UPDATED: ATI/AMD have issued updated drivers for Rage, which you can download here.

We've installed the updated drivers on our in-office machine, and the frame rate and texture pop-in seems much improved. There's still texture pop-in, but that's just part of the engine at this point. There does appear to be some significant tearing, however, which proved pretty distracting.

--

If there was one thing people expected from Rage, it's that the PC version would be impeccable on day one. If PC owners could count on any developer to knock it out of the park, it would be the father of the first-person-shooter. Right? Right?

Unfortunately, for reasons partially out of id Software's control, Rage has had a bumpy launch since its midnight unlocking around the Internet.

The response from players has been...loud. Just take a look at the gaming section of Reddit today.

The main issue is performance, which id Software and Bethesda Softworks are currently squarely blaming on driver issues. Players are experiencing an incredible amount of texture pop-in, especially so on ATI/AMD cards. We can confirm this, having loaded Rage on our in-office PC. It's inexcusably bad right now.

The texture pop-in is not exclusive to PC; it's also very much present on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

There are problems with both ATI/AMD and nVidia cards, but it's reportedly most egregious on ATI/AMD.

"While many folks are playing RAGE on PC and not running into issues," said the company on its blog, "we’re aware that some of you are experiencing issues with screen tearing and texture issues. These problems can be attributed to driver issues, and we’re currently working with Nvidia and AMD to resolve them as quickly as possible."

For the moment, it's recommended you do not update the ATI/AMD drivers and wait for the updated drivers to come "in a few hours," according to AMD's Catalyst developer on Twitter. Also, if you're using the Battlefield 3-specific drivers, the CTD (Crash to Desktop) rate is apparently 100%. A driver/battlefield-3/61-27006/ rollback is necessary there.

nVidia owners should be using the current beta drivers, which will be automatically include more Rage-specific improvements as they happen, so long as you've flipped updates on.

Expect more updates on this throughout the day.

UPDATED: ATI/AMD have issued updated drivers for Rage, which you can download here.

We've installed the updated drivers on our in-office machine, and the frame rate and texture pop-in seems much improved. There's still texture pop-in, but that's just part of the engine at this point. There does appear to be some significant tearing, however, which proved pretty distracting.

--

If there was one thing people expected from Rage, it's that the PC version would be impeccable on day one. If PC owners could count on any developer to knock it out of the park, it would be the father of the first-person-shooter. Right? Right?

Unfortunately, for reasons partially out of id Software's control, Rage has had a bumpy launch since its midnight unlocking around the Internet.

The response from players has been...loud. Just take a look at the gaming section of Reddit today.

The main issue is performance, which id Software and Bethesda Softworks are currently squarely blaming on driver issues. Players are experiencing an incredible amount of texture pop-in, especially so on ATI/AMD cards. We can confirm this, having loaded Rage on our in-office PC. It's inexcusably bad right now.

The texture pop-in is not exclusive to PC; it's also very much present on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

There are problems with both ATI/AMD and nVidia cards, but it's reportedly most egregious on ATI/AMD.

"While many folks are playing RAGE on PC and not running into issues," said the company on its blog, "we’re aware that some of you are experiencing issues with screen tearing and texture issues. These problems can be attributed to driver issues, and we’re currently working with Nvidia and AMD to resolve them as quickly as possible."

For the moment, it's recommended you do not update the ATI/AMD drivers and wait for the updated drivers to come "in a few hours," according to AMD's Catalyst developer on Twitter. Also, if you're using the Battlefield 3-specific drivers, the CTD (Crash to Desktop) rate is apparently 100%. A driver/battlefield-3/61-27006/ rollback is necessary there.

nVidia owners should be using the current beta drivers, which will be automatically include more Rage-specific improvements as they happen, so long as you've flipped updates on.

Expect more updates on this throughout the day.

I bet too much ICI points on this. I will lose all one million of them.

Glad to see they're on top of this.

Kinda glad I have to wait to the European launch on Friday, hopefully they will have fixed it by then.

@rjayb89 said:

I bet too much ICI points on this. I will lose all one million of them.

Aw man, that's fucking harsh. Hope it works out for ya yet.

This is so disgusting I cant even start, fuck them.

How did they not know about these problems, did the play tester not notice?

But - have they put Top Men into fixing this? - if not, then get a hold of Vinny - he will allocate the needed resources!

I saw some video for this problem. It completely boggles my mind that this got missed, during play testing. Especially since this seems so widespread.

Sad to see the game getting so much hate for this (I'm looking at you Steam forums). Its really AMD's fault for always putting out shitty OpenGL drivers. Hope this is fixed before the European launch. 

Sounds like there's a lot of rage over these problems.

The drivers do not help at all. The texture simply do not load in some spots, or when they do, they are hideously low resolution. Pretty much none of the Dead City section textures are loading whatsoever.

Mate as been going mad about this all day, it's even unplayable for him. What a joke!

@Gav47: People have a right to complain when the product they got was shit, if all my others games work fine on AMD cards how is it their fault that Rage is broken at launch?

Rage's PC Launch Problems Creates Rage

Why did you past that up?!

