My personal AMD v. Nvidia thoughts

[runs2far]

Funny thing is as much as we bash nVidia or AMD drivers, Intel is still the biggest graphics card manufacturer in the world and their driver are a true nightmare.

 

[dcds1]

I love the way my nVidia cards just work with no hiccups over the years. Never had to google how to make certain games work or which driver to roll back to to make sure something didn't crash.

The last Nvidia cards I owned were 8800GTX in SLI on a ASUS A8N32SLI Deluxe motherboard. I loved that setup till the game Witcher came out. Then I learned what hell was. After 6mo of the game still not working properly I finally sold those cards and bought my first ATI card. I truely don't know if they ever did fix the problem of the screen going all white or all black if you drank a potion.

Right now both my daughters and my computer are running HD5850 graphic cards. We are just running single cards with triple monitor eyefinity setups. I did have a crossfire setup till my DFI LanParty Jr. 790GX-M3H5 motherboard died. After I recieved the RMA back I ended up selling the whole computer. But I have had zero issues with the setup. Every feature they have added to CCC has worked with no problems. I would have to say AMD has even made setting up Eyefinity alot easier and straight foward now.

 

[Sodapopjones]

I think it's more of case of people who don't know how to install a graphics card driver or properly run their PC look for something else to blame besides their own incompetence. Since ATI/AMD had driver issues a decade ago, it will be brought up again and again because people can't honestly assess their (lack of) ability. For the record, I've probably put together over 100 computers in the last ten years and out of 50+ video cards from both sides I've had three driver issues that needed more than an uninstall and reinstall to fix. If we're keeping a tally, two were NVIDIA and one was ATI.

I ran a 4830, no problems with that, built a pc with a 5770 for a buddy at work, no problems with it, ran a 7950 had no driver problems with it, ran a 7850 and suddenly it was black screen city, full install of windows etc.

It has nothing to do with competence, it has everything to do with the 78xx series...

 

[kevineugenius]

True story: I was starting to feel dumb because I thought Nvidia's software had dealt me a negative blow as sometimes my taskbar was only on the center screen and after new drivers, it was across all three screens. I only did a driver update at the behest of the Guild Wars 2 launcher. So, I was dreading coming here and being like "well dang, I was wrong, everything has problems and sucks equally." Nope, I was not wrong. There's a checkbox to enable/disable that feature and I even discovered ANOTHER feature I wished my Eyefinity setup had but I don't think it did while I was looking for that one. So, 2 more points to Nvidia, AMD loses no points because I truly can't go back into CCC and search through their crap interface looking for the two features to see if they match up. Oh, this looks familiar... no bias, no poo-flinging, just a props to Nvidia for adding things I wanted even if it did take me an extra menu click to find those features.

Elsewise, this thread is somewhat hilarious and I do ... kinda... regret starting it.

 

[Hagrid]

I ran a 4830, no problems with that, built a pc with a 5770 for a buddy at work, no problems with it, ran a 7950 had no driver problems with it, ran a 7850 and suddenly it was black screen city, full install of windows etc.

It has nothing to do with competence, it has everything to do with the 78xx series...

So, it means they are all bad? or the one you got was bad, or something else went wrong?
Yeah, its all the 78xx cards.....

 

[Mr. K6]

So, it means they are all bad? or the one you got was bad, or something else went wrong?
Yeah, its all the 78xx cards.....

Exactly my point. And no one knows because they throw up their hands and say "OMG AMD DRIVERS WTF LOLZ" and come bitch on here instead of trying to figure out the problem. Stupidity will be the end of the PC long before any one company. Quote me on it.

True story: I was starting to feel dumb because I thought Nvidia's software had dealt me a negative blow as sometimes my taskbar was only on the center screen and after new drivers, it was across all three screens. I only did a driver update at the behest of the Guild Wars 2 launcher. So, I was dreading coming here and being like "well dang, I was wrong, everything has problems and sucks equally." Nope, I was not wrong. There's a checkbox to enable/disable that feature and I even discovered ANOTHER feature I wished my Eyefinity setup had but I don't think it did while I was looking for that one. So, 2 more points to Nvidia, AMD loses no points because I truly can't go back into CCC and search through their crap interface looking for the two features to see if they match up. Oh, this looks familiar... no bias, no poo-flinging, just a props to Nvidia for adding things I wanted even if it did take me an extra menu click to find those features.

Elsewise, this thread is somewhat hilarious and I do ... kinda... regret starting it.

If this had been your first post instead of all that whining, people might have taken this thread more seriously. It's one thing to post and say "hey guys, just got a GTX 670 running my triple monitor set-up. I didn't know NVIDIA had XYZ feature(s) and after switching over, I'm impressed!" I appreciate reports on personal experiences as I'm sure others do, just not when they're all hyperbole and complaining with little substance.

 

[DopplerEffect]

Single card is almost always better than a multi-card setup.

Completely agree.

 

[psyside]

I would gladly have "lower quality drivers" then shitty vrm design - build quality, with drivers is often user error/conflicts which could be fixed, but you cant fix inferior vrm.

 

[Ryun]

Do you guys spend a lot of time in the AMD CCC or the nVidia control panel or something?

Both packages have problems with being non-user intuitive for one reason or another. I change a couple of things here and there after I install them initially (and on driver updates), but for the most part leave things at the default. My opinion on either driver is that they're pretty much the same.

That being said, I've never tried a multi-GPU setup... and from all the horror stories I've read, would never want to deal with the hassle.

Oh, and what I find REALLY weird is the people who say "I always have problem with AMD and never with nVidia" and vice versa apparently continually have problems with that brand. Like their systems hold some sort of grudge.

I've just never had that happen to me. Guess I'm lucky...

 

[chimera991]

i been hearing that since the 2xxx series, lol.

Been hearing that too, so basically it means once AMD comes out with a new gen, fuck the older models.

Isn't it more telling when majority of pc users/builder prefer nvidia cars, every time I open a PC gaming/building/enthusiast magazine they always have an Intel cpu and a top of the line nvidia gpu for prebuilt rigs, and for the most part their (magazine) test rigs run an nvidia gpu.

 

[HardOnForMe]

True. It's a little known fact that the 7000 series makes the CCC morph into total awesomeness!

How so?

 

[wonderfield]

He was being facetious.

 

[Cool Vibrations]

that ANALogy sucks

What's wrong with it? He's pretty much spot-on, especially with each vendor's price history.

 

[NukeDukem]

Never had any driver problems with my CFX 7970's, trifire 6990+6950, or CFX 5850's. SLI GTX 260's gave me nothing but problems.

My conclusion is that nVidia sucks, and AMD is awesome! Maybe I'll start a thread about it!