Is it your drivers?

[sojrner]

I did not see this posted yet, it is a few days old but still valid:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/pos...t-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html

What got me interested is the fallacy that I still see perpetuated that Nv's drivers are better than ATI's.[:mousemonkey:2] Ever since the advent of the 'catalyst' name on them ati has had solid drivers... well at least as solid as ANY driver can be. Yet so many still respond to questions about which card to buy with "dont buy ati, their drivers suck" or something and "Nv has better drivers, buy that". I have always felt that since around 2002 the drivers from both teams were very well made and resulted in fewer issues than in times past.

I am not trying to start a flame war, or say that ATI's drivers are "better"... rather I am posting this to help dissuade so many from furthering the belief that Nv is better. Clearly the chart shows both having issues but Nv is obviously not the best in that regard.

...oh, and this has nothing to do with which card is faster performance-wise, just a driver thing.

 

[ZOldDude]

"Better" goes hand-in-hand with "another brand".
No way to use one brands drivers on the other and even expect it to run.

 

[Shadow703793]

^ Agreed.

 

[sojrner]

lol, kinda odd take on what I was saying... did not expect that one.

when ppl respond saying "ati drivers suck, don't buy ati" that implies that you should buy Nv so you can use their "better" drivers. No-one claims to run Nv drivers on ati cards... wow, never thought someone would even think that, but I suppose if you squint hard and tilt your head you might get that from what I wrote.

This has been thrown around the tubes since the stone-age era of wolfenstein... I am only saying that has been a false claim for years. Buy the card that is best, not based on an "old wive's tale" of driver boogey-men.


...one caveat is that if an issue DOES come up (like say, creative xfi cards and nforce4 mobos conflicting) then you should steer clear until it is resolved. So if either green or red-green puke out something bad in the future that nullifies that idea...

 

[bobbknight]

Feelings and reality seem to be two different things. When the article is critically read it gives a pretty good description of driver crash error percentages. Also with a higher market share Nvidia is bound to have a higher percentage of driver crashes.
I can see where just looking at the pie chart one could ASSume that nVidia drivers were the cause of more crashes than ATI, BUT thats just not the case.
Back when I was using a CRT monitor, the ATI video cards always had a flicker to them, no matter what refresh rate I selected, I never experienced that with nVidia cards. Now that I am using an LCD monitor that's not an issue.
Something to remember is that ATI drivers rely heavily on the Microsoft.Net Framework, which by themselves are buggy.
My largest memory of ATI, was when I bought an ATI tv card and ATI video card together. At the time I thought that they would play well with each other. All I had with the combination was grief. I ended up putting an nVidia video card in the computer with the ATI tv card to get it to work. To top this all off on my last os and driver reinstall I had to mix and match the ATI tv card drivers from four different revisions to get it to properly work. Both times ATI tech was less than helpful.

 

[Zenthar]

I think what most people don't like is the VARIABILITY of ATI's driver quality. For example, some people with 3870x2 cards lost more than 20% performance when going to 8.3 drivers ... kind of annoying when you paid 450$ for a card ...

 

[sojrner]

Feelings and reality seem to be two different things. When the article is critically read it gives a pretty good description of driver crash error percentages. Also with a higher market share Nvidia is bound to have a higher percentage of driver crashes.
I can see where just looking at the pie chart one could ASSume that nVidia drivers were the cause of more crashes than ATI, BUT thats just not the case.
Back when I was using a CRT monitor, the ATI video cards always had a flicker to them, no matter what refresh rate I selected, I never experienced that with nVidia cards. Now that I am using an LCD monitor that's not an issue.
Something to remember is that ATI drivers rely heavily on the Microsoft.Net Framework, which by themselves are buggy.
My largest memory of ATI, was when I bought an ATI tv card and ATI video card together. At the time I thought that they would play well with each other. All I had with the combination was grief. I ended up putting an nVidia video card in the computer with the ATI tv card to get it to work. To top this all off on my last os and driver reinstall I had to mix and match the ATI tv card drivers from four different revisions to get it to properly work. Both times ATI tech was less than helpful.

"critically"... if you read it about the market share it points out it is not clear if that market share (or anything else for that matter) affected the numbers... regardless, that was NOT my point (as clearly stated in the first post). I was not saying one had more errors than the other but rather to point out that BOTH drivers have issues.

Now, as for the .net thing... again, perpetuating an old situation as a current problem is my real beef here. You say .net is "buggy" and yet give no reasoning. What is buggy about it exaclty? Just like the claims of ati drivers being "bad" by so many, I see no listing of specifics.

back w/ v1 of .net there were many problems, but v2 and now v3 have no such issues and many software devs are building on that frame... including Nvidia.

now, as far as DRIVERS... ati DRIVERS do not need .net, only the control center does. (same as Nv's control afaik but correct me on that one) You can install just the drivers w/o any control app from both Nv and ati so that is a moot point altogether.

finally... I personally have never called tech from either company, so I can't comment on that aspect. Most that I have seen show both companies are quick to ignore obvious problems... like the 7900gt frame buffer issues and my aforementioned issues w/ nf4/xfi. Yes ati does it too but again my point is that they both do this.I am talking here about video cards... I have not messed with tuner cards but from what I gather in research online and in forums (was thinking about building an htpc a while ago) NONE of the companies have tuner cards really figured out and working with other hardware (or software) very well. Nv doesn't even make tuners anymore do they?

