ATI driver quality

A

alan.p

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
Messages
409
My initial PCI-E rebound card was a a Sapphire x600pro, and I distinctly remember the (old) drivers being somewhat shoddy, compared even to the old GF2MX I was running before that. When I upgraded it to a 6600GT, the drivers were quite a bit nicer. I later added a second display, and the NVidia drivers handled it quite nicely, even adding little buttons on the title bars of windows to flick programs between the two screens without having to fart around (restore, drag, maximise every single time). The 6600GT was b-day gifted to my brother (who now runs a blazing 6600GT SLI rig), and I went back to the x600pro, since a X1900XT is on the way (ETA monday! :-D )

This time, I grabbed new ATI drivers off the latest issue of PCPowerplay.

They still suck! They suck even harder at dual monitors -- the ONLY keybinding I could hunt down was to transfer primary display status between the screens, no nice and easy way of transferring windows across! They aren't integrated with the Windows display properties like the NVidia ones (damn CCC), either.

So my question (after all that) is...

Why do ATI's drivers still feel thrown-together, as opposed to NVidia's smooth, 'engineered' drivers?
 
ati has a separate util set for multi mon systems.. it's still not that great tho, look into ultramon

ultramon is a great util!
 
Never liked ATI's drivers. and the Catalyst Control Centre is a joke.
 
If you don't like ATI drivers just get an Nvidia card...

I for one don't have any problems not to mention I love ATI superior image quality...
 
Marvelous said:
If you don't like ATI drivers just get an Nvidia card...

I for one don't have any problems not to mention I love ATI superior image quality...
Click to expand...


so you spend more time looking at the effects the game creates than playing said game?

or you spend more time looking at the paused movie/tv show instead of actually watching it???

quality matters less when your chasing down an opponent trying to kill them..

it's kinda like buying a porche gt and getting pwned by a corvette someone else bought for less than 1/2 the cost of the porche k thx bi
 
Marvelous said:
If you don't like ATI drivers just get an Nvidia card...

I for one don't have any problems not to mention I love ATI superior image quality...
Click to expand...

Thats very subjective. I had a X1800XL (before it died) and never warmed to the Image quality, The colours never seemed as vivid as the 6600GT I had before it. On another note I have had a few ATI cards and I have never had a Nvidia card actually die on me, but both my 9500pro and x1800xl died.

My last comment about Ati's CCC sucking ass... Nvidias new control panel also sucks, sticking with the old one thanks.
 
omegatotal said:
so you spend more time looking at the effects the game creates than playing said game?

or you spend more time looking at the paused movie/tv show instead of actually watching it???

quality matters less when your chasing down an opponent trying to kill them..

it's kinda like buying a porche gt and getting pwned by a corvette someone else bought for less than 1/2 the cost of the porche k thx bi
Click to expand...

hrrm yes... I think i get what your on about,,, no, no I dont. Are you saying Nvidia cards are cheaper? gayer? better? german?
 
I love how ATi fan boyz hang around in an ATi specific forum to rip on drivers. I for one have never had a problem with ATi's drivers. I don't use CCC, but rather ATi Tray Tools, and have never had a problem with dual displays. I've had my 22" NEC CRT connected to the D-Sub and my 19" LCD connected to the DVI.

Zero problems.
 
I've owned a lot of both ATi and nVidia cards over the years. I have had a few more problems out of ATi drivers than I have nVidia drivers, but still I have had very little issues with either. I do think that CCC sucks, and I don't like the new nVidia control panel either. The old one is much better.

ATi's 6.10 and 6.9 Catalyst drivers and the newest CCC aren't that bad. They've generally worked pretty well for me though.

The only issue I've had is with the 6.9's giving me pretty horrid frame rates with AA and AF enabled in UT2004 with Crossfire enabled.
 
