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

[Jimbo75]

That depends on whether the need for more bandwidth increases.

The 7950 is a far more future proof card because of the hardware you think is wasted. There will be cases where the 7950 doesn't make any gains but there will be cases where the 7950 makes gains that will catapult it past the 680 even at stock. The 660 Ti will never catch up because it's already at it's limit.

[hackerDON]

Of course Nvidia take the example of the Beta 320.00 drivers I had a nearly 5% performance gain on my old 8400 GS graphics card.

[ET3D]

On the original subject, it feels to me that NVIDIA drivers are generally better, but when they screw up they screw up big. Whether it's causing cards to overheat and die or just killing all DX8/7 support, NVIDIA knows how to make a big screwup. With AMD it's more like "hey, why don't we blow your cursor up to twice the size and not fix that for 6 months?"

10 years ago when I was working on a game things were pretty much the same. I found a bug which both NVIDIA and ATI had. Difference is, if you ran it on ATI it returned wrong values, if you ran it on NVIDIA Windows froze completely.

[crossy]

Depends which OS you're talking about:

Windows, it's definitely NVidia that's got the upper hand for me - certainly seem to be easier to get rid of than the AMD ones that seem to squirrel themselves in all sorts of OS nooks and crannies. Although the Catalyst control panel seems to have more tweakability than the NVidia equivalent.

Linux, on the other hand it'd be AMD all the way. After all, Linus is never wrong is he!

Didn't comment on OS/X because you've got no choice - you do what Apple tells you.

[TooNice]

Until shown otherwise, I will probably favour laptop (that may be used as mobile computers) with an nVidia card due to Optimus. Yet they have certainly given me some grief yesterday as I was trying to figure how to get MadVR to work properly on my machine (with MPC-HC). It terms out that nVidia is *forcing* some video players not to use the discrete GPU on "newer" drivers. Well, you'd have to go fairly far back to find a driver that doesn't do it (2+ years). I don't get why they completely stop users from being able to pick which card to use on some applications. If there are compatibility issues with some apps then it should be fixed instead. And I don't think there are, neither I nor the many who have worked around the problem by renaming the blacklisted .exe have had any issues. Assuming that there will never be any need. A high quality video renderer like MadVR can definitely overwhelm an i7 Sandy Bridge GPU and even Ivy Bridge gets pushed very hard (and still requires pretty fast memory as I understand).

[loyal986]

I am na AMD fan, but I allways choose to follow my pocket and my pocket allways chose AMD. Amd lately makes really great drivers but I still believe that NVidia is better at making drivers. But I like AMD as it makes more durable chips. NVidia chips tend to fail more.

[anselhelm]

Until recent times, I might have said Nvidia, based on having experienced more driver issues with AMD generally, yet recently I've experienced no AMD-based issues and have read of fewer issues in general, whereas Nvidia has had a few well-publicised issues itself.

In addition to this, AMD has changed its driver programme to match Nvidia, so driver packs tend to have fewer issues now due to the lack of rushing them out. Overall, I'd have to say that neither has a noticeable advantage right now.

The real issue for both Nvidia and AMD right now is still micro stuttering, which I believe AMD is having more issues with right now if memory serves, but from what I read in an AnandTech article, it seems that this is being dealt with now at least by AMD and possibly also by Nvidia.

[minicale]

Never had nvidia but with my amd 6850 if I install catalyst control center it causes blue screens and I have to install just the drivers so I'm going to say nvidia has the better drivers.

[ajones]

Equal.

I've experienced a similar number of driver crashes in both nVidia and AMD based systems were only the graphics subsystem is changed.

[cheesemp]

Equal. I've had several cards from them both over the years and can't say I've noticed much difference in stability (I never OC my GPUs which helps!). I am a few generations behind now mind...

[ddg4005]

At this point Nvidia's drivers are better than AMD's. Unfortunately drivers for Radeons are buggy and generally unstable these days.

[crossy]

At this point Nvidia's drivers are better than AMD's. Unfortunately drivers for Radeons are buggy and generally unstable these days.

You sure about that? I'm running a factory-overclocked 7970 and it's been VERY stable - well, at least when I swapped the XFX-supplied driver set for the "real" AMD ones. And given the number of Radeon fans here, I would suggest I'm not in a minority.

[ddg4005]

You sure about that? I'm running a factory-overclocked 7970 and it's been VERY stable - well, at least when I swapped the XFX-supplied driver set for the "real" AMD ones. And given the number of Radeon fans here, I would suggest I'm not in a minority.

I admit that my experience of late is limited to AMD's Radeon HD 3400 series (crappy cards) so I'm glad to hear that the drivers work for their more expensive cards.