Dan, being able to stick a billion dollar company in the eye is "something better to do". But further, the real truth of the matter is that litigation is the only thing businesses seem to understand these days. I'm sick and tired of false advertising in all its infinite forms. In fact I'm tired of the plethora of advertising, period. There seems to be no level that marketing types won't sink to shill their products. The least I can do is keep one or two of them obeying the law.
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Where are my NVIDIA Drivers for Vista?
- Thread starter FrgMstr
- Start date
I can understand that.
Good job on that Illegal Lottery action and It would be great if we could go after MS for releasing an OS that is still in beta.
I too am fed up with companies that false advertise their products and that is exactly what NVIDIA and MS have been getting away with.
I too am fed up with companies that false advertise their products and that is exactly what NVIDIA and MS have been getting away with.
The OS isn't 100% perfect. No operating system ever is. I don't think the problem is really so much with Microsoft (this time) as it is with the hardware manufacturers and their drivers. It seems to me (from most of what I've read) that the problems with Vista right now are mostly driver related at this point.
Everyone is so quick to blame Microsoft for everything that could possibily go wrong with Windows, but much of the time the problem is related to third party software or drivers that are made by companies who do not follow Microsoft guidelines.
While I am always dubious about anything coming from the Inq, I do have to say that I agree and that the blame for this falls squarely on NVIDIA's shoulders. Whatever excuses NVIDIA comes up with at this point will fall on deaf ears because no one cares or wants to hear their reasons.
I don't either. I just want a driver that works and performs at least 95%+ as well as the XP driver does.
From what I understand Vista WHQL certification is indeed harder to get, but there is no evidence supporting your theroy. I really think NVIDIA probably just dropped the ball on this.
I'm not an 8800 owner (yet), but I would appreciate a modicum of truth from NVIDIA on this issue. Even if the Real Deal drivers are weeks away, I think users are at least entitled to the truth. Offer users an apology (even if they don't agree with us), offer an explanation, and you'll have calmed a substantial portion of the storm. It's a typical disaster control tactic, but it's the only tactic that will really satisfy anyone aside from actually delivering the goods.
I'd really like to think that Microsoft doesn't operate like this. I don't think they've become a mega-corporation by making decisions purely to spite other corporations they've had rough histories with, but I could be wrong. It's not a totally unreasonable thing to speculate.
It would put NVIDIA into a corner, however. Certainly NVIDIA would be wary about speaking out against Microsoft's tactics, as they depend on Microsoft for the livelihood of a substantial number of their products. When you think about it, Vista makes hardware manufacturers that much more dependent on staying under Microsoft's good graces.
I agree with you, but I seriously doubt NVIDIA will admit fault in this situation. They'll just put out a good driver and hope that this situation goes away.
This sums it up perfectly. I'm pissed about this whole situation but after countless posts in countless forums nothing more will come of this. NVIDIA will finally release drivers that work and we will shortly forget. NVIDIA sales will hardly be impacted and maybe somebody with a long memory will bring it up as a "remember when" moment.
I hate the fact the NVIDIA has yet to release drivers for a product it has stated was Vista ready but I hate people like you more.
When you sue them they simply pass the expense on to us. Moron!
A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.
Don Corleone, in The Godfather
That would be true if there were no competition. In the high-end graphics card market, competition is absolutely fierce.
You can't really pass the expenses on to consumers if the market is kept in check by competition. They may raise certain component prices slightly to AIBs, but AIBs will accept the price because of the pricing structure ($50 increments typically) and because there can be as many as ten AIB vendors selling the exact same product, albeit with different packaging.
If the cost gets passed down due to a lawsuit, it gets passed down to AIBs, and he isn't even talking about lawsuits! Moron
You can't really pass the expenses on to consumers if the market is kept in check by competition. They may raise certain component prices slightly to AIBs, but AIBs will accept the price because of the pricing structure ($50 increments typically) and because there can be as many as ten AIB vendors selling the exact same product, albeit with different packaging.
If the cost gets passed down due to a lawsuit, it gets passed down to AIBs, and he isn't even talking about lawsuits! Moron
Astral Abyss
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This is of course assuming Nvidia has the ability to get an actual 100% working driver out the door. If they could have, I have to believe they would have.... but they haven't.
I'd just be excited if they had a decent driver for XP and DX9. You know, one where the overclocking features actually worked and where settings didn't randomly change.
As pissed off as most of us are I really don't think any of us have any question that they will release drivers that will work. Its the when that is driving us crazy. This is just a matter of NVIDIA releasing a product to simply be first and say we were first with a DX10 card.
I'll tell you what. I think nVIDIA had the same tought as the "Vista goes thump" that you see on [H]ard consumer. http://consumer.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTI3MywxLCxoY29uc3VtZXI= So they do need to finish the drivers, but don't see everyone running out right away so why spend the money for double the developers?
