Why do people not like AMD drivers?

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orca-4444

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Oct 20, 2015
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I'm in the market for a graphics card(my first one), and this R9 280x seems like a good deal to me
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150678
One thing that I'm worried about is AMD drivers. I have a basic understanding of what they are, and I get worried when I hear people saying that AMD drivers are bad.
I have 2 questions:
1. Why do people say AMD drivers are bad?
2. How much should that influence my decision to buy or not buy the 280x?

Thanks
 
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wakafaka

wakafaka

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I had Sapphire Radeon HD1950(bad cooler though)-very old graphic card but good for the time
and now i have Sapphire Radeon HD7870 OC.Cant complain..only u have to know how to make the options.
AMD cards are not so power efficient like Nvidia...but that's why they are cheaper
Your choise of video card depends what will u play and what monitor u will use...(biger resolution need powerful card)
 
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Hellowalkman

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May 19, 2015
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They used to be worse but are a lot better now .. The Crimson 16.1 Hot-fix is pretty good as far as I heard ..

You also need to take into consideration power consumption of the 280x which can go up to 250 watts so you need to have a good 550-600 watt power supply
 
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AS118

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It's not so much that AMD's drivers are bad (although ATi's could be lackluster and sometimes bad, before AMD bought them out), it's just that Nvidia generally tends to have slightly better drivers. Most of the bad rep AMD gets for drivers is just hearsay, based on a small amount of truth in the distant past.

I've used both companies' cards (although I'm more traditionally an Nvidia buyer) and honestly, as long as you use stable, non-beta releases, I feel like there's not much difference between the two companies' drivers. I feel like Nvidia makes performance optimizations slightly faster, but it's not really a big deal, imho.

If you want a 280x, get one, is my advice. It's a strong card even today and can even handle some 1440p. I feel like AMD provides better value than Nvidia in the midrange, whereas Nvidia tends to rule the low and high end, imho. That said, I prefer to buy AMD more nowadays because I feel like Nvidia's 80% market share is putting it dangerously close to being a monopoly, and I'm very leery of those.

Caveat: Using 2 or more GPU's and/or overclocking can cause problems with either company's products, especially with beta drivers. Especially if a particulary game developer is lazy and/or incompetent. *cough*Funcom*cough*
 
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shortez

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May 22, 2015
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Totally new AMD/ATi user here, bought R9 390 few months ago.

I can't say that I DID NOT had any problems with these infamous AMD drivers. Some drivers they release are just not working and broken from the start. A month ago with older 15.12 drivers I used to have lots of problems starting with random blue screens, which used to happen even when doing nothing, random FPS drops... BUT after few weeks they released "hotfix" 16.1 drivers and these problems just disappeared.

Now to questions.
1. Why do people say AMD drivers are bad?

They say that because:
A. AMD takes time(months) to optimize their graphics cards while Nvidia releases drivers EVEN before games get released.
B. Sometimes AMD releases broken drivers which overshadow the good ones.

Nowadays AMD is becoming more like Nvdia with each update. Their new control center looks nice and I feel that AMD will get even better since 300 series cards were a success.

2. How much should that influence my decision to buy or not buy the 280x?

AMD drivers work fine on older titles and usually get better with newer titles too. If you think that 280x is the best card you can buy then go for it but be careful though, I heard 280x has coil whine problems so I would do more research before buying that if I were you.
 
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Norwood

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Feb 10, 2015
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It's the same reason people still think they need a Mac for design or music production, back in the day it used to be true. Scroll back to 2000 and ATI did indeed produce inferior drivers, but that problem was tackled and by the time AMD acquired ATI, the drivers were more or less on par with Nvidia. I have never had driver issues with AMD cards and have had a lot of AMD cards.
 
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Mousemonkey

Mousemonkey

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In mid 2013 I bought a 7790 and it wasn't until 2014 that a driver was released that allowed me to use the card without it constantly black screening, The problems persisted long after AMD acquired ATi, they only started getting better with their drivers when they dropped the monthly release cycle they were so bad at and copied Nvidia's "release them when they're ready" model.
 
