Why do people ignore Nvidia's Driver Problems?

[funnyperson1]

I was just wondering because theses DetXPs have really been a pain, and the only ones that dont crash my comp are the 23.11s which suck in smoothness of gameplay, and the 22.50s which are good....but also ive seen lots of people post here about problems with MXes and arguing about what driver is the best, and which ones suck and which ones are unstable, when i had my rage fury pro it was simple, i went to www.ati.com clicked drivers, downloaded the newest drivers, and never had a single problem, not one (other than the overall crappiness of the card:D ), another problem of mine is that (i know this is minor, but i am lazy) with the ATI drivers i never uninstalled the old ones and it worked fine, its annoying to have to reboot and go into safe mode, then install the driver then restart, i want to just double-click, go away and then have new drivers installed when i get back....is that too much to ask....now notice this is not an Nvidia flame and i am pretty happy with my Geforce2, but im just trying to put everything on a level playing field.......now maybe with a card that has developing drivers such as the 8500 they may not be up to par, but i expect that, does anyone remember the shipping drivers with the GTS? when they first came out they were hardly beating the TNT2Ultras and Voodoo3s, and they had some major texture compression problems, the sky in QuakeIII looked like fractal Geometry....now that theyve had two years to mature they are whooping up....and i think that anyone that says not to buy an ATI card (excepting 8500) because "ATI's drivers suck" are just like people who dont buy AMD because "Intel is just better"........whoooohh that was long.....:D

[Element-Xero]

i dunno about anyone else but I change my dirvers very frequently and have never had any problems whatsoever. I like the constant stream of drivers....ATI doesn't update its drivers NEARLY as frequently, so there is less to manage.

[-Exi|e-]

I never had any problems with drivers from nVidia like i had with my Radeon64DDR, a thing to remember here is that these new drivers are leaked, therefore BETA, this would be like buying a pre-production car, it would probly have some major issues. Just try the reference drivers and i'll bet you wont have any problems. Another thing to remember is that sometimes its not only the drivers that are to blame, WindowsXP anyone? Via chipsets are also known to have some problems as well. Back in your Rage fury days they probly didnt have beta drivers to begin with.

[oc jason]

actually bout 90% of the problems in all drivers are the system hardware.

If a driver does not work on my card it probly will on a different system.

And i have tested that 2250 work on one rig, but put the card in other rig nad 2250 are a no go??

[o770]

yes, i agree about nvidia driver issues seem always to be something not to argue about that much, and they have some serious ones.
Despite the fact there r so many versions and occasional problems can be easily solved by just changing for another version - something i dont know about ati's: how much easy it is to find another good one, nvidia's have related problems even with official releases: something like the S3TC and DXT1-DXT5 (texture compressions) for example, present since the first detonator versions were released.
I havent also seen anyone complaining about the impossibility to apply the driver customized colors under direct3d applications when running the XPs or the popular lack of driver support to overclock some video cards.
I can recall starting two threads about two problems quoted above but to no avail; could never discuss them with anyone. and i have seen ppl talking about ati driver issues - like destroying them! - without ever used nor even owned any ati product.
i could bet now that, cuz as i said have already seen this before, if i ever start some thread about some unknown ati driver problem, that even if no-one has ever got the same thing i would get at least one reply as a big critic of the ati's bad bad development of drivers.

[Mykex]

Well my last few video choices were in this order......

Ati AllinWoner 16mb PCI (Still fine in a PC)
Savage4 PCI (sold to parts unknown)
Diamond Viper V550 ( I toasted)
Voodoo 5500 (I broke)
GF2MX400 (returned in 3 days)
KyroII (just sold)
Radeon7500 (lovin it)

All in all Ide say for drivers ATI brought me back, they made a commitment to hiring and realize there's an issue. That's all I can ask is that a company know there's a problem and do something about it. As for nVidia I took a good look through three sets of drivers on the MX and it was just so ugly and so confusing between refrence,detonators,beta,leaked,tweaked,double secret beta tweaked and the like I just said screw it and got the KyroII. At least I got into that card knowing there would be problems but it had a chance at becomming something better.

Even when dealing with someone else using the det this or beta that most of the people out there base performance on 3D# or games I'll never play. So even if it's the holy grail of driver sets to them, it might just stink for me. With ATI I get a few sets to choose from, a beta or two and I can comment to ATI on whats broken. With nVidia odds are your using a driver that nVidia will never support or the card manufactuar wont. You can use the manufactuors drivers that are more than likely slow and possibly outdated.

This is all after you make the choice buying one which is yet anouther clusterfudge. Do I get the Gainward leadtech Asus powercolor mousevision, or the boss house of video express golden eggdrop? Well one has great OCing and the other good 2D but then theres Eddie's vidshack 2300XP9 GF2Ultra MX ti 350.2 that has great memory but the clock isnt cooled well.
:rolleyes:

Choices are nice and all but I just dont have the ambition to wade through all that, thats what brought me back to ATI.