Granted you all have a reason to complain, and I'm not denegrating that, but myself and many others are waiting for the killer apps to do an upgrade.
Show me those games now, not 6 months or more down the road, and I'll be likely to join the complaint. But I just don't see them yet. Stop posting pics of what Cyrsis will look like and show me a running retail edition first.
I suspect this will all be worked out during the next couple of months and when the first truely killer DX10 games are actually shipping and shown to be awesome on nVIDIA and ATI hardware, this will all be forgotten by the masses. You may hold a grude, but many won't. How many nVIDIA fans are going off about how bad their FX was now? They got over it and bought the next gen or they jumped to ATI. It may be an annecdotal quote about the design flaws of previous stuff when reviewing new hardware, but it's rarely a stock market killer.
Granted you all have a reason to complain, and I'm not denegrating that, but myself and many others are waiting for the killer apps to do an upgrade.
Show me those games now, not 6 months or more down the road, and I'll be likely to join the complaint. But I just don't see them yet. Stop posting pics of what Cyrsis will look like and show me a running retail edition first.
I suspect this will all be worked out during the next couple of months and when the first truely killer DX10 games are actually shipping and shown to be awesome on nVIDIA and ATI hardware, this will all be forgotten by the masses. You may hold a grude, but many won't. How many nVIDIA fans are going off about how bad their FX was now? They got over it and bought the next gen or they jumped to ATI. It may be an annecdotal quote about the design flaws of previous stuff when reviewing new hardware, but it's rarely a stock market killer.
That would be true if there were no competition. In the high-end graphics card market, competition is absolutely fierce.
You can't really pass the expenses on to consumers if the market is kept in check by competition. They may raise certain component prices slightly to AIBs, but AIBs will accept the price because of the pricing structure ($50 increments typically) and because there can be as many as ten AIB vendors selling the exact same product, albeit with different packaging.
If the cost gets passed down due to a lawsuit, it gets passed down to AIBs, and he isn't even talking about lawsuits! Moron
You are missing a very important point. Both ATI and nVIDIA have been acused and are being investigated for price fixing in the graphics market. So when all your providers pass on lawsuit costs to the overall price, free market competition doesn't mean dcik.
But hey, let's just test it to prove a point. Maybe the lawsuit havers can punish nVIDIA fiercely and nVIDIA doesn't compensate by increasing the price, if hemoraging enough from a "just because I can" lawsuit, perhaps they'll go the way of 3DfX and provide you a market with a great selection of choices. ATI or all the low ball OEM makers like S3
A "real" free market, not one that is simply litigation, involves customers saying "hey, what's teh competition doing" and voting with their wallets. This is far more impactful than some lame class action lawsuit. Seriously, if you google, you can see the millions of class action suits that have occured over time, does anyone remember them? Did it make a long term impact for the consumer? Or did it only benefit the lawyers themselves?
One I remember with significance, was a Dishplayer suit against Echostar (Dish Network). The lawyers got millions and millions, what did the Displayer consumers get? 5 pay per view discount coupons
http://www.mmmb.com/echostar.htmlSo what happened afterwards? DishNetwork upped the pricing on their subscriptions by a dollar and payed off the lawsuit in less than a month. Now they've supposedly garnered a huge chunk of the Sat market. Those that were cheesed enough switched to DirecTV or cable, but then switched back again in a couple years for the next best deal.
Don't like that reality? Tough darts.... You'll find it'll be the same for nVIDIA. Sure go ahead and dish me some abuse for relaying this to you, but it'll not change the reality and it'll still stick in the craw.
Accused, but no convictions, so it's an irrelevant point for the time being.
You make good points, and I agree that lawyer-speared class action suits aren't beneficial for consumers, but the poster only mentioned talking with the attorney general. From what it seems, the contest dispute was settled without so much as a grain of real judicial involvement. The poster suggested the same for this scenario, which I feel is premature and unnecessary. I feel a better path is the vote-for-your-wallet path, but I also feel like a filed complaint to the FTC wouldn't be totally out of line.
Honestly, I think we should hold on to our asses for a while yet. I don't think we're at a point where we need to start dialing up the pressure on NVIDIA.
Some may want to put NVIDIA in a legal vice because AIBs used to put a fairly meaningless sticker on boxes, and that's really not the right path for anyone to take. Not right now, anyway.
Oddly, nVidia responds on other websites but not on their own:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070206-8784.html
Kind of weird, almost to say (to their investors), "There's nothing wrong here".
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070206-8784.html
Kind of weird, almost to say (to their investors), "There's nothing wrong here".
Commander Suzdal
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That was disappointing. Perez' statement was utterly devoid of chagrin, remorse, apology, concern, or zeal. Not even a simple recognition of the problems. Only bravely-marching-forward marketing BS.
