Now I remember why I love Nvidia

M

MassiveOverkill

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 8, 2005
Messages
1,748
Flamesuit on. OK, sold my SLI'd GTX 275s while they still had some value and got an Asus 5850 CU, not as powerful, but runs cooler, consumes less power, and performs pretty damn good for a single card.

Nvidia's drivers have been sucking lately, I remember ATI's drivers sucking as well, but I have to say............as far as the king of sucky drivers................ATI beats out Nvidia hands down. At least with Nvidia I could uninstall drivers without going through some AOL-like registry crusade.

I wonder if someone has counted and compared the number of Nvidia registry entries vs ATI Catalyst.
 
The 5000 series are a well rounded solution for todays average PC gamer or budget conscious enthusiast.

I've owned different flavors of the DX11 products available from both camps and I have considered the ATI cards to be the best buy for 2010, the year I bought my first ATI hardware and the first time in 10 years since I haven't had an nvidia gpu inside my main rig.

I've had no issues with drivers from either side. Once in a while I have had to change to a different driver because of scaling or 2d/3d clocks.. but fixing minor driver issues was always easily accomplished
 
I have had equal problems uninstalling Nvidia and ATI drivers. I've had to registry hunt for nvidia entries as well. Perhaps you are not using a driver sweeping program when you should.
 
MassiveOverkill said:
Flamesuit on. OK, sold my SLI'd GTX 275s while they still had some value and got an Asus 5850 CU, not as powerful, but runs cooler, consumes less power, and performs pretty damn good for a single card.

Nvidia's drivers have been sucking lately, I remember ATI's drivers sucking as well, but I have to say............as far as the king of sucky drivers................ATI beats out Nvidia hands down. At least with Nvidia I could uninstall drivers without going through some AOL-like registry crusade.

I wonder if someone has counted and compared the number of Nvidia registry entries vs ATI Catalyst.
Click to expand...

What? I ended up reformatting to get rid of nvidia drivers. (granted, took the quick way out, was still annoying)
 
I will say this though, in my experience, nvidia drivers are much more forgiving than ati drivers when it comes to driver-over-driver lazy or dirty installations.
 
lol?

I install 257 then try to revert back by installing 197 on top of it..

guess what? Freeze right away..
 
shevanel said:
I will say this though, in my experience, nvidia drivers are much more forgiving than ati drivers when it comes to driver-over-driver lazy or dirty installations.
Click to expand...

I've never had any issues with either when I installed on top of the old. I've been doing that since the 9700 Pro days without any issue.

It was a *bitch* to uninstall Nvidia's drivers when I switched from a 7950GT to a 4850. It was almost like they tried to make it as hard and painful as possible to remove the bloody thing. When my friend switched from an x1600 to my old 7950GT, ATI's drivers uninstalled without any problems whatsoever.
 
DaFox said:
Both drivers are horrible.
Click to expand...

+1

Each company has issues. They're both a pain in the ass to remove.

I will say that I prefer AMD due to the fact that I've had no problem installing new drivers atop the old ones. With Nvidia, I usually had some isolated issue which meant I ended up having to boot into safemode and run driver cleaner.
 
nVidia used to have decent drivers... but [i think] they're on the same level now :) , trading blows for the who's suckier award :D
 
MassiveOverkill said:
At least with Nvidia I could uninstall drivers without going through some AOL-like registry crusade.

I wonder if someone has counted and compared the number of Nvidia registry entries vs ATI Catalyst.
Click to expand...
Are you kidding?

ATI gives you driver only downloads which you can install and uninstall completely in device manager. All you need is ATT.

Nvidia drivers though will load all sorts crap and then fails to uninstall completely. It so bad that I create a restore point before I install my 8800 GTS 512 for a physx title.
 