If Voodoo haddent gone under I would more than likely be running the 6000 right now and giggling at the fact that my vidcard has it's own PSU and four fans.

[Angry]

(I was bored so enjoy this long post)

From 3dfx to ATI

Once there was this boy age 14 who just got a brand new computer, Cyrix 266, 32 meg Ram 4 gig Ultra ATA 33 Hardrive. But the boy soon found that when he borrowed Monster Truck Madness 2 from afriend that the game ran very slow and jercky with the built in 2d video card. (If only He knew at the time). SO one day while in Software eTc looking at computers games thinking it was the game that refused to run rigtht on his PC he came acroos a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 PCI 3d Accelerator. "Hmm" thought the boy, "3d Acellerator, Does that mean My games will run faster if I had this in my system?" Asking a clerk he found out that 3d was a necesity to run 3d games. He then asked teh clerk how come his game ran slow on his pc and he told him his systems specs. The clerk asked "What Video card do you have?" "I have no idea sir, All I know is it came with my system" replied teh boy, " I Can bet you have a 2d video card, If you get this V3 you will see a huge increase in game play." The boy looked at teh cards price 99.99, "Im sorry it will take me awhile before I can get that" So the next week after school had let out the boy mowed yards for many a people over the summer. By the time the middle of summer came teh boy had enough to buy what his dreams had been set on day and night, and why 3dfx.com was on his favorites. Upon returning to Software eTc he bought teh card with his hard earned cash and took it home. At home he ripped open teh box and pulled everything out. All there was was a big green hunk of silicone and a CD with quickinstall guide. The boy inserted the CD and watched all of teh installation video. "I have to open my system up to install this?" Finaly teh next day the boy worked up his nerver to remove teh first screw from his case and inside found a huge chunk of metal with fins on it and a card that went into the motherboard via a PCI slot that was apparently his 56k modem. "Wow, looks easier than I thought..should be simpler than modifying my RC cars and sound system." So teh boy took out the cord that ran into the motherboard which the boy foudn out his 2d card was built in. The boy installed teh Voodoo3 2000 in a PCI slot and put everything back in order and together. Next he turned his system on and got the message "3dfx Voodoo3 2000 BIOS" on his screen. "Oh heck yeah, this is gonna be fun!" Upon booting into window it asked for the driver CD as sopposed to and it found them and rebooted and wala! The boys games ran much faster and smoother thus began the young boys journey into teh world of Pc hardware and video games. He also spent teh rest of teh summer playing games instead of mowing yards LOL.

Now this teen has a ATI Radeon 7200 after haveing fried his KT7a and finds teh driver install and update as simple as 3dfx.
This spring...A Duron 1ghz is gonan get paired up with a VisionTek Geforce 3 Ti 200. Thus will begin the teens Nvidia jouney while still holding on to ATI.

Oh yeah guess where that V3 is? It still sits in teh EXACT same system as it was first installed in only with 128 meg ram and Windows Me....great for daddyo who does nothing but email.

So in other words ATI and 3dfx had simple driver installation ( well the offical ones did hehe) Why hasnt Nvidia followed this route? I have just the basic abnormalties as any gamer, slow cpu LOL but gets teh job done for now.

[GORDIE]

you said this ...


"and i think that anyone that says not to buy an ATI card
(excepting 8500) because "ATI's drivers suck" are just like people who don't buy AMD because "Intel is just better"."

I agree mostly however the November 14 release of the radeon 8500's driver fixed most of the problems. the quake 3 "cheating" issue is fixed and the card did better in almost every benchmark, defeating the GeForce 3 ti500 in many of them. At this time Id say the Radeon 8500 is almost identical in over all speed to the GeForce 3 ti500 only difference being the radeon's next driver release will probably result in even more speed and i dought very much the GeForce card is going to get any faster with future driver releases. The radeon is also cheaper and comes with tv out/multi monitor support whereas the GeForce ti500 does not. I don't understand anybody who would pay more and buy a ti500 over a 8500 despite amd's past for "driver problems"

Why does this post look like an advertisement for amd ?LoL I went a little off topic.. sorry ha ...

[o770]

why r the ati drivers so much easier to install than nvidias anyway?
i cant figure this out.

[o770]

Originally posted by oTTO
(...)something like the S3TC and DXT1-DXT5 (texture compressions) for example, present since the first detonator versions were released.


this is something im still curious about and just found out right now its not something relating to the drivers but to the nvidia GPUs. so im completely wrong talking about that as a driver issue.
once there is no specification for DXTC decompressor nvidia chose to implement 16-bit colors interpolation in the DXT1 decompressor. thats why nvidia img quality s*cks with the texture compressions enabled.

[Kingslayer]

Why do people ignore Nvidia's Driver Problems?

Because they are too busy noting ATI's driver problems.

I have seen a lot of things change since the release of the Radeon. I am glad, that if ATI doesn't take the top posistion, that they have at least stirred the pot, and made alot of hardware review sites out to be the morons that they are.

