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Drivers, ATI/nVidia

Six6siX

Six6siX

Six6siX

Soldato
Joined
25 Nov 2004
Posts
4,788
Location
Hertfordshire
Don't want to turn this into a fan boy war but I feel the need to rant in general...:D

Since I started messing about with computers, I've always had ATI cards - initially just because they happened to be in the computers I was using but then more out of choice for new builds as the previous ones served me well.

Then my X850XT started struggling a bit in COD4 and I spotted a bargain for a 7900 GS OC.

Now the performance of the card itself is an improvement on what I had before - I'm happy with that - but that's not the issue. The problem lies in the stability of the poor excuse for a driver set that nVidia has developed.

I use Vista x64 and had no problems on my X850XT - thought the drivers were pretty good and did the job.

I now get driver lock ups on COD4 at least a couple of times within a couple of hours of gaming. Thank god for the display driver recovery is all I can say otherwise I'd be restarting my machine every hour.

And when are they going to fix the fan speed issue when resuming from hibernation? At the moment I'm having to use RivaTuner to manually adjust it when resuming a session.

I've tried a few versions of the drives in case it was a specific issue but these two problems in particular persist. Reading around, it would seem I'm not alone and others have the same issues.

C'mon nVidia, technically, the hardware is good an' all but just hardware alone doesn't offer a complete graphics solution! :rolleyes:

/rant
 
not to be a fan boy but nvidia have always been bad at drivers (after the geforce 2 era) ATi raised the bar by releasing drivers every month. Nvidia cant keep up. However Nvidia i have to admit realeased some god damn good cards in the 8800 series. even though its like 1.5 years old? They really got the jump on AMD/ATI with that series although it seems now ATI are back with the constant delays of nvidia's

only time will tell but drivers ati are always ahead imho. Bring on larabee, then we'll have 3 major gfx players cant wait!!!!
 
This is the reason though why I've got a 3870 X2 due for delivery any moment today :D

I wanted a fairly high level card but I too also run Vista X64 and driver stability had me concerned. Initial plans were to go for a GTS 512 but after getting some feedback from fellow OcUK members I've stayed away from the Green team this time round.
 
X64 drivers on vista are abit dodgy, traditionally ATi got the blasting about drivers but their vista ones seem to be better. (Used both a 8600GT and a HD3850).
 
I first moved to ATi when the catalysts first started, when i had my 9800se, and found the drivers excellent. Before then i heard that Ati were a bit behind with their driver support, and as said above nVidia were quite strong.

Nowadays it seems to depend on who you speak to, ATi bring out very regular driver updates but seems to be because it is to fix certain 'issues' with the card, however nVidia bring out drivers every couple of months.
 
the first few waves of nvidia drivers for vista were disgusting, can't comment on the ati ones as i've only started using them again recently

in xp though, ati were the jokers a lot of the time :)
 
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