Nvidia is "more stable" out of the box

[Fasauceome]

Since Navi launched, many users and even tech reviewers have been remarking about how AMD drivers just suck when they release new ones for new generations. While generally I'm aware that the driver ecosystem for AMD cards is slightly worse than Nvidia, the "it just works" mentality seems pretty blown out of proportion. Does anybody remember the rtx launch?

 

Space Invaders bug, dying memory, locked frequencies, it was a nightmare. Arguably worse than the current 5700 series launch. The same problem what happens the same way to both companies, if they release a graphics card that uses a refined microarchitecture it doesn't require much special software, it won't be any problems with a new driver. Maxwell to Pascal was basically just a node shrink, and there weren't any major issues on launch. Same thing with the Radeon 7, it was just a node shrunk Vega and there you have it, no major problems (aside from being a redundant product).

 

Personally, I don't see much problem with AMD having all these issues with their drivers, to me it's expected. They release a new microarchitecture basically all the time, going from the R9 series to the RX series and then Navi now, all of these problems don't seem out of the ordinary. It's true that at this current point in time, Turing drivers have matured past their problems, but it was considered a fluke when Nvidia had a launch problem, but standard fare when AMD did.

[5x5]

My 10 series card just doesn't works so idk. Every time Windows updates I have to DDU my driver else the power profile vanishes and were in loud territory again

[porina]

The RTX launch was a hardware problem on a small handful of units, not a driver one. It is worse, but a different problem. 

 

The recent AMD driver fail also affects older gen cards, so is not limited to Navi. Reported (lack of) compatibility in compute cases means Navi in its current form is not a consideration to me outside of gaming use.

 

I think Polaris (RX) and Vega launches didn't have any notable driver problems. Just the PCIe slot power issue on 480 but again that was hardware, not driver, even if it was "fixed" in driver.

[Levent]

I have been using AMD graphics more than 10 years now, I dont know what happened but ever since they got to GCN cards, their driver QA took a massive hit. I have been extremely vocal about how shit AMD drivers are since then. However they made some improvements, their "adrenalin" drivers are still so shit that I would rather update my drivers once a year to their annual WHQL certified drivers AND even then combined with how shit W10 is I always end up with issues that %90 of the user probably wouldnt notice. 

I should add that back when Windows 7 was still the king, I had significantly less issues with AMD drivers, although there were couple of releases (catalyst 13.x and 15.x) that forced me to do a clean windows install, ever since I installed W10 issues just skyrocketed along with shit caused by windows10.

[Akira Shimazu]

well cant argue about Nvidia card. it just faster than AMD in term of more money comes out. cooler and faster i would said. but then again people choose AMD because of the price difference its just crazy. i meant that's how Taiwan or Chinese ( they are different i know) market the product. almost same performance cut the price by half. monopolizing the market ,then release the expensive one.

 

same side with intel. we cannot lie intel is faster in term of gaming or speed alone. and remember how intel does not need 3000Mhz ram because they can ultilize the ram better like in MacBook?, or other intel laptop?. but then again the number of core and price of amd it just worth with money