I've personally only had one issue with AMD drivers and that was when my dad tried to prove I didn't know what the hell I was doing with my computer (he ended up downloading drivers from 2 years ago that hated my 7770). While I do personally like the appearance of Nvidia software, one of my friends (who owns a 660ti) has encountered some issues with drivers randomly crashing in games or just plain being bitchy (my brother replaced his 640 with a 270x and the Nvidia drivers prevented the AMD drivers from working even once they said they were uninstalled until we had to do a driver wipe), which is why I intend to stay with AMD for at least the next gen. (There's also the fact that I couldn't afford to get something like an 880, but may he able to get a 390/390x)
As far as I'm concerned driver quality shouldn't be a consideration when buying a card, at least when using a single card. Possibly in the past ATI/AMD drivers weren't very good, but I've had my HD 7950 for almost 2 years now and I've had very few problems with drivers, and the problems I did have were very, very minor. People are going to have different experiences with some cards, some will have major problems with nvidia drivers, other with AMD drivers, and when it comes down to it both drivers work well for most users.
Driver features (Shadowplay, Geforce experience, etc.) are legitimate reason to pick nvidia over AMD or vice versa.
Price to performance is king as far as I'm concerned. Since you're looking at gaming at 4k, just wait to see what the next generation brings in terms of performance, especially in terms of multi-card setups. That is probably the one situation where I would really look at driver quality, as multi-GPU setups have less fleshed-out drivers in general.
If you can. Try testing the card in another system just to rule out hardware problems. Honestly i have had less problems with Nvidia drivers then AMD. But i guess that not saying much as i rarely have crashes due to the driver its self.
Not in my experience, the community Nvidia driver have always worked better on multiple machines, platforms, and other tid bits. The ATI/AMD drivers always have issues for me and few friends with ATI/AMD cards. One guy right now I know gave up with Linux because the support for his ATI/AMD card was simply not there.
From my understanding and from what I have read a lot of people use Nvidia GPUs on their Linux boxes. I have laptop, desktop, and another laptop all Nvidia GPU based and they all work flawlessly while my AMD/ATI desktop has so many issues with the drivers. Yes I have swapped the cards, yes I have tried different OSes, yes I have tested the board. It's the drivers.
It might be different for the really new cards out there but personally in Windows, Unix, and Linux Nvidia has worked fine for me.
Sources:
EDIT: Cleaned up the post a bit.
Will all due respect the question in your post is quite stupid.
you are using a Computer, and you will have an issue every now and then. It is inevitable.
For the one person who has driver issues their are 100s or thousands that don't. It could easily be something else in your system. Windows, Your Motherboard, the ram, hdd.
Your next gpu should be based on the performance you want and your budget, then ancilary considerations like Mantle, Physx, multi monitor support, freesync, gsync, etc should be taken into consideration (If you care about any of those specifics).
I have driver problems with my Gtx 770 but only when I try to overclock. If you have any overclock applied, I'd take it off and see what happens.
Yup I fully agree. In addition to all I posted above this is the end result.
What every you deem to be the best for your needs then that is the card to get.
i would look into doing an RMA then, it's possible that you got a bad chip.
OP try this uninstaller. Then reinstall latest drivers as well as update everything else on your system.
Try your gpu in another system - if it shits itself in another rig then rma it otherwise you'll have to dig deeper for the problem.
On the subject of drivers, Ive never had any issues that really bugged me from either team. My only gripe was some crossfire issues in some titles. There is always a rock solid driver version for every card.
I remember when I got my first HD 7970, all I had were issues. Got a second one for crossfire, even more issues. Several months down the road and multiple driver updates later, they're solid as a rock now, with some pretty intense overclocks under water as well.
Basically, it might get better with later driver releases.
In my experience the driver response crashes you see on Nvidia cards usually comes down to hardware instability (mostly due to an unstable OC or a faulty card). OC viability on GPU's can vary from driver to driver.
Hmm well it seems that they both can be a bit here and there according to you all in this thread, maybe Ijust got lucky when I had amd cards vs Nvidia's ones.. I think the main reason it felt so extreme is because of the sudden amount of faults it's been having with games driver wise, but i'm guessing that it's just coincidence that they all happened at once. I guess i'll just have to live with it and see what works best, thanks for all the feedback :)
Are you running an overclock on the card? All of the issues you have described sound more like card instability than driver. If you are not running an overclock, is your PSU old, low wattage, or a cheap brand? a PSU that outputs inconsistent power under heavy load can make the hardware "crash" which will stop the driver.
Back when ATI still existed, they had the stigma of having some of the worst driver support ever. Screaming fast cards, but the software was so far behind that it didn't matter. This carried over when AMD bought them. Since then, the driver support has been much much better.
"As far as I'm concerned driver quality shouldn't be a consideration when buying a card"
what? this is a silly statement. driver quality directly impacts the performance of the card you're buying. that said, both camps seem to be right on par with each other right now (for the most part anyways)