Are ATI Drivers Bad?

[EnderXi]

Okay let me give you a quick rundown on the issues I have had:

Grey vertical lines
Brown Vertical lines
RMA the card
Grey Blocks on the Screen
Crash to desktop
Blue Screen of death
Driver failed to initialize
Poor crossfire performance
0% usage on second card
Overclocks on pre-clocked card being set lower than they should be

These are but a few of the many many issues you can read about with a simple google on ATI cards, some of them are caused by hardware and to generalise that people dont do hardware troubleshooting and testing is grossly unfair.

I have run memtest86 to rule out the issues being caused by my memory, I have pulled off the overclock, I have tried every driver that has ever been released by them, I have tried clean installs of windows.

This issue will go on forever as will this discussion, it as someone else mentioned earlier is all about perception and the general perception i get is that while the drivers work they could be better and I echo the above poster given the experiences I have had I honestly doubt I would buy ATI again in a very long time.

 

[PaulyD]

Had 4870, 4870x2 and now 5970, really had no issues with the drivers. Friend of mine had multiple ATI cards and currently has 4890 in crossfire and again no issues at all.

I'm really bored to death of this topic now, both have had issues but for the 99% of the time I haven't had any issues with ATI drivers

 

[Marine-RX179]

Had 4870, 4870x2 and now 5970, really had no issues with the drivers. Friend of mine had multiple ATI cards and currently has 4890 in crossfire and again no issues at all.

I'm really bored to death of this topic now, both have had issues but for the 99% of the time I haven't had any issues with ATI drivers

If you are curious enough, you could try 10.6 driver just to see if it will run perfectly for your cards

However, the 10.6 driver update killed a 4670 of a member here...don't say I didn't warn you.

I agree with people that says the ATI drivers are usually fine for single cards, but random people WILL have issues when it comes to Crossfiring. Not saying SLI is perfect neither, but probability wise, Crossfire has higher chance of running into problems than SLI.

 

[Final8y]

Okay let me give you a quick rundown on the issues I have had:

Grey vertical lines
Brown Vertical lines
RMA the card
Grey Blocks on the Screen
Crash to desktop
Blue Screen of death
Driver failed to initialize
Poor crossfire performance
0% usage on second card
Overclocks on pre-clocked card being set lower than they should be

These are but a few of the many many issues you can read about with a simple google on ATI cards, some of them are caused by hardware and to generalise that people dont do hardware troubleshooting and testing is grossly unfair.

I have run memtest86 to rule out the issues being caused by my memory, I have pulled off the overclock, I have tried every driver that has ever been released by them, I have tried clean installs of windows.

This issue will go on forever as will this discussion, it as someone else mentioned earlier is all about perception and the general perception i get is that while the drivers work they could be better and I echo the above poster given the experiences I have had I honestly doubt I would buy ATI again in a very long time.

Memtest does not rule out memory & motherboard compatibility issues that can lead to CTD, Blue screen, driver has stopped responding from 3 to 8 times a day while gaming for 3 weeks to nail this one down.

OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 (OCZ3G1333LV4GK) (1333MHz)
Asus M4A79XTD Evo.
Passed memtest 12 hours, Passed Prime-95 8hours passed, Furmark passed, 3Dmark06 passed.
Changed the gfx card.
Drivers 10.4/ 10.5 hotfix/10.6.

Fire up WOW which is the only game the customer plays at the moment & instant multiple driver has stopped responding or sometimes hours or more would pass.

Put in some G.Skill RipJaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C8 & not had a single issue.

 

[EnderXi]

Well I had a faulty card in my first setup which was the root cause of most of the issues, since then I have got 2x MSI Lightning 5870 and its a awesome card but the drivers and poor crossfire performance let them down, its frankly better as a single card than a pair in terms of game compatibility and fewer issues.

I havent had a blue screen issue in a long time, also I only get CTD in one game (bad company 2 and thats cos of crossfire issues with that piece of crap).

Drivers and stability are a problem and I must say I have had more problems with ATI than Nvidia not to say that they havent improved recently just wish that it would be smoother times thats all.

 

[RavenXXX2]

There is no denying the fact that xfire drivers have a lot more issues than single cards and SLI rigs. Trying to blame uses error or other hardware is lame when you consider all the issues that are being reported with xfire. ATI should scrap their monthly driver release cycle and concentrate on getting a rock solid set out every few months or when issues with games crop up.

 

[Spazzfish]

Is crossfire scaling resolved at driver level or is it hardware/technology level?

 

[ThomasTheTankEngine]

No real problems with my 2x5850's. GTA4 runs like crap, but I blame rockstar's crappy coding rather than ATI.

The whole system is actually incredibly stable. It's crashed about 3 times since I built it in Janurary.

 

[PaulyD]

If you are curious enough, you could try 10.6 driver just to see if it will run perfectly for your cards

However, the 10.6 driver update killed a 4670 of a member here...don't say I didn't warn you.

Have already run them, installed fine and gave a nice increase in performance, went from mid 28k in vantage to just over 30k.

Installed 10.7 when they came out and increased it by 4 points

 

[Final8y]

There is no denying the fact that xfire drivers have a lot more issues than single cards and SLI rigs. Trying to blame uses error or other hardware is lame when you consider all the issues that are being reported with xfire. ATI should scrap their monthly driver release cycle and concentrate on getting a rock solid set out every few months or when issues with games crop up.

Sometimes it is hardware unless your saying that the ATI driver should have fixed the Ram Compatibility with the mobo.

Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe 1800XT, 1900xCF & 3870CF no issues.
DFI cfx3200 1900xCF & 3870CF no issues.
Asus M3A79-T Deluxe 3870 quadfire no issues
K9A2 Platinum 3870 quadfire no issues.
DFI 790FX-MR2 3870 TriFire no issues.
Asus M4A79XTD Evo 3870CF no issues.
GA-MA790FXT-UD5P 5970 quadfire no issues.

