Who makes the best graphics drivers?

[W1zzard]

Everybody has a different understanding of what "best" means.

For your criteria, who makes the best drivers? Let us know why.

[james888]

Oh oh.... (Gets popcorn)

I use Amd right now. I havn't had any more problems with them than I did with nvidea. I don't like Amd's control center and much prefer nvideas. On that alone I choose nvidea because stability is similar in my experiences. Intel's drivers have never given me any problems though, ever. I only have had 8 months with intel though.

[erixx]

The more I approach retirement age, the less I like to spend time on constant tweaking. I will take nVidia based on the ca. 20 green vs. 2 red cards I have owned.

[Mathragh]

My first thought was Nvidia, but only because I usually build AMD powered PC's for people, and probably 1 in 2 people running AMD drivers has run in some kind of problems related to drivers, while I dont know many people with Nvidia cards with problems(but also not many people with Nvidia cards in the first place).

The most annoying problems while using AMD included:
Catalyst not wanting to run untill I completely wiped the drivers, and then manually deleted the registry keys.
Flash randomly crashing the PC(or in the case of the 7950 giving a grey flickering screen which requires a reboot) because of the weird clock profile that flash uses which lowers GPU memory clocks after the GPU memory got OC-ed.

I cannot vouch for the quality of Nvidia drivers though, but in the short time I used the Nvidia drivers they bluescreened my PC in LoL when a champion performed a specific move(very weird, Lux with light binding in this case), and randomly when I tried to watch a movie or use flash while using a 3d application(most annoying aswell).

In the end i'm not so sure, they both do not work perfectly. I wish there was a poll option "They all suck", but I guess that would defeat the purpose of the poll.

[_ALB_R3D X]

Been using a crossfire setup for more than one year and had lots of issues!
First I blamed my ex CPU (X6 1090t )for not being so powerful to fulfill the needs of the GPU's...but then I used tweaking and things completely changed...
ATM I upgraded ro 12.8 thinkin they must be the best but I'm havin this wierd thing happen where the second GPU would keep higher clocks on idle (450mhz/1250mhz) until I run BF3 or some game...!

[DanTheBanjoman]

I vote Microsoft, standard vga driver always works. Other than that I'd say NV has the better control panel. Can't say I notice any difference between AMD/NV otherwise. Intel is just poop.

[1nf3rn0x]

I'd have to say Nvidia, only had two ATi cards a 4650 and a 4890, both were a pain in the ass, especially with drivers. Would always crash on bad company 2 when it just came out and wanted to play multilayer so badly

[HammerON]

I say Nvidia. Used ATI/AMD from 2004 to 2008 and have used Nividia since. Main reason was lack of Crossfire support and updates for new games when released. Nvidia seems to be ahead of AMD when new games are released, even if you are using multiple GPU's.

[entropy13]

Definitely Intel. I mean, they rarely releases new drivers because updates and fixes aren't needed anymore! That's why they're the best!

[hb904460]

Back in the day, Omega drivers were the best.

[NC37]

Depends...at one time I had to switch to ATI due to incompatibilities with NV drivers. But when I eventually switched back, things worked fine.

But if rating based on bloatiness of the driver control panel...NV wins. ATI has never been able to get CCC to feel like it wasn't poo through a funnel.

Whoever voted Intel needs to be smacked...hard...and multiple times...

[Crap Daddy]

I think there should be another poll for statistics, how many NV and AMD users are on this forum. Might be interesting to find out. Back on topic, never had problems with NV drivers and I think the best drivers are those that you forget that you have them, they just work. I'm still on 285.62 since I own a 570 and just got Sniper Elite V2 which is a recently launched game. Fired up the benchmark and on the same settings W1zz used for 1680/1050 I got the same FPS as a 660Ti. Usually I change drivers only when one new game requires that it is mandatory.

[arnoo1]

Nvidia, never had any problems, yeah there was once a grappy driver for the 9800gtx but i saw the news about it ibefore installed it, i am still on a gtx275 and works great

[Law-II]

Hi

I am a little embarrassed to say that I own two HD 5970's and that I fell for the QuadFireX hype when it first started the rounds; however was stung by the lack of support from AMD/ATI with the developers of the games. They may be trying to change the tide now with regard to supporting games but are facing an uphill challenge from their ATI legacy.

