Do AMD / ATI Drivers really suck??

cybereality said:
For people that are saying the AMD drivers are bad: what does this mean exactly?

I mean, what happened to make you think the drivers were bad? Was it crashing, slow performance, stuttering, artifacts, etc.? I see a lot of people saying the drivers suck but not exactly what happened to make them think that.
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When I had the 6870 at launch, AMD released four different driver fixes in less than three weeks.
11a, 11b, 11c , 11d drivers. None of them fixed the issues. I returned the card back to Newegg before the 11d drivers hit.
My 5970 went months without a black screen fix for BC2, I had to use old drivers while 5870 owners kept getting performance increases.

When it comes to game drivers, Nvidia rolls out new drivers before a collection of games are launched, but AMD will release drivers the day of release or a few days after which usually resulted in poor performance.
Then an avalanche of driver fixes come right after, making the problem worse.

Experience means more to me than higher FPS.
 
WorldExclusive said:
When I had the 6870 at launch, AMD released four different driver fixes in less than three weeks.
11a, 11b, 11c , 11d drivers. None of them fixed the issues. I returned the card back to Newegg before the 11d drivers hit.
My 5970 went months without a black screen fix for BC2, I had to use old drivers while 5870 owners kept getting performance increases.

When it comes to game drivers, Nvidia rolls out new drivers before a collection of games are launched, but AMD will release drivers the day of release or a few days after which usually resulted in poor performance.
Then an avalanche of driver fixes come right after, making the problem worse.

Experience means more to me than higher FPS.
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I also had the infamous black lines on BF2/BC2. I traded in my 5870 CF for 470 SLI at that point.

Bad for me was, like I said before, Skyrim. Horrible stutters and weird flashing artifacts made the game essentially unplayable. It has been that way since the end of 2012 and still isn't fixed.
 
The only card I ever had fail was a 8800gt...I guess that means all nvidia cards are horrible.
 
wizzi01 said:
The only card I ever had fail was a 8800gt...I guess that means all nvidia cards are horrible.
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Ofc :p

I have "fixed" about 8 nvidia cards ranging from 6800 series to laptops with nvidia gpu using the oven technique. Only ati cards that has failed in my case has been 9800pro and 3870X2.

But back to topic: Both companies suck when it comes to drivers and the reason is that there is plethora of different systems and you just cant test them with every combination.

Those who say that they haven't had a single issue with drivers haven't really done any testing then. The reason why both companies releases drivers is to fix issues.

Amd has problems with CF and frame pacing atm. Some say they haven't had a problem with CF. My only nVidia card atm is 560ti on my second pc and it took nVidia god knows how long to fix the black screen problem on BF3 with that card. Still most have been playing the game without a problem...

So to sum this: both companies have problems with drivers, big or small. Generally they are on even ground when using single gpu.
 
Fooshnik said:
I read a lot of 290X reviews and no one mentioned any issues with any game, many of the reviews pointed out that they had no problems. From my personal experience I haven't had any issues since they were ATI.


Sometimes this works. Some people on Nvidia had the same issue. Skyrim is a POS console port.
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Thanks for the tips, but I've already tried both of those heh....

At this point, I've given up trying to fix it. It's just NOT going to happen.
 
HOODedDutchman said:
Only problems are if u update and run into an issue. Ive tried every different tool possible andi dont think ive ever been able to rollback drivers without reformat. Nvidia u simply click custom install and check clean install. Way easier. Amd needs to implement this.
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Can anybody else confirm this is true, because if it is that would probably be a big enough reason for me to not go with AMD for my new card. I don't mind about getting a bad driver as long as it's easy to get rid of and install another one as it is with Nvidia.
 
Skyrim on AMD you ask? I've never seen microstutter on a single card before. I saw it with a 7970 in Skyrim. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, going from a 670 to a 7970. They say it's fixed, though. That's the thing with AMD... they are always fixing their drivers. That's good, right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2URG-KIvtQ4
 
spacin9 said:
Skyrim on AMD you ask? I've never seen microstutter on a single card before. I saw it with a 7970 in Skyrim. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, going from a 670 to a 7970. They say it's fixed, though. That's the thing with AMD... they are always fixing their drivers. That's good, right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2URG-KIvtQ4
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I don't know, it is good but if they are always fixing them then that means they are always broken doesn't it?
 
smaudioz said:
Can anybody else confirm this is true, because if it is that would probably be a big enough reason for me to not go with AMD for my new card. I don't mind about getting a bad driver as long as it's easy to get rid of and install another one as it is with Nvidia.
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pc ain't a bloody ps3. :rolleyes:
you can revert to previous versions of catalyst.
anyone saying you gotta reinstall every time you install a amd driver is selling you snake oil.
 
