Good.
Well. Let me amend that to “usually good, but I assume there is a way to set your drivers to ‘do not update automatically’ the same way there is for other stuff.”
Not exactly good timing on this considering that the last few Catalyst releases have been among the buggiest they’ve been for a long time and I really shouldn’t have been updating them…
(Edit: And technically, Windows Update would take care of this too if they actually bothered to push out WHQL versions more often.)
I don’t know how i feel about it. I’ve frequently had problems with their driver updates in the past, having to tinker around with them to get them to work.
If i can truly effortlessly keep my video drivers updated, that is great. If steam starts throwing me errors about how AMD’s shit drivers installer has failed, that isn’t so great.
This could go either way. The idea certainly sounds good, but having completely up to date drivers all the time can be detrimental if you do a lot of PC gaming. I can’t even count the number of times a game has preferred an older driver while the newer one has actually caused errors.
meh.
Driver updates should be handled through Windows Update already.
Granted, video card manufacturers tend to release multiple non-WHQL (or whatever certification they use these days) releases between WHQL releases, but
A) Steam users are the probably the PC-using group that least needs an automated system for driver deployment. They probably already anally administrate what their local driver situation is based on their current games du jour.
B) Those that don’t fit into the A) stereotype should probably stick to using WHQL drivers only.
Hmm, I don’t see where this really works out. Do you really want auto-updates on video card drivers? It’s one thing to want the latest version of a game, but there are often times when you intentionally roll drivers back. As long as I can turn off the auto-update for the drivers, I guess it would be a more convenient way to go.
Personally I never update a thing until stuff stops working. If it’s a new game install acting funky, well then I’ll go look for an update, otherwise if it ain’t broke I don’t try to fix it. I’m already fed up with auto-update appearing in a bazillion programs I would really rather just ignore. It is especially bad when a reboot is required.
Ironic. I spent most of Monday fixing a butchered set of drivers thanks to Windows Update screwing up when trying to update my 4870X2. Ugh.
I used to update drivers all the time until it started biting me in the ass with a lot of older games where a lot of games would stop working properly. So now I follow the same rule. Never update unless something specifically doesn’t work right and needs newer drivers.
Same thing here. I’m currently running a 2008 version of Nvidia’s driver. It works just fine.
That would be great. It rarely happens, though. You sometimes get some driver updates through WU, but not most. Often, not important ones.
Granted, video card manufacturers tend to release multiple non-WHQL (or whatever certification they use these days) releases between WHQL releases, but
In the case of AMD, they release a new set of WHQL certified drivers every single month, and have done so for several years now. So it makes a bit more sense.
A) Steam users are the probably the PC-using group that least needs an automated system for driver deployment. They probably already anally administrate what their local driver situation is based on their current games du jour.
You’d be surprised. As much as people tell a horror story about some new driver borking things up, it’s far more often that having a new driver actually fixes something. The 25M Steam users are no exception. I understand the trepidation of some of the hardcore, but the vast silent majority (even of Steam users) really needs something like this, because they’re often experiencing problems or at least worse performance by having far outdated graphics drivers. I can’t begin to tell you how many gamers - very much the Steam audience - have run into a problem with some recent game, said they had “the latest drivers” because they just updated them “recently”, but had the problem fixed then they upgraded the 6-month old drivers they thought were new.
On balance, I think this is a very, very good move.
Drivers obviously won’t be automatically installed, since they often require a reboot. There’s no real downside to this.
It’s a little strange that they’re automatically updating the specific drivers that update every month on Windows Update already, but whatever I guess.
Catalyst drivers don’t auto-update on Windows Update. Only very rarely should you see any sort of graphics drivers on WU (Nvidia or AMD). I’m not sure if the ones WU installs are simply the display driver component, or if it has the whole catalyst control center.
You know what would be great? If graphics drivers weren’t so shoddily written that they have to be updated this often.
Frequent updates are a good thing. They don’t in any way imply the original code was shoddy. We were worse off when they only updated once or twice per year.
Just updated steam and gave it a whirl. Thought I had the latest version already but I was incorrect. Steam downloaded the drivers in 10 seconds and installed it in 20 (using the regular ATI installer, but no stupid unpacking, etc).
A++++ Would buy again!
Edit: Looks like if you manually have it check again after an install it will install the same drivers over again unless you quit out of steam and relaunch, then it properly detects the driver version and says you have the latest.
“XXXYYY is now playing AMD Driver Update!”
… UMM, thanks for the info?
Whelp, I’m giving it a whirl right now. Why is the download package from the ati web site 75 megs but the size in Steam is 115 megs?