I have to run a single HD5970 these days as I get better frame rates. needless to say one of the HD5970's is gathering dust on a shelf.

CrossfireX, questionable support for games at best, if you are lucky you *may get support when a game is released and it *may be optimised; however most of the time the Catalyst Driver Team are "looking in to it".

Morphological filtering, is a joke and provides little to know improvment to IQ in games and slow's FPS

Catalyst Drivers - Vertical refresh (Vsync) dose not work in all applications; I have to use a third party app to lock the frame rate at 60Hz.

Catalyst Driver Team appear to have crippled dual GPU/VPU cards from their line up within the drivers from version 12.1 WHQL; I have reported this for the last eight months in a row - http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D20B2F3EBF. (I have to use 12.1a Preview drivers)

Needless to say I for one will not be investing in any of their future single or dual tech

atb (all the best)

Law-II

[jigar2speed]

This poll basically indicates how many fanboys of Nvidia, AMD and Intel are there on Techpowerup

[jigar2speed]

Originally Posted by Crap Daddy

I think there should be another poll for statistics, how many NV and AMD users are on this forum. Might be interesting to find out. Back on topic, never had problems with NV drivers and I think the best drivers are those that you forget that you have them, they just work. I'm still on 285.62 since I own a 570 and just got Sniper Elite V2 which is a recently launched game. Fired up the benchmark and on the same settings W1zz used for 1680/1050 I got the same FPS as a 660Ti. Usually I change drivers only when one new game requires that it is mandatory.

Exactly, still on AMD's 12.3 and have yet not faced any issues.

[95Viper]

I'd have to say about even for all.

However, ATi nudges out NVidia, IMO, because... I have had a tiny amount more trouble with NVidia drivers (installing and/or upgrading), than ATi.

No comment on Intel and others, as the only time I have had to use them is on a netbook or years ago.

[buggalugs]

I think they all make good drivers, most "driver issues" are caused by badly installed systems, or some other conflict.

Nvidias drivers are a little more robust than AMDs, Nvidia's drivers are better able to handle a poorly installed/poorly tuned system.

Intel would win in the reliability area, but it doesnt really count because they dont have the features of AMD/Nvidia cards.

[mypg0306]

Use AMD before and switched to Nvidia now. Found that NV is more reliable in terms of performance & user friendly control panel. Just had an issue with driver before (forgot which version) which once I shut down my PC, the case fans were still running. Update the latest driver solved the problem.

[Frick]

Dunno. Have had little trouble with drivers overall.

[lZKoce]

I think there should be multiple choice. Since I have no complaints from Intel and nVidia for example. Only one choice is not enough :P. Later on you will correct the statistical results when analyzing the collected data with IBM SPSS/Excel .

[the54thvoid]

Meh, I've not voted. I've had zero problems on single card AMD drivers and any crossfire on older set up of dual 5850's were related to poor crossfire support from game. I had similar issues with a GTX 295 with low gpu usage.

I can't vote on ethical grounds.

I think a nice discussion would be who makes the most reliable custom cards (for either camp).

[camoxiong]

I have experienced both, the on-board nvidia 7600i series, the r6670 and a gtx 560ti.

edit:

plus a AMD a8 3870k with a 6670 in crossfire.

[EarthDog]

Nvidia.

Though I havent had any real issues with them in the past, from the amount of forum posts complaining about AMD's vs the amount that complain about Nvidia, AMD is trailing.

Never touched intel drivers.

EDIT:

poor crossfire support from game.

Hmm, I thought it was drivers that gave the ability to run Crossfire/SLI...I mean you dont change the game code to use SLI/Crossfire, you change/update the GPU driver, not patch the game.

[cadaveca]

Originally Posted by EarthDog

not patch the game.

You would be surprised how un-true that is then. Games need to be threaded poperly to run across multiple VGAs, and still keep everything in sync. If not, there'd be no need to different rendering modes. Those modes exist because the way the code runs prevents something from working right.

How Post-processing is done is the big thing, as I understand it, but I guess an actaul programmer that writes engines would know best. Where's Carmack when you need him?