ATI vs Nvidia : Driver Stability


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Hi, y'all

Currently have an Nvidia Graphic card, but thinking of trying an ATI Graphic Card

Which drivers have been more stable for you guys! ATI or Nvidia

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I can tell you in the past ATI had CRAPPY drivers and I mean horrible. That's the main reason I went over from 3dfx when they died over to Nvidia, but now ATI has supposedly gotten their act together and the drivers are really stable.

I personally still use Nvidia, but ATI is hot right now, and has the fastest card on the market currently

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I can tell you in the past ATI had CRAPPY drivers and I mean horrible. That's the main reason I went over from 3dfx when they died over to Nvidia, but now ATI has supposedly gotten their act together and the drivers are really stable.

I personally still use Nvidia, but ATI is hot right now, and has the fastest card on the market currently

Perfectly said.

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Likewise with SMELTN, I'm using a 4850x2 (dual GPU), which you would assume is terrible for scaling and driver support. Surprisingly, I've had no problems at all, and plan to stick with ATI for a while.

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The stability of the current ATI drivers is exceptional, and although the layout of the CCC is a bit lame, it has been refined significantly and consumes nothing like the amount of memory or CPU power that it used to

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Loved ATi for the longest time, but I got sick of their drivers, not to mention having one card burn out on me. Sticking with nVidia for the time being, until I run into a problem with any of their cards. Currently have 4 of their cards in use, on various computers. No problems yet. (8600, 9600, 9800)

Oh, and to not mislead you, I've heard ATi's been doing better, but as a consumer, my experiences will keep me away from them.

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I've always had more luck with ATI...I stopped using nVidia a few years ago because I had so many issues with drivers and BSODs.

I can only recall ever having two BSODs with ATI stuff--that was back in early November when I bought a new Radeon HD 5770. It had a few driver issues to start with, but after ATI released their November drivers, I haven't had one since. That's not too bad considering the 5000 series just came out the month before, so they were still getting the bugs worked out.

According to Microsoft, nVidia was apparently the cause of almost 30% of crashes in Windows Vista: http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2008/...dia-drivers.ars

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Thanks guys!

I'm thinking of buying a 4850 which is a pretty good for price!

Not a real serious gamer, but think should do me fine.

Currently have a 7950GT!

Do you think it's worth the upgrade!

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Would be a good upgrade, can play most games maxed on a modest res :)

Concerning drivers. I have plenty of experience with both ati and nvidia and they are both perfectly stable with the occasional issue on either side. I have never had any major problems with either.

I can tell you in the past ATI had CRAPPY drivers and I mean horrible. That's the main reason I went over from 3dfx when they died over to Nvidia, but now ATI has supposedly gotten their act together and the drivers are really stable.

I personally still use Nvidia, but ATI is hot right now, and has the fastest card on the market currently

keyword IN THE PAST. They have had fine drivers for ages, back with my x1950pro their drivers were fine. Hell their early drivers for vista were far superior to nvidias.

Now their linux drivers is another story... but the windows ones are perfectly stable and have been for years. The one thing I think nvidia does much better is the per game 3d settings in the control panel.

Edited by ViperAFK
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I've had ATI drivers cause instability problems at work, but they were fine on my laptop. Never had problems with Nvidia's drivers.

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I heard that ATi Won't be able to run this for example, (short sample vid)

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/132004/Planet_E...ample_16ref.mkv

Can any verify?

Hmm I actually did have issues with that, bad flickering. Quite odd, I watch LOTS of hd video on my computer and have yet to come across an hd mkv file that didnt play perfectly. What codec is that sample encoded with? Seems like a rather specific case.

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Hmm I actually did have issues with that, bad flickering. Quite odd, I watch LOTS of hd video on my computer and have yet to come across an hd mkv file that didnt play perfectly. What codec is that sample encoded with? Seems like a rather specific case.

Video: MPEG4 Video (H264) 1920x1080 23.98fps [Video]

Audio: Dolby AC3 48000Hz 6ch [Audio]

Subtitle: Advanced SubStation Alpha [subtitle]

16 reference frames is the killer here as I understand.

Plays fine on ION.

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Hmm I actually did have issues with that, bad flickering. Quite odd, I watch LOTS of hd video on my computer and have yet to come across an hd mkv file that didnt play perfectly. What codec is that sample encoded with? Seems like a rather specific case.

I just played it with no playback issues at all, but the video had no sound and I believe it was played via the CPU not the GPU (0 GPU activity, but like 10% CPU activity).

What player are you using to view it? I tried media player classic and it played just fine, VLC and WMP12 however would not play it (I have not installed any video codecs).

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ATI for sure. Never ever going back to Nvidia. I remember the early phase of Vista, BSOD's everytime, display driver kept toppling over, it was a mess. Jumped onto the ATI ship and most of the drivers that are released are quite good with a few exceptions such as bad framerates in some games but no BSOD's. Forum posts are usually a good thing to keep a look at.

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I just played it with no playback issues at all, but the video had no sound and I believe it was played via the CPU not the GPU (0 GPU activity, but like 10% CPU activity).

What player are you using to view it? I tried media player classic and it played just fine, VLC and WMP12 however would not play it (I have not installed any video codecs).

I was using MPC-HC 64 bit and the video was dxva accelerated. I have no codec packs or anything installed. I was going to try vlc but it was "building font cache" and taking forever when i tried to play it. I'd imagine it is something to do with dxva which vlc doesn't support by default afiak.

WMP 12 also did the flickering. I am on win7 64 bit.

Thats the first video I have ever had any trouble with though, I have lots of other h.264 mkvs and they work perfectly.

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I just played it with no playback issues at all, but the video had no sound and I believe it was played via the CPU not the GPU (0 GPU activity, but like 10% CPU activity).

What player are you using to view it? I tried media player classic and it played just fine, VLC and WMP12 however would not play it (I have not installed any video codecs).

That is actually big fat playback issues because the CPU should not decode h264.

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I was using MPC-HC 64 bit and the video was dxva accelerated. I have no codec packs or anything installed. I was going to try vlc but it was "building font cache" and taking forever when i tried to play it. I'd imagine it is something to do with dxva which vlc doesn't support by default afiak.

WMP 12 also did the flickering. I am on win7 64 bit.

Thats the first video I have ever had any trouble with though, I have lots of other h.264 mkvs and they work perfectly.

Ok, just got MPC-HC and have no issues at all with it here. Win7 64-bit and the 64-bit version of MPC-HC. While playing I get anywhere from 0% to 25% GPU usage (with the old version of MPC I was getting maybe 3% GPU usage at max) but I get solid frames the whole way through the video, no flashing or anything.

That is actually big fat playback issues because the CPU should not decode h264.

How about 10% CPU usage (still) with 0-25% GPU usage while playing the video bacK?

Either way, just played that short video with no problem what so ever.

4890 Toxic

9.12 Hotfix drivers.

Other than assuming it is running on video acceleration due to 0-25% GPU utilization, is there any way to ensure it is running on DXVA?

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Ok, just got MPC-HC and have no issues at all with it here. Win7 64-bit and the 64-bit version of MPC-HC. While playing I get anywhere from 0% to 25% GPU usage (with the old version of MPC I was getting maybe 3% GPU usage at max) but I get solid frames the whole way through the video, no flashing or anything.

How about 10% CPU usage (still) with 0-25% GPU usage while playing the video bacK?

Either way, just played that short video with no problem what so ever.

4890 Toxic

9.12 Hotfix drivers.

Other than assuming it is running on video acceleration due to 0-25% GPU utilization, is there any way to ensure it is running on DXVA?

I use MPC and it says if it is on the statusbar

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