Who has better drivers?

mattchapman

mattchapman

Gawd
Joined
Dec 30, 2005
Messages
572
So for me its a toss-up between GTX 560 and 6870/6950.
How about drivers? Is one better than the other?
I've heard some Catalyst issues but I'm sure there are nVidia issues too as the cards are coming out faster than the drivers can be updated.

I have Win 7 64.

thanks
 
i have had very few driver-related issues in my entire history of gpu-owning, and i bounce back and forth between green and red. i'd say you are fine either way. i've never ran a multi-gpu setup so take my issue-free history with drivers FWIW. i'll be running SLI by the end of the week though :)
 
I've run with Nvidia and ATI now, and they both work fine.

Crossfire was my first multi-GPU set up and it worked right out of the box.
 
In my experience with multiGPU. Had ton of problems with 10.X drivers in Crossfire with recent games, while Nvidia it's been smooth as of right now.
 
This question truly has no answer and should not be asked. People can't go about answering or discussing something like this, they just can't handle it.

In my experience owning a 4860 using CCC 10.8 - 10.11, then owning a 6850 and using CCC 10.12 or whatever the most recent one is, I haven't had any issues that couldn't be explained. I hooked two monitors up to my 6850 using DVI and VGA and when I disconnected one I couldn't get an output from my PC. I had to uninstall the 6850 and install something else to access Windows and uninstall the drivers. I think it was because I didn't change the settings before unplugging that. Smooth sailing before and after that.

Owning a 9500GT using 263.99, I had some crashing issues between loading screens, and HL2 would crash to desktop immediately after launching. This happened after I used Driver Cleaner and uninstalled AMD drivers for the 4860, so I don't know why. But I'm fairly certain it was a driver conflict with old AMD drivers or something. nVIDIA tends to have solid drivers from what I've heard.

EDIT: Also, I'm using Vista Ultimate 32 bit.

shawnoen said:
For every 100 happy customers you never hear about, there's always 1 with an issue that makes alot of noise....
Click to expand...

This.
 
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In terms of stability I'd say they're both equal, or at least I've never had significant problems with either company.

In terms of performance, Nvidia. Too many games are broken/bugged/underperforming on ATI cards and it always ends up something like "wait for the new driver for the game to run properly" which is okay once in a while, but it seems to be a more common occurrence these days, at least since the 68xx launch.
 
notagain.jpg


Is the sky blue or not?
 
I think both sides have some quality issues with their drivers that is really disappointing. But for most people I imagine they probably won't even notice most of the issues.

I actually picked up a GTX 580 last week because I was so upset with all the driver issues I had with my ATi 4870 X2 over the last two years.

But after some rational thought, I realized most of the issues were specific to that card and Nvidia isn't perfect either. So I returned the GTX 580 and went with two 6950s because they appear to be a better value.
 
XacTactX said:
This question truly has no answer and should not be asked. People can't go about answering or discussing something like this, they just can't handle it.
Click to expand...

Wisest post I've seen in a while. +1
It's totally variable per-user, so it doesn't have a definitive answer. I primarily use radeons, and I do have minor driver issues, but nothing much to write home about. Performance/compatibility wise things have gone well, it's just quietness that i've had issues with (and the cards are still really quiet anyway, I'm just a silencing enthusiast)
 
I've seen countless post of people trashing ATI drivers, and rehashing bad things other have said. TBH, I have never had any issues with the ATI drivers, and I use crossfire which tends to be a bit more less stable.
 
For every 100 happy customers you never hear about, there's always 1 with an issue that makes alot of noise....
 
shawnoen said:
For every 100 happy customers you never hear about, there's always 1 with an issue that makes alot of noise....
Click to expand...

QFT!

Fortunately:

motivator4920448.jpg


Though some have real issues, drivers have often become a scapegoat for issues that they cannot figure out (be it memory, psu or actually the drivers).

I've had a 5870 which have been very stable (besides the GSODs that was caused by faulty PSU). Now I've just ordered a SB setup, so when migrating old setup, I thought I'd buy a new GPU for fun (tinkering), so I ordered a Gainward 570 Phantom (hopefully its very silent). I have no doubt I'll have a stable experience with the 570 as well. :)
 
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Had nothing but problems with ATI and 2 seperate 5970's, couldn't upgrade past 10.5 or I'd get BSODs, couldn't run more than one graphic intensive app otherwise I'd get BSODs, couldn't use WMC otherwise I'd get BSODs, finally said screw it "side graded" to a GTX580, updated to latest drivers and pretty much all issues are gone, definitely BSODs, some multi-tasking apps don't work as well as I think they should but at least I'm not constantly rebooting, so if ATI can't support their last gen flagship when it was the flagship I can't be bothered to give them any more money until they prove for 2 or 3 generations that they can.
 
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/warning-nvidia-19675-drivers-can-kill-your-graphics-card/7551

I go back and forth between ATI and Nvidia all the time. It all depends on who has the best performing product at the time of my purchase. Research reviews, buy the card that best performs in the application you are looking at for the price. Nvidia/ATI, it's all the same shit. Both are great. Both have issues.

Half the people who experience problems with ATI are the same tards who write all the reviews on newegg.
 
