How's the AMD driver support?

[IAEInferno]

Hello, all of the PC's I used up to now have a NVidia GPU and I was wondering if the AMD GPU driver supports are as good or on equal terms with Nvidia ones since 2017 will be the release of a lot of new hardware for the desktop computers and I'm planning on upgrading. 

[Morgan MLGman]

Their drivers have improved A LOT over the course of the past 1,5 year (or something around that), they're stable and there are no issues. Crimson is also good and less laggy than its Nvidia's counterpart.

[IAEInferno]

Just now, Morgan MLGman said:

Their drivers have improved A LOT over the course of the past 1,5 year (or something around that), they're stable and there are no issues. Crimson is also good and less laggy than its Nvidia's counterpart.

 

That's really good to hear since G-sync monitors are too expensive...

[TheRandomness]

Due to the fact that GCN doesn't want to die, driver support for any card using it will probably last a lot longer.

[MaxBunny]

3 minutes ago, IAEInferno said:

Hello, all of the PC's I used up to now have a NVidia GPU and I was wondering if the AMD GPU driver supports are good or on equal terms with Nvidia ones

They're better. You don't have to register to use them and they usually update support for Vulkan and DX12, while NVIDIA ones do just...something. I don't know really since it seems pretty redundant at this point.

[johnny5c]

Between my wife and kids we have a even mix of Nvidia and AMD GPUs, in the last year the only issue I've had with AMD is Crimson doesn't have hotkey support but I've had multiple problems with Nvidia drivers since upgrading to Win10.

[zMeul]

13 minutes ago, MaxBunny said:

You don't have to register to use them

what are you talking about!?

[byalexandr]

They're fuckin' great! I just switched over to Nvidia from my 290X but I can tell you that they were absolutely fantastic.

[rattacko123]

31 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Their drivers have improved A LOT over the course of the past 1,5 year (or something around that), they're stable and there are no issues. Crimson is also good and less laggy than its Nvidia's counterpart.

"no issues" not exactly accurate, supposedly there is still some freesync issues and wattman isn't stable, also game support is different (better or worse depending on the game) compared to nvidia. I agree that Crimson is much better than that piece of sh*t Geforce experience.

31 minutes ago, MaxBunny said:

They're better. You don't have to register to use them and they usually update support for Vulkan and DX12, while NVIDIA ones do just...something. I don't know really since it seems pretty redundant at this point.

You only register to use geforce experience, the driver itself doesn't require registration. Nvidia drivers do update support for Vulkan and DX12, it's just that Nvidia seems to just spam "game-ready" drivers which in reality will probably break support for some older game. AMD drivers are generally more reliable where performance is rather stable from driver to driver, while in the case of nvidia their might be some performance issues.
 

Also, if you are using windows 10, AMD is the best choice as Nvidia doesn't support OpenCL properly on windows 10

[byalexandr]

41 minutes ago, zMeul said:

what are you talking about!?

When you download GeForce Experience you have to make an account or sign into an existing one before you are able to download any drivers.

[zMeul]

1 minute ago, byalexandr said:

When you download GeForce Experience you have to make an account or sign into an existing one before you are able to download any drivers.

GFE is not a part of the driver, it's a optional application, just like AMD's Raptr - and guess what, Raptr does require log in too

[byalexandr]

Just now, zMeul said:

GFE is not a part of the driver, it's a optional application, just like AMD's Raptr - and guess what, Raptr does require log in too

True, but I was just clarifying his point since you asked about it.

[xAcid9]

Both about the same driver wise imo. Nvidia release more WHQL driver but quality is about the same as AMD beta driver.

Software wise GFE is better than Raptr but both is a useless bloatware for me. 

[Ryujin2003]

I have had zero driver issues on my PC running R9 380. I have had friends with 970s and 980s woth driver issues, and often had to jn I nstall and reinstall drivers to get games to work properly. Could've been a fluke.

[Earnhardt]

They are Fine,have had pretty much 0 issues with AMD drivers ,ever.They are a lot more regular now,maybe even to regular

 

I have read on some of the other forums out there that some people are saying Nvidia's drivers are becoming quite bad lately.

