Opinion: AMD's GPU control panel is way better than Nvidia's

[UltraMega]

Nvidia: 

 

 

AMD:

 

 

 

I don't get why Nvidia hasn't updated their control panel layout since I was a kid playing far cry 1 and BF1942. It works, but it looks like something from windows XP and it lacks basic features like doing updates. I know there is the GeForce Experience thing which will do updates and all that stuff but I always hate using that and being forced to sign in just to do basic things. AMD's control panel does pretty much everything GeForce Experience + The Nvidia Control Panel can do but all in one and without making you sign in, but actually does more because there are OC controls available among other things. Just something I've thought about ever since I got my current GPU with this is my first AMD card. 

 

Once AMD catches up with FSR 2.0 and smart upscaling is pretty ubiquitous and even enough to work well across the board, I feel like AMD will be operating on an even basis with Nvidia as far as support and features go. I've definitely been surprised by the quality of their drivers lately at the very least. People used to say AMD driver support was way behind Nvidia and I think that was true for a long time but from my experience that does not seem to be the case anymore. I definitely wouldn't hesitate to get an AMD card in the future for any software related reasons at this point.

Edited April 2, 2022 by UltraMega

[ArchStanton]

I've only begun messing around with it (Radeon software).  Minor annoyance: needing to turn off their (data mining I think) "customer experience program" after each update.  Also, does it offer the ability to save multiple, or even better application specific, overclock profiles?  I notice it "runs home to momma" and defaults back to no overclock whatsoever any time any part of the system has a hiccup.  It would be nice to have specific one click profiles for various benchmarks/games.  It may have this functionality already and I am simply unaware, as I have not delved deeply into all the available settings yet.

[damric]

Yeah the basic Nvidia driver controls haven't changed in a long assed time, but also yeah if you want something that looks better you need to install the whole experience thing, which looks very much like and feels similar to newer AMD drivers in functionality. 

[Darkpriest667]

You ever run linux you'll never buy another Nvidia card again. Nvidia's proprietary driver BS makes them a pain in the butt on Linux, Yes their (AMD) software AND drivers are actually better. I was spoon fed "muh Nvidia drivers better" for over 10 years before learning the truth the hard way. 

Edited April 3, 2022 by Darkpriest667

[Sir Beregond]

9 minutes ago, Darkpriest667 said:

You ever run linux you'll never buy another Nvidia card again. Nvidia's proprietary driver BS makes them a pain in the butt on Linux, Yes their software AND drivers are actually better. I was spoon fed "muh Nvidia drivers better" for over 10 years before learning the truth the hard way. 

There's a reason there's a video of Linus Torvalds flipping the bird to Nvidia lol.

 

Yeah, I never understood it either Ultra. Absolutely looks like Windows XP still lol. It works, but could use a facelift.

[Diffident]

It looks better in Linux.  Overclocking is still available in the Linux Nvidia Settings , but I don't have it activated.

 

 

[bonami2]

6 hours ago, UltraMega said:

Nvidia: 

 

 

AMD:

 

 

 

I don't get why Nvidia hasn't updated their control panel layout since I was a kid playing far cry 1 and BF1942. It works, but it looks like something from windows XP and it lacks basic features like doing updates. I know there is the GeForce Experience thing which will do updates and all that stuff but I always hate using that and being forced to sign in just to do basic things. AMD's control panel does pretty much everything GeForce Experience + The Nvidia Control Panel can do but all in one and without making you sign in, but actually does more because there are OC controls available among other things. Just something I've thought about ever since I got my current GPU with this is my first AMD card. 

 

Once AMD catches up with FSR 2.0 and smart upscaling is pretty ubiquitous and even enough to work well across the board, I feel like AMD will be operating on an even basis with Nvidia as far as support and features go. I've definitely been surprised by the quality of their drivers lately at the very least. People used to say AMD driver support was way behind Nvidia and I think that was true for a long time but from my experience that does not seem to be the case anymore. I definitely wouldn't hesitate to get an AMD card in the future for any software related reasons at this point.

