Why do many people refuse to use AMD, while others claim issues with drivers and roughness?

[mohamed.97]

Can someone tell me what is wrong with their products? I've used even their less acclaimed products like the FX9590 and HD60-something, and the RX480, which wasn't bad at all. I never encountered any issues with them. In fact, I enjoyed AMD's software more than Nvidia's 3060, which feels outdated, and I experienced far fewer blue screens compared to the countless frustrating blue screens with Intel.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Maybe because stuff such as any AMD CPU prior to Ryzen or AMD GPU older then RX 6000 series are fairly ancient and wouldn't be able to handle demanding games at 1440p/2160p 120-240Hz or other demanding apps well enough.

Who wants to be stuck in a drastically aged computing experience where you lack the raw hardware power to be able to multitask.

[nullable]

Once a certain idea takes hold, it gets repeated ad nauseam. It doesn't matter how edge case the claimed issue is. Or how insignificant. Nothing gets manifested into something in the psyche of consumers and every believer and repeater has to get over it on their own schedule and usually it takes them years to update their knowledge. Don't worry, chances are they'll just adopt new FUD to fuss over once the old FUD wears out its welcome.

[Haruspex]

Blind brand loyalty, mostly. The whole "AMD drivers are bad" narrative was false FUD from years ago, but it's stuck around for some reason.

[_I_]

i avoid amd, not because the drivers are bad, but their control panel (ccc) was a pain to navigate and find the settings you are looking for
needing to make a shortcut within ccc to get to a setting should never have be needed

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Overall, I do like AMD Ryzen, but not their GPUs. AMD doesn't really have a good GPU still. I want performance & features, AMD doesn't offer what I want, it's that simple in my eyes.

[Piston Smashed™]

I once bought a AMD Thunderbird 1.4 Ghz, it was my first time of going AMD after having Intel previously. All my Intel builds have worked perfectly, I've never had one die on me, unlike AMD's. The Thunderbird 1.4Ghz which I bought brand new only last 6 months before it died on me. I've had some cheap AMD builds to tide me over after needing a new PC but I have always had some sort of problem with AMD, so I would always build an Intel system as soon as I could.

For me all my Intel builds have lasted for years and worked great, the only time a PC has died on me has been down to the motherboard dying from leaking or blown capacitors which hasn't happened in years.

When it comes to graphics cards I haven't looked back since getting the Geforce 256. I had some earlier graphics cards but I was hooked on Nvidia ever since. As I mentioned earlier I did have some AMD builds to tide me over and one of those came with a AMD HD 5870 (I think it was, I still have it somewhere but too lazy to go find and check it is the right model) and while I didn't have an experience to make me want to change it did get me through a tough patch at the time but I went back to Nvidia.

So, the reason I personally don't go AMD is because I've always had a better experience and less troubles using Intel and Nvidia. Although, I have known plenty of people to have had a totally opposite experience.

[Andrius227]

Intel and nvidia always work for me. Amd is cheaper but often have problems like the stupid infinity fabric bs in a lot of their cpus causing stuttering. Forcing people to use things like Process lasso.

Not saying people shouldn’t buy amd. But I certainly wont switch from something that i know works and i am familiar with.

Same thing with intel gpus. They may be ok but im never getting one.

[skOsH♥]

I just have more experience with taming AMD beasts than Intel ones

[Illusion of Progress]

There's a number of reasons.

nullable covered one so I won't list that one.

A big reason is that nVidia has been adopting an Apple-like position, much like Intel had in the CPU space before, and much like Samsung has in the SSD space, and you get the idea. They posit themselves as the "premium" brand and people will spend more for it. When a brand has something good semi-consistently compared to the competition, they can use a flagship or halo product to be better than the competition, and then price their lower stuff higher even if it makes the lower stuff worse.

An analogy is imagine two car makers. One has a faster sports car. The same brand has slower or more expensive sedan. The masses will flock to that sedan because of brand. Same thing actually happens in tech. A good example is Samsung SATA SSDs. They're all often poorer choices than their competition these days, but people pay for it for "reliability" FUD, despite the fact Samsung has consistently had issues with its offerings.

Another reason is that AMD has had legitimate times of poor competitiveness. So at times, they simply didn't offer enough to make consumers choose them.

==========

CPUs:

AMD's CPUs lost preference during the late 2000s and especially early 2010s when they just fell so far behind Intel. Ryzen laid the foundation to start turning that around, and with Zen 2 (3000 series) it really came of age and AMD was back. Zen 3 (5000 series) took the performance spot even, and AMD suddenly raised pricing and didn't even put out value offerings in the 5000 series until late in its life cycle. They left the 3000 series to that role. In that time, Intel cut pricing on the 10th generation (a rarity), making it a serious budget winner, which they needed since they fumbled the 11th generation, and then came out with the 12th generation which was their largest gen-on-gen uplift in a long time. AMD brought out v-cache tech and a new generation, Intel also brought out a new generation (and then a refresh of it). In other words, they've been competitive. And it's great. Unless you're stuck in the mid 2010s, there's no excuse to think AMD's CPUs are bad anymore. But people think it because *see nullable's answer*. They're not always better for every budget and what every user wants to do, but they're trading back and forth. Consumer have many options here.

GPUs:

Radeon though? That's one more of a mystery to me. Apparently the best they ever matched nVidia was during the early 2010s (when the CPU division was doing poorly), and then they started losing market share and... it just kept happening. I couldn't tell you why, exactly. One thing I heard (but this may not be true) is AMD gained a lot of that market share precisely by having such high value and low prices... but despite gaining market share, they were losing profit. So that might explain why they seem to merely follow nVidia's pricing lead lately.