 

[sojrner]

I think what most people don't like is the VARIABILITY of ATI's driver quality. For example, some people with 3870x2 cards lost more than 20% performance when going to 8.3 drivers ... kind of annoying when you paid 450$ for a card ...

huh, I have used ati drivers... every new version... since my purchase of a 9700pro back at the start of 2003. I have not experienced this "variability" that you seem to have first hand knowledge of. (single card mind you) crossfire/sli users BOTH get shafted sometimes on new driver revs... sli is not perfect no matter what some say, but neither is crossfire. It is a small subset of the market that is tough to support...

again though, my point is that BOTH companies have these issues... NOT just ati. Nv has had many issues even with the 8800 cards... read the forums (even in the Nv forums) and you will see many issues. Some are resolved quickly, some still "at large".

what I am saying is that all else (i.e. performance) being equal, the comanies are on about an even keel with driver quality, support and "variability".

 

[Zenthar]

I don't excuse NVidia at all, I think early Vista adopters would have prefered high performance variability between release to constant crashes . For it to be THAT unstable and NVidia still putting a Vista stamp on it tells a lot about a company's QA ... either they tested with some kind of special developer Vista platform or their tests aren't really deep :/.

 

[San Pedro]

I think both companies have quality drives and quality products. I don't like how CCC (note not the driver) takes so long to load up on start up, but if you use ATI Tray Tools this isn't an issue, and on the nvidia side I don't like a lack of options for video playback that CCC has (strecth video to fit screen is an example).

 

[sojrner]

@zenthar: agreed. I too am not defending ati per-se... so we r probably more or less saying the same thing from different views.

@san pedro: Turn off the auto-detect feature for monitors in ccc. When set to manual it opens much faster as it is not searching for anything connected... In most apps auto-detect really slows it down and ccc is no different there.

 

[mactronix]

@zenthar: agreed. I too am not defending ati per-se... so we r probably more or less saying the same thing from different views.

@san pedro: Turn off the auto-detect feature for monitors in ccc. When set to manual it opens much faster as it is not searching for anything connected... In most apps auto-detect really slows it down and ccc is no different there.

No reason for the Quote. Its just i cant reply if i dont.
You make a very valid point sojrner,
Taking a broad view of all the possibilities/permutations its virtually impossible for either company to make a rock solid stable driver that will work with all hardware/software combinations.
The article makes interesting reading but does pose more questions than it answered. Very generally of the first ten or so people I know with PC's I would say i know for a fact that at least 3/4 of them dont send error reports. Also 1.6 million isn't a very big section to be basing any conclusions on.
On the subject of ATI driver updates giving negative performance. I have experienced this variability myself about 3 times between 6.8 and to date, usually in my experience when they are specifically tweaking for performance on a new release or for crossfire support. I dont use crossfire.
ATI do have a specific performance problem (R600) but its more down to the architecture. Its very difficult for the card to be fully loaded at all times so performance goes begging and people have been looking to the drivers for increases. There is a compiler in the drivers that ATI say will improve in time, and they have proved that given the right coding( not a luxury it will get in the real world ) that the cards can hit there theoretical through puts. but i still think people just look to the drivers too quickly when there is a perceived issue.
Its basic human nature to blame the other guy when something goes wrong and i would love to know how many of the reported driver faults were down to bad installation practice.
Mactronix

 

[sojrner]

...but i still think people just look to the drivers too quickly when there is a perceived issue.
Its basic human nature to blame the other guy when something goes wrong and i would love to know how many of the reported driver faults were down to bad installation practice.
Mactronix

couldn't agree more w/ that. [:mousemonkey]

 

[baddad]

Well Nvidia is still having problems with there Vista drivers in SP1 I no longer have SLI again a early problem when vista first came out.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

I think you and Mac get it, but I think many will B like BOY, err I mean be like Bob, and paint the present because of the past.

The error report is pretty straight forward and removes the perception and guessing. Regardless of how you cut it, Nvidia is over 3 times more errors, and yet they don't sell 3 times as many GPUs as ATi/AMD and intel. If it was market share alone the numbers should be closer together, not so far apart., heck add either intel and ATi together or even either of them and all the "unknowns" or "all others" and you still have less than nVidia's number. So market share doesn't explain it even if you doubled their sales.

I just encountered this very SAME issue of mis-blaming in a notebook forum where your link would've been very helpful (have since added it), and while it was the now more common corrupt DX issue, the Fanbois came out immediately to say "ATi has crappy drivers always had, always will", pretending that this was an objective statement of fact.

However if you were to post the same about nV's IQ improvments since their notorious days most peoplle would say "nice to see" not "I still doubt it".

 

[Mousecud]

Although it looks like you are a really supporter of CCC my experience reflects the other side of this coin. I had an NVIDIA card and the auto detection of monitors and pickups on drivers was great, smooth transition. I tried ATI Radeon card and installed the recommended 4800 series drivers which came with CCC. What I now have is an unknown monitor with reduced resolution max 1600x1200 which you can force to 1920x1080 but the games you decide to play will only go to 1600x1200 which runes the experience.

Frankly I am not all that knowledgeable when it comes to this sort of thing but I have spend hours trying new drivers, uninstalling devices, drivers and then re-installing these items to no avail.