Features - QOTW: AMD or Nvidia, who makes the better graphics driver?

[loftie]

Intel...trololol

[Valinor]

I've had just as many problems with both sets of drivers (pessimistic, I know), so in my experience neither set of drivers is better.

[petrucius]

I am using ATi/AMD cards for about 6 years now and sometimes there are some issues like crashes, artifacts or small bugs, but nothing major. I still like them and they give more performance for the money.

I do not know about Nvidia, I haven't use them for years.

[MadmartUK]

nVidia ofcourse.

For the WIN ive had a few in my time

Nvidia Brilliant

[Jimbo75]

Didn't we do this one already recently?

Anyway, http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers/

[Zetioun]

AMD in charge of driver

(lol)

[Noxvayl]

It depends what you mean by "better", it's a loaded word. If by better you mean more performance gains in driver updates for various generations then I'd say nVidia. If you mean stability and lack of issues I'd go for AMD. There are other considerations and my experience would not have much bearing on anyone else because a lot of other factors can affect your stability and performance like for instance playing certain games.

My first graphics card was an X800, then I got an X1950, then went with nVidia with the 8800GTS 512Mb, then nVidia again with the GTX260 and currently use an HD6950. None of my ATi/AMD cards had any issues with drivers, zero crashes or game compatibility problems. nVidia on the other hand was a mine field of problems. Friends of mine had numerous crashing issues and incompatibility problems with nVidia playing BF2, Counter Strike and Call of Duty while I had none with my X800. I then got first hand experience of driver problems when I used my 8800GTS 512Mb, one set of drivers worked great for all my games except BF2142 crashed... got an update that didn't crash with BF2142 but it managed to cause glitches on Empire: Total War that didn't exist before. I lost count of the hours and number of driver updates that I skipped because some of my games had issues with the specific driver version that was the latest at the time.

Because of this experience I prefer AMD graphics cards to nVidia, nVidia are great at providing performance but it comes at a price both monetarily and in terms of time that I am unwilling to accept.

EDIT: Thanks for the link Jimbo75. 2007-2008 was indeed the time frame in which I had my issues with my 8800GTS 512Mb.

[Namor]

Every Nvidia driver after 310.90 duffs up my BF3, I have tried them all, as well as the beta's but I have to keep going back and re-installing the old driver.
Saying that I still think Nvidia have to edge but only just.

[directhex]

I just replaced my perfectly functional 5850 with a GeForce, just because ATI's Linux drivers are so bad compared to NVIDIA's

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I just replaced my perfectly functional 5850 with a GeForce, just because ATI's Linux drivers are so bad compared to NVIDIA's

You should have sold it a few weeks ago. They were going for around £110 to £125 on Ebay.

[directhex]

You should have sold it a few weeks ago. They were going for around £110 to £125 on Ebay.

I gave it to a Windows-using friend

[JimmyBoy]

Never had any trouble with either.

Although my fave card I ever owned was my trusty ati 9700 pro back then ati were much better than nvidia with the driver updates (every month iirc) so personally I'd have to pick amd over nvidia but that's only because both companies have been fine for me but I've owned more amd cards over the years

[zap117]

I'd say they've both been pretty bad. Never had a problem with Intel drivers though. (not even trolling)

[MrBozack]

Didn't we do this one already recently?

Anyway, http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers/

The actual statistics for this image could look massively different considering the "17% Unknown" factor.
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I bet it's nvidia!

[AndyM95]

Didn't we do this one already recently?

Anyway, http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers/

That's from a 5 year old article, are you serious?

[watercooled]

Sorry, but the author of this was just asking for a flame war and a load of one-post wonders signing up to wave their respective flags.

There's so much parroted rubbish on this subject, you couldn't hope for a sensible discussion. No good can come of some of these 'which is better' topics TBH.