Good Bye AMD/Raedon

G

glazenuts

n00b
Joined
Nov 3, 2005
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I've been a ATI fan for many years and have been using raedon cards since the 9800. Since AMD bought ATI the driver quality has gone down significantly. I've been waiting for about 3yrs for them to fix the atikmpag blue screen the some games get. I seens dozens of this issue in forums across the net and AMD ignores it completly and as far as I can tell refues to even to acknowledgment this issue exisit. UPS is delivering me 2 new
GIGABYTE|GV-N560UD-1GI GTX560TI which I will run in SLI. It's with a heavy heart that I way wave good bye to AMD with my middle finger held
 
I have never had any problems with the new ATI drivers- it has been my experience that they have actually gotten better
 
Wow I had the exact opposite happen to me. I went from a GTX 560 ti and GTX 570 to 6950 2GB because of too many problems with Nvidia drivers, I thought they were terrible. Now that I have the 6950 I haven't had one issue with the ATI drivers. To each his own I guess..
 
glazenuts said:
It's with a heavy heart that I way wave good bye to AMD with my middle finger held
Click to expand...

If it really was with a heavy heart, you would have bothered to fix the problem, and not taken the 'easy' way out by changing brands...
 
so who's ready to have a laugh when this guy has problems with his new cards? Half the problems people report are from the user side : /
 
My first ATI was the 9800. I bought it for HL2 and it sucked for that game. Bad.

I think I agree ATI drivers are better now-a-days.
 
otapnam said:
so who's ready to have a laugh when this guy has problems with his new cards? Half the problems people report are from the user side : /
Click to expand...

Or its also possible that card is bad. I had a 5870 that would crash intermittently and I swore up and down its the drivers.

Then I got another 5870 and 5670 to test drivers and everything worked fine. The same games that would crash didn't with a different card with the same drivers.
 
glazenuts said:
Since AMD bought ATI the driver quality has gone down significantly.
Click to expand...

Actually, the reality has been quite the opposite.

I've been waiting for about 3yrs for them to fix the atikmpag blue screen the some games get.
Click to expand...

Your card is probably overheating or there is something else going on in your system that is causing the problem. You're making an assumption that this has anything to do with the drivers when in-fact you have no idea what's going on.

I seens dozens of this issue in forums across the net and AMD ignores it completly and as far as I can tell refues to even to acknowledgment this issue exisit.
Click to expand...

This might come as a surprise to you but people are more likely to post on the forums when they have problems compared to when things are working well. "atikmpag" is the name of the ATI driver so of course you are going to find tons of results for that when you do a search - even though probably less than 1% of those people are having an issue even remotely related to what's going on with your card.

You can get "atikmpag" BSODs for a number of different reasons none of which have anything to do with drivers. Your card could be overheating (do you ever dust them out?), your RAM might be overclocked too high, your CPU and/or FSB/BCLK might be overclocked too much. Your powersupply might be underpowered or dieing.

UPS is delivering me 2 new
GIGABYTE|GV-N560UD-1GI GTX560TI which I will run in SLI. It's with a heavy heart that I way wave good bye to AMD with my middle finger held
Click to expand...

At least now when you break your own computer either due to incompetence or negligence, you won't be placing the blame on AMD anymore.
 
I've never had any problems from either camp. I just get the best bang for the buck which usually goes to ATI.

4200Ti -> 6600GT -> 7900GTO -> 8800GTS 512 -> SLI -> 9800GX2 -> GTX 280 -> SLI -> 5870 -> 6990 -> 6990 + 6970
 
I have noticed shit all difference between the drivers since AMD took over.

This thread is fail.
 
<.< I've had a Radeon 9700 Pro, Radeon 3870, Radeon 5770 and now a 6950 over the past several years now. I've also had a Geforce 4 MX and Geforce 8600 GTS. Both have their driver and software issues. I've only made the switch to Radeon fulltime after the 8600 GTS because of costs and personal budget alone, not driver problems.

Catalyst has been stable for me from 9700 Pro to 3870 up to Catalyst 9.5 I believe when I switched to 5770. That I believe is when I first experienced AMD/ATI's Powerplay issues.

Now, I've suffered through gray screens, black screens, enlarged cursors, BSODs, hard freezes, PC resets since Catalyst 10 series.

Those issues disappeared around 10.8 or 10.9. I've went so far to go to AMD forums to find fixes. I eventually came down to this conclusion a year or two ago-- Powerplay is the cause of most of the problems. When the card is switching between three or four different power modes depending on what graphics mode it's in-- 3D, hardware accelerated video, 2D acceleration, and idle/low power-- atikmpag.exe would go into a panic and throw up a random issue.

I ended up editing my BIOS for my previous 5770 and now my 6950 to have the same clocks for all power states. Problem solved.

Oh, this issue also affects Nvidia cards as well. From a friend's testimony, he's seen similar issues in his GTX 260 up to GTX 285. I eventually offered to fix this for him as well by editing the BIOS of his card. The only difference between this and AMD's cards is that it seems to be more prevalent in AMD cards. My only guess is that the drivers are more sensitive or more reactive to power state switching than Nvidia drivers are.

