General Discussions

[NicoRampa]

What are the best drivers (Longevity, performance, optimizations for Professional games and apps and windows)?

[elstaci]

Depends on who you ask (-: .

If you go to both Nvidia and AMD Forums or other forums that deals with Nvidia or AMD you will find a lot of complaints from both manufacturers.

So if you ask someone that owns a Nvidia User who never had any major issues with Nvidia drivers he will say Nvidia drivers are the best and vice versa with AMD Users.

I would just google to find reviews on whichever GPU card you are planning on purchasing to find out what type of issues are seen in the Manufacturer's (Nvidia and AMD) Forums or Customers Reviews from Retailers like Amazon or Newegg.

I generally tend to look at the one or two star reviews to see if I see anything common with the product I am planning on buying. 4 or 5 Stars reviews aren't very helpful except to show a happy Customer with the product.

I have an Nvidia GPU card and I haven't had any major issues with the Graphics drivers. I used to have AMD GPUs but decided to purchase a Nvidia GPU card due to it was on special or sale.

I really didn't have any major issues with AMD Drivers until my last AMD GPU (HD 7850) card which brought me to the wrong conclusion it was a defective GPU card when in reality it was a AMD Driver issue (Had no audio from GPU card all of a sudden) .

My wife has a legacy AMD R7 GPU card in her OEM PC and I never had  any issues with the GPU card nor its AMD Drivers since I purchased the PC for here over 7 years ago.

So like I said depends on who your ask.

[johnnyenglish]

I do liked the part you said

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@elstaci wrote:

Depends on who you ask (-: .

So let me present you, the owner of the question and everyone else with a third party view.  

Go here and spend some time reading it.
https://rog.asus.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?311

Done yet? Armoury Crate is, even to some of the most hardcore RoG fans, viewed as "problematic" LOL

And it is! Its pretty unstable. I never had much trouble as others do but I've dealt with some occasional (grab the computer and throw it out of the window) situations. So much that I learned to do a Windows Restore Point because the probability of an update going bad is high. And bear in mind that my PC is top to bottom RoG, from board, to PSU, to AIO, external drive, peripherals, you name it.

Having said that, you ask, why am I reading a Armoury Crate opinion? That's not what I asked..

Well, use the image with a bit of salt.....

[elstaci]

I happen to be a huge fan of Asus since I have been using their hardware I have had really good experiences. Granted Asus is more expensive than other manufacturers but they do manufacturer decent hardware especially Motherboards.

But even though I am a huge fan of Asus I never use any of their own programs that comes  with the hardware like Asus Suite 2 or 3, GPU Tweak, or Armoury Crate.

I was using Asus Suite 2 for a long time but I found out it was causing issues at times so I just uninstalled it.  Same with GPU Tweak.

Simply put many if not most of Manufacture's propriety programs might have many useful features but it also has many issues.

Maybe that is why I have had such good experiences with Asus hardware since I don't use their propriety programs to configure the hardware.

Just my thoughts on Asus in general.

[johnnyenglish]

Don't get me wrong, I had lots of brands and ASUS for me is one of my TOP picks. But in a topic like this, It was funny to bring this picture of Armoury Crate with NVIDIA source code. 

I feel that Nvidia software could use a more modern looking GUI

[elstaci]

I agree I was a surprised to see that Armoury Crate is a Nivida program. I wonder since that uses Nvidia coding if that has any conflicts with AMD drivers or programs.

[Skrybe]

I wouldn't call it an Nvidia program. It probably uses features or changes settings relating to Nvidia devices and in order to do so needs to use proprietary Nvidia code. Which in turn needs the disclaimer.

Back on topic. I'm a gamer who flip-flops between AMD and Nvidia (over my last 10 video cards I've had five from each). And if/when Intel get their act together and provide viable hardware I'll consider them too. I've had problems with both camps. Honestly I couldn't say either is better than the other in terms of drivers because frankly you run the risk of having problems with both. It depends on so many factors - your overall hardware (model, manufacturer, age), the games you run, what version of Windows (or Linux) you're on, whether you're overclocking, etc.

Frankly, I found that if you buy quality base hardware (especially PSU and motherboard) you have less problems. Similarly, don't buy bleeding edge. Because there are inevitable driver (and hardware!) problems for both sides in the first few months of a product release.

I prefer AMDs approach of being open with most of their technologies so basically anyone can implement them versus Nvidia's more closed off approach. But Nvidia seems to have more game developers onboard with their game development assistance program. Which (sadly) means a lot of games are better optimised for Nvidia hardware. This is not a driver fault as such though.

[hrpuffnstuff]

IMHO Nvidia has been more consistent with good drivers for me but both have had issues over the years on my systems.