Why Do GPU drivers suck? (In General) no flames!

[macboy]

Why do GPU drivers suck? I don't want to turn this into an Nvidia Vs. ATI debate
on who does better, but I think in general both do bad. I'm not even sure if its
their fault and that is my main question. Why do we constantly need new drivers
for new games. I'm very curious on this and I'm not sure why there isn't some kind
of standard that you have to follow when you design a game.

I'm curious at where the issue lies. Is it the people making the game? The windows platform itself it goes on? DirectX? I have never had more problems say driver related more than GPU's. I myself don't ever really have too many issues, but I read forums at fix computers all the time and it just seems ridiculous. I know the amount of people having issues is still a fairly short percentage, but it's a much higher percentage I believe than any other driver out there.

So please inform me on where the issue lies at. Or maybe it literally is just Nvidia's and ATI's fault, I don't know. It just seems to me that when you make a game, you tell things how to work according to some structure that has already been made up and then things start to work. Just like how you code a website using CSS,HTML, etc… it then works when you use the browser of your choice.

So please enlighten me as to why there are so many issues. Also are there any fixes, coding standards for the gaming industry? I'm not sure where the issue lies so I can't be much of help

I just can't believe that we are pretty far in PC development and we still have really basic stupid errors such as these. It seems like all of these could be avoided.

 

[ChristopherB]

Simple case of perception.

The millions of users that don't experience driver issues don't go around posting their positive experiences. Only the whiners get heard amongst the masses.

 

[mesyn191]

Also there are the usual issues of difficulty testing and validating for each and every hardware config. which is pretty much impossible to do.

You have to bear in mind that lots of people overclock both the card and their CPU's too. New drivers will sometimes expose instabilities that they thought weren't there, and people will usually blame the drivers or the video card.

 

[Digital Viper-X-]

Also there are the usual issues of difficulty testing and validating for each and every hardware config. which is pretty much impossible to do.

You have to bear in mind that lots of people overclock both the card and their CPU's too. New drivers will sometimes expose instabilities that they thought weren't there, and people will usually blame the drivers or the video card.

hardware configs are doable, software + hardware combos are not =p working in the QA field will teach u that you can never fully test anything.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

a lot of the problems that people have can be alleviated by

1. buying quality stuff

2. programmers that actually code to the DX standard versus a specific vendor.....I mean really now do you honestly expect ATi to have to "fix" their drivers becuase some greedy ass developer codes specifically for nvidia hardware?

3. actually trying to get older stuff to work in Windows. After a little fiddling I found that I could get an old classic called Take No Prisoners to run under Win Vista and 7 by letting it run as an Admin program so it could properly set the D3D video mode. (you will have to install it on a virtal box XP or lower box and copy the files over though)

 

[cyclone3d]

Why do we constantly need new drivers
for new games. I'm very curious on this and I'm not sure why there isn't some kind
of standard that you have to follow when you design a game.

I'm pretty sure it is probably because some programmers have become either too lazy or run out of time to write proper code.

Drivers shouldn't have to contain what are essentially game specific hacks in order for the games to run properly.

 

[AltTabbins]

I'm actually very curious as to what makes drivers suck. I always hear about how bad both ati and nvidias drivers are but I have never once heard specifics. When I ask people they usually give me blank stares and end up saying that they hear stories from other people or on forums (which takes us back to square one with nobody being specific).

 

[Matrices]

The question is fundamentally flawed. Drivers don't suck. Aside from obvious flaws that are usually patched within days, everything else by way of complaints is generated by only the 1% hardcore who need to OC and tweak every setting to max AA/AF/SLI etc etc. and will find flaws and nitpick. Including me

We're a damn hard bunch to please. Which is why there's been a developer stampede in the direction of the 360/PS3.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

I'm actually very curious as to what makes drivers suck. I always hear about how bad both ati and nvidias drivers are but I have never once heard specifics. When I ask people they usually give me blank stares and end up saying that they hear stories from other people or on forums (which takes us back to square one with nobody being specific).

