ManofGod
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2007
- Messages
- 12,863
When’s the last time you used an AMD card?
As I said
My last few gaming cards have been:
< 2015 all Nvidia 100% back to 3dfx voodo days.
2015 - GTX 670, AMD 285, AMD 380 (I turned to nvidia for PLP support which Nvidia didn't and still doesn't support - https://hardforum.com/threads/can-someone-clarify-for-me-which-amd-cards-support-plp-gaming.1861756/)
2016 - AMD Fury X
2017 - AMD Vega 56, AMD Vega 64, and then back to Nvidia with a 1080ti
*If you want to count mining card experience - add just about every card from either vendor since RX480 to this list, and 1060 and up for nvidia.
I play 20-30 hours of PC games a week and have since grade school. I’m 38 years old. I’ve hosted and organized at least 50 LAN parties.
I’m telling you AMD GPU drivers are more buggy. There is no question. You know the reason I was 100% Nvidia before the AMD 285? Because of all those LAN parties I hosted where the AMD GPU owners were fighting bugs in their drivers —- to the worst of it in the early days —- actually having older drivers the AMD owners would reinstall to make certain games work and regularly swapping drivers multiple times during the LAN party to play each different game. (UGH!!!!)
I suspect I have more experience with recent cards than most people. Feel free to back up your statement with evidence to your experiences.
If Nvidia drivers are a solid "A" for reference then AMD 285 drivers were mostly good - I'd grade them a "B+". AMD Fury X drivers were Grade "A-" by the time I picked one up in Jan. 2016, and issues I encountered were minimal, but not absent. Vega 56 and 64 drivers were an absolute "D" at launch. (Freesync didn't work, Crossfire didn't work, Eyefinity Bezel Correction didn't work, Chrome Browser didn't work, FPS ranges were terrible -- PUBG for instance I'd get 90FPS, then 8 FPS in the same match. Same thing for Wolfenstein New Order 90FPS - 30FPS range was common in playing through the game) Overclock settings didn't stick in Wattman, Red Screens of Death, my CPU overclock that was stable for many months suddenly became unstable. When I went back to Nvidia, I was able to restore my original CPU overclock with not one issue. The Vega drivers for the first few months after launch were nothing short of junk). I'VE NEVER ENCOUNTERED AN NVIDIA DRIVER EVEN CLOSE TO A SUBJECTIVE "D" RATING in 20 some years of using Nvidia.
Subjectively, I'd say it's a 3:1 ratio for AMD bugs to Nvidia driver bugs AFTER AMD drivers are mature. Before they are mature - it's not even worth owning the AMD card. I imagine Vega is approaching a mature driver by now - and most of the bugs are probably defeated - but certainly not all -- I was over at my friends house last night, looking at his Vega 64 and his new 38" monitor. He loaded up Path of Exile - the textures were blurred in town???, he got 72FPS in town and 150FPS in the game world - even though he set his frame rate target to 72FPS. (Neither issue happens with nvidia), he loaded up Vermintide 2 and his mouse cursor wouldn't disappear off the screen (doesn't happen on nvidia) he loaded up the Freesync windmill demo - Freesync didn't work. He tried to set a game profile in the AMD drivers with a target FPS, and it wouldn't stick when he launched the game - only the global config would stick. We tried to play a half dozen 4K videos on youtube with Edge browser to experience HDR - Edge wouldn't play above 1440K.even if you selected 4K - it would always just pick 1080p or 1440. We couldn't figure it out. We loaded up Firefox and it played the 4K videos just fine as expected - so it must be some Edge incompatibility with Vega drivers preventing 4K playback in Edge. (doesn't happen with Nvidia). Get the idea? These were issues we just discovered in casual use. I can only think of one single issue I have with my 1080TI. When I play Kingdom Rush ( a little casual tower defense game) at 1100FPS - I get blinking on the 1080TI. I've encountered NO other glitches on my 1080TI since last summer.
Your personal experience, although legit for you, does not indicate an across the board issue or issues. Was this a clean install? Did you DDU? Where the 18.4.1 drivers, which I know have bugs but the 18.3.4 works just fine? Is this a many year old installation of Windows 10? Is this the 1803 or 1709 build? And hundreds of other questions that could be asked to eliminate problems.