As an enthusiast that used Eyefinity Surround VR and 4K 120hz

 

The nvidia panel is 10000x more stable than that piece of crap amd thing that crash and never hold any setting

from 7950x2 crossfire to rx 480 rx 580 and now my 6800xt.

 I miss my 1070

 

Ways overcomplicated going around the amd setting.

 

 

Remind me of Xfire and Raptr thing

Edited April 3, 2022 by bonami2

[Darkpriest667]

2 hours ago, Diffident said:

It looks better in Linux.  Overclocking is still available in the Linux Nvidia Settings , but I don't have it activated.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Diffident said:

 

 

 

Yeah, and AMD's is still better.

 

[UltraMega]

2 hours ago, bonami2 said:

As an enthusiast that used Eyefinity Surround VR and 4K 120hz

 

The nvidia panel is 10000x more stable than that piece of crap amd thing that crash and never hold any setting

from 7950x2 crossfire to rx 480 rx 580 and now my 6800xt.

 I miss my 1070

 

Ways overcomplicated going around the amd setting.

 

 

Remind me of Xfire and Raptr thing

Interesting. I actually tried eyefinity recently to stretch a split screen game over two screens and I didn't have any issues. Haven't tried anything else yet but it seems to work well for me. 

[PCSarge]

2 hours ago, UltraMega said:

Interesting. I actually tried eyefinity recently to stretch a split screen game over two screens and I didn't have any issues. Haven't tried anything else yet but it seems to work well for me. 

the problem with both camps is everyones had different experiences, i had a bad nvidia driver release destroy 2 brand new cards and a motherboard back in the G92 days. neither nvidia or evga would replace them after 2 weeks of ownership.

however the motherboard company who wasnt at fault did replace thier board, and i buy thier boards to this day because i got customer service

 

people get used to certain things on both sides, its a never ending topic where everyone is going to answer differently.

Edited April 3, 2022 by PCSarge

[ENTERPRISE]

Granted the Driver Control Panel UI has not changed in a million years and you can get more with GF Experience (Which I avoid) as it seems like extra rubbish in my system BUT if something just works, why change it ? 

 

Putting Linux aside, on Windows the Nvidia Driver Control Panel is yet to ever break on me and in reality rather than using it in the RTX branding, they should have used "It just works" on their control panel. Nvidia has all the necessary functions in their control panel in a familiar layout and it works. Don't fix what isn't broken I say. I have however always been a function over form kinda guy.

 

I have nothing against the AMD control panel. It looks nice...that is the extent of my input on that. 

[Diffident]

7 hours ago, Darkpriest667 said:

 

 

 

 

Yeah, and AMD's is still better.

 

That's radeon-profile, it's 3rd party, not AMD. CoreCtrl, another 3rd party, is more like the Windows app.   AMD is too lazy to make one for Linux, which is strange since their control panel on Windows is written in qt  Also they can't figure out how to get full OpenCL support working on all their GPU's for all distro's.  ROCm is only supported on a select few GPU's and it doesn't work with all OpenCL applications.

 

If we are counting 3rd party apps, there is GreenWithEnvy for Nvidia on Linux.

 

[bonami2]

7 hours ago, UltraMega said:

Interesting. I actually tried eyefinity recently to stretch a split screen game over two screens and I didn't have any issues. Haven't tried anything else yet but it seems to work well for me. 

Nah setting those work fine and even crossfire is impressive at high resolution.

 

Their some benchmark of direct x 12 multigpu scaling with dual 6800xt. Fee game support it.

 

But the amd app for some reason hate me.

Set res to 4k 10bit 120hz. Install new driver. Default to 4k 8 bit 60hz cant change it. Move cable from tv port and it fixed itself like what?

Fan setting never stick for long.

 

I updated my hdmi cable to a real 2.1

And ddu

 

Am sure i can crash the app be just changing fan setting and res setting too many time .

 

Maybe it a curse.

 

Still like my 6800xt except some driver issue.

