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ATI vs Nvidia drivers ?

V

V4705

n00b
Joined
Jan 12, 2011
Messages
60
Hi,
I'd love to hear your opinion on who's drivers are better (effective, easy to use, have lots of options, easy on resources and whatever you think is important).

I'm just thinking about getting a GTX 650 TI Boost or an HD 7850 and I guess in overall the performance are pretty much the same (other than benchmark score, I guess the overall experience should be the same).

So the difference will be mostly in heat producing, power consumption and drivers...?

BTW, I'm using 1920x1080 resolution and Corsair CX600M PSU.


Any recommendation\opinion will be highly appreciated :)
 
Single card they both just as good as each other from a stability standpoint. Personally I prefer the user defined application profile stuff that Nvidia do, it's doable on AMD but you need a third party utility and in my opinion it's better to roll all that into a single package.

AMD have a leg up on Nvidia in the HDMI space in that they include a full range RGB toggle in the control panel, to get this enabled on Nvidia you need to apply a registry hack (there is a utility out there that makes this pretty easy).
 
Just got an EVGA GTX650Ti Boost a few hours ago. Nvidia drivers refuse to install on my Win8 64bit system. This is my first Nvidia card since before the ATI 9800Pro and I am not impressed. Still trying to figure out a way to get them to work.
 
BoogerBomb said:
Just got an EVGA GTX650Ti Boost a few hours ago. Nvidia drivers refuse to install on my Win8 64bit system. This is my first Nvidia card since before the ATI 9800Pro and I am not impressed. Still trying to figure out a way to get them to work.
Click to expand...

Weird, running the installer as admin?
 
BoogerBomb said:
Nope, genuine problem. In the other thread I posted in someone mentioned that Win 8.1 preview came with a different version so downloading it to see what happens.
Click to expand...

I'm talking about the OP... Why would I be commenting about you without a quote?

To the OP, spend five minutes in the AMD and Nvidia sections and you'll have your answer.
 
I had no issues with my old 9600 GSO but my Radeon 5770 the drivers for it crash on me and the CCC keeps the fan speed at 40% and I have to manually tell it to run at 100 or else the card starts that black grey vertical line stuff. I am fairly certain the current drivers for AMD are the root of my issues with my card HDMI detection not working and other stuff. Not a fanboy of either just pointing out what I noticed.
 
Leaving past issues out, as you're considering buying a 650 ti Boost. AMDs drivers are amateur at best, Proof is the article HardOCP recently put up that the newest catalyst drivers catching the 7970 up to the GTX 680, which Absolutely Annihilated the 7970 on Launch. Oh, but a year later AMD releases drivers that "fix" the lower performance. The last AMD product I used was a 5850 Crossfire. Crossfire was half-baked as hell too.
 
They're both fine.

If anything I've had more trouble with Nvidia drivers. On my GTX 260, I would, seemingly randomly, get this horse shit where the driver installation would fail literally the instant it completed. Just as it was done, my screen would flicker one last time and WELP FAILED. I'd then end up in limbo where the card is just coming up as some generic video adapter.

Then I'd have to clean all the driver files, reboot, the card would be recognized again, and I'd get to try once more. Fucking irritating. Also whenever Valve started adding in the multi-threading to the Source engine, enabling it not only doubled framerates but liked to explode the driver for whatever reason.

Better yet was the bug at launch of Alien Swarm that would crash the entire machine if a grenade went off. http://store.steampowered.com/news/4119/
 
V4705 said:
Hi,
I'd love to hear your opinion on who's drivers are better (effective, easy to use, have lots of options, easy on resources and whatever you think is important).

I'm just thinking about getting a GTX 650 TI Boost or an HD 7850 and I guess in overall the performance are pretty much the same (other than benchmark score, I guess the overall experience should be the same).

So the difference will be mostly in heat producing, power consumption and drivers...?

BTW, I'm using 1920x1080 resolution and Corsair CX600M PSU.


Any recommendation\opinion will be highly appreciated :)
Click to expand...

Well, here is some advice.

1. If you plan to get a second card later on down the line then get the 650ti, nvidia are better at multi gpu solutions at the moment.

2. If you want Phsyx and 3D go Nvidia. Saying that, I don't think the 650ti has the power to run physx and 3d at good settings, so this is probably not going to factor into your choice.

