ATI/AMD driver stability

[astrotzky]

Hi all,

Firstly, let me apologize for posting here as this is not related to VGA silence at 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.

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.

[mkk]

I'm no Linux user but at least they have begun pushing out drivers for Linux on the same schedule as their regulars and seem to have improved featurewise from what I've read. Unless someone else running Linux with an ATI/AMD card today replies I'm sure there's plenty to read on the forum for whichever Linux distribution you are planning to use.

When a system bluescreens it's hardly the graphics driver being the reason, but I can see how people might get that idea since a system crashing because of CPU/RAM/Chipset instability may well produce a bluescreen with some driver being included in the crash information. Having switched between ATI and Nvidia cards several times over the last five years I feel they are very close to each other today, both with their own ups and downs.

I would led price/performance decide between your two choices, and since the 4870X2 isn't quite out on the market yet I wouldn't want to call the decision even though it sure looks great. Two-chip solutions have some drawbacks that I don't fany though, like the difficulty with finding good alternative cooling and the SLI/Crossfire dependance for getting full performance in each individual game.

[Vicotnik]

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.

My question is: is this still the case?

That has never been the case imho. ATi had some problems with their drivers but that was way back and as far as I can remember stability was never an issue. I have not had an unstable system since the Win98 days and I've switched back and forth between ATi and nVidia a lot since then.

[mexell]

Btw., instead of using a X2-solution I would prefer Crossfire or SLI due to the ability to fit aftermarket coolers like the Accelero S1 to the individual cards. With these dual-chip cards, you don't have this possibility.

[Scrooge]

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.

My question is: is this still the case?

That has never been the case imho. ATi had some problems with their drivers but that was way back and as far as I can remember stability was never an issue. I have not had an unstable system since the Win98 days and I've switched back and forth between ATi and nVidia a lot since then.

See, to me, I've heard that ATi has finally fixed their drivers... for the past decade. Still, the drivers on my laptop card exhibit incorrect rendering on a fairly frequent basis, and it's 18 months old. The same games on nVidia cards are flawless. ^%&$%^% Lenovo using ATi on the T-series!

[thejamppa]

See, to me, I've heard that ATi has finally fixed their drivers... for the past decade. Still, the drivers on my laptop card exhibit incorrect rendering on a fairly frequent basis, and it's 18 months old. The same games on nVidia cards are flawless. ^%&$%^% Lenovo using ATi on the T-series!

until your VGA card fries due piss-poor batch of nVidia mobile cores. Some say its not limited to G84 and G86m-series but also G92m and G94m products. Lenovo, HP, Acer are mentioned of those whom suffer problems.

In my use of past two years of Ati drivers in Win XP I haven't seen any BSOD caused by ati driver... I've seen 3 linux errors caused by nVidia drivers in Xorg at the same time but my systems intend to be different from others it seems.

I haven't had any issues of stability, OC or etc problems with Ati drivers Since HD 2900 Pro in game rig or Ati X1600XT in main system prior upgrading to this.

[Vicotnik]

See, to me, I've heard that ATi has finally fixed their drivers... for the past decade. Still, the drivers on my laptop card exhibit incorrect rendering on a fairly frequent basis, and it's 18 months old. The same games on nVidia cards are flawless. ^%&$%^% Lenovo using ATi on the T-series!

Yeah, there have been a lot of problems in the past in games. Glitches, poor support for the newest games and so on. But no stability issues with BSODs and all that, as far as my experience tells me anyway. And like I said all that was way back.

I have no experience with laptop GPUs though, but at least since the days of the 9800pro, desktop gaming has worked just fine on both nVidia and ATi GPUs.

A few years ago (more recent than the serious ATi driver issues) nVidia used to have rather poor picture quality due to bad filters. I remember hacking an old GF2MX card to improve the quality a bit. That is also of little relevance today but that is another old myth still being tossed around.

[Bar81]

To be honest, I have no idea what you and your friends are talking about. I've had multiple ATI cards (Windows) and frankly their drivers in terms of stability have been superior to nvidia for quite some time. In terms of performance, I haven't had any showstoppers and the monthly updates are nice.

[ryboto]

I've never had issues with the drivers specifically, but that damn Catalyst Control Center has never worked reliably for me. Ever since the Cat. 8.5 drivers, CCC crashes randomly. I just get an error saying it needs to close. It doesn't have any effect on the system, it just closes. I've tried full driver cleaning, installing drivers over drivers, uninstalling, reinstalling, nothing helps it.

[jack_aubrey]

Bit of anecdotal evidence: running Ubuntu 8.04 with the Catalyst 8.6 or 8.7 drivers on a 780G motherboard, I reliably get hard system hangs running Xine using the Xv driver. Really hard hangs - have to power cycle the machine.

OTOH the AMD drivers correctly recognize the resolution of my Dell 2005FPW monitor, unlike the radeon driver. I haven't tried any 3D stuff yet, new system.

[mrCow]

I'm a long time Nvidia user who has just switched to ATI. On Vista 64 at least, the catalyst 8.7 drivers are running fine with everything I've thrown at them so far. Bear in mind this is a new system (a few days) with a new card (4870) and only new-ish games.

Back in the day, my main beef with ATI drivers was with their poor OpenGL support, even with their professional cards (on Linux Workstations too) However, these days I don't bring my work home, so DX is all I want or need.

I heard that ATI drivers on Linux improved a lot since they went open source...

[Cryoburner]

I would led price/performance decide between your two choices, and since the 4870X2 isn't quite out on the market yet I wouldn't want to call the decision even though it sure looks great.

It looks as though it's on the market to me, though I suppose it's not available everywhere yet...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102768

I personally think high-end cards like this are overkill though. I'd rather buy a $200 card that can play practically all of today's games at high settings, and in a couple years replace it with a new $200 card that's faster and better than anything currently available, than to drop $500+ on a single card.

This card isn't even practical for any gaming system running a 32 bit operating system. The 2 GB of onboard video memory would limit your available system RAM to well under 2 GB. The card is apparently CrossFire capable as well, so I wonder what would happen if you tried running two 4870 X2s side by side. : P

[Scrooge]

Ah yes, that's true, I haven't had a system stability issue caused by ATi drivers, just piss-poor rendering. If that's not the concern then yes, their drivers are fine.

The quality issues with nVidia are ones I've only vaguely heard of, since I haven't built a desktop with a discrete card recently.

[ryboto]

I personally think high-end cards like this are overkill though. I'd rather buy a $200 card that can play practically all of today's games at high settings, and in a couple years replace it with a new $200 card that's faster and better than anything currently available, than to drop $500+ on a single card.

I completely agree with you on the $200 aspect. As for the X2, it's only worth it for people with 30'' monitors. Otherwise you really wont give the card a chance to show it's prowess, and it's just overkill.

[astrotzky]

Thank you guys, I've decided to buy a 4870 x2.
I can hardly wait to get my hands on it...