drivers as a marketing tool?
Nvidia seem to do a lot more performance drivers than AMD's firefighting.
Is this just very clever marketing?
Nvidia using their drivers as a marketing tool?
45% since the last NV WHQL certified which was about 3-4 months ago and not 45% from the driver before and maybe AMD had better performance to begin with, the only way you get 45% more is if the performances was bad before.
AMD had about 250% performance increase in a particular benchmark a while back= bad performance before.
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Changing a graphics card and installing/removing drivers is pretty simple. Most people who are willing to open their cases and fiddle, are more than capable of this. Most driiver issues are exactly that - driver issues. If it was plain user error, you would have an equal number of NVidia & AMD users complaining about such problems. Whilst AMD drivers are certainly not bad, they can be more niggly than NVidia's, atleast in my experience.
When i lookd on the NV forum i seen i very wide range of issues that i have never known of before, when i see issues with AMD it seems to be the common issues CF,Vsync,EyEfinity, its either broken or fix and broken again, that's most of the complaints.
As far as effecting less people do you have any official inks to back that up because the last one from Microsoft showed that NV problems affected more people.
Your personal experience and gut feeling does not count otherwise its just a personal opinion.
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Associate
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Ive had more issues with Nvidia drivers so much so i changed to AMD cards and vowed never to go back to Nvidia again.
I used to run sli gtx 8800s and was constantly having to save my games every 5 minutes because of the constant driver stopped responding.
This was when i used Vista os but when i changed to ATI the problem went away.
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/new...it-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.ars
Since then ive owned every high end ATI card all run in xfire or trifire and the only problems i have had is when a new game comes out sometimes have to wait for driver updates to get xfire to work apart from that no problems at all certainly nothing to make me want to buy nvidia again.
I used to run sli gtx 8800s and was constantly having to save my games every 5 minutes because of the constant driver stopped responding.
This was when i used Vista os but when i changed to ATI the problem went away.
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/new...it-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.ars
Since then ive owned every high end ATI card all run in xfire or trifire and the only problems i have had is when a new game comes out sometimes have to wait for driver updates to get xfire to work apart from that no problems at all certainly nothing to make me want to buy nvidia again.
Soldato
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I've been considering Nvidia myself, not because I've been having issues with AMD drivers, but just because Nvidia seems to have better development relations, at the launch of a new game, at least for the past year or so, you're more likely to have issues on an AMD card than a Nvidia one.
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Having used both the 5870 and GTX580 simultaneously for the past 14 months, I've found that in terms of the number of issues with the drivers, they're about equal.
However, the Nvidia driver issues are somewhat smaller scale than AMD's.
In the past, the worst that Nvidia's drivers have given me is the card refusing to clock down when idle.
The worst AMD drivers have given me is driver crashes/BSODs/GSODs when changing to 3D clocks, features not functioning properly through CCC; Vsync and AA to name a few.
Before someone hits back defensively over this; I do not use driver sweeper. I install over the top of the previous lot and if that causes issues I'll uninstall everything, reboot and install the newest drivers.
I think it says it all that you even have to worry about the install method for drivers with AMD. Nvidia's are fool-proof; a simple case of install over the top with the "Clean install" box checked.
Although, all of this is immaterial if you consider the options available to Nvidia users. NVCP offers far more 3D settings customisation than CCC ever has, or probably will. RadeonPro helps a little but Nvidia Inspector stomps it to the ground. Being able to force specific levels and techniques of AA & ambient occlusion on engines that don't natively support them...
However, the Nvidia driver issues are somewhat smaller scale than AMD's.
In the past, the worst that Nvidia's drivers have given me is the card refusing to clock down when idle.
The worst AMD drivers have given me is driver crashes/BSODs/GSODs when changing to 3D clocks, features not functioning properly through CCC; Vsync and AA to name a few.
Before someone hits back defensively over this; I do not use driver sweeper. I install over the top of the previous lot and if that causes issues I'll uninstall everything, reboot and install the newest drivers.
I think it says it all that you even have to worry about the install method for drivers with AMD. Nvidia's are fool-proof; a simple case of install over the top with the "Clean install" box checked.
Although, all of this is immaterial if you consider the options available to Nvidia users. NVCP offers far more 3D settings customisation than CCC ever has, or probably will. RadeonPro helps a little but Nvidia Inspector stomps it to the ground. Being able to force specific levels and techniques of AA & ambient occlusion on engines that don't natively support them...
You can call bull if you like, but I explained why it went wrong and how it should have been done.
When you uninstall everything from AMD's uninstaller, it doesn't uninstall the legacy driver, when you put in the new card you can be left with a 'ghost driver' which caused conflicts in this instance.
Using driver cleaner worked by getting rid of the old driver due to 555BUK not uninstalling the card through device manger(which everyone should do when replacing a gpu(with any vendor) to reduce the chance of conflicts.
Whether you have to uninstall the legacy driver or not with Nvidia has no baring in regards to AMD.
And this is clearly outlined in the Uninstall procedure, is it?
I am not debating how best to do it, using cleaners is preferential. But you certainly cannot cry "User Error" on this.
Even suggesting using the provided guidelines and Uninstall tools for it not to work as user error is completely hilarious.
Laugh on my friend, installing any new hardware requires uninstalling the part being replaced by way of add remove hardware in device manager to avoid possible conflicts, which if you fail to do, is user error.
As stated above simply removing AMD components from add/remove programs doesn't remove the legacy driver which causes the problems.
It's a different scenario from updating drivers than changing hardware.
It may not be required with all hardware components, but with the complexities of gpu drivers, and what can go wrong, it's best to do it to save possible headaches and wasted time.
If you or others don't accept it to be the case then I won't loose any sleep, just pointed out what went wrong in another case of AMD getting the blame.
As stated above simply removing AMD components from add/remove programs doesn't remove the legacy driver which causes the problems.
It's a different scenario from updating drivers than changing hardware.
It may not be required with all hardware components, but with the complexities of gpu drivers, and what can go wrong, it's best to do it to save possible headaches and wasted time.
If you or others don't accept it to be the case then I won't loose any sleep, just pointed out what went wrong in another case of AMD getting the blame.
Nvidia drivers are better not without issues but they just are better, better support, better config, a more solid feel. Out of the box SLI is better than crossfire.
I own both ATI and Nvidia cards in my house now. and owned just about every card from both sides.
I own both ATI and Nvidia cards in my house now. and owned just about every card from both sides.