[hadesfriend]

make sure you keep them up to date and you should have no problems. 

[Morgan MLGman]

8 hours ago, rattacko123 said:

"no issues" not exactly accurate, supposedly there is still some freesync issues and wattman isn't stable, also game support is different (better or worse depending on the game) compared to nvidia. I agree that Crimson is much better than that piece of sh*t Geforce experience.

I'm on an AMD card for over a year now, had completely zero issues (and I update as soon as a new version releases)

[Lord Nicoll]

whew, I have a Radeon HD 7870 and it still has amazing driver support. I have a GTX 860m, it too has good driver support. This is probably the most matched these companies have been for drivers in a good few years, both are good solid choices and both offer something the other doesn't. Unless you use Linux, in that case fuck you and your hopes for good drivers unless you have the money for FirePro/Quadro cards, Although Nvidia drivers are vastly superior on Linux compared to AMD.

[ivan134]

Neither great not terrible, just like Nvidia's drivers. With 16.9.2, my vram wouldn't downclock in 2D mode. I haven't checked to see if they're still doing the same with the new drivers. Other than small things like that, they do what they're supposed to do. It's impossible to predict what a driver will do in the future so it's better to ask this question closer to when you're about to build.

[i_build_nanosuits]

3 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

I'm on an AMD card for over a year now, had completely zero issues (and I update as soon as a new version releases)

same here, but i have been on nvidia for 3 years straight now...zero issues, one driver broke the ''idle speed'' of my card when monitor set to 144hz, was fixed within a couple days. ..Ohh and the witcher 3 gameready driver that broke my GTX 780 performance by 1/3...also was fixed a couple days later.

[Morgan MLGman]

2 hours ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

same here, but i have been on nvidia for 3 years straight now...zero issues, one driver broke the ''idle speed'' of my card when monitor set to 144hz, was fixed within a couple days. ..Ohh and the witcher 3 gameready driver that broke my GTX 780 performance by 1/3...also was fixed a couple days later.

Yeah, it depends on the personal experience I guess, but I'm using Nvidia's software on a secondary rig (5820K @4,5GHz + GTX 970 @1480MHz) and the Nvidia control panel is not only old (the GUI), but also laggy... IDK, I've had it lagging on my every rig, and I doubt that an X99 rig with quad-channel RAM and a 12threaded 4,5GHZ Haswell CPU is the reason...

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Based on my experiences with my 280x, 390x, 980 Ti. AMD has been giving me less issues. So they're probably the same either way. No one has superior driver support.  

[i_build_nanosuits]

16 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Yeah, it depends on the personal experience I guess, but I'm using Nvidia's software on a secondary rig (5820K @4,5GHz + GTX 970 @1480MHz) and the Nvidia control panel is not only old (the GUI), but also laggy... IDK, I've had it lagging on my every rig, and I doubt that an X99 rig with quad-channel RAM and a 12threaded 4,5GHZ Haswell CPU is the reason...

the nvidia control panel is indeed getting long in the tooth...get's a while to open sometimes, but for me it's stable and gets the job done...especially considering all the many settings you can adjust in there on a per game basis and everything, support for DSR resolutions built in etc.

 

Also, they have come out with a brand new Geforce experience, and it's exeptionaly good...it open in a flash and is even easier to use than before...and i would think and hope they would/should come up with a new version of the control center soon!

[Morgan MLGman]

3 minutes ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

Also, they have come out with a brand new Geforce experience, and it's exeptionaly good...it open in a flash and is even easier to use than before...and i would think and hope they would/should come up with a new version of the control center soon!

Is it really good? I disabled it on that rig as the previous version wasn't a good piece of software imho, had some issues with it, but I might check it out if you really recommend the GF Experience 3.0

[i_build_nanosuits]

Just now, Morgan MLGman said:

Is it really good? I disabled it on that rig as the previous version wasn't a good piece of software imho, had some issues with it, but I might check it out if you really recommend the GF Experience 3.0

oh yeah i do...it's very light and very snappy and it works great...used it to update to driver 373 that recently came out...went smooth...scanned and added all my games etc...works very well.