Are AMD GPU drivers still bad?

[Millios]

For a build I'll make after this summer is done I'm looking for a GPU that can run games at 1440p and 90+fps at least and have good performance for 1080p and 4k editing in programs like davinci resolve,adobe after effects and Photoshop.

Due to pricings in my country and lack of good used parts I'm stuck betweens an rx 7800xt and an rtx 4070 (potentially a super if prices drop low enough). I'm aware of the new gen coming however I'll stick to this gen. It'll have 32gbs of ram (5200 Mt/s, ddr5) and a ryzen 5 7600. Are the AMD drivers good now? Or should I stick to team green? 

[ImWilly]

5 minutes ago, Millios said:

Are the AMD drivers good now?

Sure, AMD drivers improved a lot, so it wouldn't do some random BSOD out of the blue

I feel it's way better compared to the drivers last year where sometimes the FPS overlay wouldn't even show, and Frame Gen is a really good additional feature on 2024 version of the driver

 

5 minutes ago, Millios said:

Or should I stick to team green?

It depends, productivity does favours NVIDIA

If the pricing in your country places Radeon RX 7800 XT and RTX 4070 (Super if there's some price drop as you have mentioned), I would go for RTX all the way, cause the main advantage of Radeon cards are performance per price which makes it more appealing compared to NVIDIA

 

[Levent]

Yes they are.

[Millios]

2 minutes ago, ImWilly said:

Sure, AMD drivers improved a lot, so it wouldn't do some random BSOD out of the blue

I feel it's way better compared to the drivers last year where sometimes the FPS overlay wouldn't even show, and Frame Gen is a really good additional feature on 2024 version of the driver

 

It depends, productivity does favours NVIDIA

If the pricing in your country places Radeon RX 7800 XT and RTX 4070 (Super if there's some price drop as you have mentioned), I would go for RTX all the way, cause the main advantage of Radeon cards are performance per price which makes it more appealing compared to NVIDIA

 

I see. I do understand the cuda cores on the Nvidia and codecs as well are somewhat better but do the newer drivers and the extra 4gbs of VRAM make up for it? Cause you did mention that amd is more bank for the buck.

[podkall]

Just now, Levent said:

Yes they are.

depends how lucky,

 

usually they are bad for brand new games

[Millios]

2 minutes ago, Levent said:

Yes they are.

Are we talking system crashing bad still? Or some fps drops and low 1% more times than they should bad?

[podkall]

Just now, Millios said:

I see. I do understand the cuda cores on the Nvidia and codecs as well are somewhat better but do the newer drivers and the extra 4gbs of VRAM make up for it? Cause you did mention that amd is more bank for the buck.

amd is better bang, and cuda is only useful if you use software that capitalizes on it, otherwise you don't really need it for gaming

[Kid.Lazer]

They're fine. Just buy whatever GPU suits your needs and budget.

[BentleyOwen123]

4 minutes ago, Millios said:

Are we talking system crashing bad still? Or some fps drops and low 1% more times than they should bad?

second one

[Millios]

2 minutes ago, podkall said:

amd is better bang, and cuda is only useful if you use software that capitalizes on it, otherwise you don't really need it for gaming

To my understanding editing programs capitalize on cuda cores don't they? From what I've seen they use them to render images, do complex tasks and render videos. 

[Millios]

Just now, BentleyOwen123 said:

second one

If it's the second I can deal with it since it affects gaming more than editing. Cause I do not want to lose hours of work again.

[Levent]

7 minutes ago, Millios said:

Are we talking system crashing bad still? Or some fps drops and low 1% more times than they should bad?

1%s are always AMDs trouble spot. I was talking in the lines of actual driver/software stability.

[Millios]

1 minute ago, Levent said:

1%s are always AMDs trouble spot. I was talking in the lines of actual driver/software stability.

When you mean stability where exactly does it stand then? Does it crash often? Does it stutter? If it crashes it's a great scare for what I want it for. If it stutters I can deal with it. If it's some errors that get resolved without closing the program again it's acceptable but if it closes it it's a problem 

[Tan3l6]

I swapped from RTX 4070 to RX 7800 XT lately. I do notice some small stutters there where there earlier weren't (I assume when assets are first loaded). But the average fps without ray tracing is better.

Seems to be driver issue rather than anything else. But I haven't used AMD GPU for a while (before this one)...

[Millios]

1 minute ago, Tan3l6 said:

I swapped from RTX 4070 to RX 7800 XT lately. I do notice some small stutters there where there earlier weren't. But the average fps without ray tracing is better.

Seems to be driver issue rather than anything else. But I haven't used AMD GPU for a while (before this one)...

How about using some programs that aren't for gaming necessarily? Do they crash or pop up with errors a lot? 

[Tan3l6]

2 minutes ago, Millios said:

How about using some programs that aren't for gaming necessarily? Do they crash or pop up with errors a lot? 

No, no errors at all with either cards. But I'm not using any other non-gaming apps than 3D-benchmarks.

One aspect - 4070 was easier to OC so it is almost as fast as 7800 XT at default speeds. Only issues appear when I try to OC the AMD card. Nvidia drivers reset automatically when OC was unstable. AMD might need pressing manually keyboard shortcut to reset.

[podkall]

30 minutes ago, Millios said:

To my understanding editing programs capitalize on cuda cores don't they? From what I've seen they use them to render images, do complex tasks and render videos. 

depends what programs, some barely use GPU some might use CUDA,

 

Blender would be a better example

 

7 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

I swapped from RTX 4070 to RX 7800 XT lately. I do notice some small stutters there where there earlier weren't (I assume when assets are first loaded). But the average fps without ray tracing is better.

