Hardware Does Anyone Else Hate AMD Graphics Drivers?

[Hydrazine]

I recently moved from the Nvidia camp to AMD, and I have to say, AMD drivers are terrible.

Firstly, they release drivers updates less frequently than Nvidia, and the new drivers they release usually give a lower performance improvement than Nvidia drivers. Their stability is also a huge issue. I've have to fall back to older drives on multiple occasions due to a new drivers causing issues. CCC is also unstable and less feature rich than Nvidia control panel. I don't care what Linus says about Nvidia, I've had more trouble in Linux using AMD drivers than Nvidia, even though Nvidia Linux drivers are supposed to be worse. WTF AMD?

 

[Originality]

My personal experience between the two camps is that for single GPUs, AMD actually performs better in games. However for more intensive tasks (because gaming is most certainly not intensive) like animation and rendering, nVidia tends to come out top... not because it had more raw processing power (per price point, it doesn't) but because the drivers support it better. With multi-GPU setups... neither camp is great, but nVidia tends to have less issues with the graphics having to "jump start" (for lack of a better term) the second GPU a couple minutes into the game.

CCC takes a lot more work to tweak for better performance than nVidia's Control Panel, but I have made it bend to my will on a dual-GPU AMD graphics card in my brother's PC. It really depends on what exactly you need it to do.

 

[3bbb7]

I have used more systems using AMD than Nvidia but I can say that updating drivers is so much easier on Nvidia. It's almost sad complicated of a process it is for users who haven't done it before to upgrade their graphics drivers.

Nvidia was straightforward and easy to do, but updating AMD takes downloading the drivers (or the detector if you're not exactly sure which to download), then downloading the installer, then installing it, and half the time it not even working.
It's really stupid.

 

[PityOnU]

Not sure who told you nVidia drivers were worse on Linux. In my experience, nVidia drivers are pretty much bulletproof on Linux, whereas AMD cards take some mucking with.

The reason for this (and the seeming lack of updates from AMD as opposed to nVidia) is because the NVidia drivers are unified - one ring to rule them all, as it were.

As far as I can tell, AMD drivers most certainly are not.

And yeah, 3bbb7, their installer to download the installer setup is a real piece of work. WTF guys

 

[Hydrazine]

Not sure who told you nVidia drivers were worse on Linux. In my experience, nVidia drivers are pretty much bulletproof on Linux, whereas AMD cards take some mucking with.

The reason for this (and the seeming lack of updates from AMD as opposed to nVidia) is because the NVidia drivers are unified - one ring to rule them all, as it were.

As far as I can tell, AMD drivers most certainly are not.

And yeah, 3bbb7, their installer to download the installer setup is a real piece of work. WTF guys

Linus Torvalds told me:

 

[aireca]

Actually AMD drivers updated too much and people complained about it so they decided to make just one big update when new games are released. And honestly Linux + Videocards = Fail.. in general. Probably steam will make this change but i wounldn't hold my breath meanwhile this happens.

 

[trumpet-205]

Linus Torvalds told me:

What Torvalds meant to say is that Nvidia closely guard its driver specification. Making open source alternative, as well as integration due to different licensing very difficult. Nvidia Linux driver is miles ahead of AMD counterpart.

Though for Linux, Intel has the best driver support. This is one odd area where Intel willingly to open source its hardware specification.

Having used both Nvidia and AMD, I can tell you that,
* Nvidia driver in general has less bugs, but when they do it is a major one and tends to remained unsolved.
* AMD driver on the other hand has more bugs, but mostly just annoyance rather than game breaking.

My personal experience between the two camps is that for single GPUs, AMD actually performs better in games.

There is one exception where Nvidia is better at gaming, 3D gameplay. AMD HD3D support practically doesn't exist in, often requires middle man software like Tridef to make it work. On the other hand there is actually decent amount of games supporting Nvidia 3D Vision.

 

[smf]

Linus Torvalds told me:

No, he didn't say the drivers were worst. He loves the drivers, he just wants them to give him the source code.

He is a liability for Linux uptake.