I noticed that too. He completely avoided acknowledgement of the issues. Many enthusiasts just want an apology and a time frame on new drivers.
Commander Suzdal
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Yeah, think of how much more respect and goodwill he might have earned with a statement like this: "We are aware of the problems our users are experiencing, and we are committed to solving them quickly. We are proud of our history as a world-class company and we will spare no effort until we have proved that legacy once again to our customers. Your concerns have been heard--mountains will be moved, midnight oil will be burned, and, if necessary, heads will roll until we make the situation right."
Notice that the above makes no legally actionable admission of wrongdoing or failure to perform, nor does it set even a tentative timetable. But it communicates that nVidia cares and is taking action. The vanilla marketspeak only fuels customer discontent by refusing to acknowledge or validate their feelings.
Agreed.
TheGameguru
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The current beta SLI 8800 series drivers are pretty bad for Vista. I can usually only game for 150-20 min before I get a bluescreen and my PC reboots.. and the bluescreen is usually a Nvidia DLL.
BF2142 wont even load past the shader optimization screen... but some people have gotten this game to work with SLI enabled so I'm going to keep trying different things. WoW gets 13-15 fps at 1920X1200 with SLI on (this is with a 2.66 Core Duo 2 and 4GB Ram and SLI 8800GTX's) HL2 is pretty miserable in performance as well.. I was to disgusted to try some more.. but I'll play longer and see if I can smooth it out.
What really is annoying is that my Dell XPS M2010 with an ATI X1800 Mobility performs much better under Vista.. I've yet to see a single Bluescreen from that machine gaming.. and suprise suprise I can actually sleep that machine.. unlike my other PC.
Here is hoping for a quick driver update that smooths things out.
FYI this is with Vista Ultimate 64bit.
BF2142 wont even load past the shader optimization screen... but some people have gotten this game to work with SLI enabled so I'm going to keep trying different things. WoW gets 13-15 fps at 1920X1200 with SLI on (this is with a 2.66 Core Duo 2 and 4GB Ram and SLI 8800GTX's) HL2 is pretty miserable in performance as well.. I was to disgusted to try some more.. but I'll play longer and see if I can smooth it out.
What really is annoying is that my Dell XPS M2010 with an ATI X1800 Mobility performs much better under Vista.. I've yet to see a single Bluescreen from that machine gaming.. and suprise suprise I can actually sleep that machine.. unlike my other PC.
Here is hoping for a quick driver update that smooths things out.
FYI this is with Vista Ultimate 64bit.
I've heard of alot more problems with Vista x64 than the 32bit version in terms of gaming. Not to say that the drivers are better for the 32bit version, it doesn't generally seem to be the case. Application compatibility on the other hand seems much better on the 32bit version.
I don't understand that because Windows XP Professional x64 Edition would run almost any 32bit programs Windows XP could.
TheGameguru
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that could very well be.. I was sorta hoping that Vista would finally put 64 bit computing semi mainstream.. I hope it doesnt go down the path of X64 XP.
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition worked well for me. I never had any trouble running it. Almost every application or game I ever installed worked fine. There were a couple of exceptions, but they were rare. The main problem was lack of drivers for certain types of hardware like TV tuners and video capture cards.
So no 7xxx SLI support until march it seems:
"timeframe" probably means "near the end of" in which case we're looking at 6+ weeks easy.
I was prepared to wait for SLI support and hold my tounge for a few weeks while they got their shit together, but this is outright taking the piss. If anything the 6xxx and 7xxx users are the ones with more right to complain over any other group, this is just appauling.
"timeframe" probably means "near the end of" in which case we're looking at 6+ weeks easy.
I was prepared to wait for SLI support and hold my tounge for a few weeks while they got their shit together, but this is outright taking the piss. If anything the 6xxx and 7xxx users are the ones with more right to complain over any other group, this is just appauling.
Yeah the Geforce 6 and 7 owners may have a right to be pissed off about this. I would be too. Even so, I don't think that it's acceptable that I have to wait another three weeks to fully utilize a card that claims Vista compatibility on the box that I purchased in early November.
I dont expect full support straight away, but I have a 7950GX2, I paid more for this card than for a 7900GTX at the time, because it runs faster. However it relies on SLI to reach its expected speed, currently on only one core it's holding up OK, but the supreme commander demo last night was choppy as hell, I wanted to run dual monitors which looks really great but runs really badly.
I'm a reasonable person y'know, I dont expect XP style performance straight away, and I dont expect all the features straight away, but having to wait upto 2 months is just way off the map.
I might have even kept quiet if it was just 2-3 weeks (which I was expecting up until this point)
All I can say is that there better be some "leaked" versions out before the final ones, by that I mean Nvidia better intentionally leak anythign thats even remotely usable otherwise they're going to get an e-foot up their e-arse.