Only ever had one issue directly related to one set of ATI drivers when they would only install the driver for the first GPU if you had 8GB of ram & that was way back before 8GB was common & everyone with 8GB had that issue.

There clearly is compatibly issues with some peoples setup with ATI cards which is not within their powers to fix due to drivers gfx card bios or motherboard bios & sometimes other sw on the system & PSU.
Having the latest motherboard bios does not necessarily mean that the bios is still not the issue.

The only trend that i have is that they have all been AMD systems & maybe that's part of the reason for my lack of problems because multi GPU is a recipe for disaster but yet so far i have come through unscathed.

It seems like NV is more compatible on Intel systems than ATI.

 

[Makhaira]

Never had an issue with ATi drivers per se, but having had both ATi and nVidia, I can honestly say that it's the installation that's the biggest difference. nVidia you can update with impunity, without even having to uninstall the old drivers (although I acknowledge that it's still a wise step). On ATi drivers, most of the time it throws the toys out of the pram if there is a trace of previous drivers on the system, crashing without even a handler to tell you why, and it's also ridiculously sensitive to having redistributables of VC++ anywhere on your machine. Bloody nightmare!

 

[Final8y]

Never had an issue with ATi drivers per se, but having had both ATi and nVidia, I can honestly say that it's the installation that's the biggest difference. nVidia you can update with impunity, without even having to uninstall the old drivers (although I acknowledge that it's still a wise step). On ATi drivers, most of the time it throws the toys out of the pram if there is a trace of previous drivers on the system, crashing without even a handler to tell you why, and it's also ridiculously sensitive to having redistributables of VC++ anywhere on your machine. Bloody nightmare!

I always install over the top.
VC++ is a problem if it installs older components.

It just shows that its really down to the individual setup.

 

[antran]

I had 6 ati cards since last year crossfire 4890, 5870, crossfire 5850 and now a 5970.

Never really had any real major problem with any of the drivers, except for few CTDs and few black screens in bfbc2 during gameplay.

For me, 10.4a and 10.5a is probably the 2 most stable drivers at the moment.

 

[Final8y]

I had 6 ati cards since last year crossfire 4890, 5870, crossfire 5850 and now a 5970.

Never really had any real major problem with any of the drivers, except for few CTDs and few black screens in bfbc2 during gameplay.

For me, 10.4a and 10.5a is probably the 2 most stable drivers at the moment.

CTDs is not something that i get unless its really down to the game sometimes fixed with patches later.

Test drive unlimited didn't like more than 2GB of ram.
BF2 would crash on exit with a set of creative sound drivers.

ATI would know about CTDs with some setups & in game or driver settings ( Not something that i have come across personally for myself yet).

Just started getting CTDs in bfbc2 last night for the first time & i had a good idea as to why & as i suspected my Ram is failing memtest.

Now i have an excuse to get the G.Skill DDR3 Flare ultra high performance 2000MHz CL7 8GB (2GBx4) Or The new 2000MHz CL9 16GB (4GBx4)

 

[coughs]

OK, OK, so ATI's drivers aren't exactly terrible per say but compared with NVIDIA, who are very quick to support new games (the SLI patch for the Lost Planet 2 Benchmark came out within hours for example) and even add workarounds for AA under DX10 in BioShock/BioShock 2, it's like ATI are still in the Dark Ages IMO. I mean five years after NVIDIA introduced per-game profiles to their drivers, ATI have still to add anything similar! I find it unbelievable personally that they aren't doing more to attract people to their graphics cards. Oh the hardware is terrific, I don't dispute that, but it counts for nothing if the drivers aren't up to scratch and, in my honest view, they are so obviously inferior to their rivals...

 

[james.miller]

Ati drivers do have game profiles lol

 

[Final8y]

OK, OK, so ATI's drivers aren't exactly terrible per say but compared with NVIDIA, who are very quick to support new games (the SLI patch for the Lost Planet 2 Benchmark came out within hours for example) and even add workarounds for AA under DX10 in BioShock/BioShock 2, it's like ATI are still in the Dark Ages IMO. I mean five years after NVIDIA introduced per-game profiles to their drivers, ATI have still to add anything similar! I find it unbelievable personally that they aren't doing more to attract people to their graphics cards. Oh the hardware is terrific, I don't dispute that, but it counts for nothing if the drivers aren't up to scratch and, in my honest view, they are so obviously inferior to their rivals...

If the developers has worked with NV then NV will have working drivers first.

ATI has to wait for the game to be released before they can fix it because NV paid for the The Way It's Meant to be Played.

Also seeing as these games have been made on NV gfx card i find it strange that the drivers are not ready even before hand.

I personally don't care about not having a hotfix rushed out for a benchmark of a game.

ATI has per game profiles for years.

 

[RavenXXX2]

ATI has not got game profiles by default, you have to make your own profile for each game. Do ATI not look at Nvidia and say " yeah that's a great idea let's help our loyal consumers out and implement it in our software" but they don't bother.

 

[Final8y]

ATI has not got game profiles by default, you have to make your own profile for each game. Do ATI not look at Nvidia and say " yeah that's a great idea let's help our loyal consumers out and implement it in our software" but they don't bother.

The profiles are in the drivers & the Applications profiles.

 

[magicroundabout]

personally i'd like to see ATI not release a driver for at least 2 months to get everything ironed out and sorted properly rather than drivers each month which ruin something else.

i've ran crossfire and had no problems but that was before the new 10.* set of drivers.

as for are they bad. No they're not. They're not as good as Nvidias by any means but they're definitely not bad.

but i am a big believer of PEBKAC. whether that be Nvidia or ATI