Drivers: NVidia vs AMD

J

JOSHSKORN

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 29, 2007
Messages
262
I'd like to know from user experience, which card has the better drivers and why. That is, less prone to crashes.

In my current PC (purchased 2007), which has an NVIDIA card, seems to have more issues than my previous build (2003), which at the time had an ATI (now AMD) card. Both PCs, at one point in time, I had upgraded the video card, but went from ATI to ATI in my first build, and from NVIDIA to NVIDIA in my second build.

EDIT: I apologize, I accidentally posted this in the "NVIDIA Flavor" sub forum. I meant to post this in the Video Cards forum. Please move if you're a moderator or admin. Thanks.
 
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I had no issues with my 7970 nor 680 GTX with crashing in games, unless I deliberately overclocked too high.
 
I think Nvidia has better drivers. More options, and better compatibility. If there is an option that would break or freeze something or result in extremely poor performance, Nvidia is ( more intelligently) likely to override it for the sake of compatibility and user experience which they place first.

This is a highly debatable topic. My preference is NVCP over Catalyst. Though keep in mind over-volting is extremely limited on a 680, and not so much on a 7970. 7970 offers a 384 bit memory bus and 3GB vs. 2GB while the 680 offers consistently faster 1080P performance. Max OC is a wash between these two products, barring you don't receive an atypical sample of GK104 or Tahiti.

Strictly drivers, NVCP wins. I'd rank it a 9, and CCC a 4 on a scale of 1-10.
 
Nvidia has a control panel with the depth and controls I prefer over AMD's solution that gets dumber and dumber, and they are the #1 choice if you're going multi-card. AMD's never had drivers that fried cards roll out, so that's another thing they're behind on.

When it comes to crashes related to graphics hardware or software (I run support), if you're going single-card, not planning to overclock, investing in a decent a PSU and a healthy well-ventilated system, AMD's the top choice, studies the world over can tell.
 
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1683315

See poll above and vote if you have not yet done so.

Short answer is that about 1/2 of users have better experiences with Nvidia drivers, 10% have better experiences with AMD, and the remaining 40% find Nvidia and AMD drivers to be equally reliable.
 
My choice is neither, both are good for single card which is what I primarily base my decision on. I understand that when you push twords multi card things move in different directions which seems to favor Nvidia.

I would say my longest gripe with Nvidia's settings and CP is them not sticking and AMD sometimes not having the options you need.
 
The drivers malfunctioned on my 7970, causing the entire computer to explode. Shrapnel killed my dog and was jammed in the side of my leg. I don't know how AMD doesn't beta test this stuff? I don't understand. Only using a pirated windows 7 install I got off of thepiratebay, not quite sure why I'm having problems.

My next card will be green. The last NV card I had was great. I installed them and it cured my HIV.
 
After having issues with the 5k series Grey screen of death.

After having issues with Crossfire and Tri-fire with the 6k series.

I gave up on AMD and there Driver team. AMD makes great cards, Love the technology and what they brought out etc.

I would have to say Nvidia is the way to go. This is from my experience, but I just recently got my TRI-SLI up and running, and its been so damn good. No issues in Games, no crashes, Support for new games right when they come out.

Nvidia > AMD when it comes to Drivers hands down
 
I think for single card single monitor setups you're good with either but better off with nVidia for multi-card multi-monitor setups. I'd say this is a pretty common perception.
 
Though AMD drivers are not quite as terrible as people make out. I prefer nvidia drivers for the extra stuff. Pre DX9 compatability flag...:D
 
DeathPrincess said:
Though AMD drivers are not quite as terrible as people make out. I prefer nvidia drivers for the extra stuff. Pre DX9 compatability flag...:D
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O they are Terrible. Even Hardocp did an article about how bad AMD and there drivers are.

After 3-4 years of experience with them, he was 100% spot on
 
Amd's shit drivers are the sole reason I switched teams this time around. The piss poor crossfire support is just inexcusable, and their last two rounds of drivers just pushed me over the edge after the problems I had. I mean, you have hardocp, one of the biggest pc enthusiast sites on the web do a front page article about your shitty drivers, that should tell you something.

That said, I'm none too happy with nv at the moment either. Their current drivers have a bug that prevents Displayport from working with my monitor, so i'm stuck at 60hz until they get it fixed. It's a known issue and has been for months apparently. Not a great way to start things off.
 
amd drivers have gotten a bit better in recent years but they are still WAY outclassed by nvidia
 
cthulhuiscool said:
amd drivers have gotten a bit better in recent years but they are still WAY outclassed by nvidia
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I dont know about that. It took them 3 months to release official WHQL Drivers for the 7k series.