People have never complained about nVidia driver problems. People have never complained or asked why do they get constant performance increases with their drivers? Are their programers that good, that lucky, or is nVidia intentionally holding out on you now that there is competition?

Here are a few other cases to take note of.

Before Radeon...3DMark2001 is the industry standard in benchmarking video cards. It's reports and numbers are taken as gold.

After Radeon...3DMark2001 is now nothing but a "simulated" and an "estimated" benchmark. It's reports and numbers are now worthless. Especially if the top posistion is held by an ATI product.

Before Radeon...Benchmarks were done with certain games and 3DMark2001. Most of the games used were DX8 games.

After Radeon...Benchmarks are done, still, with games and 3DMark2001, however, all of a sudden we are now benching using DX7 games. Both the GForce3 and the Radeon8500 are designed for DX8 and 8.1. However, the GForce the still supports DX7 very well. But why bench with old software if only one card supports it. Bias at it's best.

Before Radeon...Benchmarks were done on FPS and FPS alone. nVidia brainwashed the public into believing that FPS was all that matters, and the self named "honest, unbiased" review sites supported this.

After Radeon...People are now starting to look at image quality, 2D quality, DVD playback, and speed. They are still overlooking the company that makes the cards, because they find it hard to down trod a company that just threw a $300 video card in their lap for nothing...

Before Radeon...Nobody cared about nVidia driver issues. You could either go back to the old set, or wait a week and see if the new ones fixed it. No big deal.

After Radeon...nVidia is still releasing drivers regularly, 3rd parties are releasing them damn near daily. ATI are making theres slowly, and this multiplies the fact that they arent perfect to begin with.

All of this time that nVidia was top dog has brainwashed the people into a certain mindset. This mindset was FPS rules, my drivers better come weekly, and I better get more performance. nVidia is still doing their thing and as long as the peoples mindset stays the same, then nVidia driver issues will never matter.

But it was amazing that for a card that "is horrible" and "will never beat nVidia" the Radeon sure got its attention. Even if the public was screaming the drivers were bad, or they cheated on Quake benches, they got their attention.

Remind me of something...

"Whether they cheer for me, or boo me, I'm still the center of their attention"....Dale Earnhardt

[o770]

the most favorable thing about nvidia drivers is the "unified" aspect they have i think. for how many time is nvidia developing the very same driver? and in comparison with ati that needs one specific driver for each video card, gpu whatever, ati has to start all over again everytime a new product is released.
as a market solution the unified thing is really quite favorable for nvidia in my opinion, in the very several aspects i can think of.

otherwise, since the last so popular competition between both i doubt a lot about the newer nvidia drivers - 23.11 for example. i havent heard so many related compatibility problems for a long time since this last one was released. havent tried it yet and its difficult to get information about img quality (and anything other than performance numbers) but the constant improvement of performance is really something i concern about. as ati has done, couldnt nvidia be also cheating for performance - now more than ever?
i cant say nvidia always did: i have the version 22.50 and it works great for me; performance, img quality, compatibility (had also 21.83, this one truly developed by nvidia).. just the LOD bias that cant work with negative numbers anymore - for all the XP versions i guess, and cant recall seeing anyone complaining about: im not sure but a possible answer could be (it seems for me at least) in general: ati is much more a reasonable solution for users that know what they r getting. ppl dont use to complain so much about nvidia drivers issues because they just not know the issues exist.

[Dark Illusion]

nVidia's marketing:

It's not a flaw, it's a feature.

=)

[funnyperson1]

any other opinions :)

[The Real CyReX]

The Voodoo that you do! 3dfx was the best 3d card maker i'am sure a lot of people would agree with me. But nvidia ruined them taking their technology with them. 3dfx already had plans to make a VooDoo 6 but then nvidia took over the company!

No one can ever top 3dfx. i remember the time when i went from a ati 2d 2mb pci to a VooDoo 3 16mb agp card. (It sent shivers down my spine)


A shame

[Burning Phoenix]

I never had any problem installing Nvidia drivers or using them. Some were better performers and some had better image quality. I can honestly say i've personally have installed and uninstalled every known nvidia driver since the 3.xx series. I not to long ago posted a thread on results on testing the current drivers using my current system and that'll show i've at least tested the 12.xx - 22.xx. If restarting the computer is the part of the problem you don't like well it is no big deal to me at least because it may take 20 + secs of my time waiting for it to do so. As for trying to overwrite current drivers with new i've found in benchmarking that it makes a difference in scores. I know at least with Nvidia drivers some parts of the old driver may stay behind and mix with the new install causing sometimes less performance but maybe more.

[Kingslayer]

Well for all you out there touting how good nVidia's driver system is....go look at their page. They have removed the latest drivers from their page because they were so crappy and have gone back to the prior drivers.

Nothing like having the manufacturer settle the arguement for you...