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ATI Drivers really that bad?

F

flexcore

Gawd
Joined
Apr 12, 2006
Messages
683
I been wanting to go with ATI, but every where I go I read about craptastic drivers. Having to use 10.4 for this or 10.5 for that and somtimes 10.6 or 10.7(a). This just seems crazy to me. When drivers progress they shouldn't break things from previous versions. Is it really that bad? Why can't AMD/ATI do a better job like NV does?
 
flexcore said:
I been wanting to go with ATI, but every where I go I read about craptastic drivers. Having to use 10.4 for this or 10.5 for that and somtimes 10.6 or 10.7(a). This just seems crazy to me. When drivers progress they shouldn't break things from previous versions. Is it really that bad? Why can't AMD/ATI do a better job like NV does?
Click to expand...

They are both equally bad. ATI drivers are buggy sometimes and nvidia has released drivers that have flat out destroyed cards. Pick your poison.
 
ATI has actually impressed me. Used a HD5870 for 6 months and really only had a few small issues. You shouldn't worry about it, you can report driver issues to them and see things get fixed pretty quick.
 
I would say they are both equally GOOD.

If you want to see crappy GPU drivers, look no further than Intel's drivers. THOSE suck. ATI and Nvidia have a rocking set of drivers, truly fantastic job by both companies.
 
I don't see how it is different. I've used nVidia cards almost exclusively for 5+ years, rolling back to previous driver sets was needed quite a few times for me.

I owned a 9800pro back when they were new and the drivers were mostly fine. Now I own 5850's (since October) and have only had trouble with one driver set, 10.7.

I had to do so many tweaks just to get games like Oblivion to not blackscreen with nVidia, same with NWN 2, some levels would just fail to load geometry. I still somewhat prefer nVidia, but mostly for the good times I had with their G92's, not particularly fond of their driver set either.

Keep in mind ATI rolls out 1-2 driver sets per month, nVidia takes more time to release theirs. This can be good or bad. Sometimes driver fixes will not go out with a particular set of ATI drivers (or they forget to add something), yet sometimes they have a hotfix out a few days after a problem is detected.
 
Thanks for the replies. Just wanted to find out before i spent a bunch of cash. Just seems like there are always way more posts recently about ATI drivers than NV. Guess I konw where to come to if I have issues. ;)
 
I think one of the reasons you see more posts about their drivers is they release more often (twice a month lately - one official, one beta).
 
yeah to me its always hit or miss and luck of the draw. i always bounce back and forth and buy whatever is best performance per dollar at the time and neither one stands out being better or worse than other.

personally, i like the ATI driver/interface a bit more...but thats just opinion.
 
i went from a 9600 -> 5850 and would say the drivers are equal in that they are both good overall.
 
Just to be the voice of dissent here, I have had nothing but horrible experiences with ATI's drivers. And if you use CFX and/or EF -- be especially wary.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
They are both equally bad. ATI drivers are buggy sometimes and nvidia has released drivers that have flat out destroyed cards. Pick your poison.
Click to expand...

That only happened ONE time, and not everyone had their NV card cooked by that driver. Mostly those with poor case flow to begin with.

As for ATi, every driver since 10.4 has been nothing but pure trouble for myself and a few others around here. As far as drivers go, NV has been doing a better job than ATi here lately. It sucks too, because if they don't get their (ATi) act together soon, I'm not even going to get my second 5870. I may end up going back to NV for a dual card solution once I get my new monitor.
 
you hear more problems because the NVIDIA fan boys always toss out that ATI drivers suck because they haven't bothered with an ATI cards since the 8500 days when their drivers were bad, apparently, when even back then i had more BSOD related to nv_display file than ATI ever.

These days i use both ati and nvidia and i guess i am just lucky that i don't have issues with either one.

One time or not Proxy, that is one SERIOUS screw up!
 
I've seen shit drivers out of both companies. Over the years I've encountered problems with either company's drivers. In the past I would have said that ATI's drivers were worse but that was definitely several years ago. Actually with a few exceptions I've not had any major issues since I used my 9600 Pro. Here lately I've run 10.1, 10.2, 10.3b, 10.7 and 10.7a without any major issues. The only issue I saw was with Battlefield Bad Company 2 and the 10.3b driver resolved everything but the bad level load times which was addressed in 10.7. Actually that issue was addressed earlier from what I read but I never tried the 10.4 or 10.6 drivers myself.

The main area where ATI still needs improvement is in regard to CrossfireX scaling. Then again NVIDIA could improve on this front as well.
 
MrGuvernment said:
These days i use both ati and nvidia and i guess i am just lucky that i don't have issues with either one.
Click to expand...

Same. Neither my 6800 Ultra, 8800GTX or 5870 have had any issues due to drivers in a long time. Only issues I've had were self inflicted, when OCing. No surprise there.
 
Scaling for ATI is another concern. I really wish they would make more progress in this area. Makes it hard to decide on 5850cfx when 460sli is cheaper and has better scaling.
 
Just BS, however YMMV.