Last edited:
shevanel said:
I will say this though, in my experience, nvidia drivers are much more forgiving than ati drivers when it comes to driver-over-driver lazy or dirty installations.
Click to expand...
Nvidia even now recommends just installing the new driver right on top of the previous one.


http://www.nvidia.com/object/drivers_faq.html
Q: Do I need to uninstall my older driver first?
A: No. It used to be the case that an uninstall was first required. Today the recommended method is to overinstall the newer driver on top of your older driver. This will allow you to maintain any current NVIDIA Control Panel settings or profiles.
 
Last edited:
It's gotten better but uninstalling graphics drivers is still too much of a hassle.

For the record, between the two, I've had more problems with ATI drivers in the past (not the uninstalling but just random bs)

Nowadays, it seems this procedure is pretty fool proof:

1. Uninstall completely via add/remove programs, then reboot
2. enter safe mode, run driver sweeper, reboot
3. install new drivers, reboot
done.

I still wish we just had a simple "update" button. Seriously.

For the average user, this is all still kinda a pain in the ass.
 
I'm lovin my Ati Radeon 5650 1gb mobile chip. Running in my acer it runs crysis on high at 1920x1200. its slightly faster than my old desktop 9800gt 1gb but uses a bunch less power and runs cooler.. mobile after all. :D As for drivers... yea its never fun going from a Nvidia to Ati or Ati to Nvidia card... might as well reinstall windows because its going to get bumpy..
 
Everyone has problems. GPUs are very complex, just look at Intel and larrabee.
 
One thing MAJORLY better over ati cards: NO MORE GOD DAMN DX10 problems with my HDTV. Often times in dx10/11 games the screen would go into 1080i or in some games it'd alt tab out and in and it change from p to i and i'd have to reset the res. This has not happened once.
 
qb4ever said:
I'm lovin my Ati Radeon 5650 1gb mobile chip. Running in my acer it runs crysis on high at 1920x1200. its slightly faster than my old desktop 9800gt 1gb but uses a bunch less power and runs cooler.. mobile after all. :D As for drivers... yea its never fun going from a Nvidia to Ati or Ati to Nvidia card... might as well reinstall windows because its going to get bumpy..
Click to expand...
Crysis on high settings at 1920x1200 with a 5650 mobile? yeah right. that thing is a bit slower than a desktop 5670 and even that cant smoothly play Crysis on high at 1920x1200.

according to this a 5650 mobile gets less than 30fps on high settings at just 1024x768. and thats the 600mhz version which is almost the fastest model with 650 being the fastest. http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5650-Graphics-Card-Review.24035.0.html
 
Personally, in about 11 years I've never had a single issue with NV drivers, not one - I even ran the driver that so called 'cooked cards', didn't have a single issue with the temperatures of my two overclocked 275's at all.

I can't say the experience was the same for the 2400XT that I tried to run in my HTPC, was modifying registry entries trying to get it to work, as instructed on AVS forums, coulden't get the damn thing to render a 1080p Bluray to save itself, was a damn slideshow....1080i was fine, but 1080p was a mess....

Took it back the next day and fitted a 9600GT in the machine, everything was sweet and worked perfectly straight out of the box.
 
Both drivers suck. Right now NVIDIA really needs to fix that issue with Media Classic Player where videos don't even play properly, DX10 games crashing and video glitches in some games. And the last time I used an ATI card, the computer would lock up when I opened GPU-Z.
 
John Vuong said:
Both drivers suck. Right now NVIDIA really needs to fix that issue with Media Classic Player where videos don't even play properly, DX10 games crashing and video glitches in some games. And the last time I used an ATI card, the computer would lock up when I opened GPU-Z.
Click to expand...

After an entire day watching downloaded MKV's, DVD iso's, and a BluRay image in Media Player Classic, I'd like to know what issue NV's latest driver is having with MCP.

Is there a specific codec on your computer that is not working?
 
Some videos in MCP with NVIDIA's drivers, especially with the 197 was just awful, most videos experienced a lag or caused a driver recovery error. The latest BETA drivers are slightly better, MKV files play fine but some AVI files still lag, play way to fast and the sound is out of sync or some videos have a blank screen.
 