Seems to be driver issue rather than anything else. But I haven't used AMD GPU for a while (before this one)...

is it on all kinds of games or is this more likely the more "fresh" the game is?

[Millios]

2 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

No, no errors at all with either cards. But I'm not using any other non-gaming apps than 3D-benchmarks.

One aspect - 4070 was easier to OC so it is almost as fast as 7800 XT at default speeds.

I do not intend to oc any component (maybe tweak the CPU and RAM but not push it to it's absolute limits) so the Rx is faster out of the box then. If it doesn't crash and it's only some stutters I suppose then an and GPU is more worth it since it's also cheaper 

[Tan3l6]

3 minutes ago, Millios said:

I do not intend to oc any component (maybe tweak the CPU and RAM but not push it to it's absolute limits) so the Rx is faster out of the box then. If it doesn't crash and it's only some stutters I suppose then an and GPU is more worth it since it's also cheaper 

The differences in performance are mild. Mostly a matter of preference in features.

 

  

3 minutes ago, podkall said:

is it on all kinds of games or is this more likely the more "fresh" the game is?

I only remember one of the newest games when the menu loads. Have not played a lot other games lately.

Lightyear Frontier starting screen stutters each time game loads, and when the game starts it stutters lightly also, but smooth after loading.

[Millios]

2 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

The differences in performance are mild. Mostly a matter of preference in features.

 

  

I only remember one of the newest games when the menu loads.

Have not played a lot other games lately.

One I've seen relatively recently is Fortnite and some shooters like apex where the 1% drop to like 9fps and the .1% to 1-2. Has that happened to you? (In situations like gunfights not out and about with no one around)

[Tan3l6]

Just now, Millios said:

One I've seen relatively recently is Fortnite and some shooters like apex where the 1% drop to like 9fps and the .1% to 1-2. Has that happened to you? (In situations like gunfights not out and about with no one around)

Have played neither of those lately, can't say.

[podkall]

11 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

I only remember one of the newest games when the menu loads. Have not played a lot other games lately.

Lightyear Frontier starting screen stutters each time game loads, and when the game starts it stutters lightly also, but smooth after loading.

that could just be new games and not even GPU's fault u know,

 

I heared that sometimes AMD card owners are more vocal about their games stuttering than Nvidia owners, despite Nvidia owners experiencing same lag with new games

 

 

[SkilledRebuilds]

My AMD Gpu will record gameplay using AMD Relive ONLY at 30FPS in H264 mode, if I choose H265 it'll do 60fps everytime, but set back to H264 it WILL NOT capture 60FPS even though the option is enabled...(H264 faster/less demand to edit than H265) and half rate vsync cannot be located in the drivers which is bad for lower end GPU's (VRR solves this typically however until you hit 48Hz in high detail low fps games or CPU limited games) but you can't SET 1/2 Rate Vsync yourself...but its crazy that 2006--2024 no Half Rate Vsync has been in their drivers and FPS caps don't count as it's not the same output/effect I want for smoothness (Synced with proper framepacing, not just a cap)

 

I don't know for sure if the Relive bug is just me or not... but worth putting it out there because it's still an issue today for me.

Beyond those two gripes with the drivers, the AMD setup don't give me much annoyance at all, and the GUI is nice even though I rarely use it that much..
 

[Salted Spinach]

If drivers is a long term issue, reviewers would have said so in their videos... and basically none of them do

 

And if the price of the 4070 Super drops, the price of the 7900 GRE might drop as well...

 

Its just the performance and hardware acceleration for productivity apps that you have to decide on.

[ImWilly]

8 hours ago, Millios said:

extra 4gbs of VRAM make up for it?

Well, for extra VRAM, that is actually quite a niche requirement

Bigger VRAM surely helps for loading higher quality graphic setting, but it doesn't matter if the compute cores are not enough to process it to high FPS counts

That's why NVIDIA insists on "barely enough" VRAM, especially on the entry line up such as RTX 4060, cause the compute unit is so minimum, that it wouldn't need excessive 16GB of VRAM compared to RX 7600 XT

With that said, it doesn't mean that VRAM is not important, it's just NVIDIA is intentionally cut some corners on the lower line up to make the RTX 4090 24GB VRAM very desirable (for upselling purpose)

8 hours ago, Millios said:

Cause you did mention that amd is more bank for the buck.

Yup, that's AMD strategy since the beginning. Knowing that they can't beat NVIDIA in AI related features, AMD undercut the price of their GPU compared to NVIDIA, and focus on the segments that they are really good at, which is gaming.

I have been using my RX 7900 XT for a year now, it is really great experience for gaming. My disclosed frustrations for me to use, is FPS counter overlay that doesn't work on last year's driver, and experience playing "Fallout: New Vegas" (after watching the TV shows, I really have an urge to play that)

Somehow, I can't load the game with 2024 version of the driver, and I have to reroll to 2023 version of the driver in order to play it. To be fair, it's probably the developer's problem not optimizing the game years ago and abandon it.

For productivity side, AMD Radeon shouldn't have any big issue, the only difference to NVIDIA is that the CUDA cores is so well-optimized by the video editing app developer, it will have shorter rendering time.

 

So if I have to choose between RX 7800 XT and RTX 4070 (assuming it's the same price), I will take RTX. 12GB vs 16GB is not a game changer, 6GB to 8GB is a huge improvement since 6GB is barely minimum nowadays. And RTX is practically versatile for gaming and productivity, so it fits on your use case