Now the driver issues.

Some driver issues can also be attributed to the game software themselves. I've had random crashes in Final Fantasy XI in Catalyst 10.11, 11.6, 11.7, and 11.8 and 11.8a. I mostly blame the fact that FFXI is still running on a DirectX 8 graphics engine. Other crashes were in EVE Online and another game, but I found that to be driver issues. This happened to me in Catalyst 10.11, and 11.7. The issues fixed themselves on a clean re-install of Windows 7 and WHQL Catalyst 11.8 drivers.

Fast forward to Catalyst 11.9 which I installed yesterday, and I've had no issues with the drivers. No crashes. No blue, black, gray screens. No hard freezes or resets. No enlarged cursors or stuck cursors.

Nada.

YMMV-- your mileage may vary.

However, I can definitely say that the BIOS fix was probably the biggest fix I've done that solved all of my issues.

Why only 5000-series and higher seem to have the most of these problems?

I can only surmise the following:
  • Radeon 9700 Pro is a DirectX 9 card.
  • Radeon 3870 is a DirectX 10 card.
  • Radeon 5770 is a DirectX 11 card.
  • Radeon 6950 is a DirectX 11 card.
That led me to the assumption that DirectX 11 drivers aren't the most stable when it comes to Powerplay is my only best guess. I've had zero issues with the DX10 and DX9 drivers during the Windows XP-to-Vista-to-7 days under the 3870. It wasn't until moving to a DX11 card under Windows 7 that the issues popped up. So, it is very likely that AMD's drivers are at fault during power state switching. You can try the BIOS edit fix which worked for a lot of [H] users.
 
NVIDIA TNT2 ULTRA > RADEON 8500 > some nvidia card i forget > NVIDIA 8600GT > 5770 > CF 5770 > 6790

its all about the bang for the buck for me, half the fun is figuring things out and getting every drip of performance out, thats why were at the [H] right
 
Ironically, I did just the opposite.

Moved from an EVGA Geforce HD 570 to a Sapphire Radeon 6970. Due to the following issues:

1) Noise: Reviews told me that the 6970 was supposed to be louder, however under load the 570 was MUCH louder.

2)Power Consumption

3) 2GB Frame Buffer: While a large frame buffer shouldnt be the ONLY consideration when upgrading GPUs. I felt buyers remorse when spending $300 on a GPU with only 1280mb of VRAM. (Upgraded from a 5850)
 
I can never understand these posts. It's not really a goodbye considering you still own the old ATI card.

At least you upgraded to a 560 Ti, you'll run into endless driver problems if you have a 9 series.
 
Interesting about the noise, you say HD 570, do you mean GTX570HD? Isn't that meant to be the 2.5GB version?
 
And I like others have done the opposite. I went from a gtx 260 to a 6950. And I forgot to make my obligatory "goodbye nVidia" thread! DOH! :eek:
 
glazenuts said:
I've been a ATI fan for many years and have been using raedon cards since the 9800. Since AMD bought ATI the driver quality has gone down significantly. I've been waiting for about 3yrs for them to fix the atikmpag blue screen the some games get. I seens dozens of this issue in forums across the net and AMD ignores it completly and as far as I can tell refues to even to acknowledgment this issue exisit. UPS is delivering me 2 new
GIGABYTE|GV-N560UD-1GI GTX560TI which I will run in SLI. It's with a heavy heart that I way wave good bye to AMD with my middle finger held
Click to expand...

Atikmpag bsod is a windows tdr error which can be caused from everything from motherboard compatibility with the gfx card, to faulty memory sticks or failing PSU. Sometimes changing GPU can fix this, from Nvidia to AMD or from AMD to Nvidia, but both vendors have their variant of this and if you are waiting for drivers to fix it, you will wait long on both. Here you can see other variants of this, including some of the causes:

'Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and was recovered.'

Also seen as:
'Display driver atikmdag stopped responding and was recovered.' (ATI cards)
'Display driver xxxxxxxx stopped responding and was recovered.' (others)

Also noted as nvlddmkm.sys, atikmdag.sys, and xxxxxxxx.sys bug-check/BSOD.

.......

Common issues that can cause a TDR:
- Bad memory
- Insufficient/problematic PSU
- Corrupt driver install
- Overheating
- Unstable overclocks (GPU or CPU)
- Incorrect MB voltages (generally NB/SB)
- Faulty graphics card
- Your asking too much of your graphics card. Not one that many people like to hear, but as the blurb from Microsoft states, if your game falls below a certain FPS and something graphically complex occurs, it could trigger a TDR.
- The issue can potentially be caused by a badly written driver or piece of software, but this is an unlikely cause in most cases.
Click to expand...

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=65161

So, if you are very unlucky, you might have a "goodbye atikmpag" -> "Hello nvlddmkm"... Hopefully it works out, but if you read my link, you get an explaination of what error you have been waiting for drivers to fix and what to do if they reoccur in another form. :)
 
Yea, I'll echo the collective "bwha?" to the statement that the drivers have gotten worse since amd took over.
 
samuelmorris said:
TDRs seem more prevalent on geforces from what I've read...
Click to expand...

