ATI's driver?

[Domy]

my question is very simple 4 u ati owner.does it have a stable driver?coz i'm thinking about switching from Nvidia.so guys...give me some enlightment will u?thx....

[saturnotaku]

atis recent drivers are stable as a matter of fact i have had less problems with their drivers thatn nvidias

[Dazz]

Yeap they are pretty good, i used to suffer from loop errors with nVIDIA's drivers with HalfLife, but not with ATi's :)

[EMunEeE]

ATI's drivers are rock solid stable for me. Haven't had a crash with ATI ever since '95.

[cthellis]

You'll be fine with either at this point. Main thing to do is know how to cure problems that DO happen to come up, as you won't be able to predict them and it's an impossibility to survey enough people and track enough data for an "overall view" of drivers with the broad swath of gaming you're likely to do. I've had issues go away with reinstalling the game, reinstalling Windows, updating my sound card drivers, updating my VIA 4-in-1's, adjusting a BIOS option, checking Option X, unchecking Option Y... And usually, any serious issues will happen an extreme minority of the time. Not really worth the worry. If you spend 90% of your time on a few games and want to REALLY know which cards handle them best you can do a decent investigation, but predicting for all your gaming habits for the next few years just ain't gonna happen.

[bkswaney]

ATI drivers are far better than they have ever been.
But they r still behind nvidia's. Even carmack said it. ;)

[The Baron]

Originally posted by OWA
I've been wondering if he meant overall or was just talking about OpenGL. Do you know off-hand? I only read a snipet of his comment (b/c that was all they provided where ever I read it) so I couldn't tell the context.
only ever seen the spot comment. however, I have found NVIDIA's drivers to be much more tolerant of craziness. for example, I can multitask in almost any game without having any problems with NV cards, whereas multitasking with ATI cards would cause 2D funkiness (basically, EXTREMELY slow 2D response).

[DivotMaker]

Originally posted by bkswaney
ATI drivers are far better than they have ever been.
But they r still behind nvidia's. Even carmack said it. ;)

All depends upon your perspective...since I play no Open GL games, then I would say that as far as D3D, ATI is better. Open GL is a known sore spot for ATI, but I know Terry and the gang are committed to correcting that issue.

[cthellis]

Originally posted by The Baron
only ever seen the spot comment. however, I have found NVIDIA's drivers to be much more tolerant of craziness. for example, I can multitask in almost any game without having any problems with NV cards, whereas multitasking with ATI cards would cause 2D funkiness (basically, EXTREMELY slow 2D response).

I get that a LOT with my rig as well. Of course I tend to attribute that to slow computer + slow nVidia card... and of course Windows. :p

[The Baron]

Originally posted by cthellis
I get that a LOT with my rig as well. Of course I tend to attribute that to slow computer + slow nVidia card... and of course Windows. :p
no, I mean like this:

1. alt-tab out of 3D game (didn't really matter which one, but SWG seemed to exhibit the symptoms the worst)
2. run Firebird/Thunderbird/mIRC/Notepad/whatever
3. application window appears on the screen, nothing appears on taskbar, app is unresponsive
4. wait 15 seconds (at least) for the damn thing to appear on the taskbar, at which point it became responsive

quite annoying, and didn't matter which Cat version I tried. swap out the 9600 Pro for 5700U, and voila, instant app starting goodness.

is it limited to a few computers? probably, but it still happens.

[cthellis]

I get a bunch of sluggishness similar to that after the first time I minimize games that can handle it (also for me, typically SWG), but after the first time it stays easy. If I'm back in the game for hours before minimizing it again, it takes some time. I assume there's just some card/memory/virtual-memory shifting going on.

[PreservedSwine]

Originally posted by bkswaney
ATI drivers are far better than they have ever been.
But they r still behind nvidia's. Even carmack said it. ;)

He said that what, 1 or 2 years ago, b4 he decided to demo DOOM at ATI hardware:)

[Kruno]

Originally posted by The Baron
only ever seen the spot comment. however, I have found NVIDIA's drivers to be much more tolerant of craziness. for example, I can multitask in almost any game without having any problems with NV cards, whereas multitasking with ATI cards would cause 2D funkiness (basically, EXTREMELY slow 2D response).

That never happens to me. I can alt-tab perfectly with my R300.


1. alt-tab out of 3D game (didn't really matter which one, but SWG seemed to exhibit the symptoms the worst)
2. run Firebird/Thunderbird/mIRC/Notepad/whatever
3. application window appears on the screen, nothing appears on taskbar, app is unresponsive
4. wait 15 seconds (at least) for the damn thing to appear on the taskbar, at which point it became responsive


Bullsh|t.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/ksaho/ati/alt.JPG

[Rytr]

Originally posted by Domy
my question is very simple 4 u ati owner.does it have a stable driver?coz i'm thinking about switching from Nvidia.so guys...give me some enlightment will u?thx....

My quick answer is yes they are stable. But after reading some of the responses I would throw in a caution that they did not. You may have problems with particular programs and in particular situations (such as mentioned by The Baron) depending on your system components.

My advice is not to worry about noted problems as most have work-arounds and may not even show up on your particular system. Most have not on mine. Only drivers I would be hesitant to recommend are the 3.8's and they even worked well on my system (see sig).

[Kruno]

I find it strange that people have so many problems. I find myself trying to recreate a vast majority of these issues without luck.

Sometimes it can be because of driver configurations of different system components, I still have trouble comprehending most of the issues that occur on one system configuration compared to the exact system configuration(right down to the hard drive) with another user which doesn't have the same problem.

By system configuration I mean: exact hardware and drivers and settings in BIOS and Windows XP.

[Rytr]

Kruno,

I think a lot of the problems stem from conflicts with the OS and various programs, especially virus programs. Other conflicts such as the well documented Via/SB conflicts for example.

[-=DVS=-]

To say the truth there is no perfect driver Nvidia have some drivers who totaly sucks so does ATI ;)

From my personal experiance with ATI i had problem only when card was first shipped , no problem since new drivers getting progressively better ;)

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by -=DVS=-
To say the truth there is no perfect driver Nvidia have some drivers who totaly sucks so does ATI ;)

From my personal experiance with ATI i had problem only when card was first shipped , no problem since new drivers getting progressively better ;)

Yeah, drivers are very system dependent. Some people have instability with NVIDIA drivers. Others do not. Some people have instability with ATI drivers. Others do not. Beyond some possible special cases or known driver bugs, there is no way to tell if you will experience trouble.

I haven't had bugginess with graphics drivers from either ATI or NVIDIA since the old VIA Socket7 AMD K6/2/3 motherboards and their infamous incompatibility with NVIDIA cards.

[Kruno]

What I don't like is people who spread ****.

The only reason I bought my R300 instead of buying a top end GF4 was because I ignored all the Ati vs NV ****.

I heard about how poor Ati's drivers were at the time I was making a decision about what video card I should buy. All I heard were fanboys spreading unfounded crap.

Ati's CD drivers never gave me ANY problems. Hell, everything I had on my HD ran better and looked much better on it than it was on my GF3.

Domy, don't take advice from ANY of us(not even me). You are much better finding out yourself. If placing the card in your system gives you any crap, return it. Then decide yourself where to go from there.

If I had listened to the people here at nVNews I would have a NV25 in my system now and regretting it hardcore.

[Rogozhin]

I've had problems with both ati and nvidia drivers from a tnt2 to a 9800xt.

rogo