Only minor issues (needing to disable crossfire for some titles, clock speeds occasionally getting stuck) here. No crashes, no BSODs, no real woes with installing the drivers. That said, this only applies to 10.12a [10.11 based] and drivers 10.11 or earlier. 10.12 and its derivation, 11.1a, is a little worrying, as it does indeed have severe bugs for older cards.
 
nvidia drivers are better but their hardware are more likely have bad problems.

ati drivers are not that great but they have better hardware.
 
+1 for this. Geforce 8800s are still dropping like flies. None of the older HD3/HD4 series cards my friends have owned have gone bad yet that I know of.
 
My most recent experiences with cards goes 7950GX2, 8800GT, 4890, 5750, GTX480.

Never had a problem with the 7950

Not a single issue with the 8800GT, probably one of my favorite cards

Various issues with the 4890. Some games just wouldn't run right, certain settings brought up new issues.

5750 had the same issues for the most part, it was short lived for me really.

GTX480 has been just amazing.

I put aside a bunch of games that would crash randomly on my, or freeze etc. Started to piss me off so I jumped back to the nVidia band wagon. After installing the 480 all the crap that used to plag me was gone.

I wiped, reinstalled drivers, re installed Windows, did everything I could to try and get the Radeons working. Some issues would go away while others would pop up.

AMD and nVidia both make a good product, but I attribute all of my woes with games to drivers. The issues were to random to be hardware related.
 
I had some pretty severe issues with Crossfire in the early days with my 4870X2, but with crosfire disabled in the offending titles, not much went wrong, at all. I very rarely have full driver crashes (I've probably had 4 or 5 in two years). Not saying it doesn't happen to most people, but someone who's taken the time to ensure they get proper drivers installed, usually would have relatively minimal issues.
 
I have gone from a 7800GS > X1950Pro > 8800GT > 4870

IMO the Nvidia drivers are better but its not a big enough difference to mean much. Maybe if you where between 2 100% identically performing cards it could matter but like always get the best card for your budget.

The biggest difference for me is the way the drivers handle custom 3d profiles per game. The way Nvidia does it is awesome, trigger profile when you launch the game exe. AMD drivers have you create a new .exe which can be annoying when you want a nice pretty desktop. Other than that i like the way the Nvidia control panel is arranged and works compared to CCC.

But again to reiterate it dont matter enough that it should influence a buying decision.
 
For modern games, i'd say they are both more or less equal. However, if you like to play a lot of older games, I find that I've had a lot less problems with Nvidia cards.
 
Never had any driver problems with AMD before same goes for Nvidia. I guess some people are just lucky with this stuff.
 
Cloud 69 said:
As for installing drivers, nvidia hands down is better. No ads!
Click to expand...

Thinking of it in a glass-half-full way, isn't it more entertaining to look at advertisements for upcoming games rather than a loading bar?

My main problem with those same pictures is that they take unnecessary space on the hard drive for something that shouldn't be required. It's just like movies, you pay for the movie, you get some commercials to go along with it :rolleyes:.
 
Amazingly I've had a great experience with my 6950 and the 10.12a drivers.
The first AMD drivers in a long time I didn't have to reinstall over and over.
If you notice, AMD hasn't released another hot fix for the 10.12a driver because they are pretty decent.

I used to get hard sutter/freezing with Nvidia cards in F1 2010 and that went away when I switched over to AMD.
When AMD drivers matches the quality of their hardware at certain times, it's a beautiful thing.

The ATI 5800 series was a nightmare for me, hopefully AMD has learned their lesson and develop good drivers the first time.
Too many hotfixes last year.
 
For me it's the same lol, I never had problems with either. I must be one lucky cat.
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
QFT!

Fortunately:

(image snipped for length of quote :p)

Though some have real issues, drivers have often become a scapegoat for issues that they cannot figure out (be it memory, psu or actually the drivers).

I've had a 5870 which have been very stable (besides the GSODs that was caused by faulty PSU). Now I've just ordered a SB setup, so when migrating old setup, I thought I'd buy a new GPU for fun (tinkering), so I ordered a Gainward 570 Phantom (hopefully its very silent). I have no doubt I'll have a stable experience with the 570 as well. :)
Click to expand...

hehe, nice image :)

I've used both and they seem to trade wins every new driver release :p. The only bad thing about ati is folding and the few games that tend to favor nVidia cards (like Dirt 2) :/
 
Right now nvidia clearly has better drivers. Something has really fallen apart at AMD the past several months.
 
They both suck, it's cyclical. If one is on top now and you buy them you can be guaranteed they'll be horrible in a handful of months and you'll be kicking yourself.

In other words, forget about drivers and buy the product that best fits your performance and budgetary requirements.
 
They both work and they both have updates that you go WTF?? too from time to time. I prefer NV just because I find their interfaces easier to deal with than ATi.
 
They both have their ups and downs and sometimes (moreso for ATI in my experience) it can matter which actual card u have.

As far as ease-of-use and general layout, I've always found nvidia to be much more user friendly and straight forward.
 
Both ATI and NVIDIA their drivers are sucks big time this year with new hardwares, They shouldn't never release new hardware with bad driver in first place plus very poor QA teams and didn't test on some popular games.

I just sold 450 GTS SLI a week ago, now use 275 GTX temporary.
 
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