IDK, the GSOD thread might be a good example. Not being able to force AA with Nvidia WHQL drivers (all of the 196 WHQL drivers) for a couple of months was another good one. Broken fan profiles (the famous 197.xx), do you want me to go on?

 

[AltTabbins]

IDK, the GSOD thread might be a good example. Not being able to force AA with Nvidia WHQL drivers (all of the 196 WHQL drivers) for a couple of months was another good one. Broken fan profiles (the famous 197.xx), do you want me to go on?

The thing is that those things that make drivers so "bad" affect maybe 2% of the people who own the cards. It's like 100000 people buying a truck from ford and 200 people complaining that the hood latch gets stuck and the seats are uncomfortable.... Then those 200 people saying that their trucks are absolute shit even after ford addresses and fixes the issues.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

The thing is that those things that make drivers so "bad" affect maybe 2% of the people who own the cards. It's like 100000 people buying a truck from ford and 200 people complaining that the hood latch gets stuck and the seats are uncomfortable.... Then those 200 people saying that their trucks are absolute shit even after ford addresses and fixes the issues.

Install any 196 whql and tell me that you can force AA. AFAIK that was a universal issue. What about the FO3 stutter that AFAIK effected everyone with a Nvidia card for like 4 months? I won't even talk about the 185 WHQL drivers.

I don't own an ATI card so I can't go into too many detail there but when I did have a 4870 I had some driver issues too. For example I remember my 9800GTX spanking my 4870 in FSX.

Maybe you just play CSS, IDK. Only once every few months do I find a truly stable driver.

 

[kllrnohj]

Why do we constantly need new drivers
for new games. I'm very curious on this and I'm not sure why there isn't some kind
of standard that you have to follow when you design a game.

There are. There are two of them, actually. DirectX and OpenGL - you may have heard of them

The problem is that programmers suck (and I say that as a programmer). We are all complete fucktards who will always do *something* wrong. If a game dev makes an illegal DX/OGL call, it could cause the driver to crash. ATI and Nvidia are forced to skip error checking in the interest of speed. Any programmer will tell you that you are supposed to *always* validate any input your program gets, be it a public API or the user typing something in. ATI and Nvidia simply can't do that because it is far too slow. Throw on some super optimized code that needs to make assumptions about the data to go faster and you have a recipe for disaster.

I'm curious at where the issue lies. Is it the people making the game? The windows platform itself it goes on? DirectX? I have never had more problems say driver related more than GPU's. I myself don't ever really have too many issues, but I read forums at fix computers all the time and it just seems ridiculous. I know the amount of people having issues is still a fairly short percentage, but it's a much higher percentage I believe than any other driver out there.

So please inform me on where the issue lies at. Or maybe it literally is just Nvidia's and ATI's fault, I don't know. It just seems to me that when you make a game, you tell things how to work according to some structure that has already been made up and then things start to work. Just like how you code a website using CSS,HTML, etc… it then works when you use the browser of your choice.

I'd be very surprised if even 1% of game crashes or rendering bugs were the fault of the driver. ATI and Nvidia frequently fix game bugs and such that are due to buggy game code and not buggy drivers.

Obviously some things like the GSOD problems and such are driver issues.

So please enlighten me as to why there are so many issues. Also are there any fixes, coding standards for the gaming industry? I'm not sure where the issue lies so I can't be much of help

I just can't believe that we are pretty far in PC development and we still have really basic stupid errors such as these. It seems like all of these could be avoided.

There aren't that many issues given the ridiculously high complexity and the sheer number of users. Coding standards are almost always ignored, and game developers aren't necessarily smart people or good coders. You'd be shocked how much production code from even major companies is hacked together and disgusting. Us humans *suck* at writing code. Our brain just doesn't think literally like a computer does. Things like slapping your head and proclaiming "I'm such an idiot!" while staring at broken code you wrote is frighteningly frequent.