Last night upgraded drivers on the SO's rig because Alien Swarm and other games were CTD. 7900GS got the latest Forcewares. Guess what? Couldn't go beyond 640x480, 8 bit color...All locked. Rolled back to the old drivers and a restart fixed the CTD issue. This was on x86 XP machine..

Again, YMMV. ;)
 
These days, I wouldn't say they are bad. I have a 5870, I'm happy with it, etc. However I do not find their quality to be up to what I was used to from nVidia. Thing like the per app settings and so on. Not a big deal though, I'm happy with my card and it is stable. Their drivers are at the very least acceptable and I'd say pretty good.
 
dnottis said:
ATI has actually impressed me. Used a HD5870 for 6 months and really only had a few small issues. You shouldn't worry about it, you can report driver issues to them and see things get fixed pretty quick.
Click to expand...

i moved from the green camp after being with them since the 7xxx generation and have been thoroughly impressed with the stability of ATI drivers over nvidia. most recent nvidia card i used was a gtx 285 before moving to ati 5870 in march.
 
flexcore said:
Why can't AMD/ATI do a better job like NV does?
Click to expand...
images
 
Don't worry about ATi's drivers. I used to think the same thing since I had a nightmare of a time with an old X1800GT and X1600 Pro AGP I owned in 2005. So I switched to NVIDIA and didn't look back for years until I started having stability and compatibility issues with NVIDIA's drivers after buying a GTX 260. Lots of crashes and lock ups. Popped in an ATi card a month ago and this system has been the freaking rock of Gibraltar ever since.

Still, neither's drivers are "perfect", but I can say go ahead and buy an ATi card with confidence.
 
I have problems with ATI drivers on my CF 5870 setup all the time. I hoped to be done upgrading video cards at least through 2011, but probably will go back to Nvidia before summer's end. It will depend on finding some decent GTX 480 prices.
 
I have multiple NVidia and ATI machines... most of the time I dont even remember which card I am using ;)

They are both very good I find...

mind you I have not used SLI since my GTX 280s were sold or Xfire ever
 
flexcore said:
Thanks for the replies. Just wanted to find out before i spent a bunch of cash. Just seems like there are always way more posts recently about ATI drivers than NV. Guess I konw where to come to if I have issues. ;)
Click to expand...

This is the age old agurment that Nvidia zealots will use to prove their product is superior...

Its spoken/spewed alot from people who really have no idea of anything related to actual driver/hardware performance.

These people will give you futuremark scores as proof of performance.
 
I think a lot of the driver comparisons was due to "way back" (relatively) when the graphics card market was relatively chaotic and different cards used different rendering techniques and had varying feature sets. Of course Nvidia back then was the market share leader, so it isn't surprising what developers tended to optimize for. However Direct3D has standardized a lot of how things are done, so you have much less issues with Direct3D games which saturate the market.

The current equivalent of this situation is somewhat GPU computing, where of course we have ATI and Nvidia going with different approaches. In this area I suppose it might be logical that ATI side is more "buggy," in the sense that developer support will likely lean towards the more established Nvidia cuda solutions.

ATI also followed Nvidia in going to the unified driver model (Catalyst/Detonator), and this simplified things considerably for the end user, and in terms of getting updates to everyone. Where as much earlier for ATI you actually had to get specific drivers depending on your chipset.

At the moment if I had to pick, I'd say Nvidia's drivers are still better simply because they have been the market leader for so long that it is more likely that developers would lean/test towards Nvidia. So it is likely that Nvidia has the less odd bug here and there then ATI. But again this is hardly significant and likely inconsequential for most mainstream popular titles since they develop for both. (Mainly for instance I know more casual gamers who play say free MMOs, and they tend to have more issues with ATI cards)

Really though nowadays if you look at brand comparison the differences only exist in there extra features sets. Cuda/OpenCL, eyefinity/surround, physx and etc.
 
I used to use Omega drivers with my x850 xt. They were much better as far as performance than standard ATI drivers. However I have had both nVidia and ATI cards and for the most part both drivers were ok as long as you used a driver cleaner program to start fresh with them.
 
I've used both nvidia and ATi drivers and think both are alright. I used to prefer Nvidias because of their "digital vibrance" but ATi fixed theirs and finally included it haha. And I don't think ATi has ever released drivers that stop fans from working.

btw how can I tell which ATi Drivers I'm running on?
 
problems with ati drivers....wtf

i havnt had a single problem in YEARS! even back with my radeon 9000 i couldn't complain.
 
llmercll said:
I've used both nvidia and ATi drivers and think both are alright. I used to prefer Nvidias because of their "digital vibrance" but ATi fixed theirs and finally included it haha. And I don't think ATi has ever released drivers that stop fans from working.

btw how can I tell which ATi Drivers I'm running on?
Click to expand...

Digital Vibrance is just a saturation control. ATI has had all the same color adjustments for years and years.

Anyway, to tell what version open CCC, go to Information Center, and it'll say "Catalyst Version"
 
I've been running a 5870 since launch and I've had very little issues with the card or drivers. Any issue I've had is more than likely due to oc'ing and overvolting.
 