With the release of windows 8.1....Directx 11.2 will also release. In the link is what Directx 11.2 would mean for drivers and gamers.


http://mygaming.co.za/news/pc/55784-directx-11-2-what-it-does-for-you.html



TroyX said:
explain why AMD still hasn't improved high latency in crossfire and weird lines in 2d mode.
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AMD has taken measures in their drivers as of the last few months to improve crossfire issues. Read the link.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/amd-frame-pacing-explorer-cat138
 
spacin9 said:
Skyrim on AMD you ask? I've never seen microstutter on a single card before. I saw it with a 7970 in Skyrim. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, going from a 670 to a 7970. They say it's fixed, though. That's the thing with AMD... they are always fixing their drivers. That's good, right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2URG-KIvtQ4
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Up until recently, AMD lacked frame pacing in their drivers. This is why NVIDIA's cards often felt smoother even when the benchmarks showed AMD cards having higher frame rates in games.
 
If you use loginmein or vmware Radeon drivers can go pretty crazy. I think i'm going back to nvidia since i've given up coin mining.
 
I have a 5760x1080 setup that I run with GTX 670 sli. I switched to a 7970 for a few weeks just to test the waters with eyefinity. Biggest mistake ever. The drivers and software were nothing but a headache. I switched back to Nvidia and never looked back. Everything with Nvidia surround is just so much more intuitive and user friendly. I think Nvidia just has more polish.
 
Dan_D said:
Up until recently, AMD lacked frame pacing in their drivers. This is why NVIDIA's cards often felt smoother even when the benchmarks showed AMD cards having higher frame rates in games.
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Skyrim had problems with single GPU, granted it isn't the best coded game in the world which is made obvious by all the 3rd party performance optimizing tools (SKSE, etc.) available. But with a single AMD card it was really bad. That is only one game though, I wouldn't base my purchasing decision on that unless it was the only game I play.
 
I think driver issues are normally tied to other incompatibilities.

I use both Nvidia and AMD cards, but more often than not I have a Radeon something or other. (Still have a bad taste in my mouth from the FX "crouching tiger, no dragon" cheats)

I have had zero issues the past few years on ATI drivers. The only real issue I had back in the day was on an X1950XT using an HDTV 1080P display. Always wanted to have black borders around the screen from automatic scaling since I was using an HDTV.

These days i haven't had any issues, including when I had Crossfire. Never had issues with SLI either.
 
I used a 6870 for a little over a year and never had any problems with it. I actually think I've had more driver issues with my 660 Ti than with my 6870 (still only crashed maybe 2 or 3 times in the last year though). Point being, I personally wouldn't worry about drivers when shopping for a new card as there really doesn't seem to be much difference either way.
 
clownshoes said:
I used a 6870 for a little over a year and never had any problems with it. I actually think I've had more driver issues with my 660 Ti than with my 6870 (still only crashed maybe 2 or 3 times in the last year though). Point being, I personally wouldn't worry about drivers when shopping for a new card as there really doesn't seem to be much difference either way.
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Agreed
 
Dan_D said:
Up until recently, AMD lacked frame pacing in their drivers. This is why NVIDIA's cards often felt smoother even when the benchmarks showed AMD cards having higher frame rates in games.
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You can force microstutter to happen again with 4x SSAA in 2560x1440.

jzoXTuo.png
 
Personally I want them both to be successfull as competition breeds lower prices and more gamers with money still left over to buy games.

Having said this, I used to be an AMD user but years of problems with AMD just soured the experience and I just use Nvidia now. I literally cannot remember the last time I had a game crash, bug out or just not work since using Nvidia, asus and Intel hardware. It just works.
 
fdiaz78 said:
Personally I want them both to be successfull as competition breeds lower prices and more gamers with money still left over to buy games.

Having said this, I used to be an AMD user but years of problems with AMD just soured the experience and I just use Nvidia now. I literally cannot remember the last time I had a game crash, bug out or just not work since using Nvidia, asus and Intel hardware. It just works.
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But when Asus hardware stops working and you need to RMA it, you'll probably end up wishing you never bought it.
 
smaudioz said:
But when Asus hardware stops working and you need to RMA it, you'll probably end up wishing you never bought it.
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Man that is the truth, That is the reason I will never, ever, buy anything made by Asus. I won't touch their tablets, motherboards, graphic cards, nothing. They manufacturer a lot of things, but their support sucks. It is like they create something and then they forget about it. If it is buggy, good luck getting them to patch it or update a bios. Plus, their RMA process is a nightmare. If you ever get anything back from them, your lucky. If you ever get anything back that actually works, you are very lucky.
 