 

[Rogue71]

The question is fundamentally flawed. Drivers don't suck. Aside from obvious flaws that are usually patched within days, everything else by way of complaints is generated by only the 1% hardcore who need to OC and tweak every setting to max AA/AF/SLI etc etc. and will find flaws and nitpick. Including me

We're a damn hard bunch to please. Which is why there's been a developer stampede in the direction of the 360/PS3.

overheating issues. sleepmode issues. game crash issues.function issues (eyefinity, crossfire) none of these have anything to do with overclocking. i do understand that the small amount of hardcore gamers and benchwhores want to squeeze every clock out of their hardware, but that has nothing to do with stable functional drivers. there are massive amounts of people having problems with ati drivers and their functions. the nvidia failure with the overheating? that affected everyone with those cards, whether you knew it or not. ati failed when they broke a basic function...sleep mode....an utter embarassment.likewise the whole issue of crossfire not working with eyefinity. so while i do understand that oc'ing brings with it the inherent risk of finding flaws, there are many flaws in driver sets lately that should never have been there in the first place.
if you have a function on a card, advertise that it works, then maybe you should make a stable driver version that friggin enables all those features. it used to be that compatibility problems and issues would arise from new hardware and games, but lately its all over the place. its like all the driver programmers suddenly took a brick to the head or something.

the flood of people going to console is simple. people are too damned stupid and lazy to figure out how a computer works for anything more than facebook. consoles are easy. cheap for them to make. easy for them to ramp up the cost to the consumer. piracy is down. but so is the level of gameplay. so programmers dont have to do such a great job to produce mediocre results. most console games are garbage. companies keep expected high profits without investing in real solid game programming. and the consoles themselves are plagued with issues and problems all their own, some of which are ignored by the manufacturers. consoles suck ass. but thats just my opinion.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

nVidia drivers are great and always have been. ATI drivers suck and always have. Who knows why ATI can't get their shit straight when it comes to drivers. nVidia did it right by simplifying things.

lol

that is why ATi had the first intergrated driver set
and gives monthly releases

and actually got their card to market in a timely mannor lol

 

[Matrices]

overheating issues. sleepmode issues. game crash issues.function issues (eyefinity, crossfire) none of these have anything to do with overclocking. i do understand that the small amount of hardcore gamers and benchwhores want to squeeze every clock out of their hardware, but that has nothing to do with stable functional drivers. there are massive amounts of people having problems with ati drivers and their functions. the nvidia failure with the overheating? that affected everyone with those cards, whether you knew it or not. ati failed when they broke a basic function...sleep mode....an utter embarassment.likewise the whole issue of crossfire not working with eyefinity. so while i do understand that oc'ing brings with it the inherent risk of finding flaws, there are many flaws in driver sets lately that should never have been there in the first place.
if you have a function on a card, advertise that it works, then maybe you should make a stable driver version that friggin enables all those features. it used to be that compatibility problems and issues would arise from new hardware and games, but lately its all over the place. its like all the driver programmers suddenly took a brick to the head or something.

the flood of people going to console is simple. people are too damned stupid and lazy to figure out how a computer works for anything more than facebook. consoles are easy. cheap for them to make. easy for them to ramp up the cost to the consumer. piracy is down. but so is the level of gameplay. so programmers dont have to do such a great job to produce mediocre results. most console games are garbage. companies keep expected high profits without investing in real solid game programming. and the consoles themselves are plagued with issues and problems all their own, some of which are ignored by the manufacturers. consoles suck ass. but thats just my opinion.

The examples you offer repudiate your own point.

Crossfire and SLI are issues that concern the 1% of PC gamers who cluster around a few sites like this one.

Even less use Eyefinity.

The Nvidia overheating function only affected people who manually set a fan profile.

 

[Tolyngee]

The thing is that those things that make drivers so "bad" affect maybe 2% of the people who own the cards. It's like 100000 people buying a truck from ford and 200 people complaining that the hood latch gets stuck and the seats are uncomfortable.... Then those 200 people saying that their trucks are absolute shit even after ford addresses and fixes the issues.

