So where's Radeon WHQL 11.10 drivers?

Come on AMD! You had three pre-release drivers for BF3 beta, now that the game is released, where's the goods!

 

I got this from twitter, so thats about it!

 

man amd's always slow on this front.

 

11.10 v3 has been out for so long now. How is that slow?

 

How are they slow? They release more drivers than any other GFX hardware company. And they have already said the WHQL is just the Preview 3 drivers which have been out for over a week now and they have had 3 11.10 Preview drivers so far.

I see no evidence of AMD being slow with driver releases.

 

I kinda meant on the whql front.

they did get the preview drivers out quickly at least.

 

oh, come now. certainly Nvidia is at least slightly more proactive with drivers. They have BF3 whql drivers available right now, just as an example. Just being realistic.

- Happy AMD owner

 

Nvidia does not release more official drivers than AMD does. They release a lot of beta drivers among which have led to smoking GFX cards. AMD release preview drivers which are often the drivers they send in for WHQL certifaction early.

So yes, AMD officially release more drivers than nVidia does. Especially ones with mobile support and not with INF modifications from third party like LV2Go.

AMD has had more drivers released for BF3 than Nvidia has also. It's just too bad their Profile 3 from 11.9 is causing stuttering for CF users. Would have thought they had this sorted out by now. Maybe BF3 did something at release that beta didn't, causing problems for AMD.

 

The quantity of driver releases doesn't have much to do with being proactive. They could be release drivers twice as fast and only including half as many updates (or worse!). I'm not saying they are, but I am saying quantity is not what I think is important, it's not the best metric for us. It's more about preparedness and timing. Nvidia was able to release their whql BF3 driver on the same day as the game release. It takes AMD a week for that. I don't really care about the ~5 week vs ~7 week schedule of major driver releases during down times.

Proactivity is more about anticipation than productivity, which is more about how much you produce. As far as the release schedule, it's more about preference than productivity. Would you rather them plan to wrap up changes every 5 weeks or every 7? Presumably the extra 2 weeks aren't spent by the engineers on tea parties, or Nvidia's driver support would start trailing further and further behind AMD. I think they just elect to produce a driver on that schedule, so, all else being equal, each major driver release is a little bit more dense and less frequent than AMD. It's hard to say who produces more by looking at release frequency. It's easy to determine who is more proactive. Figure out how the dates line up with important events.

Nvidia's beta drivers often end up passing whql certification, just like AMD. I'm not buying that Nvidia's beta drivers destroy graphics cards without a body of evidence. Mobile support, both companies release mobile drivers. Some manufacturers block them, but most don't in both cases, and LV2go is not necessary for most users. It's a 3rd party community. Just because it exists doesn't mean Nvidia is worse. Nvidia also has much better linux support than AMD at the moment, as well as OpenGL, which AMD is having some (hopefully shorter term) issues with.

So we know the difference between high frequency and proactivity. We know that releasing drivers faster vs slower doesn't have any effect, all else being equal, on driver quality. Nvidia could just be rolling slightly more into slightly less frequent updates. I don't really want to get into a massive debate about driver quality. I do buy AMD products primarily, and currently I am AMD heavy, and I think they offer the best value overall, or at least they certainly did at the time I bought my gpu. Other than that, the companies are very similar overall.

 

It's already been said the WHQL driver will be the 10.11 Preview 3 which were out for over a week before Nvidia released theirs.
- And even on Guru3D which is the capital of let's whine about AMD are reporting constant 60 FPS without any issues with Preview 3. Just don't install Cap 3.
- AMD has already stated, don't install WHQL if you already have Preview 3 installed.

AMD was faster to release BF3 release day drivers than Nvidia.

And you really want to talk about day 1 release drivers about Nvidia? Are you joking?
- Nvidia has had a number of MEANT TO BE PLAYED games such as Crysis 2, Witcher 2, Bulletstorm etc. where at Day 1 release, the drivers from Nvidia were buggy with the game. Forums smashed with players complaining that it was running crud on their nvidia even though these were Nvidia paid for games...

You may be a AMD fan, but you certainly hold onto your prejudices against AMD strong, which seems very weird for someone who claims to be an AMD fan, with a raging bias for Nvidia...

 

I hope the irony of this statement is not lost on anyone.