That shows how lacking they are....
 
search the forums, covered a billion times

people cry AMD drivers sucks, people cry MVIDIA suck, fangirls scream their's is the best!

and if you do give an opinion, most people dont actually provide any true FACT to argue their side just ^^ OMFG!!! AMD sucks NVIDIA RULES!

For me i have had far more BSOD's from NVIDIA than i have from AMD and i can not say i have had any problems with either driver outside of the BSOD's from NVIDIA.
 
I have all nv cards, but they aren't perfect either. nVidia stumbles with HTPCs sometimes, for some reason the Radeon drivers handle "bad" TVs/LCDs more gracefully (bad meaning they report themselves incorrectly). Also HTPC related is that NV doesn't let you choose 16-240 vs 0-255 without major ini/reg hacking, iirc. The whole nvidia TDR thing was a driver nightmare (power management bugs) for some of us the last 8 months. They never did say why only certain systems were crashing. I still miss the "old style" nv control panel before they decided they needed to change everything for the hell of it.
 
I've had more success & stability with Nvidia drivers than I have with AMD drivers. Especially on the mobile end with laptop/netbooks. It took almost an entire year to get a stable set of drivers (12.2) for my netbook. To be fair though, the netbook has a C-50 APU that I upgraded to 4 GB DDR3, Win 7 HP & a SSD. I mostly did some video streaming through netflix, youtube & some other sites via airports when I travel. Did some very llight gaming as well but those ran fine. The 720P playback didn't get stable until 12.2.
 
MrGuvernment said:
search the forums, covered a billion times

people cry AMD drivers sucks, people cry MVIDIA suck, fangirls scream their's is the best!

and if you do give an opinion, most people dont actually provide any true FACT to argue their side just ^^ OMFG!!! AMD sucks NVIDIA RULES!

For me i have had far more BSOD's from NVIDIA than i have from AMD and i can not say i have had any problems with either driver outside of the BSOD's from NVIDIA.
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Thing is, if you check the poll I started on this, Nvidia drivers come out ahead on single card.

For multi-card setups, I am sure the consensus would be even stronger that Nvidia is better in this regard.

Anyway, I think the way to go is to trust the opinions of dozens of users as quantified by a poll rather than our own individual experience. Even though I have had better experience with Nvidia drivers, I did not assume Nvidia was better until I saw the poll numbers to back it up.
 
Well, I have had no problems with either side. My friend had problems with his 8800gts in vista, The driver would malfunction often, But I say its vistas fault.

As for the NVCP Vs Catalyst debate, Those are not the drivers and why would you use either of them? There are better programs to use right?

IMO they both suck Afterburner is a much better program.
 
Last line of AMD cards owned includes.
X800XTPE, 3870X2, 4850 1Gig, 6870 Crossfire, 7970.

Last line of Nvidia cards, owned or placed into friends machines.
6800GT, 6800NU, 8800GTX SLi, GTX280, GTX295.

From both camps I have experienced little to no driver issues.
With my current 7970 I have had no driver issues.
Only the multi GPU purchases (3870X2/6870CF/8800GTXSLi,GTX295) gave me slight problems. I would like to claiify thats the newer gen (6870/GTX295) gave me no issues.

Honestly Drivers are chance and luck sometimes. AMD makes good, stable, and reliable drivers.
 
{NG}Fidel said:
Last line of AMD cards owned includes.
X800XTPE, 3870X2, 4850 1Gig, 6870 Crossfire, 7970.

Last line of Nvidia cards, owned or placed into friends machines.
6800GT, 6800NU, 8800GTX SLi, GTX280, GTX295.

From both camps I have experienced little to no driver issues.
With my current 7970 I have had no driver issues.
Only the multi GPU purchases (3870X2/6870CF/8800GTXSLi,GTX295) gave me slight problems. I would like to claiify thats the newer gen (6870/GTX295) gave me no issues.

Honestly Drivers are chance and luck sometimes. AMD makes good, stable, and reliable drivers.
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I would have to disagree with AMD making good stable reliable drivers.

And I have owned a 9700pro, 4870, 5870, 6970, 6990......They have been lacking so bad its pathetic. They are always 1-2 months behind in releasing drivers for MAJOR brand new games that come out.

Deus ex, BF3, Skyrim, Rage....they dropped the ball on all these games.

And Im talking about Single and multi-gpu setups.
 
I haven't had driver issues with either camp, that said my I got my HD 4870 at least 6 months after its release so it probably had all the issues taken care of. I still prefer Nvidia though, I like their control panel better.
 
i have to agree with the majority of people here, AMD's drivers SUCK complete ass.
Since i bought these cards, the day after they became available here, it has been nothing but problems and issues.