I'm a reasonable person y'know, I dont expect XP style performance straight away, and I dont expect all the features straight away, but having to wait upto 2 months is just way off the map.
I might have even kept quiet if it was just 2-3 weeks (which I was expecting up until this point)
All I can say is that there better be some "leaked" versions out before the final ones, by that I mean Nvidia better intentionally leak anythign thats even remotely usable otherwise they're going to get an e-foot up their e-arse.
My sons PC is running Vista with a
A64 3200+
1GIG PC3200
6800NU
100.59 drivers.
Performance is piss poor.
UT 2004 is unplayable (Even bringing down rez to 800x600)
BF2 - same story
Quake 3 can't even keep a steady 125 fps (dips all the way down to the 40s)
Hell, even a GF4 4200TI can keep Q3 at 125fps
A64 3200+
1GIG PC3200
6800NU
100.59 drivers.
Performance is piss poor.
UT 2004 is unplayable (Even bringing down rez to 800x600)
BF2 - same story
Quake 3 can't even keep a steady 125 fps (dips all the way down to the 40s)
Hell, even a GF4 4200TI can keep Q3 at 125fps
The Vista Drivers for my motherboard (Asus P5B Deluxe) have been better than the XP drivers. The drivers for the JMicron IDE/SATA controller never ran right in XP. It would make my system bog down and become choppy. With Vista the controller runs perfectly smooth and is faster. Vista supported everything except for the WiFi on my motherboard right out of the box.
Every driver that was installed by Vista has been just as good, or better than the XP version. The Raid utility that I downloaded from Intel performs perfectly and the Realtek drivers for the built on WiFi card are solid.
It is only my drivers for my 8800 and X-Fi card that don't work 100%. Everyone expects there to be problems with Creative drivers, but I expected the same great drivers that I have always gotten from nVidia. Especially after all of the claims they made.
That being said, I don't understand how people are having so many problems with their 8800's. I have been playing quite a bit of UT2004 and have been having no problems. I have been playing it at my native res (2560x1600) with everything turned all the way up and have been getting great FPS. I don't have fraps or anything installed so I don't know the exact number, but I didn't see any slowdowns or other problems. The 1 and only issue I have is that I can not put my computer into power save because the 8800 drivers wont let the machine wake up.
Well under Windows XP I can't play UT2004 hardly. The performance is horrible and 2560x1600 isn't even an option for me. It lets me run it at 1920x1080 and that's as high as it will go. (I haven't bothered to try and tweak it for higher resolutions since it sucks so bad right now.)
codegrinder
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yea kinda sucks that the 7900 users like me get stuck with waiting. they've had since rtm to come up with something even a beta something. even dell was able to pump out drivers for most of their vista compatable systems before or the day of retail release.
on a side note whats wrong with the X-Fi drivers. im using the latest from their website for vista and mine works?
on a side note whats wrong with the X-Fi drivers. im using the latest from their website for vista and mine works?
calebb
[H]F Junkie
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My sons PC is running Vista with a
A64 3200+
1GIG PC3200
6800NU
100.59 drivers.
Performance is piss poor.
UT 2004 is unplayable (Even bringing down rez to 800x600)
BF2 - same story
Quake 3 can't even keep a steady 125 fps (dips all the way down to the 40s)
Hell, even a GF4 4200TI can keep Q3 at 125fps
It sounds like he's using the wrong drivers for that card. Check out nvidia.com and download the Vista drivers for the 6xxx and 7xxx cards. (currently Version: 97.46 would be the most up-to-date drivers for a 6800 in Vista.
Where are the NVIDIA shills or apologists in these forums lately? You think even they realize how badly NVIDIA screwed up? On the 30th and 31st they were hot and heavy defending NVIDIA saying we were stupid and it was our fault for buying their product and for installing Vista. Anybody notice how even on NVIDIAs main page there is no mention of Vista now?
What a mess!
What a mess!
Sabrewulf165
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If they would just fix fixed-aspect ratio scaling and HDR+AA in Oblivion, I would be fairly content. Of course I still need some good drivers from Creative for my X-Fi as well, but the betas that are out now aren't TERRIBLE. They work, but the directional sound is a lot duller than in XP.
From the 100.59 faq sheet on nVidia's website:
This driver supports the following features:
Single GPU support
DirectX 9 support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs
DirectX 10 support for GeForce 8800 GPUs
OpenGL support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs
I did try the 97.46 drivers first, but Quake 3 had some OpenGL gamma ramp error even when running Compatibility mode. DX9 performance was just as poor as 100.59.
As it is 100.59 drivers nets the same error unless Q3 is ran in compatibility mode.