ATI/AMD driver stability

C

cvmocanu

n00b
Joined
Aug 12, 2008
Messages
3
Hi all,

I want to buy a new computer soon and I am a little undecided on the video card. I have a budget of 2000-2500 EUR so I want top notch.

The thing is I will probably keep this system for 2-3 years so stability is the most important thing for me.

The way I see it I can choose between a NVIDIA GTX 280 and the newly released AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2.

The AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 seems a better solution, but...

I and all the friends I know have had problems with ATI drivers (before ATI was taken over by AMD). Constant blue screen, games not working at all and so on.
Probably a hardware problem with that particular card... but still.

My question is: is this still the case?
Are NVIDIA drivers better that ATI's ?
Or they are mostly the same?

One more thing. Has the driver situation on linux changed or NVIDIA is still the king?


Thank you for your time.
 
People seems to have the same amount of problems with either company's drivers. I'd say they're comparable.
 
I've had both company's GPUs.
I admit that lately nvidia has been releasing driver sets like crazy, mostly because they have released a bunch of new products, and they tend to update the driver sets very quickly when a new game is released.
I never had a problem with their drivers at all.....some were better than others as far a FPS in games, but still solid sets......now add in Physx support at the same time....wow.

Currently I have Crossfire and am waiting on the arrival of my shiny new 4870 X2:D.
I have had no problems at all with my ATI driver sets either. ATI just seems to be content with releases once a month and the occassional "hot fix" if there is an emergency.

I don't think you can go wrong either way.

Pay your money and take your chance.
 
I've never had any real problems with my ATI cards. I had a X1950Pro for a year, now I have an HD3850.. no problems with either drivers.
 
When I had my 8800GT, Nvidia released a grand total of one driver for it, over the course of like 6-8 months. The recent flood of Nvidia drivers is, as you say, only a result of them releasing new products.

ATI always releases one new, official, WHQL'd driver every month.

Can't say I've had any real problems with either driver. ATI's control panel is a little bloated and annoying and it sometimes "forgets" AA settings and such, but I've had similar problems with Nvidia's drivers.

4870X2 is the more future proof of the cards.. Dual-GPU optimizations will only make the card faster over time in a large number of games.. With the GTX280, I doubt they can squeeze that much more performance out of it with new drivers.
 
I never had a problem with either company's drivers, until recently I bought a 4850 and vsync was broken. I don't know if it's fixed yet, I returned the card and am back using my 8800GT.
 
I'd agree completely. I've used drivers from ATI and Nvidia for many years now. Rarely have I had a problem with either one... But they've both messed up about the same amount.
 
i switched from nvidia to ati and i think ati has bad drivers there are simply too many problem example one being alt+tab from warcraft 3 ft to desktop takes 1-2secs (both on same rez + no aa/af or vsync and same refreshrate) and if voice chat is going on alt+tab makes the voice hang+repeat if anyone can help me solve this problem ill be thankful

while it was instant on nvidia
 
ATI drivers are very good.
I really like the monthly drivers release.
 
six on one hand, half dozen on the other. with the curent generation of cards I would go with the ATI cards. Dual GPU are coming of age. But I expect Nvidias next dual GPU to do the same
 
Well, occasionally (well before at least they happened at an interval of about 1 month) windows BSODs with my ATI cards due to driver malfunction (or so the bsod says), which doesn't happen my two nvidia cards... And also I don't know if my 2900xt is an erroneous part (will be replaced by a 4870x2 ASAP) but I can't get it to run cnc:g:zh, which is a great RTS. My laptop with a x1600 used to BSOD before like described, but not anymore... Nvidia's drivers have been problematic at times with a notable bug ruining the gaming experience in STALKER, which was later fixed. So essentially I think drivers have improved quite a bit for ATI over the past few years.
 
I made a completely smooth transition from nvidia (7950GT) to ATI (4850). I haven't had any driver issues (just uninstalled the nvidia drivers, rebooted, installed ati drivers, rebooted, done :) )
 
recently I bought a 4850 and vsync was broken
Click to expand...

You mean Vsync was broken *on your system*. Vsync works fine here, I can enable and disable it at will using the slider in the control panel.

Well, occasionally (well before at least they happened at an interval of about 1 month) windows BSODs with my ATI cards due to driver malfunction (or so the bsod says), which doesn't happen my two nvidia cards.
Click to expand...

Don't always believe what the BSOD sais. Even though it points to the ATI driver, it could be something else, or a hardware problem. I haven't yet seen a BSOD since I bougt my 4850 in early july.

Rarely have I had a problem with either one... But they've both messed up about the same amount.
Click to expand...