- computer hard locks
- BSOD's, BSOD's everywhere
- display driver crashing
- can't let my monitor go into sleepmode or i have a big chance of it not recovering (i get a mouse cursor but that's about it)
- can't put my pc in standby or it might not come back to life.
- flash player causing bsod's (think youtube and such)

i'm this close to just throwing them out the window and getting 2 680's in stead. Just the idea of having stable drivers is a heavenly thought.

The only thing AMD can come up with is "hurrduurr yur pc iz borked". Even AFTER i told them that each card seperately runs great. It's from the moment that cf comes into play that things get messed up.

And if that's not enough proof, a friend of mine recently did a clean install of windows. Which, obviously, made him install the latest drivers and guess what. He's also hard locking now on pretty much every game he plays.

GG amd. i'm going green.

And if you're thinking "damn hemad" then i say: fuck, i'm not mad, I'm pissed off. I paid a massive amount of money and the fucking things don't even work properly.
 
i work with ATI drivers at work, and its a nightmare. Drivers randomly disabling co-workers extra monitors for no reasons, resolutions changing on their own, driver crashes when opening word (no lie), etc etc

IMHO in all the years that i worked with ATI/AMD products, their drivers are garbage.
I use Nvidia products in all my computers at home.. ZERO problems.

I feel that if a product isn't capable of giving me 100% quality 100% of the time, then its not worth my time and it doesn't work.

i don't like to piss away money on garbage. That shit is for the birds
 
killernerd said:
i have to agree with the majority of people here, AMD's drivers SUCK complete ass.
Since i bought these cards, the day after they became available here, it has been nothing but problems and issues.

- computer hard locks
- BSOD's, BSOD's everywhere
- display driver crashing
- can't let my monitor go into sleepmode or i have a big chance of it not recovering (i get a mouse cursor but that's about it)
- can't put my pc in standby or it might not come back to life.
- flash player causing bsod's (think youtube and such)

i'm this close to just throwing them out the window and getting 2 680's in stead. Just the idea of having stable drivers is a heavenly thought.

The only thing AMD can come up with is "hurrduurr yur pc iz borked". Even AFTER i told them that each card seperately runs great. It's from the moment that cf comes into play that things get messed up.

And if that's not enough proof, a friend of mine recently did a clean install of windows. Which, obviously, made him install the latest drivers and guess what. He's also hard locking now on pretty much every game he plays.

GG amd. i'm going green.

And if you're thinking "damn hemad" then i say: fuck, i'm not mad, I'm pissed off. I paid a massive amount of money and the fucking things don't even work properly.
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This. I just recently got 3 displayport monitors (ASUS VE248Q) JUST for my Trifire (6990/6970), to use in Eyefinity. I get MASSIVE flickering when trying to play Battlefield Bad Company 2 on eyefinity. I used to be able to play Borderlands on a single monitor. Nope, crashes to desktop saying "Borderlands has stopped working". Same thing with Arkham City and Guild Wars.

I go to my 460 gtx SLI NVSurround setup. No problems ...zero. Whatsoever.

It's frustrating to spend money on a setup, only to find out that it doesn't work once you get everything together.

I am an AMD supporter no more.
 
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Eh - for my use, both manufacturers served my needs just fine. Both my laptop (sports a GeForce 7300 - yeah, I need to upgrade), and my desktop (Radeon HD 7750) have very stable driver sets. No issues with them now, or ever. The only complaint I had with Nvidia cards is that they never seemed to render the Active Camouflage correct in Halo PC - but this is a GeForce 7600GS and the laptop video card mentioned above, so who knows? Other than that, not a single complaint. :) As for multiple video cards, I can't comment. I have no interest in ever doing that. I hate micro-stutter. :)

Edit: My cards have been the following:
Radeon 9700pro
Radeon X800XL
GeForce 7600GS (Radeon X800XL died a premature death :( )
Mobility Radeon 9600 (good card for its time, but it had stupid a 64 MB framebuffer)
Mobility Radeon X1600
GeForce Go 7300 (terrible card, very slow!)
GeForce 7600 GS AGP
Radeon HD 3450 AGP
Radeon HD 7750
 
I'd say Nvidia has better drivers in that it's easier to setup profiles though AMD has been working to rectify that, but their implementation is still a little quirky IMO.
 
I have two machines, one runs nvidia and the other AMD.

My only real gripe about AMD is their problems getting Crossfire profiles out in a timely fashion, and then releasing (proudly I might add) profiles for game you either never heard of or that are very obscure while delaying AAA titles for weeks.:eek:

nivida's work fine, and the driver portion of AMD's does too.:D
 
sdlvx said:
The drivers malfunctioned on my 7970, causing the entire computer to explode. Shrapnel killed my dog and was jammed in the side of my leg. I don't know how AMD doesn't beta test this stuff? I don't understand. Only using a pirated windows 7 install I got off of thepiratebay, not quite sure why I'm having problems.