I think its the same on both vendors, especially since its often not caused by Geforces or Radeons to begin with.

Some drivers can reveal the issues that the system have and some can mask them better, but if memory or PSU is screwed up, thats what causes it. Here, you can see an issue with nvlddmkm and 280.26 drivers:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=207666

Those drivers have an experimental powerplay (adaptive power usage) which can reveal unstable overclocks, failing components, incompatible components or similar. I moved away from that driver pretty fast, but I didn't have nvlddmkm bsods, since my system is stable.

Chances are that he gets this error with that driver, while other drivers masks the error and the system doesn't bsod. In any case, it would be wrong to say: 280.26 = nvlddmkm bsods, since I and many others doesn't get that error with our system (it crashed my two worlds 2 though, unless I changed from adaptive to prefer maximum power). I bet that the 280.26 reveals an already unstable system, it doesn't cause it to become unstable.

Thats the problem. TDR's are generic errors and often hard to trace.
 
True, but the recent nvidia drivers have made the situation a lot worse for that side.
 
funny how the op uses this site to flame ati instead of asking for help. Looks like he has a few options without even asking for help, which is very indicative of this great community. Good on ya guys :)
 
samuelmorris said:
True, but the recent nvidia drivers have made the situation a lot worse for that side.
Click to expand...

Only worse in the sense that the 28X.XX drivers are good to flush out unstable systems, but bad masking them. Nvidia (ManuelG) explained it that they had too rapid change in their adaptive power option in 280.26 (bad for unstable or barely stable overclocks and bad PSU's), which is more relaxed in the latest 285.38 beta (BF3 driver). I prefer the 275.50 and earlier though when it comes to adaptive power. Hopefully they will return to that in their 300 drivers. :)
 
i went from a 6950 twin frozr II 2gb OC which kept having:
amd drivers crashes
game freezes resulting in closing game through task manager
sometimes not being able to load games at all!
this was for FO: New Vegas
went back to nvidia, gtx 580 carefree gaming! no driver crashes either!
 
Faulty card != bad drivers
(And no excuses, driver crashes are very rarely the driver's fault)
 
chimera996 said:
i went from a 6950 twin frozr II 2gb OC which kept having:
amd drivers crashes
game freezes resulting in closing game through task manager
sometimes not being able to load games at all!
this was for FO: New Vegas
went back to nvidia gtx 580 carefree gaming! new driver crashes either!
Click to expand...

After some crashing with the GTX 580 in the very same game?:

SO I recently bought a GTX 580 from CL, the owner told me he got it from EVGA's RMA. The card has been flawless but recently I get crashes in the game while playing FO: New Vegas.

I actually had an MSI Twin Frozr II 6950 2gb OC and sold it for the same exact reason. The problem with that was I would get constant crashes and AMD driver errors. So I went back to the green side (had a GTX 480 before).

Anyways, can anyone tell me what is wrong/troubleshoot my problems with New Vegas?
I am running 285.27 beta drivers
My system ever since I sold the 6950 has been refreshed (new win7 64bit install on new ssd drive).
Deleted gaming drive and re-downloaded/installed New Vegas on steam.
Also I am running a couple of mods for New Vegas, Darnified UI and Primary Needs HUD.
My rig runs on a 24'' 1920x1080 and I game at the resolution as well settings are on Ultra (x4 AA, 15 AF, Vertical sync off).
Rig:
i7 965E
Asrock x58 Extreme6
12gb DDR3 Vengeance
Patriot Wildfire 120gb SSD
WD Raptor 600gb

Just worried about the game crashing and freezing the entire system (no ctrl-alt-del or alt-f4), so I'd have to reset every time it does this.
Click to expand...
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?high=&m=1252898&mpage=1#1253317
 
lol yea thats me, my antec tpq is slowly shitting the bed.
its ok though, guy i bought it from has helped me with RMA.

im still gaming with a gtx 580. but a 3gb 580 :D
 
chimera996 said:
lol yea thats me, my antec tpq is slowly shitting the bed.
its ok though, guy i bought it from has helped me with RMA.

im still gaming with a gtx 580. but a 3gb 580 :D
Click to expand...

LOL! Happy you figured out the real issue then :) I had a PSU (corsair hx620) that crapped out. Got a lot of GSODs before it just died. Was hard to figure out, since I had used that PSU with a 4870X2 earlier.
 
edit! damn shitty phone. maybe i should spend less money on pc shit and get a decent phone!
 
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I'm running SLI at the moment but pretty sure my next set will be Xfire.
 
wow really ? i update my drivers monthly with amd and never had an issues to my knowledge. Ive always noticed taht nvidia drivers specially with Half Life games though were always darker so they could draw faster and cheat on there fps benchmarks when i used to use nvidia yrs back. I also member teh nvidia FX cards wouldnt and couldnt render Half Life 2 Properly and took them lieks 8-10 revisions only come to find out there cards werent TRUE dx9.0c LULZ.

Waits on HL3.........:D
 
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