Interesting thread as I've just recently sold my 5870 to go back to a 480 because I was so unimpressed with the ATI driver options and flaws. I admit I've been a long time nVidia user but would hardly call myself a fanboy in any sense of the term, seeing I would happily switch to any company that provides the hardware that I feel best suits my needs at the time.

I was willing to give ATI a shot because I was impressed with the raw performance, low heat, power usage and price but I was dismayed to find the application profile settings did not work in the majority of games and the vsync setting seemed to be totally broken. It may be silly trading in the card for a seemingly insignificant caveat since there's probably a dozen free 3rd-party apps that can over-ride most required settings but it is one which was the deal breaker that made me swing back to green team. It's a bonus that I'll also get PhysX (even if it is a doomed engine) and cuda regardless of the high temps, power usage and extra cost. I guess it's partly a familiarity thing too. That MPC issue with the nVidia drivers is definitely a pain in the ass!
 
man a lot of you weenies sound like this

"in my experience [insert company name here]'s drivers suck ass......"

lol I have never had a driver just decide to not to hardware accellerate video in power dvd all by it's self like the nvidia drivers did every so often on my vostro 1400 lol requiring a reinstall to fix the issue.....not a deal breaker for me but seeing their new hardware that can only keep up with ATi's 6+moth old stuff is.....

in all honesty neither driver set gives me much trouble I find with ATi drivers some older games require admin rights to be able to properly set the d3d mode.....
 
flu!d said:
Personally, in about 11 years I've never had a single issue with NV drivers, not one - I even ran the driver that so called 'cooked cards', didn't have a single issue with the temperatures of my two overclocked 275's at all.

I can't say the experience was the same for the 2400XT that I tried to run in my HTPC, was modifying registry entries trying to get it to work, as instructed on AVS forums, coulden't get the damn thing to render a 1080p Bluray to save itself, was a damn slideshow....1080i was fine, but 1080p was a mess....

Took it back the next day and fitted a 9600GT in the machine, everything was sweet and worked perfectly straight out of the box.
Click to expand...

thats because the HD series are the only ones that supported hardware accel.. the 2400XT didnt.. should of saved the 20 bucks and gone with the HD2400 pro and it would of been fine :p though a cheap ass low end HD3k series card would of done just as good..
 
OK, maybe it's not ATI that sucks so bad, but Asus. Just uninstalled Smart Doctor and things seem to be working OK now. I'll have to find a way to up my voltage without Smart Doctor.
 
John Vuong said:
Some videos in MCP with NVIDIA's drivers, especially with the 197 was just awful, most videos experienced a lag or caused a driver recovery error. The latest BETA drivers are slightly better, MKV files play fine but some AVI files still lag, play way to fast and the sound is out of sync or some videos have a blank screen.
Click to expand...

Funny, never had a problem with MPC-HC and nvidia. Might be something else?
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
Use MSI Afterburner. That program is a gem! :)
Click to expand...

It won't allow me to adjust my GPU voltage (which the Asus 5850CU BIOS allows). That's why I didn't try it in the first place. I DL'd it now and confirmed that it won't allow me to adjust GPU voltage. I'd rather not flash BIOS to force a specific voltage either.

I wonder if Riva Tuner will allow me to do it (I know RT is more Nvidia-oriented).
 
MassiveOverkill said:
It won't allow me to adjust my GPU voltage (which the Asus 5850CU BIOS allows). That's why I didn't try it in the first place. I DL'd it now and confirmed that it won't allow me to adjust GPU voltage. I'd rather not flash BIOS to force a specific voltage either.

I wonder if Riva Tuner will allow me to do it (I know RT is more Nvidia-oriented).
Click to expand...

Go into the settings and select unlock voltage. :) Should work. Here's a .ini edit that works with someones Asus 5850:
http://www.overclock.net/ati-driver...-afterburner-unlock-voltages-asus-5870-a.html
 
"uninstall drivers without going through some AOL-like registry crusade"

ATI has a install manager lets you uninstall everything in one click.
if you want to flame, at least pick something with some IQ in it.

