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General discussion (archive)AMD vs Nvidia for old 3D accelerated games(14 posts)(14 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted June 12, 2014
I'm wondering which would be better for old games driver wise. Right now I use an Nvidia GTX760 and I had suprisingly very little graphical problems with any of the games I purchased so far from GOG. Previously I had an AMD Radeon HD4870, though and I had trouble with a lot of games like Mechwarrior 3 or X-Wing Alliance due to the missing 16-Bit Z-Buffer (or some sort of driver emulation of that). I haven't tried those games, though, since I switched to Windows 7 and an Nvidia card. I also saw a few games some time ago which require driver rollbacks for AMD cards but I can't remember which ones.

So, how is the current state of videocards and drivers when it comes to old games? Is NVidia or AMD better suited for that? And please try to explain why or give examples for negative experiences.
Post edited June 12, 2014 by Captain_Shiny
Posted June 12, 2014
Cant say ive really heard one way or the other.

Id dare to wager both have the same problems. Just my guess / personal experience.
Posted June 12, 2014
That's a bit surprising. I had a 4870 (Sapphire) for a long time without any 3D issue with my gog games. I however found the 2D performance quite lacking with the 4870, even compared to older 'mobility' hardware. However, I don't deny that it just can be related to some specific games (I don't have mechwarrior or X-wing).

But yes, I have the impression that NVIDIA is currently delivering better quality overall (design and drivers), even if I don't know their respective market shares with AMD.

Edit : you switched to windows 7 in the same time you switched GPU ? that may be motherboard related or a lot of different thing.
Post edited June 12, 2014 by Potzato
Posted June 12, 2014
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Potzato: That's a bit surprising. I had a 4870 (Sapphire) for a long time without any 3D issue with my gog games. I however found the 2D performance quite lacking with the 4870, even compared to older 'mobility' hardware. However, I don't deny that it just can be related to some specific games (I don't have mechwarrior or X-wing).

But yes, I have the impression that NVIDIA is currently delivering better quality overall (design and drivers), even if I don't know their respective market shares with AMD.

Edit : you switched to windows 7 in the same time you switched GPU ?
Well, almost, maybe a few month later. It's a longer story though. After my HD4870 went puff I bought a Gigabyte GTX660 Ti (and switched to Windows 7 shortly after) but that had a crappy cooling unit and it took me almost a year to get my money back (also it was in repair for several times, so I didn't have much of it and I used a Geforce 9600GT in the meantime). Then I switched to my current MSI GTX760 end of last year.

Edit: Not motherboard related. That 16-Bit Z-Buffer problem was a known issue with any AMD card above the HD3000 series. Only the games which used the 16-Bit Z-buffer exclusively were affected, though, which weren't too many but still.
Post edited June 12, 2014 by Captain_Shiny
Posted June 12, 2014
Need to find a 3DFX Voodoo 2 or two! :P
Posted June 12, 2014
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Bigs: Need to find a 3DFX Voodoo 2 or two! :P
Yup :D ! Still have one lying around as a matter of fact - not sure if it still works though. And I doubt I'd be able to use it with Windows 7.
Posted June 12, 2014
nvidia are known to be the ones with better drivers and more resources being spent on their development. this is one of the few positive things I would readily say about nvidia.

this situation hasn't changed much, though AMD has been beefing up its developer relations and driver departments. so the news about it would seem to say anyhow
Post edited June 12, 2014 by johnnygoging
Posted June 12, 2014
I'm sure you will see lots of opinions on brand preference. I'll share mine ;)

I used to be a die hard ATI fan. I stick with what works and what I like. Slowly but surely new ATI driver releases started breaking my older games. I got to one point where a newer game insisted on a newer driver but the older games were all broken by the newer driver... so I didn't even have a choice to stick with the driver that worked... none of them universally worked for me.

I contacted ATI support and after explaining the issue was told, and I quote, "Stop playing older games".

I bought an Nvidia card that night which resolved every issue I had with both older and newer games. With 700+ games in my catalog, I've only had 2 issues on Nvidia drivers and they were solvable via a control panel tweak. (one with Book of Unwritten Tales and one with The Witcher). I haven't researched... these may not be driver issues either.

Hope that helps.
Post edited June 12, 2014 by user deleted
Posted June 12, 2014
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Bigs: Need to find a 3DFX Voodoo 2 or two! :P
Got one in my old Dell Optiplex GX1 (Pentium II baby!) :)
Posted June 12, 2014
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hucklebarry: I'm sure you will see lots of opinions on brand preference. I'll share mine ;)

I used to be a die hard ATI fan. I stick with what works and what I like. Slowly but surely new ATI driver releases started breaking my older games. I got to one point where a newer game insisted on a newer driver but the older games were all broken by the newer driver... so I didn't even have a choice to stick with the driver that worked... none of them universally worked for me.

