Driver impact to system... AMD vs Nvidia

[Grimlakin]

We all know and currently begrudgingly accept that no vendor is putting out drivers that are consistently great and bug free.

I've recently changed from the top AMD card (7900xtx) to the top Nvidia card (RTX 5090).

Part of the change was gaming of course... but another part was stability.

AMD drivers I'd regularly had games crashing to desktop with driver issues. I'd tried tweaking this or that setting... under volting, custom aggressive fan curves... things like that to try and control the card to keep that from happening. And honestly.. it never worked.

So I switch to the new AMD card. yes it's faster at gaming and that sort of thing. But what I've noticed from the seat of my pants impact is that my system has become OVER ALL more responsive and stable.

I really think AMD's graphics drivers were interwoven into the system or their API's were accessible in such a way by other components in the system as it was causing an over all performance/experience negative impact to my day to day.

I'm talking about in small ways that have just added up. I'm sure I'll have some driver woes going forward with Nvidia as well.

But my system has been stable in gaming in a way I never had with the 7900xtx and honestly that's huge to me. A 5080 would have equaled and minorly exceeded the 7900xtx, and probably brough that same overall stability and snappiness back to my system.

Just putting that out there, if you've become accustomed to little delays in your system here and there and games crashing to desktop with your AMD card... it might just be that driver suite from AMD causing the issues. Not sure if going with only drivers from MS's vault would solve that for you or not.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Prefacing my remarks; I rarely play games on release or even near it, unless bundled with hardware. This subsequently means I do not immediately upgrade drivers. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

I have not had crashes or other issues with teams red or green that were a problem on the vendors end, in years. I've had games be responsible due to well known issues. Since switching to Linux gaming, I've stuck with AMD. Only issue so far was CTD in Spidey games using RT. Which no longer happens after switching to Cachy from Bazzite.

Team blue I've had numerous issues with, but that was expected and is part of the fun of supporting player 3. It's the box of chocolates, never know what you are going to get.

It's interesting you are having no issues so far. Numerous tech sites, channels, and users, have been chronicling and roasting Nvidia for how historically bad the drivers have been the last year.

 

[ShmeeCat]

FWIW, this could be more of a Windows driver issue. I know someone who sometimes plays ETQW as well, also has a 7900XTX, and they used to have crashes to desktop when playing. They have since switched to Linux, and the crashes have gone away.