[UltraMega]

8 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Granted the Driver Control Panel UI has not changed in a million years and you can get more with GF Experience (Which I avoid) as it seems like extra rubbish in my system BUT if something just works, why change it ? 

 

Putting Linux aside, on Windows the Nvidia Driver Control Panel is yet to ever break on me and in reality rather than using it in the RTX branding, they should have used "It just works" on their control panel. Nvidia has all the necessary functions in their control panel in a familiar layout and it works. Don't fix what isn't broken I say. I have however always been a function over form kinda guy.

 

I have nothing against the AMD control panel. It looks nice...that is the extent of my input on that. 

With the AMD driver you get an in game overlay in which you can enable RSR or other settings, basically the whole control panel becomes an overlay. Definitely useful when adjusting settings. You would need gefore experience for that in the nvidia camp and still gefore experience has a lot fewer options in game. 

 

Nvidia control panel may not be broken but I think its missing some pretty major features.

Edited April 3, 2022 by UltraMega

[Alastair]

On 03/04/2022 at 00:12, ArchStanton said:

I've only begun messing around with it (Radeon software).  Minor annoyance: needing to turn off their (data mining I think) "customer experience program" after each update.  Also, does it offer the ability to save multiple, or even better application specific, overclock profiles?  I notice it "runs home to momma" and defaults back to no overclock whatsoever any time any part of the system has a hiccup.  It would be nice to have specific one click profiles for various benchmarks/games.  It may have this functionality already and I am simply unaware, as I have not delved deeply into all the available settings yet.

As far as I know you can save application specific OC profiles. 

 

Go to global graphics and then you see all your installed applications. Select a game or application you want to tune and click on it. You can se all the graphical settings you can adjust for the app. There will be a wrench with the option "tune game performance". That will allow you yo adjust the clocks on a per profile basis I think. 

[Alastair]

On 03/04/2022 at 10:22, PCSarge said:

the problem with both camps is everyones had different experiences, i had a bad nvidia driver release destroy 2 brand new cards and a motherboard back in the G92 days. neither nvidia or evga would replace them after 2 weeks of ownership.

however the motherboard company who wasnt at fault did replace thier board, and i buy thier boards to this day because i got customer service

 

people get used to certain things on both sides, its a never ending topic where everyone is going to answer differently.

Remember the dreaded 320.18? Bricking Kepler based 780s and titans? Damn. 

[Alastair]

On 03/04/2022 at 06:06, bonami2 said:

As an enthusiast that used Eyefinity Surround VR and 4K 120hz

 

The nvidia panel is 10000x more stable than that piece of crap amd thing that crash and never hold any setting

from 7950x2 crossfire to rx 480 rx 580 and now my 6800xt.

 I miss my 1070

 

Ways overcomplicated going around the amd setting.

 

 

Remind me of Xfire and Raptr thing

That was a long long time ago. These days it almost always just works. 

[pio]

4 minutes ago, Alastair said:

Remember the dreaded 320.18? Bricking Kepler based 780s and titans? Damn. 

Don't forget 196.75's that killed entire fleets of G92 cards......

NVIDIA retracts WHQL-certified “GPU Killing Drivers”

BRIGHTSIDEOFNEWS.COM

---

Recently, nVidia posted a WHQL driver “Release 196.75”. The driver brought WHQL-certified support for nVidia ION, recently renamed...

 

Seriously, both sides have driver problems.  Pick whichever card fits your budget, has the features you want, and just be careful what drivers you use lol.  Goes for both sides of the fence.  I had experienced G92 failures with the above driver, and never again did I just blindly trust a driver on release from either company.  Lost too many cards that day.

[Alastair]

3 hours ago, pioneerisloud said:

Don't forget 196.75's that killed entire fleets of G92 cards......

NVIDIA retracts WHQL-certified “GPU Killing Drivers”

BRIGHTSIDEOFNEWS.COM

---

Recently, nVidia posted a WHQL driver “Release 196.75”. The driver brought WHQL-certified support for nVidia ION, recently renamed...