Until I bought my 7900GTX SLI setup, I owned ATI exclusively. The only reason I went with Nvidia this time is that Crossfire was an immature technology, and you couldn't create your own profiles like you can with SLI.
 
omegatotal said:
so you spend more time looking at the effects the game creates than playing said game?

or you spend more time looking at the paused movie/tv show instead of actually watching it???

quality matters less when your chasing down an opponent trying to kill them..

it's kinda like buying a porche gt and getting pwned by a corvette someone else bought for less than 1/2 the cost of the porche k thx bi
Click to expand...

No if you read my original post... It says I never had any problems... So what does that mean? It means I can play any game without problems and better image quality to boot...

If ATI drivers is not to your liking you can always jump the Nvdia route... Few quorks here and there is bound to happen on either side and or it's usually user error/different hardware setup.
 
alan.p said:
So my question (after all that) is...

Why do ATI's drivers still feel thrown-together, as opposed to NVidia's smooth, 'engineered' drivers?
Click to expand...

NV has had a lot more time to optimize their unified driver model. They are in realease 90 now, and ATI is what, only at release 6. ATI didn't start the Catalyst program until around the Radeon 8500 times, while NV had already had a unified model for several years before that. They got a leg up on ATI in the driver department. I'm hoping the AMD/ATI merger will only help their drivers.
 
Well I think that ATi drivers aren't as good as nVidia's as I have stated before, but I do think that people tend to overexaggerate how bad they are.
 
I just got a 1900XT a couple weeks ago and installed the latest Cat drivers and other ATi software. The first thing I noticed was that I had three CLI.exe programs running at once (looking in task manager) and that I was using about 75MB more RAM at idle than with my 7800GTX. Then when I tried playing games I got major artifacts within minutes of starting up a game. I went into CCC and saw that my clocks were way lower than advertised, but found out that was normal. I was only getting a score of 3000 in 3D Mark06.

Needless to say I was very unhappy. I was very close to RMAing the card (it was a refurb bought from Newegg) and then decided to try the Omega drivers. What a difference that made.

I am now getting a score of 4000 in 3D Mark06, using less RAM (though still more than my 7800 GTX), and have less artifacting in my games. All I can think of is that the card was stuck in "2D" mode (500MHz core) and couldn't go into "3D" mode (621MHz). I still can not OC my card as whenever I open up an OC program it shows the 2D mode speeds.

Overall I am not that impressed. I do like the improved AF of ATi, but I don't know if I will stick around with them next fall when I upgrade to DX10...
 
Demon_of_The_Fall said:
3 Error boxes from CLI.exe any time I start a video or a 3D app. Reformat didn't fix it

ATI drivers = teh suck.
Click to expand...

CLI=Control Panel...

You can install without ATI CCC...

Drivers work in any game you throw at it... But I do understand why people might not like ATI's CCC... It's a resource hog...
 
MH Knights said:
I just got a 1900XT a couple weeks ago and installed the latest Cat drivers and other ATi software. The first thing I noticed was that I had three CLI.exe programs running at once (looking in task manager) and that I was using about 75MB more RAM at idle than with my 7800GTX. Then when I tried playing games I got major artifacts within minutes of starting up a game. I went into CCC and saw that my clocks were way lower than advertised, but found out that was normal. I was only getting a score of 3000 in 3D Mark06.

Needless to say I was very unhappy. I was very close to RMAing the card (it was a refurb bought from Newegg) and then decided to try the Omega drivers. What a difference that made.

I am now getting a score of 4000 in 3D Mark06, using less RAM (though still more than my 7800 GTX), and have less artifacting in my games. All I can think of is that the card was stuck in "2D" mode (500MHz core) and couldn't go into "3D" mode (621MHz). I still can not OC my card as whenever I open up an OC program it shows the 2D mode speeds.

Overall I am not that impressed. I do like the improved AF of ATi, but I don't know if I will stick around with them next fall when I upgrade to DX10...
Click to expand...

Well if you'll notice, ATi drivers are almost double the size of the nVidia drivers when you download them off the site. Plus with CCC you need to isntall all the .NET framework crap.
 
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