==========

My experiences with AMD:

I personally preferred nVidia back then, at least after AMD bought them, but I used them as ATI, and I used them as AMD Radeon in budget roles, but I went nVidia since the late 2000s for my own primary PC so I can't tell you what happened with Radeon. I do recall one game I played had a lot of AMD GPU users claiming crashes due to it. They seemed to cede market share especially during the Maxwell and Pascal era and just never made it back.

I went with Radeon for my last purchase because I used to buy at the x60 range, and watching nVidia cut their product stack down was disappointing. Maybe not a big deal if you're buying an x80, but the x60 fell below an acceptable point due to it in my mind. It become a joke when it used to be one of the legendary all around price/performance options that still had enough performance and specs. Horizon Forbidden West (which is a good port, so the "poor port" excuse doesn't apply here) is being rough on 8 GB cards even at 1080p, and at 1440p even the 10 GB RTX 3080 has issues. It's not the end of the world for them becuase you can lower settings, but that's the crux of the issue, and seven years after my Pascal, I was looking at the RTX 4060 situation and wondering what the heck happened. 2 GB more VRAM than my GTX 1060 had, or a serious price hike on the 16 GB model that just encourages you to spend up more to the x70 instead?

Ironically, I did spend up to that amount, but I went with a 7800 XT since it still had more performance, more VRAM, and a lower price than the RTX 4070. Admittedly... it's been mixed. The performance and specs for the price were unbeatable, but I suffered from the infamous "Black screen" issue with it. If you're unaware, it's the display losing signal, the PC initiating a machine check exception (this tends to be a hardware issue), and restarting. Spent two months trying to rule out other causes in my system to no avail. Did an RMA and the new one had different issues at first... (TDR crash in one game, coincidentally the same game mentioned above that people used to complain about crashes in with AMD, and strange performance in another), until I found out it was the drivers. So I go back one version... and it's good then, right? I was in a "time will tell" spot and it was looking good after months with no issues, but I've had that Black Screen crash again now. It happened with a change in use pattern so there's a chance that the new use did something the drivers don't like... or this one has a hardware flaw too, and I didn't trip it until now because it's far less severe. It's seemingly not an uncommon issue on the 7800 XT, and I'm finding it's not uncommon on new GPUs of many types, but the 7800 XT seems especially prone to having it. I'm pretty miffed I spent extra for a premium brand and model, spent a lot to send it back to RMA insured, and might be looking at doing that again.

So yeah that might be a hardware issue rather than something with AMD itself... but if it's happening more on AMD (I don't know if it is, for reference), it will hurt their image. A lot of people on nVidia's side never tried AMD so they take those experiences to heart rather than risk it. I have an internal saying of "I'll try anything twice" but not a lot of people will do that. A lot of people tend to prefer familiarity when it comes to spending money, and with the sky high pricing of GPUs in particular... I don't blame them entirely.

If these crashes are the hardware and not the drivers though, then I have no complaints with the supposedly bad AMD drivers. More the opposite. Adrenalin is a heck of a lot better than the nVidia control panel was, and if you reject GeForce Experience like many nVidia users do, you're outright missing features Adrenalin just gives and need a whole software suite to match it. I'm excited to see the nVidia App bring nVidia's driver ecosystem out of the Windows XP era. My next purchase, which hopefully doesn't come soon if this one is problematic enough to force a change early, will be whoever has the better price/performance/spec/feature ratio for my uses at the time. I'm not married to brands, even if I have preferences, but an issue with one will make me temporarily avoid it at least. The only next purchase I'm pretty certain of is the CPU will be AMD, because I'm eyeing the 9800X3D. But if Intel's 15th generation comes earlier and has a better offering when the 9800X3D launches (not just in raw performance but in price/performance), I may change that plan.

==========

TL:DR; People are probably stuck in 2014 on AMD's CPUs, and as for AMD's GPUs, nVidia is an Apple-like company that people seem willing to pay a premium for, or stick with out of familiarity/lack of experience with AMD. But they do see the horror stories on AMD. Many of which are real experiences, mind you, but nVidia has its own issues.

[C1REX]

It’s a super interesting topic worth hours of multiple podcast conversations.

I personally really like AMD. I even have full AMD system right now and I’m super happy with it. However, some of their decisions are so weird and questionable that it may look like intentional self harm.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Got to admit last time I used AMD I didnt like the drivers and Adrenaline software but that was four years ago and things in that regard have gotten better meanwhile.
I´m actually considering getting the RX 8800 XT when it launches in autumn if it`s performing decently and is reasonably priced.
Nvidia is getting too complacent and crazy with their prices, they could easily afford to cut some slack to gamers since they are rolling in that AI money but nope, got to squeeze the last drop out of you.

[MonkehMaster]

well, with nvidia moving away from gaming and going AI nonsense, im willing to bet at the very least AMD gpus are going to get a big uptick in sales, even if some prefer nvidia.

[GOD RAYS ON ULTRA™]

AMD drivers are pretty good lately. Hopefully it stays that way and AMD can redeem themselves. I'm having a good experience with my Rx 6700 and I've decided to completely switch over to AMD GPU. I still prefer Intel for my CPU, though *shrugs*

I'm having my best experience yet with a 12600k, nvme drive, Rx 6700 and ddr5 ram.

[Cksalzy]

Originally posted by mohamed.97:

Can someone tell me what is wrong with their products? I've used even their less acclaimed products like the FX9590 and HD60-something, and the RX480, which wasn't bad at all. I never encountered any issues with them. In fact, I enjoyed AMD's software more than Nvidia's 3060, which feels outdated, and I experienced far fewer blue screens compared to the countless frustrating blue screens with Intel.

because amd is very shady and i dont trust it

[A&A]

Well, it's the same way as in the automotive industry. There are certainly people who are uninformed and there will always be biased people.