 

Seriously, both sides have driver problems.  Pick whichever card fits your budget, has the features you want, and just be careful what drivers you use lol.  Goes for both sides of the fence.  I had experienced G92 failures with the above driver, and never again did I just blindly trust a driver on release from either company.  Lost too many cards that day.

Well in all my years between amd and nvidia. Rankine's, Currie's, Tesla's in various G80 and GT200 flavours, Kepler's and Maxwells,  Evergreen's, Northern Islands, Pirate Islands and vega's. I've never had an AMD driver kill a card. I can confidently say that between my years of experience with both teams. Although during my G80 days I was still in school and was getting my driver updates off of DVD's that my local computer magazine (PC Format) had on their disks. So I probably missed 196.75. I also did not own a Kepler during 320.18 so I missed that one as well. But boy did OCN blow up when 320.18 came out I remember that. 

[pio]

19 hours ago, Alastair said:

Well in all my years between amd and nvidia. Rankine's, Currie's, Tesla's in various G80 and GT200 flavours, Kepler's and Maxwells,  Evergreen's, Northern Islands, Pirate Islands and vega's. I've never had an AMD driver kill a card. I can confidently say that between my years of experience with both teams. Although during my G80 days I was still in school and was getting my driver updates off of DVD's that my local computer magazine (PC Format) had on their disks. So I probably missed 196.75. I also did not own a Kepler during 320.18 so I missed that one as well. But boy did OCN blow up when 320.18 came out I remember that. 

Been running GPU's since GeForce 2 / Radeon 7000 days myself.  I too, have NEVER had an AMD / ATI driver flat out kill hardware.  That 196.75 driver did ruin probably about a dozen G92 cards in my house though back in roughly 2007 / 2008 when that driver released.

 

However, I DO have issues with "current" AMD drivers for legacy cards like the HD7970 and R9 290x.  They completely gimp perfectly capable older cards anymore.  That does kind of suck.  My 5700XT works beautifully though, as does my RX 580's.  I just find it frustrating a 290x doesn't work in 2022 with official drivers, but yet an R9 380 or 390 works just fine.  It's the same dang card!  GCN came out with the 7970.  There's no reason some GCN cards get updates and others don't when they're functionally the same.  Meh...youtubers rant about this enough as is though.....   Maybe AMD will change that with a future "final" driver.  I doubt it though.  I really probably should get off my butt and install the latest modded drivers for those cards on the systems they're in.  Supposedly the modded drivers make RDR2 and Crysis Remastered enjoyable on even a 7970.  By all means, it "should" be capable enough to play modern games (on low / medium). /rant

[Alastair]

27 minutes ago, pioneerisloud said:

Been running GPU's since GeForce 2 / Radeon 7000 days myself.  I too, have NEVER had an AMD / ATI driver flat out kill hardware.  That 196.75 driver did ruin probably about a dozen G92 cards in my house though back in roughly 2007 / 2008 when that driver released.

 

However, I DO have issues with "current" AMD drivers for legacy cards like the HD7970 and R9 290x.  They completely gimp perfectly capable older cards anymore.  That does kind of suck.  My 5700XT works beautifully though, as does my RX 580's.  I just find it frustrating a 290x doesn't work in 2022 with official drivers, but yet an R9 380 or 390 works just fine.  It's the same dang card!  GCN came out with the 7970.  There's no reason some GCN cards get updates and others don't when they're functionally the same.  Meh...youtubers rant about this enough as is though.....   Maybe AMD will change that with a future "final" driver.  I doubt it though.  I really probably should get off my butt and install the latest modded drivers for those cards on the systems they're in.  Supposedly the modded drivers make RDR2 and Crysis Remastered enjoyable on even a 7970.  By all means, it "should" be capable enough to play modern games (on low / medium). /rant

Oh yes I agree with you. I was pretty shocked when I heard they were basically dropping everything from Fiji right the way through. It was pretty insane. I think Terascale had longer driver support than GCN 1-3.