Current state of drivers AMD/nVidia?

techie81

techie81

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I am looking for a secondary video card that my kids will use to play some games at 1080p/1440. I have been eyeballing the XFX SPEEDSTER SWFT 210 Radeon RX 6600 and the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC GAMING.

Looking around I have seen some people really hate on AMD drivers, crashing, artifacting etc.

Does anyone have any insight to the current state of drivers for the AMD cards on Windows 10/11? I want to get the cheaper video card however the driver issues are turning me off.
 
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I use my secondary PC a lot that uses a Radeon and personally I've never experienced any crashing or artifacting with the AMD drivers.
 
havent had any issue in almost a year and even then it was just a minor hdr glitch. theyve been solid since spring 2020ish, iirc.
 
I also have multiple machines with a mix of AMD and NVIDIA cards and I do not perceive any significant difference in driver quality. GeForce Experience needing a login is HUGELY irritating to me, personally, but the actual driver experience doesn't feel different.
 
I just bought an RX6600 by Sapphire and installed it just last night, I have a B550 mother board and I'm running it in PCI Express 4 ( Sam is on) with the newest driver 22.7.1, everything is running great, also World of Tanks was given me back 130 -150 fps in 1080p Ultra which was right at my 144hz panel.

The card seems powerful compared to my old RX 570
 
I've have had more driver issues with Nvidia then AMD but Nvidia is quick to fix major issues as well as minor ones. Both are good overall. I like AMD's UI at least 10x over Nvidia's crap one where features are spread across GeForce Experience which I loath. Anyways if you also use Linux or want to try it out, AMD is virtually plug and play and is part of the OS vice being an outsider trying to pretend otherwise.
 
noko said:
I've have had more driver issues with Nvidia then AMD but Nvidia is quick to fix major issues as well as minor ones. Both are good overall. I like AMD's UI at least 10x over Nvidia's crap one where features are spread across GeForce Experience which I loath. Anyways if you also use Linux or want to try it out, AMD is virtually plug and play and is part of the OS vice being an outsider trying to pretend otherwise.
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What do you use GeForce Experience for? I haven't used it in years and don't remember anything particularly useful in it.
 
Running 1080, then 2080, then 6900XT, actually three of those in the house now. Less problems with AMD over the last year. Pretty sure the only issues I have had have been caused by me. Much better UI. AMD software has come a long ways since the 290XT days.
 
While AMD drivers have issues at times and likely some big issues such as with the initial release of the RX 5xxx release, for the most part the AMD driver issues are seriously overblown and typically spread by people that haven't used ATI/AMD cards in a really long time.

I can't say I've had a single problem with my RX570 or the HD5770 before it that had anything to do with driver issues. And I'm damn glad I have an AMD card since I swapped to Linux full time. Not having to deal with the mess that is nVidia proprietary drivers under Linux is wonderful.

My recent experience is a couple of quite old cards which had most of the bugs worked out by the time I got them but if there were any real widespread problems with AMD drivers there would be people here (who actually use AMD cards) screaming about them non-stop. The fact that you hear little to nothing from people using the cards is all you really need to know about the state of AMD drivers.
 
I have been a Nvidia user for a long time. Drivers have never been a issue for me. I tend to keep up with the latest drivers when they come out. Nvidia are better folding cards over AMD so that's the main reason for not having a AMD card. I think everyone has heard of bad drivers from both but honestly the issues get fixed pretty quickly.
 
Ducrider748 said:
I have been a Nvidia user for a long time. Drivers have never been a issue for me. I tend to keep up with the latest drivers when they come out. Nvidia are better folding cards over AMD so that's the main reason for not having a AMD card. I think everyone has heard of bad drivers from both but honestly the issues get fixed pretty quickly.
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I have used NVidia cards because Adobe photo applications seem to have better support for these cards than AMD cards. Othersise, I would be using AMD.

However, I don't use the standard NVidia drivers. I use the "studio" drivers which I believe are less bloated and more stable. I'm not a gamer, so my choice doesn't necessarily make sense for everyone.
 
ZodaEX said:
What do you use GeForce Experience for? I haven't used it in years and don't remember anything particularly useful in it.
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Nvidia GeFarce Experience
Driver update
Quick GPU monitoring which is limited
Shadowplay, record gameplay
I could see future use for Ansel, 360 and HDR capture.

AMD all in one program

I use AMD link (phone) to monitor GPU at times, really cool. In addition you can record as well using phone.

Full set of OCing tools which can be per game profiled

Benchmarking, automatically AMD gives you averages for FPS

Recording video

A few times I popped open AMD browser while in game to find a cheat or walk through. No need to go to the desktop. Not used often.
 
Scoobydo2 said:
I have 2 machines (I dual box MMORPGS) one with Nvidia and another with AMD.

Nvidia gives me more problems than the AMD. I think the AMD driver issue is largely over-exaggerated. But that's just my opinion.
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Nvidia has historically had some pretty major driver problems, yet no one remembers them. Yet people remember driver problems they had in 2004 on Radeon. I agree with your conclusion.

You can have problems with either. I was put off by AMD drivers with the RX 5000 cards, but that seems to not be a problem anymore, and frankly drivers would not be a factor in my choosing these days. I wouldn't hesitate the grab an AMD card for that reason today.
 
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AMD drivers for the 5000 series are a lot better now than a year ago. In fact, I may have that exact 6600XT to sell you. :D
 
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