Nvidia Drivers vs ATi Drivers

[rogue1979]

I have recently used both ATI and Nvidia drivers, and they both worked equally well in WinXP.

However if you are gonna run linux, you may seriously consider not using ATI.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: rogue1979
I have recently used both ATI and Nvidia drivers, and they both worked equally well in WinXP.

However if you are gonna run linux, you may seriously consider not using ATI.

I run an ATI card in Linux(Kubuntu 9.04) using the default driver no issues to speak of.

 

[TC91]

The biggest difference for me is the GAME PROFILES. If you love FSAA and stuff and have a TON of games, then ATI catalyst is going to be a huge hassle as you have to change settings before you launch each game, rather than the automatic app detection profiles that the NVIDIA control panel has. For some reason I do not understand why ATI/AMD has not implemented game profiles.

In addition, with ATI catalyst there was a notable slowdown with my boot times compared with the NVIDIA control panel (not sure if the newer driver has improved as I no longer use an ATI card in my main machine).

 

[SickBeast]

Are you sure you can't use game profiles with the ATI drivers? I know there is a way to do it. Maybe you have to use ATI tool or something like that. I know it's not a big deal; I used to do it on my old X800 card.

One nice feature I used to like with ATI was adaptive AA. It would let you run 4XAA instead of 2XAA so long as you could maintain 60FPS (basically you got to double your AA setting without taking a performance hit at all).

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Are you sure you can't use game profiles with the ATI drivers? I know there is a way to do it. Maybe you have to use ATI tool or something like that. I know it's not a big deal; I used to do it on my old X800 card.

One nice feature I used to like with ATI was adaptive AA. It would let you run 4XAA instead of 2XAA so long as you could maintain 60FPS (basically you got to double your AA setting without taking a performance hit at all).

What you means is Temporal Anti Aliasing which is no longer enabled with newer generation of cards, but it still working, I just enabled the option in the registry and it still working and appears the option in the CCC. But also flickers a bit hehe around the edges if you choose a low FPS threshold, a nice feature though.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: Mem


I run an ATI card in Linux(Kubuntu 9.04) using the default driver no issues to speak of.

I am using Mint 7 (ubuntu based) and PCLinux2009. I had glitchy problems with an HD 3870, 4670 and 4830. Using both the proprietary driver and the latest from ATI. They ran in linux, just not correctly. Switched out to nvidia and everything was peachy.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: rogue1979

Originally posted by: Mem


I run an ATI card in Linux(Kubuntu 9.04) using the default driver no issues to speak of.

I am using Mint 7 (ubuntu based) and PCLinux2009. I had glitchy problems with an HD 3870, 4670 and 4830. Using both the proprietary driver and the latest from ATI. They ran in linux, just not correctly. Switched out to nvidia and everything was peachy.

Interesting,however I had no issues with Mint 7 and ATI 9700 card ,not tried PCLinux 2009.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: Mem

Interesting,however I had no issues with Mint 7 and ATI 9700 card ,not tried PCLinux 2009.

I also ran Mint 7 on an older X700 Pro, ran perfect. I believe it is using a different driver than later ATI hardware does.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: rogue1979

Originally posted by: Mem

Interesting,however I had no issues with Mint 7 and ATI 9700 card ,not tried PCLinux 2009.

I also ran Mint 7 on an older X700 Pro, ran perfect. I believe it is using a different driver than later ATI hardware does.

I had a play with Ubuntu 9.04 on my other PC( ATi 4870 card),seems fine etc.. could not see any glitches,I'll try Mint later with it,however I suspect it'll be the same ie no issues.

 

[v8envy]

I swore off of ATI hardware because of Linux drivers. Had 2x9600, 9700, X850XT and X1800XT. The s-video TV out on Linux for the 9 series was always hoplessly broken and never fixed. Fine, it's old hardware (even in 2005) and these days it's all about HDMI. X850XT and X1800XT were fine to use in dumb framebuffer mode, but running compiz together with OpenGL apps caused problems. The installer eventually got spiffy but missed files left by previous installers and caused plenty of issues starting with coredumps and ending with graphical glitches. Didn't play well with 64 bit without tweaking, moving and symbolic linking post-install.

To my knowledge not a single ATI driver (whether proprietary or open) accelerates video playback under Linux in any meaningful way (read: more than motion compensation). Contrast this to NV, where even the 8400 card can significantly accelerate video playback with common HD codecs.

But the biggest showstopper was game performance. Stuttering, occasional awful frame rates, lockups and texture rendering problems under Wine. Replaced with an NV card and got smooth sailing with gaming, desktop and video playback for going on 2 years now. Don't get me wrong, the 5XXX series looks real attractive. But I'll be reading the Linux forums at Rage3D to see if it's at all usable before I go red again.

 

[dflynchimp]

The sad truth about BSOD is that while it sometimes can be the fault of the company's driver team, more often than not it is error on the user end. Alot of settings that amateur or first time overclocker/builders put into their BIOS and the hindsight of installing the correct or up to date drivers in the first place is responsible for BSOD most of the time, giving ammunition to the Macboi's to use. I definitely noticed a decrease in BSOD as I got better at setting up systems. I recall my first two systems were glitchy as hell and froze/rebooted/BSODed all the time, but as of late I have yet to see the PC-blues because I pay more attention to little details like adequate voltages, not turning EVERY feature on in the mobo BIOS thinking it will help the system (know what you need and what you don't need/want), and not creating driver conflicts with multiple utilities.

If you take user error out of the equation, the driver track record for both Nvidia and ATI suddenly seems alot cleaner. They're not spotless by any stretch of the imagination, like the Code 43 bug that I encountered using the 4870X2 on catalyst 8.12-9.6 drivers (the bug actually carried over from the older driver into newer installs somehow) but 9.7 fixed that proper. The last time I saw a BSOD was with my NV7900GT and NV8800GTS but I'd probably attribute both of those system errors to my own OCing stupidity/recklessness.

 

[Griswold]

I'm happy with ATIs drivers. I banned all nvidia hardware from my home two years ago due to their driver debacle with vista (chipset and video card) and found myself rarely in need of updating the video card drivers because there is rarely an issue that requires me to do so. I consider this a testament to driver quality. Then again, I dont play games every day all day long so I may miss out on some of the "fun" with driver issues.

ATIs drivers have always been good to me since my first card from them which was a 9700pro, thus I've never understood this myth about bad drivers - should they also, one day, decide to not deliver a functional (mostly feature wise) driver for a full 6 months after the launch of a major new windows version, they might end up in the same corner as nvidia. Though, I dont think they would pull off an nvidia like that. You also learn from the mistakes of your competition.

 

[CP5670]

ATI and Nvidia drivers are about the same in my experience. They both generally work well, and both have issues in one or two older games. I have a slight preference for the Nvidia ones just because of their third party utilities though. Both companies' standard control panels are lousy, but I think the nHancer/Rivatuner combination works better than ATI Tray Tools.

The 190 drivers are almost unusable because of the profile issue, but as BFG said the problem is so big that they should fix it quickly. It's better than having some obscure issue that affects an old game I play, as that kind of thing will usually never get fixed.