Agreed, both ATI and Nvidia mess up at some point. At least with ATIs schedule of monthly driver updates, it's more likely that it will be fixed. What if I had some driver problem with the November 07 driver for my 8800GT? I would've had to wait until may 08 driver or something for the fix to arrive because there were no new drivers between those.
 
I've owned both cards and both ATI and NVIDIA had their share of troubles. Games crashing, blue screens of death and graphical glitches in some areas.
 
I've had more Nvidia driver issues in the past 5 years then I've had ATi driver issues. In the end though I'd still go with whatever card I wanted, none of the problems have been major.
 
i can't play forged alliance right now using vista64 and its defently a driver issue as it just wont render anything:p, also have some call of duty problems, but im using a 3870 dunno if its specific to that card or something else wrong you never know
 
As far as drivers go I can't say that any company's is more stable than those of any other. Companies tend to make sure their products are working properly at a bare minimum. BSODs and such aren't usually the fault of any particular driver release. Nvidia has introduced a glut of new drivers recently, but they dropped the ball for quite a while during the 8000 series. AMD seems much more reliable in that respect, because you can expect a driver every month that's official, and all releases have worked reliably at a bare minimum, but it's not to say that you can expect gains of 2-3% every time. Bottom line is, drivers on either side are all reliable, and AMD has a more reliable driver schedule, where Nvidia doesn't even have one.
 
JimmiG said:
You mean Vsync was broken *on your system*. Vsync works fine here, I can enable and disable it at will using the slider in the control panel.
Click to expand...

Not just MY system, other have experienced it and several other CCC bugs in which settings are not retained or implemented.


As far as people touting monthly releases as a positive, I believe it to be irrelevant since the driver quality is more important than quantity.
 
JimmiG said:
Don't always believe what the BSOD sais. Even though it points to the ATI driver, it could be something else, or a hardware problem. I haven't yet seen a BSOD since I bougt my 4850 in early july.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I was getting frequent BSODs when playing GRID that blamed the ATI driver. Turns out it was the no-cd patch (i bought the game - just don't like disk hunting when I want to play). Same exe worked on a friends comp just fine (he also bought the game). Replacing the exe with the original and busting out the disk fixed the BSODs and crashes.

vick1000 said:
As far as people touting monthly releases as a positive, I believe it to be irrelevant since the driver quality is more important than quantity.
Click to expand...

That assumes that one is of higher quality than the other, which I dispute. My friends 9600GT (RMA'd like 3 times) has been having frequent crashes, graphical glitches, and driver hangs in just about every game he's tried. My other friend has a 7950GT, with some driver options reverting back as soon as he sets them (specifically, LCD scaling setting changes won't take effect) - settings that worked just fine on my comp when it was still my 7950GT. On the other hand, there haven't been any issue my 4850 or on another friends X1950Pro. Since neither side is perfect, monthly releases ARE a positive, as it means fixes *and* optimizations can come once a month. It sucks that there need to be fixes and optimizations, but that plagues both sides.
 
i haven't had a problem with ATI or Nvidia drivers. the only thing that was kinda scary was not having good Nvidia drivers for Vista.

 
I have found that the 1st few drivers on newly released ATI cards have been unstable for me...
Catalyst 7.12-8.1 BSOD for my HD3870 and Cat 8.6 needed an emergency hotfix for HD4850 that AMD provided.
 
through all my years of owning ATI cards till now, their drivers have improved BUT i still choose Nvidia's drivers because they are just less bloated & easier to deal with
 
The Nvidia control panel is kind of ugly, but it's indeed faster than ATI's CCC. You can always use ATT if you don't want to launch CCC only to change some small setting, though.
 
They are even its just ATI has monthly driver launches while Nvidia doesnt.
I say this is what Makes ATIs drivers better as the quality between the two is even its just ATi has a steady quantity
 
cvmocanu said:
The AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 seems a better solution, but...

I and all the friends I know have had problems with ATI drivers (before ATI was taken over by AMD). Constant blue screen, games not working at all and so on.
Probably a hardware problem with that particular card... but still.

My question is: is this still the case?
Are NVIDIA drivers better that ATI's ?
Or they are mostly the same?

Thank you for your time.
Click to expand...

If it eases your mind at all, club overclockers said this about the 4870 x2 launch drivers.

When it comes to the drivers, as of right now, they are the best launch drivers I have seen. The Crysis test scores are a testament to that. Where it will matter is down the road, as new games come out. If AMD can keep the performance up in the drivers, then this card will definitely be a winner.
Click to expand...
Source Link

Also, I've never had a problem with the ATI drivers causing crashing or anything like you mentioned. And I've had an ati card in my machines for 5+ years now.

Hope that helps! :)
 
Thank you guys, I've decided to buy a 4870 x2.
I can hardly wait to get my hands on it...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top