My next card will be green. The last NV card I had was great. I installed them and it cured my HIV.
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A friend of mine had similar issues.;)
 
MrGuvernment said:
search the forums, covered a billion times

people cry AMD drivers sucks, people cry MVIDIA suck, fangirls scream their's is the best!

and if you do give an opinion, most people dont actually provide any true FACT to argue their side just ^^ OMFG!!! AMD sucks NVIDIA RULES!

For me i have had far more BSOD's from NVIDIA than i have from AMD and i can not say i have had any problems with either driver outside of the BSOD's from NVIDIA.
Click to expand...

Plus 1
 
I've not had issues with either camp. I do notice some notoriously pro nvidia posters hopping on the bandwagon - reading some of their posts I get the impression that AMD drivers will cause a worldwide nuclear meltdown (gotta wonder if its based on experience.) Anyway, I did get TDRs on 580 sli which seemed to go away when I upped voltage. So no big deal.

Personally, browsing the nvidia gforce.com forums I see posts about driver TDR issues all over the place, this issue hasn't been fixed for a year? So nvidia is completely problem free yet I see all those posts over there, and then there was the 196 driver that literally caused cards to die.... I dunno, like I said I haven't had any real issues with either side. For ME, they have both been fine...shrug. Minor quibble on the 7970 was that Batman: AC didn't have a crossfire profile initially, but that was due to coding on the devs part - the most recent patch fixed both sli and xfire in that game.
 
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I can't say I've ever had driver crashes in games/usage. I have had driver optimization issues with both nVidia and AMD. Though the biggest problem for me, has been driver installation issues with AMD. For some reason, official AMD drivers don't install properly on my system, I am currently using 12.4 Catalyst Beta's. I never had these issues with nVidia, their installs always went smoothly for me.
 
As a 5870 user I wonder how this is even a question. AMD drivers are *horrible^, the power of the card is so held back by the constant glitches and driver crashes that come with it. Having dealt with AMDs absolutely abysmal drivers for a few years now, I can promise my next card WILL be an nVidia card.
 
Yeah according to the hardforum poll people prefer NVIDIA drivers 6 to 1. I still think AMD has a long way to go to catch up to NVIDIA in that area. They should start by getting off the marketing release schedule and release drivers when they are actually finished.
 
I've overall had great luck with both. I haven't been impressed with the 7970 driver scene, but I am sure it will get better, and to be fair, all of my problems are with BF3.
 
Both are fine. The only problem I had with Nvidia was ther drivers fried my 8800.

Other than that, their drivers have worked well. Same with the AMD cards I have had.
 
PRIME1 said:
Yeah according to the hardforum poll people prefer NVIDIA drivers 6 to 1. I still think AMD has a long way to go to catch up to NVIDIA in that area. They should start by getting off the marketing release schedule and release drivers when they are actually finished.
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According to that poll, more than a third of the people here think they are about equal.
 
Last AMD card I had was a X1800XT. CCC was garbage then and people still seem to have the same complaints today.

Had lots of issues with the card waking and sleeping the monitor. Updating drivers was a nightmare, during the reboots the card would often refuse to display any video.....several reboots later I would finally be up and running again. Everything was a hassle.
 
Nobi125 said:
Last AMD card I had was a X1800XT. CCC was garbage then and people still seem to have the same complaints today.

Had lots of issues with the card waking and sleeping the monitor. Updating drivers was a nightmare, during the reboots the card would often refuse to display any video.....several reboots later I would finally be up and running again. Everything was a hassle.
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Sounds like faulty hardware.
 
I would have to disagree with AMD making good stable reliable drivers.

And I have owned a 9700pro, 4870, 5870, 6970, 6990......They have been lacking so bad its pathetic. They are always 1-2 months behind in releasing drivers for MAJOR brand new games that come out.

Deus ex, BF3, Skyrim, Rage....they dropped the ball on all these games.

And Im talking about Single and multi-gpu setups.
__________________
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My single and mGPU setups with AMD were always plesant.
Issues can be user/system specific.
Never have my AMD drivers caused me BSODs either.
It has been smooth sailing with AMD drivers all the way for me.
honestly those CF issues for Skyrim and what not I didnt even notice...
My 6870s ran the game well and without complaint on day one. Only issues I had in Skyrim were game glitches like Esbern not speaking etc.
People should do some testing cause this back and forth on AMD vs Nvidia drivers without any type of evidence is just tiresome bickering.
 
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