But I've had my 5870 for four months now. ATi's supposedly addressed and fixed what's wrong, but the 10.3s made my experience worse.

Games used to be fine, but the desktop could GSOD at any moment for no reason. Now the desktop's almost stable (can last more than a week, anyway...), but you're crossing your fingers for the first five min that you launch a game...

The drivers still do suck...

 

[NoForgiveness]

lol

that is why ATi had the first intergrated driver set
and gives monthly releases

and actually got their card to market in a timely mannor lol

Buddy I've been using video cards for almost 15 years now. I've swapped back and forth between nVidia and ATI and seen their drivers progress over the years. It was always standard fact that ATI just had terrible drivers and nVidia kicked their ass in every way. From what I've seen and from installing and using a 5770 first-hand, these are still the facts. ATI's drivers are shoddy at best. It's not really their drivers I dislike, but their control panel. It's awful. nVidia went sweet n simple on their control panel and it works much better.

 

[lilfiend]

you all say it only affects so many users, but when it comes down to it you paid for something that works and you paid for all of its features, if you cant do anything the card claimed to do then it affects you imo.

 

[Matrices]

But I've had my 5870 for four months now. ATi's supposedly addressed and fixed what's wrong, but the 10.3s made my experience worse.

Games used to be fine, but the desktop could GSOD at any moment for no reason. Now the desktop's almost stable (can last more than a week, anyway...), but you're crossing your fingers for the first five min that you launch a game...

The drivers still do suck...

Have you considered that your video card may simply be defective, or that your PSU perhaps isn't feeding it the correct voltage?

If none of your games are stable, that points to an issue on your end, or maybe ATI drivers with a specific subset of cards they manufactured that are somehow semi-defective. Either way, Christ, RMA that thing. Clearly, if the problem were widespread, the entire ATI user base would be up in arms about games crashing left and right.

 

[kllrnohj]

Buddy I've been using video cards for almost 15 years now. I've swapped back and forth between nVidia and ATI and seen their drivers progress over the years. It was always standard fact that ATI just had terrible drivers and nVidia kicked their ass in every way. From what I've seen and from installing and using a 5770 first-hand, these are still the facts. ATI's drivers are shoddy at best. It's not really their drivers I dislike, but their control panel. It's awful. nVidia went sweet n simple on their control panel and it works much better.

No, just no. ATI's drivers do not suck. Does the CCC UI suck? Yes. Do the drivers suck? Not a fucking chance. ATI's drivers are definitely not shoddy. Nvidia's drivers are definitely not better than ATI's (and vice versa). Both have their share of advantages and disadvantages, and its saying something when an obvious fanboy can only find fault with the UI.

 

[NoForgiveness]

So why are there way more posts about ATI driver problems than practically any other driver set in existence?

 

[kllrnohj]

So why are there way more posts about ATI driver problems than practically any other driver set in existence?

Simple, there aren't. Seriously, go look right now. Both the Nvidia and ATI subforums have about the same number of problem threads in the first couple of pages, with really more complaints on the Nvidia side of things. But no surprise there given Fermi's recent launch.

Why was Nvidia's driver the leading cause of BSODs for a year or two after Vista was released? Hell, for a while there Nvidia was responsible for 30 percent of Vista BSODs (compared to 9 percent for ATI). See page 47 in this PDF: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/library/vistaexhibitsone.pdf

If you want to talk about shitty drivers, Nvidia's Vista launch drivers win that award unchallenged.

 

[NoForgiveness]

Wow you can point to one specific point in history (years ago already) when nVidia had a bad driver package, which wasn't uncommon for Vista anyway. And still I see more posts about ATI driver this, ATI driver that. It seems like for the most part nVidia is the company that you can trust to install your card and drivers and just go without problems or having to pick and choose which driver you use because it may do this or it may not do that. Not saying there's not people with problematic nVidia drivers, just saying there's less of em.

