Which side has better drivers - Nvidia or AMD?

Which side has better drivers?

  • AMD

    Votes: 75 30.6%

  • Nvidia

    Votes: 170 69.4%
  • Total voters
    245
Skakruk said:
Has AMD sorted out their shitty profiling system yet?

My main reason for buying Nvidia cards is that they have a proper application profile system - you choose your settings for each game, when you start the game they are automatically applied, and when you exit the game they revert to global.

With AMD/ATI it was always a stupid system where you had to select each profile manually (they gave you an option to launch the relevant game when you selected the profile, but this was a half arsed band aid over a fundamental problem).

The last ATI card I had was the HD5870, and the drivers still had no decent profile system then - has it been improved yet?
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Dumbest thing I have seen in a long time by a major vendor. There is a third-party app that fixes this, but drivers and software have enough issues without introducing the need for a random third-party app.
 
Lots of bias in these threads and lots of people saying "well a friend told me they suxors, so I stay away...", and the reality is both have their issues and both have their positives. I can only really think of a couple times I was truly disappointed with AMD drivers(Witcher at R800 launch) and the same goes with Nvidia. Really I don't think drivers should influence your choice(equally have problems) unless its SLI/Crossfire which I can't comment about since I have never had a SLI config or a Crossfire config going.

Edit: I wish there was a choice that says equally good, since until you try S3 drivers or Via drivers you really can't comment how bad drivers are from AMD/Nvida
 
sc3252 said:
Lots of bias in these threads and lots of people saying "well a friend told me they suxors, so I stay away...", and the reality is both have their issues and both have their positives. I can only really think of a couple times I was truly disappointed with AMD drivers(Witcher at R800 launch) and the same goes with Nvidia. Really I don't think drivers should influence your choice(equally have problems) unless its SLI/Crossfire which I can't comment about since I have never had a SLI config or a Crossfire config going.

Edit: I wish there was a choice that says equally good, since until you try S3 drivers or Via drivers you really can't comment how bad drivers are from AMD/Nvida
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Via doesn't support their shit. <--means it both ways.
 
I just installed my shiny new GTX470! And I found that some H.264 videos that had slightly glitchy playback (usually happens with videos encoded with high reframes) on my Radeon HD 4250 now play flawlessly on my GTX470. So it seems the DXVA implementation is also better... then again I haven't watched all the videos I watched before.
 
At this point both are great. I've been burned in the past by both though. Most memorably was a Nvidia driver update that borked BF1942 but that was long ago.
 
From both sides of the war, I've had equally as shitty problems with both. From crossfire giving headaches and having to reformat to install an ati driver, to the whole nvidia high definition audio murdeirng off onboard sound and random driver crashes - I'd say they both cause headaches.
 
I've used both brands extensively both now and in the past, and have had lots of little & some big issues, with the ATI/AMD drivers while the nVidia ones have never given me trouble. So, my vote goes to nVidia.
 
I voted nVidia.

I have a 6850, a 4670, and X1950XTX card right now. I recently retired my 8800GTS 320.

While AMD has some cool stuff like MLAA, they have one bug that really annoys me and it's been present for 8 months. AMD drivers won't run some old Quake 3 based games like Soldier of Fortune 2. The old fix of putting the atiogl.dll in the game folder doesn't work anymore with the 10.12 drivers. My gaming clan has a huge following for that old turd of a game... we have a dozen people nightly playing that game and a few of them have picked up AMD cards to find this out.

I also prefer the nVidia control panel over the CCC. The CCC has some stupid qualities like it's doesn't resize properly. Just the last version started to let you resize the main window, but the individual property panes don't resize and you get scroll bars.

From Anandtech's article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4058/amd-previews-new-catalyst-control-center-interface

AdvancedResize.png
 
The whole "which one is better then the other" argument is old, outdated, and stupid.

They both suck at times and they're both great at times.
 
I haven't had too many issues with either, but I'm willing to give the edge to nvidia as I dislike CCC.
 
Yeah, I find CCC kinda annoying and a bit bloated, and takes longer to install compared to NVIDIA's drivers.
 
Met-AL said:
While AMD has some cool stuff like MLAA, they have one bug that really annoys me and it's been present for 8 months. AMD drivers won't run some old Quake 3 based games like Soldier of Fortune 2. The old fix of putting the atiogl.dll in the game folder doesn't work anymore with the 10.12 drivers. My gaming clan has a huge following for that old turd of a game... we have a dozen people nightly playing that game and a few of them have picked up AMD cards to find this out.
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From what I've heard that is actually a bug in the game. The game isn't expecting as many supported OpenGL features as the driver is returning or something like that and thus overflows.

This goes back to what I said earlier, if you make a driver that conforms 100% to the specifications, it won't be able to run half the games out there. 99.99999% of problems in games are caused BY THE GAME, not the drivers (yes, even those that only appear under Nvidia or AMD, and yes even those that only affect certain driver versions). I don't know when we started expecting Nvidia and AMD to fix game bugs, but it's crap that we now punish and rant about how slow Nvidia and AMD are to fix game bugs.

Matrices said:
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Dumbest thing I have seen in a long time by a major vendor. There is a third-party app that fixes this, but drivers and software have enough issues without introducing the need for a random third-party app.
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I would have completely agreed with you a couple of years ago, but now most games let you specify AA and AF in the game settings, so it doesn't really matter anymore. I set the drivers to always use 16xAF, and AA to application setting, and I have no need for game-specific profiles.
 
I dont really know who writes better drivers but....it does seem to me that more games react more positively to nV's drivers than AMD's. I don't know if vendors are partial to nV over AMD but that is what it seems....to me of course. IMO.
 
This article at Toms compares ATI and Nvidia driver versions. It shows Nvidia having much more stable performance than ATI. It also shows ATI drivers require updates over time in order to achieve the best performance, where Nvidia drivers usually deliver top performance immediately.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Catalyst_10.12_Performance/

This fits right in line with what I said in response to this thread earlier.
 
That question always gonna get allot of responses.. Personally though I have had better luck with AMD drivers then nvidia drivers.. Nvidia has been buggy as hell for me since the 8k series cards were new.. Not to mention I also lump chipset drivers into this since I seem to always have a headache with nforce drivers where AMD chipset drivers never have problems.
 
My experience with ATI is much more limited (I've had three, but the most recent was an X850 XT - which I still use in an old rig), but I've never really had any issues with them that stick out in my mind. I suppose Nvidia, but I can think of three or four times when they've given me minor trouble over the years.
 
jeremyshaw said:
The only major gripe against nVidia drivers is some older versions in the 19x branch, at time of release, didn't spin up the fan... yet kept running the GPU. It mostly affected G92 cards, killing them outright.
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Hey i agree. i had an asus g50vt-x1 that had constant gpu issues and the machine finally died on my after it heated up to.................314f!!!! No lie, i was trying to get a screenshot before it went.
The SOB made a pretty light show and the screen was amazing. Smelled funny afterwards though. So i was refunded most of the purchase amount and bought an ipad and bought my sister a laptop for her birthday.
Thank god i built my desktop when i did or else i would have failed my classes.

Edit: I have not had any real issues with my 5770. i am looking at getting that 460gtx on tiger direct though. I want better performance. But alas a 15" dell lcd old ass thing aint going make anything look good. And between you and me, i think the inverter is going out. "Color is fading and not as bright anymore" But don't tell it that.
Plus my board is AMD so i do not think AMD chipset with Nvidia would fair the greatest, I am probably wrong though
 
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