"ATI drivers suck" crusade have been proved to be user intelligence related.
 
Funny, I have both NVIDIA and ATI drivers on my main rig at the same time and I have no issues.

I hope I continue to be so lucky.
 
MassiveOverkill said:
It won't allow me to adjust my GPU voltage (which the Asus 5850CU BIOS allows). That's why I didn't try it in the first place. I DL'd it now and confirmed that it won't allow me to adjust GPU voltage. I'd rather not flash BIOS to force a specific voltage either.

I wonder if Riva Tuner will allow me to do it (I know RT is more Nvidia-oriented).
Click to expand...

I have the same Asus 5850CU, and I checked with Unwinder, the AB creator, on the Guru3D forum:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=305908&page=2

Check out post #44 to see what you need to do. I added the line Unwinder posted to the config folder and I have voltage control. The only caveat is that voltage shows up as +1, +2, etc from the reference voltage of the card rather than as an actual voltage reading. You can read the rest of that thread to see what I mean. Also, the voltage can only be increased to 1.281v.....but it does work!
 
SicKlown42012 said:
+1

Each company has issues. They're both a pain in the ass to remove.

I will say that I prefer AMD due to the fact that I've had no problem installing new drivers atop the old ones. With Nvidia, I usually had some isolated issue which meant I ended up having to boot into safemode and run driver cleaner.
Click to expand...

this. the other I will give is this: Nvidia usually denies bugs, ATI at least goes "sorry about that"

on the other hand Nvidia doesn't take half as long to get drivers updated for new games as ATI does
 
mr_zen256 said:
the vsync setting seemed to be totally broken.
Click to expand...

You, like many others here, seem to have missed that it was listed under "OpenGL Settings". As in, it wasn't broken, you just didn't read what the setting did.

D3DOverrider lets you set vsync and triple buffering on the few games that don't have the option just fine.

Not having per-game application profiles that were automatic used to be an issue for me when I first switched from a 7950GT to a 4850, but most games nowadays let you specify AA and AF anyway, so I don't really have any use for per-game profiles.
 
I got lazy over the years with nvidia drivers and was over-installing new drivers for the last year or so. Switched to ati and did the same for a while until the avp bench came out, performance almost doubled with a simple driver sweep'n're-install. Some people swear blind that they only have to do this with nvidia drivers, so (assuming honesty!) its likely just setup-dependent.

^ I thort i'd miss those profiles too but haven't.
 
We all complain about driver support but think back 15 years ago and you'll never think that again. Driver support for 3D video cards and even 2D in the beginning was truly god awful.

I think both companies do an excellent job.
 
cannondale06 said:
Crysis on high settings at 1920x1200 with a 5650 mobile? yeah right. that thing is a bit slower than a desktop 5670 and even that cant smoothly play Crysis on high at 1920x1200.

according to this a 5650 mobile gets less than 30fps on high settings at just 1024x768. and thats the 600mhz version which is almost the fastest model with 650 being the fastest. http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5650-Graphics-Card-Review.24035.0.html
Click to expand...

I don't care what the benchmarks say.. Runs fine for me high 20' to low 30' REAL WORLD experience
 
qb4ever said:
I don't care what the benchmarks say.. Runs fine for me high 20' to low 30' REAL WORLD experience
Click to expand...
that must be one magical mobile 5650. :rolleyes:

here is a desktop 5770 which is well over twice as fast as a mobile 5650 getting 28fps at 1920x1200 on high settings. how can you claim that kind of performance from a gpu with les than half the power? http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/02/12/powercolor-ati-radeon-hd-5770-pcs-review/6

here is a desktop 5670 which is about 15-20% faster than your mobile 5650 and its getting 21fps at just 1680 for high settings in Warhead which usually runs a little better than original Crysis. http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=18441&all=1
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top