Hi!
What’s your experience with driver bug reporting to nvidia and ATI?
I’ve reported bugs to nvidias page on the register developer’s page.
Is there any response? They say that developers can browse bug reports, but I cannot find that anywhere.
How about ATI?
Tell me about your experience.
/Chris
I reported a bug to ATi dev relations, they replied the same day that they hadnt experienced said bug, nor had anyone else reported it.
Went over the details with them, and included a demo app & source of the problem. The next driver release (which was less than a week later) fixed the bug.
They were very eager to gather information on it and had it fixed in a very short time. Theyre very good to speak with about bugs 
I reported two bugs to nVidia. Now, some months later i know, that those were real driver bugs, not appliction errors.
Anyway, they never replied with a single word.
I was very disappointed.
Jan.
PS: One of the bugs has not been fixed yet.
Same experience with nVidia, i report that VBO perf was falling between 44.03 and 45.23 on my hardware (the TnL was just not used).
Never get any word back.
That ATI story sounds really nice, that’s how it should be. Hope nvidia improves!
During the last months I’ve worked with new features, and driver bugs have have been responsible for much of my time and frustration (thought my code was at fault).
However, now I have both a Radeon 9800 and a GeforceFX, running the same code on those two is the best way of finding out what’s driver bugs and what’s your own fault.
I’ve reported a bug to NVIDIA and got a fast reply. After two days and some correspondence the bug was correctly identified as an application bug.
I also reported a bug or two to ATI and got a fast reply - the bug was fixed in the next driver release.
Regards
-Lev
I have sent 1 report to ATI, they didnt reply and it’s not fixed (2 minor bugs). The other bugs I have found, they had fixed them in the next release.
With NV, I discussed with the developers there.
You can do that with both companies.
PS: there is a bug list somewhere at ATI site?
I’ve had great experience with ATI, they answer really swift and and helpful. The cannot be said about NVIDIA though, as I have been completely ignored twice on the same bug. I even included a minimal test case and a verbose description but to no avail.
I’d be interested in bug lists from both ATI and NVIDIA. Links anyone?
Fat chance of getting the bug list for either Nvidia or ATI.
I contacted both Nvidia, and ATI, and they both have their ups & downs. I got 1 reply from Nvidia, 1 from ATI, sent out 4 for Nvidia, and 7 for ATI.
ATI is a b*tch to track down the bugs, seems their drivers love to BSOD. I don’t think in the past 2 years I ever had a BSOD from nvidia drivers using openGL. ATI, well, lets just say my event log is full of minidumps messages thanks to their drivers.
Must depend on the OS. I have yet to see a BSOD since I installed WinXP back in September 2002. Basically, once I ditched Win98SE, my system’s been rock solid.
I think it was posted on these forums by someone that there’s lots of problems under Win2000, though. . .
What is a “BSOD”?
Originally posted by Ostsol:
Must depend on the OS. I have yet to see a BSOD since I installed WinXP back in September 2002.
That might be because Microsoft replaced the BSOD with an automatic reboot (on winxp pro, not sure about home version). You can change the default back to a BSOD, I have done.
The reason for the change was so that servers dont require a manual reboot after a BSOD.
Personally I would have preferred a short delay after showing the BSOD then a reboot.
A BSOD is a Blue Screen Of Death.
[This message has been edited by Adrian (edited 01-03-2004).]
Originally posted by Adrian:
That might be because Microsoft replaced the BSOD with an automatic reboot (on winxp pro, not sure about home version). You can change the default back to a BSOD, I have done.
Ah. . . that would explain it. Still, I’ve only gotten a couple auto-reboots.
I haven’t had a crash or a BSOD in a long time.
I have an ATI and ran Catalyst 3.4, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10
The only thing I hate with ATI is that sometimes it forgets my gamma setting. It’s quite ennoying.
Crashes on NT based OSs are extremely rare. I have ran NT 4, 2000, XP(not so much).
Sometimes for up to a week.
So maybe it’s your particular setup that’s bad.
Forgot to say I was using Win2k SP4.
As for the setup, well, we tried a clean install, and we get those lovely BSODs. Stick in a Nvidia card on same setup and no probs. Maybe ATI drivers just don’t like this Mobo, a A7v133. ::shrug::
I do know for a fact that we have gotten nothing but canned respones from them concerning this matter, or no response at all.
I have a feeling it has more to do with the openGL drivers, since when running D3D apps, we never get crashes. Maybe it is all a ploy to switch us over to DirectX, so they can drop opengl? 
lol
[This message has been edited by Elixer (edited 01-03-2004).]