MrGuvernment said:
you hear more problems because the NVIDIA fan boys always toss out that ATI drivers suck because they haven't bothered with an ATI cards since the 8500 days when their drivers were bad, apparently, when even back then i had more BSOD related to nv_display file than ATI ever.

These days i use both ati and nvidia and i guess i am just lucky that i don't have issues with either one.

One time or not Proxy, that is one SERIOUS screw up!
Click to expand...

This. Wasn't too thrilled with the drivers for ati 9700pro, but since with Nvidia 6800, 7900, and 8800 series cards, and then ati 4890 and 5870, I have had only minor issues here and there.

When I was last using Nvidia with the 8800, I did much prefer their CP and options/profiles etc. over ATI's, but not enough to justify the price premium for less performance with gtx275 over hd4890, and gtx285 over hd5870 for all those months.
 
flexcore said:
I been wanting to go with ATI, but every where I go I read about craptastic drivers. Having to use 10.4 for this or 10.5 for that and somtimes 10.6 or 10.7(a). This just seems crazy to me. When drivers progress they shouldn't break things from previous versions. Is it really that bad? Why can't AMD/ATI do a better job like NV does?
Click to expand...

I believe an overwhelming amount of these people talking about their Ati related driver problems are same ones who either use driversweeper during the uninstall/install process, can't maintain an operating system or build a computer properly, overclock without complete system stability, can't recognize when a component needs to be RMA'd, or just genuinely want to whine about a company's particular product.

I've used every single WHQL and most beta/leaked/hotfix catalyst version since 9.12 on my 5870 (Jan 2010) without so much as a BSOD/GSOD or other misc.strange problem some people have talked about. So no, it is not "that bad". The vocal minority is unfortunately much, much louder in this case.
 
Trimlock said:
This is the age old agurment that Nvidia zealots will use to prove their product is superior...

Its spoken/spewed alot from people who really have no idea of anything related to actual driver/hardware performance.

These people will give you futuremark scores as proof of performance.
Click to expand...
Standard response from someone who can't explain why I never had a single system freeze, gray screen, BSOD, random restart, etc. with my GTX 280, 285 and 295. The only time these problems appeared was after installing the 5870. It's easier to just call someone an idiot than try to offer a rational explanation or remedy. :rolleyes:
 
Mr. Wolf said:
Standard response from someone who can't explain why I never had a single system freeze, gray screen, BSOD, random restart, etc. with my GTX 280, 285 and 295. The only time these problems appeared was after installing the 5870. It's easier to just call someone an idiot than try to offer a rational explanation or remedy. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

A lot of this comes from the fact that a lot of people are running the same hardware without any issue. It's difficult to understand why two people running very similar hardware in a very similar environment can have such an extreme difference of experience. People base everything off of their experience, and someone who hasn't have trouble will look to something other than the driver to blame.

Personally, I've had on minor issues with both camps since the GF4/9700Pro days. I can't say one is better than the other from a stability standpoint, but I do like the additional features Nvida gives user such as Ambient Occlusion support for game that don't have it natively.
 
SicKlown42012 said:
A lot of this comes from the fact that a lot of people are running the same hardware without any issue. It's difficult to understand why two people running very similar hardware in a very similar environment can have such an extreme difference of experience. People base everything off of their experience, and someone who hasn't have trouble will look to something other than the driver to blame.

Personally, I've had on minor issues with both camps since the GF4/9700Pro days. I can't say one is better than the other from a stability standpoint, but I do like the additional features Nvida gives user such as Ambient Occlusion support for game that don't have it natively.
Click to expand...
A response like yours is far more constructive than the insulting drivel a few posts up. I agree - it makes no sense to see such differing results on similar systems. When the ONLY change is the video card and its drivers, the conclusion seems fairly obvious.
 
Mr. Wolf said:
A response like yours is far more constructive than the insulting drivel a few posts up. I agree - it makes no sense to see such differing results on similar systems. When the ONLY change is the video card and its drivers, the conclusion seems fairly obvious.
Click to expand...

n/m.
 
I think updating every release is overrated personally. If the release has fixed something you needed then by all means go for it. If it offers more performance on a game you play then by all means go for it. Really though, other than that if you're not having any problems I don't see a reason to update. If your current driver is stable and performs well then you should be fine for a long time.
 
I came from years using Nvidia. I just started using ATI about 2 weeks ago. I have to say that ATI has been unstable. I got missing hotkey and profile few weeks ago. Uninstall and reinstall and so far its OK. Now I got another problem. See my other posting on here about 'turn off the monitor' with using a displayport vs DVI-D.
 
I've never had any issues except for one...

Any of the drivers past 10.4a cause Runescape (Yes I've been playing it for 6 years) to freeze up when my cards are in crossfire. So I'm still with 10.4 because 10.5-10.7 still have the same issue, and it's be far the game I play the most. Enabling/disabling Crossfire is major PITA.
 
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