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Not at all.

Still using the original 7970s from sapphire at day one (granted I did remove the factory TMI and replaced with IC Diamond 7). Working great! the only problems I had with crossfire wis Tera online and Darksiders 2. Not sure if those issues got fixed because I just completed Darksiders 2 and stopped playing Tera. Using a single display at 2560x1600 with display port.

My roommate has the exact same motherboard/RAM as I do with two evga 680 SLI and neither of us are having any game breaking issues at day one game releases.
 
Coming from a 660 ti to a HD 7970, I'm going to say they're not as good as nvidias. Last official release was back in September and those drivers dont work as well for me for Battlefield 4, so I'm using beta's but those have some annoying bugs. Is it horrible? No, is it great? Nope. I had far less issues using nvidia.
 
Don't use WHQL drivers. There is no good reason to use one over a beta.

AMD used to release a whql every month. It was awful.

They have since moved to far more frequent betas and the occasional whql. That has been working far better.
 
I've actually had more problems with my 590 than my 6970 or my 7970.

As far as I'm concerned it works out like this:

Computer with Nvidia card has issues: "faulty motherboard/software/ram/hard drive!!!"

Computer with AMD card has issues: "must be the drivers!"

I have had customers refuse to buy AMD products because they've 'had problems with AMD cards'... I then ask what brand of card they owned and it's usually Gigabyte, notorious for their high RMA rate.

It's just brand association: I've heard Nvidia fails less therefore it can NEVER fail. I've heard AMD fails more, therefore is there is a failure in my system it MUST be because of AMD.

And then it snowballs as you might imagine.
 
Chiming in on the Skyrim issue:
My system with a single HD 6970 still has horrible stuttering and choppiness no matter what driver I use and no what settings I use. AMD made cross-fire specific fixes to help address this problem, but nothing has been done for single-card users.

My system with a single GTX 780? No issues with Skyrim.

Dan_D said:
Up until recently, AMD lacked frame pacing in their drivers
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Their drivers still lack frame pacing under most circumstances...

If you're running Eyefinity, frame pacing doesn't work in ANY game (and Eyefinity users are the ones who really need crossfire to begin with). If you're running single-monitor, frame pacing doesn't work in any DX9 or OpenGL game... and sorry to say it, but most games are still DX9. :(

BababooeyHTJ said:
You can force microstutter to happen again with 4x SSAA in 2560x1440.
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SuperSampling = running the game at higher internal resolution and down-scaling to screen resolution.

AMD specifically said resolutions above 2560x1600 are not supported by their current frame-pacing tech. Running SSAA effectively blows right past that limit.

People with 4k monitors are also unable to take advantage of frame pacing unless they run lower-than-native resolution.
 
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I thought frame pacing was working on the R290/R290X even in CrossfireX.
 
Unknown-One said:
SuperSampling = running the game at higher internal resolution and down-scaling to screen resolution.

AMD specifically said resolutions above 2560x1600 are not supported by their current frame-pacing tech. Running SSAA effectively blows right past that limit.

People with 4k monitors are also unable to take advantage of frame pacing unless they run lower-than-native resolution.
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Yes and no, I don't think that is really true with SGSSAA which is what I think that AMD uses in their drivers.
 
Well.. i'm one of the few that really has had no issues with BF 4 but I like everyone has to patch the game every time people get on there forums to bitch about the game and they try to fix there issues but in the end it still runs perfect on my 290 and doesn't or hasn't needed any patch work on my end..
 
Well, most people remember that sometimes along their way they came over some faulty AMD driver, and forget that Nvidia has their own long standing tradition of drivers capable of killing hardware or some other bugs.
IMO, at the moment there's no major driver difference for single card for the average gamer between NV or AMD; of course, anytime you can find some detail which work on a brand and not on the other, but this is specific problem, and usually blown up to unnatural size.
 