 

[tvdang7]

they are fine for me besides multi-gpu gaming. why cant the performance be 100% effective. What gives? I fail to see how lines of code is limiting the performance and its not scaling any better with time.

 

[kllrnohj]

Wow you can point to one specific point in history (years ago already) when nVidia had a bad driver package, which wasn't uncommon for Vista anyway. And still I see more posts about ATI driver this, ATI driver that. It seems like for the most part nVidia is the company that you can trust to install your card and drivers and just go without problems or having to pick and choose which driver you use because it may do this or it may not do that. Not saying there's not people with problematic nVidia drivers, just saying there's less of em.

And I'm saying you're wrong. There aren't fewer problems on Nvidia's side of the fence. And it wasn't a bad driver package, it was a horrible driver package. That was less than 2 years ago as well. But if you want a recent example, how about the drivers that fried your card? For what its worth, I've had *zero* problems with my 5870 and I had *zero* problems with the 4850 I had before it. I really only had one problem with the 7900GT before that, but it wasn't a driver problem (card died - as did many 7900GTs).

If you are seeing more posts about "ATI driver this, ATI driver that" then its because you are *trying* to see more posts about ATI driver problems and intentionally ignoring the same number of posts about Nvidia problems.

And for what its worth I do believe Nvidia has the worse record of the two as far as breaking previously working features.

 

[kllrnohj]

they are fine for me besides multi-gpu gaming. why cant the performance be 100% effective. What gives? I fail to see how lines of code is limiting the performance and its not scaling any better with time.

Because things like shaders can reference other data. Back in the day when it was all basic polygons and textures multi gpu was easy and simple, and thus scaled great. That doesn't work so well anymore thanks to fully programmable rendering pipelines. Things need to be synchronized, data needs to be shared, etc... There will always be at least some overhead.

That said both CF and SLI get in the 70-80% scaling range on average, which is pretty damn good.

 

[Nauseous]

trying to fix other peoples problems when they are not your own problem is rather difficult. so many other variables to account for and trying to reproduce errors that a few users have is time consuming and tedious to say the least.

 

[ihira]

I don't believe a single person who claimed that the faulty nVidia drivers fried their card.

WIth the ginourmous amount of nVidia card users, there *had* to be some damage done on some users. Sure, the majority survived but there had to be the unlucky ones where the high temp was too much to handle.
Even if the card didn't get killed, its probablt not fun dealing with crashes,freezes and whatnot from overheating which is was caused by nVidias own drivers.

 

[Tolyngee]

Have you considered that your video card may simply be defective, or that your PSU perhaps isn't feeding it the correct voltage?

If none of your games are stable, that points to an issue on your end, or maybe ATI drivers with a specific subset of cards they manufactured that are somehow semi-defective. Either way, Christ, RMA that thing. Clearly, if the problem were widespread, the entire ATI user base would be up in arms about games crashing left and right.

You'd have to read what I've already posted about what I am experiencing.

The most recent game I played was TDU, and I completed it in ~30hrs. It took 'til about 24 hours (that's quite some time!) for any issues to pop up, but when they did, it was hard and heavy. Experienced about six GSOD and one BSOD before the game got going again fine.

It also was suddenly ignoring my fan speed settings. Even if I was putting it at 100%, after a few minutes in the game, the fan speed would drop, and the card would start to overheat... Alt-tab out of the game, the fan immediately jumps back to 100%, and the temps go back down... Go back into the game, within minutes it would appear to again "forget" that my setting was to keep the fan at 100%, and it would drop again...

A simple reboot would fix this fan speed oddity, though. Doesn't explain why it exists, or why the card would allow itself to overheat.

I've also had some other issues with games, none of which existed 'til 10.3s.

Games were fine with 9.11, 9.12, 10.1 and 10.2 for me. But the desktop was unstable. 10.3 flipped the issue around for me.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

Simple, there aren't. Seriously, go look right now. Both the Nvidia and ATI subforums have about the same number of problem threads in the first couple of pages, with really more complaints on the Nvidia side of things. But no surprise there given Fermi's recent launch.