@Delta_Ass said:

Sounds like there's a lot of rage over these problems.

Dear god.

Kind of expected this to be honest. This is why I'm probably waiting a few months before I play Rage, to when it gets smoothed out. The same thing happens with many PC games these days, sadly.

no no no no PC is best platform.

I think Brad ought just post his review and add any appropriate addendum later.

Remember when games used to work perfectly on day one?

Good to hear they are trying to fix this as quickly as possible

John Carmack has been building to many rockets, he needs to set his priorities straight!

Yet another reason to never buy AMD (ATi) video cards. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to playing RAGE on my 560Ti.

Does this mean we're going to start running two dozen different video drivers?

Okay, I'm done playing Rage today. Time to play BF3. Better switch drivers!

@Vegsen said:

Remember when games used to work perfectly on day one?

When was that? Even Starcraft 1 had a day-1 patch

"should be using the current beta drivers"

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. No one should need beta drivers for anything.

yay nvidia sucks less!!!!

Stopped home on my lunch break to fire up rage, just to see if I had any issues. I did have some major texture pop-in issues with my GTX260s in SLI, tho I didn't have time to get the newest drivers installed. Will do that first thing when I get home, hopefully it will take care of that. Unplayable the way it is right now.

guess it's a good thing i'm waiting to get it then, why has there been a few PC releases that have been day 1 buggy?

I'm one of the folks experiencing all the issues listed above. It's absolutely abysmal. I can live with some tearing, but the performance and texture popping are completely awful. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Along with the random full screen garbage artifacts, and plain 'ol UGLY textures, it's a god damn catastrophe.

Though that's not the only problem. Menus are basically broken when it comes to mouse controls with them being way too sensitive. Then the look mouse controls feel like they are lagging and not as responsive as they should be. I hate to say it, because it is such a overly used complaint by PC gamers, but this really does feel like a console port. It's absolutely appalling Especially coming from id.

I don't get it. I have a 580, 2500k, and plenty of RAM. If anything, this game is awesome, because it doesn't make my gpu go above 60c. The Battlefield 3 Beta is pushing the gpu temp to 87c. Rage is fun to play and is looking great on my pc...

Yesterday I put an order in on Amazon for an EVGA GeForce GTX 570 HD SC to replace my GTX 260 that I have had for a few years in anticipation of Rage. Last night, when the steam version unlocked at 11 CST, I started the game with the GTX 260 still in my machine to test how it would run, and sort of get a before/after comparison.

It ran beautifully. Flawlessly, even. Solid 60 fps. My jaw was on the floor.

Then this morning the whole internet has been losing their heads over how broken the PC version of Rage is. For everyone out there having issues, you certainly have my sympathy. But I cannot say the game is broken at all. If anything, it seems like it ran almost "too" well with my 3 year old hardware.

Crash to desktop :(

I have got to say. I love Patrick's news stories. Great addition to GB.

@Vegsen: No, I just remember when there was no way of fixing them.

I'm not in the "AMD/ATI drivers have always sucked" department like some people (who probably last used an ATI card in 1999), but this time I think they REALLY fucked up, as in "public apology needed" fucked up.

Lifted this from Reddit, screenshot comparison of Rage per system: 
 

To be fair, how could id have known that many of their customers would be using ATI or nVidia cards. What are they, 3% of the market??

The last few paragraphs are so fantastically PC GAMING.

So happy I didn't buy this shit game for $60.

Sad state of affairs. Almost glad the Australian unlock isn't until Saturday morning.

Seems like an ATI balls-up, as nVidia have been encouraging use of Rage-specific beta drivers (v285.38) since a week or two ago.

Will be interesting to watch this play out. :)

More like un-smooth things out. Amirite? Anyone?

@Gav47: People have a right to complain when the product they got was shit, if all my others games work fine on AMD cards how is it their fault that Rage is broken at launch?

I only had a few texture pop in issues otherwise I've been fine

@admanb said:

The last few paragraphs are so fantastically PC GAMING.

The last three paragraphs are some of the reasons why I don't really like PC gaming. Using linux, comfort with my current setup in my house and the fact that I work in front of a computer and it feels much better to have a TV (although I could plug a PC to my TV if I was willing to spend money on another PC) are some other reasons.

Hopefully, I'll move about the same time this generation ends. In that case I may go back to PC gaming, with a different setup in my (next) house.

And this is exactly why I game on consoles.

Awful screen-tearing on NVIDIA SLI setup. There are no video options, so i can't just turn vsync on. Also, Rage is only using like 40% of a single-card (out of 2x560 ti).

How can they blame it on the drivers? You'd think they would have noticed that it doesn't work at all on AMD cards before the game was released.

@ribeye said:

yay nvidia sucks less!!!!

Right? I hate my AMD. Still running a 5770 and that thing has issues constantly. AMD always seems to be the ones with issues like this.

@MordeaniisChaos: NVIDIA have their own issues, I remember when they shipped drivers that literally broke hardware because they fucked up the fan profiles.

Although this whole beta driver thing is ridiculous, you shouldn't need any beta drivers in the first place to make the game work properly.