Not sure if this is already mentioned, so blame me for spot reading, but as far as use in a htpc I would say that even though there are some issues with my config, basically pc --> receiver --> 1080p projector, AMD cards just seam better overall. There is some annoying HDMI sync issues with both NVIDIA and AMD where the handshake gets jacked up and you might loose audio at some point with out a util to resync or a restart. As far as color accuracy and ease in the setup AMD has a more vibrant and accurate color out of the box. I am basing this between an AMD 7970 and NVIDIA 560ti and 680gtx. As far as gaming and drivers I feel this is really up to the devs of the game engines more than anything, and they probably look at market share of a device during the production cycle and allocate resources to testing based on those results (I am not talking about xbox 360/ps3 ports). Hopefully they get a decent beta pool of users together and can hash out bugs very quickly and worst case it takes a driver cycle to fix the majority of cycles. That being said because both xbox one and ps4 are all amd derivatives the cross platform testing should in theory be a lot easy to iron out hardware stuff for the AMD side of the house. Maybe just a fanboy here but in general I would look at best bang for what you are wanting to do for your buck as both products are really good at what they are designed for.
 
It's all myths and hate, i am using AMD from 2010 and never had any issue whatsoever, in fact i switched because my 2 Nvidia cards died on me. Just one time i had a problem with a memory leak in Borderlands 1, which was fixed a 2 weeks after.
 
FUD

AMD Drivers are fine, don't even bother posting about it anymore usually.
 
Some have had good experiences, others horrible ones.
I can't say I've been on the "good side" with my crossfired 7970's.

Bought them early january of 2012 (right after they got released) to put them in my x58 system with an I7 920.
I have never seen so many blue screens and hard locks in my life. Not a day passed by without my system crashing multiple times.

Anything and pretty much everything that required some form of gpu power could (and would) crash my system. Even things like youtube could cause the display driver to crash and (if lucky) recover.

It took AMD nearly a year to get the drivers to a usable level. Until then the only way to have a somewhat usable system was to disable crossfire and turn off hardware acceleration in as many programs as I could.

But even now, running 13.8B drivers, there are still games that really dislike my system and can cause it to hardlock or, at the very least, cause the display driver to crash and recover.

The good news? It's very easy now to make custom profiles per game so i just tell it to not use crossfire :)
And amd's framepacing tech really makes a difference.
Not to mention Mantle, which sounds promising.

Has this put me off buying amd? Probably not, I'll buy whatever gives me the best performance for the price :) And amd has been putting in alot of effort lately, their drivers have improved dramatically over the last 6 months.

At least, from my perspective ;)
 
Everybody has their own story to tell about this.
For me, having used AMD hardware almost exclusively in my personal use, but having used some nvidia hardware in my line of work, it's a bit of a mixed bag.

On the whole I'd say AMD drivers are poor. They're functional, but nothing more. To say they're unusable is an exaggeration in general, but can be an accurate sentiment when trying to achieve some of the more ambitious features AMD offer. Generally speaking, one graphics card, one monitor, you're fairly safe. The more cards and screens you add, the worse it becomes.

To this day there are still certain bugs from 3-4 years ago I believe that haven't been fixed, simply because the small handful of people doing software development for AMD don't have the time to look at them given there are more serious issues to look at. It's a shame because, HD2900XT and 290X excluded (hey, only just noticed that connection now :p) AMD make pretty solid hardware, at least until AIBs get their mits on it.

I ran an HD4870X2 Quad-CF setup for 2 years or so. It did take a good 8-10 months for many games to support that combination, and all too often performance was worse with 4 GPUs than it was with just 1. However, eventually after enough whining and badgering from users AMD got their act together and apart from the obvious power/heat/noise concerns it made a fairly good gaming setup. Performance scaling beyond 2-2.5x a single GPU was pretty iffy throughout, but most of the reliability issues were gone with major titles, it was just small independent games that wouldn't work. When those cards started getting a bit long in the tooth I was looking at which side to go for, and the GTX460s had recently come out. Page after page of threads were churning out with bizarre compatibility issues with those cards and certain type of motherboards, certain voltage configurations used by different partner brands, it looked like a real minefield. I decided to stick with AMD and buy two HD6970s, and I do not regret that one bit. The crossfire experience with these cards (and, more to the point 2 GPUs instead of 4) was very good, and there's not been much that hasn't worked save having to wait 2-6 months for crossfire support for games. If you're a day 1 gamer and want good performance with dual (or more) graphics off the bat, I still say go nvidia. But if you're a bit more patient, AMD has been fine with the HD6 series. Unfortunately I can't offer any personal experience of the HD7 generation in multiple. I haven't had any driver issues with the HD7770 with a single display, although eyefinity when I tested it was a bit of a chore still, and I suspect will take me a few days of learning all the bugs to figure out how to get it working how I want it, or as close as I can get.
The only driver that's caused me major grief is 13.4 WHQL, which caused BSODs roughly every week on both the PCs I installed it on. After ditching WHQL for the 13.9 and latterly 13.11 Beta drivers, so far so good.
 
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