NVIDIA 260.63 Beta Driver Performance Review Comment Thread

[chrisk]

Originally Posted by technix

Anyone who's owned both Nvidia and ATI cards think that the drivers should be taken into serious consideration when comparing/choosing between Nvidia and ATI cards?

Yes. In my personal experience, nVidia has had better drivers than ATI. CCC was always a big PITA for me too.

Meanwhile, folks on these boards who had the nVidia driver fan issue might disagree with me (and rightfully so).

As someone who uses both products, it seems to me that nVidia has more driver issues now than before, but this is just anecdotal on my part.

[SKYMTL]

I've made NVIDIA aware of this thread. I am sure they will be looking into things shortly regarding why certain aspects of this driver work perfectly on some systems (like mine) and have issues on others.

[ilya]

Drivers were working fine for me at first, but then I found a minor fairly unimportant glitch.
The thermal sensors now occasionally spike for no reason at all. It's only a brief spike and I'm pretty sure that they're completely inaccurate as my card probably would've caught on fire at 400c.

Going to try older drivers to make sure I didn't botch the hardware. (which I doubt is the case)

Everything else is working as it should though.

[technix]

Originally Posted by chriskwarren

Yes. In my personal experience, nVidia has had better drivers than ATI. CCC was always a big PITA for me too.

Meanwhile, folks on these boards who had the nVidia driver fan issue might disagree with me (and rightfully so).

As someone who uses both products, it seems to me that nVidia has more driver issues now than before, but this is just anecdotal on my part.

Yeah, I read about the fan issue. That's pretty bad that the QC is not too great and maybe Nvidia is TOO quick with driver updates? They don't do enough thorough testing? From my reading and research, it's my impression that ATI's hardware is generally considered 'better' than Nvidia's (from compatible or same level card) but the drivers are not as stable or frequently have issues compared to Nvidia. I'm not asserting this but just saying if I were to summarize a conclusion, I would suggest that. However, despite reading some customers claim ATI causing them problems (driver troubles), to play devil's advocate, I wonder if they're just being foolish or if it's 'user error.' But, the idea that ATI drivers are 'not as good' seems to be shared by a high percentage of Linux users, too.

I guess the drivers are not consistently good or bad for either but some intangibles exist for both? If you have a high performing gaming card for Nvidia, maybe hold up on testing new drivers until they've been out for a while? If ATI, you may be waiting a while for some driver issues to be fixed?

Thanks for the feedback and info.

[_dangtx_]

not to go offtopic, but that issue kinda affected gpus not too long before fermis came to market, theories galore, if you google :)

[Sagath]

Originally Posted by technix

Yeah, I read about the fan issue. That's pretty bad that the QC is not too great and maybe Nvidia is TOO quick with driver updates? They don't do enough thorough testing? From my reading and research, it's my impression that ATI's hardware is generally considered 'better' than Nvidia's (from compatible or same level card) but the drivers are not as stable or frequently have issues compared to Nvidia. I'm not asserting this but just saying if I were to summarize a conclusion, I would suggest that. However, despite reading some customers claim ATI causing them problems (driver troubles), to play devil's advocate, I wonder if they're just being foolish or if it's 'user error.' But, the idea that ATI drivers are 'not as good' seems to be shared by a high percentage of Linux users, too.

Id trust drivers that come out every "once and a while" rather then forced drivers "once a month". How good can the QC really be when you know every 4 weeks a new driver is coming down the pipe?

[Slik]

Originally Posted by technix

What's the state of this driver? Are bugs/issues being fixed?

Anyone who's owned both Nvidia and ATI cards think that the drivers should be taken into serious consideration when comparing/choosing between Nvidia and ATI cards?

Without question in my opinion. For the few months I was running two 5970s in Crossfire,I could never get them to run on ANY driver that would equal what I have with Nvidia.

[rjbarker]

Another small "quirk"...upon booting up, immediately launching nvcp, under Sli and PhysX Control, nvcp defaults PhysX to GPU#2......I've always seen this as #1...."nv recomended"....odd...