Why was Nvidia's driver the leading cause of BSODs for a year or two after Vista was released? Hell, for a while there Nvidia was responsible for 30 percent of Vista BSODs (compared to 9 percent for ATI). See page 47 in this PDF: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/library/vistaexhibitsone.pdf

If you want to talk about shitty drivers, Nvidia's Vista launch drivers win that award unchallenged.

I can't stand that argument. What was Nvidia's market share compared to ATI at the time?

 

[Savoy]

Nvidias market share is still dominant even with the supposed spanking amd has laid on em in the last 6 months. With how the fanboys talk here about how amd sold 6,000,000,000billion,trillion 5800 series cards and still lost money. (protip:lawsuit money from intel doesn't count,try to profit ob your own thanks). Reason I say this is because I just looked at the steam hadware results last night and I hadn't for about a year. Nvidia still has approx 63% share, even with being over 6 months late. with thermi erm I mean fermi lol.

 

[BravO)))]

Most driver problems are caused by users. Here is the break down.
90% of systems work fine
10% of systems have problems
Of that 10%, 90% of that is user error while 10% of that is actual hardware error.

90% works fine
9% user error
1% hardware error

This is the general rule of thumb for technicians.

 

[Silhouette]

Some of the problems are not caused by the drivers but by application/game bugs.

Driver bugs happen because of (among other things):

1. Complexity. Support X generations of cards in Y system configurations under Z versions of OpenGL and DirectX. The bug only appears when X=1, Y=2, Z=3 and the application tries to do f(1), g(2), h(3), f(3) in a sequence while some other thread accesses a certain piece of data.
2. Time constraints. The hardware is finished in week X, and should be launched shortly after. Do you postpone the launch until after christmas just because the driver team haven't had enough time to fix some known issues?
3. Programming is difficult. Multithreading, synchronization, optimizing without breaking compatibility, team management and coordination. Parts of the drivers are high-level stuff, others are very low-level.
4. User feedback is poor and difficult to sort into what's irrelevant, relevant, important or unimportant. Developers have a hard time determining whether something is a driver bug or wrong use of the API. Just forget about the normal users who complain "I have a computer and my new game doesn't work", they typically couldn't describe a bug even if they see it crawling on the front of their monitor.

I've been relatively happy with both Ati and Nvidia in the driver department lately. Personally, I haven't run into any driver bugs other than a OpenGL texture problem on OS X in my own code (and that was fixed in 10.6) , and the few game problems I've had have also been fixed relatively fast.

 

[Tamlin_WSGF]

Nvidias market share is still dominant even with the supposed spanking amd has laid on em in the last 6 months. With how the fanboys talk here about how amd sold 6,000,000,000billion,trillion 5800 series cards and still lost money. (protip:lawsuit money from intel doesn't count,try to profit ob your own thanks). Reason I say this is because I just looked at the steam hadware results last night and I hadn't for about a year. Nvidia still has approx 63% share, even with being over 6 months late. with thermi erm I mean fermi lol.

On steam, Nvidia's marketshare is primarily the 8XXX and 9XXX series. AMD have earned a lot of money on the 4XXX and 5XXX series. Infact, their GPU division is going great and its their CPU division that drags down the results. (I don't care about Nvidia and ATI's marketshare and earnings, but I thought I'd clarify this for you).
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Buying trend seems to be going towards ATI cards, if to use steam as example.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

Most driver problems are caused by users. Here is the break down.
90% of systems work fine
10% of systems have problems
Of that 10%, 90% of that is user error while 10% of that is actual hardware error.

90% works fine
9% user error
1% hardware error

This is the general rule of thumb for technicians.

This is another bullshit argument. Seriously people, read the fucking release notes that come with every driver. You'll see plenty of universal issues that effect every user.