 

I'm loling @ anyone who thinks AMD does as good a job as nVidia. Blatantly lying to yourselves.

edit: Talking purely drivers.

 

I don't have a raging bias. I do believe Nvidia has slightly better drivers and is better at getting involved with devs to release them quickly. I still prefer AMD overall because drivers are just one piece of the puzzle, and I believe AMD provides better overall value, especially when I bought my most recent GPU. I remake this choice every time I get a new graphics card. My history is about 70% AMD vs 30% intel, and similar with AMD vs Nvidia (70/30 split buying frequency).

I am not joking. I don't think there's anything funny or unusual about my position. In fact, I think most people would agree. Nvidia has better overall driver support. I just didn't want to go down that road, because arguing about it is pretty stupid.

I was just trying to help settle conceptual idea that even if AMD releases whql drivers at higher frequency than Nvidia, they might still be slow. The driver releases don't give us any information as to the density or quality of their contents. Moreover, they don't give us any information as to the timing of those releases with important events. You generally aren't desperate for 5 week releases over 7 when nothing major is coming out. You may be impatient for 0 days vs a week when something like BF3 comes out. It's great they got out their preview driver in time for launch, but that means Nvidia submitted theirs for whql certification at least several days ago so it would release in time. Hence, more proactive.

 

This is disappointing because I was hoping for more improvements. But I'll try CAP 2.

 

They really do though. This 6970M is my first AMD card, and I haven't seen any of the driver issues I'd been brainwashed to believe I'd run into with it.

In 2011, AMD has been just as good as Nvidia. If you'd like to provide examples where I'm wrong, I'm open to the discussion.

 

The only example I can think of is that, AMD switchable graphics don't work well with OpenGL.

 

I hope at least the 11.10 WHQL will be a improvement for the Prerelease 3. D;
That driver broke so much OpenGL stuff just to get crappy RAGE to work.

To break even Minecraft, now thats sad.

 

It's not a matter of it working well. It's a matter of it working at all. The only time switchable graphics work is in manual mode. AMD is allegedly working on a software-level fix, but I'll believe that when I see it.

 

There aren't generally massive driver issues. There used to be several years back. It's not that ATI releases awful drivers, I still think Nvidia is somewhat better.

One simple example is that the driver control utility (aka catalyst control center / vision control center) is built on the .NET framework. It's a virtual machine system. It's a lot like Java. You have to install the .NET framework on windows with the driver. It's basically the equivalent of installing the Java VM to run Java apps, except .NET framework programs aren't really cross platform. When you use that control panel, if you notice, the GUI is a little bit finicky. Sometimes it won't respond for a second or two. Nvidia, by contrast, has a native application that runs very fast. Both applications provide similar features. The Catalyst application is NOT terrible, but Nvidia's is a little nicer.

Again, you might be satisfied with getting a preview driver on release day of BF3. Nvidia was able to provide a WHQL driver. You can't really fault AMD for taking a few days to go through WHQL testing, but Nvidia was able to work with the dev's a little bit closer and get their driver operational in advance to submit for WHQL testing. It's not unreasonable of AMD to take a few days, but I just think Nvidia is a little bit more on it. Just slightly.

Same thing with OpenGL support in general, as well as linux support. It can generally work in both cases, but Nvidia tends to be a little easier to work with on those fronts.

I also think AMD tends to provide more performance / dollar than Nvidia, and their driver suite and updates are at least adequate. They also have a deal with Valve / Steam to streamline updates into Steam. Steam has a "check for video driver updates" right in the menu, just for AMD. Pretty cool. There's also no rendering quality difference between the brands.

Years ago, there were serious concerns about ATI drivers, and there were also concerns on both ends about rendering quality. All that is gone.

 

ATI or Nvidia...Does it matter?

A discussion I often go back to when people are comparing the two.

tl;dr AMD can achieve more with less but it's harder to write drivers for.

 

Lol this one was a lot better.

 

The main reason AMD chose the VLIW5 arch was because it was a logical continuation of what they were doing for DX9 and before (except that was better related to VLIW4 - in the sense of common execution requests on DX9). AMD kept it because DX9 was, and still is, rather dominant (many DX10+ games are not DX10 - rather are believed to be DX9 with DX10 "tacked" on top).

EDIT: of course, AMD is moving to GCN, which in a nutshell, is very Fermi-like in a high level arch view.