I contacted ATI support and after explaining the issue was told, and I quote, "Stop playing older games".

I bought an Nvidia card that night which resolved every issue I had with both older and newer games. With 700+ games in my catalog, I've only had 2 issues on Nvidia drivers and they were solvable via a control panel tweak. (one with Book of Unwritten Tales and one with The Witcher). I haven't researched... these may not be driver issues either.

Hope that helps.
Yup, that's my experience as well with ATI, although I never contacted the support - always fiddled around for myself. I don't have any brand loyalty myself, either - well, let's say I was cured of it after my experiences with sticking to various brands. But retro gaming is a big thing for me and Nvidia served me well in that regard so I'd personally go with that and recommend NVidia cards for people who are into old games as well. Until I hear that the support for that drastically changed, that is. I'd still recommend AMD cards for people who only play newer games, though.
Post edited June 12, 2014 by Captain_Shiny
Posted June 12, 2014
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hucklebarry: I'm sure you will see lots of opinions on brand preference. I'll share mine ;)

I used to be a die hard ATI fan. I stick with what works and what I like. Slowly but surely new ATI driver releases started breaking my older games. I got to one point where a newer game insisted on a newer driver but the older games were all broken by the newer driver... so I didn't even have a choice to stick with the driver that worked... none of them universally worked for me.

I contacted ATI support and after explaining the issue was told, and I quote, "Stop playing older games".

I bought an Nvidia card that night which resolved every issue I had with both older and newer games. With 700+ games in my catalog, I've only had 2 issues on Nvidia drivers and they were solvable via a control panel tweak. (one with Book of Unwritten Tales and one with The Witcher). I haven't researched... these may not be driver issues either.

Hope that helps.
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Captain_Shiny: Yup, that's my experience as well with ATI, although I never contacted the support - always fiddled around for myself. I don't have any brand loyalty myself, either - well, let's say I was cured of it after my experiences with sticking to various brands. But retro gaming is a big thing for me and Nvidia served me well in that regard so I'd personally go with that and recommend NVidia cards for people who are into old games as well. Until I hear that the support for that drastically changed, that is. I'd still recommend AMD cards for people who only play newer games, though.
there's really no excuse for it either. it's not like the driver has to be perfect or perform very well. as long as you write something for compatibility and the thing just working then you're fine because in the case of a graphics card the card is much more powerful than the software was written for and it doesn't matter if doesn't run it so well.
Posted June 12, 2014
Beware, keeping unmaintained ancient games working on new hardware under modern OS is the path to madness. A lover of persnickety old Win9x games without fixes may be better served by a dedicated retrobox.

I've had very few problems with WinXP+ games on my Radeons in the past 5 years.
Posted June 12, 2014
Always used an Nvidia card here, I still play lots of old games and they run trouble free. Most of the problems I had were OS compatibility such as not running on Win7 64bit, Messed up colors where I had to turn off Desktop Composition or kill explorer.exe before running a game. None of the problems were coming from my GPU.


Also, If you want to run 3dfx games you can always try nGlide http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide

I never tried it myself but I heard it works good for a lot of games.

Can't comment on AMD as I never owned one.
Posted June 12, 2014
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Snickersnack: Beware, keeping unmaintained ancient games working on new hardware under modern OS is the path to madness. A lover of persnickety old Win9x games without fixes may be better served by a dedicated retrobox.

I've had very few problems with WinXP+ games on my Radeons in the past 5 years.
It actually was kind of a perverted hobby for me at one point - I spend hours, sometimes days to get an old game to work (searching fixes and tweaks) just to play it for half an hour! :P These days GOG does most of the work for me, though.

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Ganni1987: Always used an Nvidia card here, I still play lots of old games and they run trouble free. Most of the problems I had were OS compatibility such as not running on Win7 64bit, Messed up colors where I had to turn off Desktop Composition or kill explorer.exe before running a game. None of the problems were coming from my GPU.

Also, If you want to run 3dfx games you can always try nGlide http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide

I never tried it myself but I heard it works good for a lot of games.

Can't comment on AMD as I never owned one.
Yes, I also used that occasionally. Can't quite recall with which games, though. One time I even got Dosbox to work with glide. That was for Schleichfahrt or "Archimedean Dynasty" as you might know it as. Unfortunately that was with my old ATI card and I ran into that Z-Buffer issue again. I might try that one day again with my current Nvidia card. But I'm kind of too lazy for stuff like that lately. One might say I'm getting too soft these days ;)
Post edited June 12, 2014 by Captain_Shiny
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General discussion (archive)AMD vs Nvidia for old 3D accelerated games(14 posts)(14 posts)
(14 posts)