On steam, Nvidia's marketshare is primarily the 8XXX and 9XXX series. AMD have earned a lot of money on the 4XXX and 5XXX series. Infact, their GPU division is going great and its their CPU division that drags down the results. (I don't care about Nvidia and ATI's marketshare and earnings, but I thought I'd clarify this for you).
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

Buying trend seems to be going towards ATI cards, if to use steam as example.

I was referring to the fact that more crashes were supposedly caused by Nvidia drivers than ATI drivers at the time of Vista's release. If more people are running Nvidia hardware it's kind of obvious that more reported issues are going to involve Nvidia.

On a side note a display driver crash can be caused by things other than the video card or display driver itself.

Driver bugs happen because of (among other things):

1. User feedback is poor and difficult to sort into what's irrelevant, relevant, important or unimportant. Developers have a hard time determining whether something is a driver bug or wrong use of the API. Just forget about the normal users who complain "I have a computer and my new game doesn't work", they typically couldn't describe a bug even if they see it crawling on the front of their monitor.

This is one problem that I have with Nvidia. I don't even know where to go to report driver issues. I had one issue as soon as Windows 7 RTM hit and it was just reported as an unresolved issue in their release notes pretty recently. At least ATI has their own forum.

 

[Krenum]

So why are there way more posts about ATI driver problems than practically any other driver set in existence?

Are you certain there are more posts about Ati Driver driver problems than others? Do you have any factual information to back up your claims? No of course you don't. I can't believe you would actually make a post regarding this matter.Your idiocy astounds me.



On the subject of bad drivers this one tops the cake.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=7551

 

[Tamlin_WSGF]

I was referring to the fact that more crashes were supposedly caused by Nvidia drivers than ATI drivers at the time of Vista's release. If more people are running Nvidia hardware it's kind of obvious that more reported issues are going to involve Nvidia.

On a side note a display driver crash can be caused by things other than the video card or display driver itself.

I was more responding to Savoy's argumentation about the market itself and not related to drivers.

As for drivers, Nvidia puts in the release notes which issues that are not caused by drivers. its an interesting read, since it shows how many programs and games that are released and doesn't work with ANY driver without bugs. Basically, they are released buggy and Nvidia/ATI's driver team tries to fix the bugs in the driver instead of the developers fixing their own bugs. I'd wish ATI would put in the drivers as well which bugs that are actually not caused by the drivers.

Bug reports on Nvidia drivers can be sent in here:
https://surveys.nvidia.com/index.jsp?pi=ad1c492c9d7488731f70e8d4356ba631

And for ATI, here:
http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D27E29B0E3

Edit:
and I agree totally that many "GFX driver errors" actually are not caused by the GFX drivers at all. BSODS and GSODS where you get a return message (and sometimes don't get a message at all) "Display Driver atikmdag / nvlddmkm / nv_disp.dll Stopped Responding" are often caused by other things not related to the drivers, but those errors crash the drivers. Here's an example with fixes:
http://www.repairyourpcnow.com/resources/atikmdag-has-stopped-responding.php?comm_page=2

As you can see, many of those fixes doesn't even involve doing anything with the GFX drivers at all.

 

[ShuttleLuv]

User error most of the time. I honestly have no problems. If I do, it's with a game that is a known buggy pos.

 

[BravO)))]

This is another bullshit argument. Seriously people, read the fucking release notes that come with every driver. You'll see plenty of universal issues that effect every user.

I guess you missed the general rule of thumb part. As a technician, most problems I have encountered were from user error. You would be surprised of the stupidity of some people such as when people ask, "where is the any key?" Most problems that people have are from system compatibility, third party software, viruses, malware, spyware, out of date drivers, missing dll files, etc... These are just a few examples of user error.

 

[Silhouette]

This is one problem that I have with Nvidia. I don't even know where to go to report driver issues. I had one issue as soon as Windows 7 RTM hit and it was just reported as an unresolved issue in their release notes pretty recently. At least ATI has their own forum.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/driverqualityassurance.html ?