3. If you like to overclock get the 7850.

In single card both camps have equal drivers, they both have their issues but I wouldn't let this affect my decision. Since both cards are so similar, the best piece of advice I can give is get the cheapest card :)
 
Kor said:
Single card they both just as good as each other from a stability standpoint. Personally I prefer the user defined application profile stuff that Nvidia do, it's doable on AMD but you need a third party utility and in my opinion it's better to roll all that into a single package.
Click to expand...

That's no longer true for quite a while (over a year?). AMD drivers feature individual application profiles just like nVidia does.

Now, regarding drivers...

I've had both cards and had to deal with both driver sets. Overall, they're pretty much the same nowadays in terms of stability/usability. nVidia does OpenGL better than ATI, though, at least for older titles. ATI drivers, on the other hand, seem more consistent in terms of compatibility between a larger array of games. I remember having to switch nVidia drivers back and forth due to specific game incompatibilities or issues present in newer drivers that were not present in older sets. ATI, on the other hand, never gave me any reasons to do a driver rollback (other than buggy beta drivers), and I've just been consistently upgrading over and over and never had any sort of issues.

But, the reason I run an ATI card now instead of nVidia, is because I've had my fair share of hardware issues with nVidia cards over the years. Two defective cards in a row was the last straw for me, while all ATI cards I've owned lasted without any issues until an upgrade was in order. I know this could be bad luck on my part, but it's something that weights heavily whenever I have to upgrade my GPU. Also, I've never had to see one of those dreadful "xxx driver has stopped working but has recovered" messages ever again since going ATI.
 
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HD 7850 running at 860 mhz is on par with GTX 650 ti boost running at 1033+ mhz (most cards boost closer to 1100 mhz ). once overclocked HD 7850 OC competes with GTX 660 OC. HD 7850 is the faster card compared to GTX 650 Ti boost. the HD 7850 on average overclocks to 1100 - 1150 mhz matching the stock HD 7870 (1 ghz) performance.

AMD single GPU drivers are on par with Nvidia. for multi GPU Nvidia is better. take your pick.

here is the Powercolor HD 7850 2GB for USD 150 after 6% off w/ promo code EMCXNWW35, ends 7/17

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131473
 
@BoogerBomb....

Try disabling the Win8 driver signature before installing the new driver. That worked for me when I installed the Win8.1 preview driver (326.01) on Win8-64 .
 
Saabjock said:
@BoogerBomb....

Try disabling the Win8 driver signature before installing the new driver. That worked for me when I installed the Win8.1 preview driver (326.01) on Win8-64 .
Click to expand...

I went ahead and installed the Win 8.1 Pro preview and it came with 325.71 drivers pre-installed so I think I am good to go now. But thanks for the suggestion in case I come across again in the future.
 
When I 1st got my amd cards at release crossfire worked fine. Crossfire for games that worked well before now don't. In the past I've never had any major problems with Nvidia SLI & will most likely go back to the green side.
 
I've had both amd and nvidia cards (multiple of each). I would say stability wise they are both equal which leads me to the point of feature sets being the deciding factor for me. Nvidia mobile drivers are light years ahead of amd's hack and slash drivers. They unified it so when the desktops get a new whql bam I can install it right away on any platform. Good luck with doing that without hacking the inf file on amds side.

Multi threaded rendering was another point that nvidia took the time to implement into their drivers and amd said they where going to when bf3 was being released. But it appears now amd have given up and there is no chance for this to be implemented into their drivers. It is truly sad because in the right circumstances in cpu bound games with large draw calls you can get a 30-100% performance increase. Thanks amd for not including the arguably the biggest performance gainer in dx11.

Now to note, no drivers are perfect and nvidia has release poor drivers in the past as well as amd.
 
lol sorry, I imagine it may be a problematic subject, I just had lots of driver issues in the past and didn't really used graphic cards in the last 3-4 years, so I needed to be sure they both ok right now :)

Thanks guys!
 
V4705 said:
lol sorry, I imagine it may be a problematic subject, I just had lots of driver issues in the past and didn't really used graphic cards in the last 3-4 years, so I needed to be sure they both ok right now :)

Thanks guys!
Click to expand...

They work just fine for most people. This forum obviously goes a bit more in depth with them than the average gamer.
 
BoogerBomb said:
They work just fine for most people. This forum obviously goes a bit more in depth with them than the average gamer.
Click to expand...