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Mousemonkey

Mousemonkey

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I didn't say that they didn't have buggy drivers I said that they release when they think/feel it's ready as opposed to releasing a driver every month regardless.
 
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Paul17041993

Paul17041993

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AMD drivers are "bad" because they have a better GUI than nvidia's 90's panel. That's basically it.

There's nothing on either side that outweighs the other, besides the aforementioned GUI difference you should only pay attention to the actual hardware and what games you play for the most suitable card.
 
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superstition

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There have been at least two releases of Nvidia drivers that bricked cards. A lot of the "AMD's drivers are bad" stuff is astroturf. However, one advantage Nvidia's drivers had until relatively recently was that they loaded quicker.

There are complaints about subpar Crossfire and SLI support in games from what I've seen, more than anything else.

The best deals in graphics cards right now are the 290 and 390 cards when they're on sale.
 
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Mousemonkey

Mousemonkey

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There was one some years back that switched fans off on some cards and AMD have had the the same with the first release of Crimson, what was the other one?
 
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SinxarKnights

SinxarKnights

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I do remember that. At the time, Eve Online killed quite a few cards because of that driver bug. Something about the fans wouldn't spin up or something.

So I recently switched from a R9 280 to a GTX 970 specifically because of the drivers. I was very happy with the overall performance of the 280 and it is an epic overclocker. The problem is that the latest Crimson drivers remove any control over your card. Overclocking was broken from the start. First it wouldn't save your settings, then it saved them so hard you couldn't change them. Now if you overclock, what you set becomes the minimum (better hope that OC is stable or time to reinstall the drivers!). Not to mention the removal of color options for some unknown reason. I don't know about you but I am not a fan of washed out video, I don't like using the limited color profile of 16 - 235, no idea why it is being forced now.

Lets also touch on some games. I won Just Cause 3 from a Tom's giveaway. It was busted on day 1 with AMD drivers. Granted it didn't take long to fix it. Elite: Dangerous, there has been a major FPS issue while in supercruise for about a year before AMD even acknowledged it. It is fixed now but come on, a year? Really? It is a popular title. Then there is the X3 series, Terran Conflict and Albion prelude suffer from massive stuttering in menus when using AMD hardware, been there for almost 3 years, no fix in sight. Transistor, x64 version will not load on AMD hardware. Full Mojo Rampage, same story, more recent drivers broke it. Sublevel Zero (awesome 6dof game btw, check it out!) apparently had issues with AMD hardware but I was not affected by this one.

I am sure Nvidia has its fair share of incompatibilities, but they are not in games I play... yet
 
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turkey3_scratch

turkey3_scratch

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It's not all the fault of AMD or Nvidia though, much of it is the game developers fault. They should be the ones programming the games to ensure they work on all cards, and the fact that modern day game developers fail to do so causes Nvidia and AMD to kick in and push drivers for specific games.
 
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SinxarKnights

SinxarKnights

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Valid point, but consider this. Why should game developers code around newly introduced bugs in graphics drivers?

Elite: Dangerous. The drivers that were available on release worked without issue. AMD decided to change them to add more features, while doing so they broke a lot of current games. Why is it the developers fault? I mean sure they could have rewritten the graphics engine, but why would they. AMD caused the problem, not the devs.
 
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17seconds

17seconds

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Nvidia R&D spending:
Data for this Date Range
Oct. 31, 2015 329.00M
July 31, 2015 320.00M
April 30, 2015 339.00M
Jan. 31, 2015 348.72M
Oct. 31, 2014 340.00M
July 31, 2014 337.00M
April 30, 2014 334.00M
Jan. 31, 2014 336.64M
https://ycharts.com/companies/NVDA/r_and_d_expense

------------------------------------------------------------------------

AMD's R&D spending:
Dec. 31, 2015 229.00M
Sept. 30, 2015 241.00M
June 30, 2015 235.00M
March 31, 2015 242.00M
Dec. 31, 2014 238.00M
Sept. 30, 2014 278.00M
June 30, 2014 277.00M
March 31, 2014 279.00M
https://ycharts.com/companies/AMD/r_and_d_expense
 
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