Also, a lot of the problems blamed on driver issues may be due to OTHER incompatibilities.

Data point - I have experience with the last two (released and beta) versions of each GPU driver family due to having migrated in the past week from AMD to nVidia; I had no issues with Catalyst, and I'm having no issues with nVidia Forceware now. My only issue (and it's a quibble) is with GeForce Experience (now an option with the Forceware driver package - it is still available and installable separately, of course) - it tends to be a bit timid in terms of setting optimizations for games. (Still, as I stated, it's a quibble.)
 
AMD drivers are limited to a 330Mhz pixel clock, which is not an issue until you hit higher refresh rates. For example 2560x1440 @ 120Hz requires 2560 * 1440 * 120 = 442368000 (about 442Mhz) pixel clock. People have reached 500Mhz pixel clock and possibly higher on Nvidia cards, so that is something to keep in mind if you plan on gaming at higher refresh rates.
 
I went from a 5850 to a Geforce 680, I had problems with the new 320 driver so I rolled it back to the 314 driver, no problems. Turns out the 320 driver was an alpha driver or something. Ill just wait till the windows approved one comes out.
 
As far as solo cards go, I've had no problems whatsoever with AMD

My last set up 2x5770s was probably one of the worst driver experiences I've had. to the point that
I didn't want to update drivers.

That being said, I am getting another 7970, so hopefully Crossfire isn't too terrible.
 
Bob_Dole said:
As far as solo cards go, I've had no problems whatsoever with AMD

My last set up 2x5770s was probably one of the worst driver experiences I've had. to the point that
I didn't want to update drivers.

That being said, I am getting another 7970, so hopefully Crossfire isn't too terrible.
Click to expand...

CFing such low end 128bit 5770 cards in not a good idea, anything below mid range is not worth CFing.
 
I've never had any issues with red or green drivers when it comes to single card setups. I've only had crossfire though (never SLI) but AMD drivers still haven't given me too many issues.
 
Final8ty said:
CFing such low end 128bit 5770 cards in not a good idea, anything below mid range is not worth CFing.
Click to expand...

I didn't know at the time, it was baby's first rig.

I'm debating xfiring my 7970s or just giving each one its own boxen.
I'm amd gpus all the way, but just mad the switch to intel.
 
Fr0nt1ine said:
I went from a 5850 to a Geforce 680, I had problems with the new 320 driver so I rolled it back to the 314 driver, no problems. Turns out the 320 driver was an alpha driver or something. Ill just wait till the windows approved one comes out.
Click to expand...

The WHQL driver (current - for Vista and up) is 326.01, and has been available since Patch Tuesday.
 
From my perspective:
Single card+single screen: excellent
Single card+Eyefinity: excellent
Crossfire+Single Screen: excellent
Crossfire+Eyefinity: microstuttering galore, to the point that going back to the other methods is like playing at 120hz.
 
Nicterys said:
From my perspective:
Single card+single screen: excellent
Single card+Eyefinity: excellent
Crossfire+Single Screen: excellent
Crossfire+Eyefinity: microstuttering galore, to the point that going back to the other methods is like playing at 120hz.
Click to expand...

100% agreed

Even though I'm going to return this other 7970 (wrong PCB Rev, it's a POS) I don't have it crossfired with my other 7970, I just give each one it's own screen and fold on both, or game on one fold on the other.
 
SLI/Crossfire: Nvidia wins.

Single card: Tie

Something to think about. All future games on next gen consoles will be made on AMD Graphics.

So you can only assume that next year, alot of games that are coming out for PC will be AMD optimized.

Also AMD is going to release drivers that fix crossfire in like 10 days or so?....So crossfire might be as good as Nvidia....but I wouldnt bet on it (my opinion of course).
 
I have a couple questions about NV vs AMD GPU drivers.

On the AMD side you can install the drivers without the CCP. When an updated CAP comes out, when you install that, do the profile updates still work even without CCP?

On the NV front, other than manual tweaks you make in the NV CP profiles, the CP doesn't affect the drivers performance?
 
I went from a 5850 to a 670
For years AMD drivers were trash. Mid way into the 12 series they got better. Now AMD drivers are very good.
Nvidia has gone the opposite. Right now their drivers are trash. Go look at their forums to see the massive complaints.
 
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