Who else is getting pissed at nVidia?

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tehfire
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Who else is getting pissed at nVidia?

Post by tehfire » Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:04 am

I've always switched from time to time between ATi and nVidia (loved 3dfx back in the day). I loved my 9800Pro, but I switched over to nVidia after the DAAMiT merger (sorry, big Intel fan).

Anyways, back in the day I remember hearing a quote saying that nVidia was the holy grail of driver support. I remember feeling the same way, seeing as all the bundled ATi software was a piece (Catalyst Control Center was bad and slow, the Multimedia Center bundled with their All-In-Wonder cards was absolutely horrible).

How the times have changed. I bought an 8800GTS 512 (G92) when they first came out because they really were a steal at the time (even with the price gouging, they offered better-than 8800GTX performance for much less). The only thing is, I'm sitting here, four months later, and still using the same exact drivers! I know ATi has updated their drivers a couple of times, and I hate the fact that nVidia's newest drivers are only for the 9-series cards.

I know that I bought the card and shouldn't expect any more than what I paid for (video card with at least a driver), but seriously - some amount of support would be nice. I know those drivers aren't optimized and I know that my card can run Crysis better than it does. It's not like my card is considered a legacy card, anyways! It's only four months old!

I really wish there was more driver support from nVidia. I guess the problem is they've pushed out like a dozen cards over the past few months. At any rate, I think they should be providing better driver support than they are.

By the way, the nVidia control center is still buggy. Fan speeds get messed up, and lead to crashes.

DaveLessnau
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Post by DaveLessnau » Wed Apr 30, 2008 9:20 am

And if you go to the nVidia forums and try to ask why they haven't released any drivers for over four months, all you get is grief from the forum regulars. I haven't found anything anywhere that explains why nVidia seems to have stopped releasing official drivers.

derekva
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Post by derekva » Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:08 am

Just curious - what OS are you running? Vista? XP? It seems as if NVidia has been giving XP users the shaft driver-wise for a while.

Das_Saunamies
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Post by Das_Saunamies » Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:52 am

Probably too much work being put into DX10 development. I'm happy with my drivers for the 7800 GT, so you won't hear complaints from me. :P

tehfire
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Post by tehfire » Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:57 am

I'm running Vista64, but I'm pretty sure it's just as bad for Vista32. I know my friend's XP machine has drivers even older than mine for his 8800GT

blackworx
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Post by blackworx » Wed Apr 30, 2008 1:06 pm

Same can be said of their chipset drivers. Loads of unfixed problems and flaky bits. I only found out about one of them after an nForce board killed my Plextor DVD burner stone dead.

jaganath
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Post by jaganath » Wed Apr 30, 2008 3:18 pm

an nForce board killed my Plextor DVD burner stone dead.
i'm curious, how did it kill the optical drive? i didn't know bad software could kill hardware. :shock:

blackworx
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Post by blackworx » Thu May 01, 2008 1:35 am

It was a long-standing problem with the nForce2 chipset that never got fixed and it only affected certain Plextor drives (mine was a PX-760A).

A "perfect storm" of circumstances (optical drive as master on IDE2 and use of a PCI SATA card in addition to a PCI sound card being the main factors - I still don't know the exact details and doubt anyone does) could suddenly bork the optical drive. Sometimes the drive would be left unable to read DVD-Video but still work with CDs, DVD-ROMs etc., other times the drive would fail totally and be unable to recognise any disc. Flashing the firmware sometimes fixed the problem (it worked once for me) but more often than not it didn't. Once the drive was borked it would not work in any machine I tried, although the drive itself was still recognised by the OS.

Plextor was initially thought to be the culprit, as it only affected their drives, but eventually it was revealed to be dodgy chipset drivers from nVidia and that they had known about the issue for some time. Plextor were on record as being understandably p*ssed off at the whole situation.

Obviously you're right - software can't kill hardware in the physical sense - and the nVidia drivers obviously did something that caused the firmware to die. Regardless - the outcome was the same anyway - one dead drive. When it happened to me, I'd been using the drive for over a year and had added a PCI SATA card several months previously. The problem could feasibly never rear its head even given the "right" circumstances, so it's not by any stretch of the imagination common, but still illustrates the point about nVidia being a bit crap at fixing known driver issues.

As an aside, Plextor were brilliant and replaced the drive anyway - a big thumbs up to them.

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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Thu May 01, 2008 12:11 pm

I don't know what you're getting mad at. Why do you want new drivers? Do you need them? What about current drivers that's not working for you? You said you know your card can perform bettern than it does right now. How do you know that? Do you have any bugs with current drivers that you want new drivers? Do 9 series drivers have features that 8 series do not?

It would seem to me that the only reason you are ranting is that you believe nVidia has cheated you out of some performance by not releasing drivers, without any solid evidence at that. You DO NOT know that your card could perform better with new drivers.

As far as videocards are concerned I've had much better luck with nVidia. I have 2400XT at work and the driver crashes several times a week which is getting annoying.


BTW, beta 174 drivers have been out for a while and they support 8800, so your rant is simply moot.

tehfire
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Post by tehfire » Thu May 01, 2008 1:36 pm

Jazz, I already covered that they did provide me with at least a driver, so I'm not saying that they completely cheated me. I'm saying that they haven't been updating drivers. In the official 174.74 drivers (not released for 8800GTS 512) nVidia says that the drivers include "Numerous game and application compatibility fixes". This is in addition to a bunch of other stuff in their release notes. That's enough for me to think that they're still tweaking the drivers.

By the way, nVidia Control Panel still has many problems setting fan speeds. It's on many forums (and I know from personal experience) and don't really want to explain it here.

I did not say that ATi was any better, so your point about the 2400XT is not applicable.

And, there's a reason why I'm not complaining that nVidia is not giving beta drivers. I'm saying they have not released official drivers.

So yes, I do know they could do better and no, my point is not moot.

lm
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Post by lm » Fri May 02, 2008 2:10 am

jaganath wrote: i'm curious, how did it kill the optical drive? i didn't know bad software could kill hardware. :shock:
It certainly used to be possible. Basically the hardware didn't have so much foolproofness, and you could set parameters that made the hardware kill itself. Today's hardware is better in that sense.

As an example a buggy fan controller software could stop your fans, and if your hardware didn't have throttling, it could die. That's why I never use anything but pure hardware based fan control.

DaveLessnau
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Post by DaveLessnau » Fri May 02, 2008 4:27 am

According to The Tech Report, nVidia is supposed to release new OFFICIAL drivers next week. Huzzah!

seraphyn
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Post by seraphyn » Sat May 03, 2008 9:34 am

I always just use the beta drivers, never had a problem with them. Official drivers are pretty much just renamed beta drivers anyway.

Isn't 174.74 from like end March? That makes it a little over a month.

tehfire
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Post by tehfire » Sat May 03, 2008 10:48 am

I've had problems with beta drivers and a few games. The most notable one was Madden '08. In all honesty, it was probably EA's fault for sucking so bad at writing code, but at the end of the day I switched back to the WHQL'd drivers and the game worked fine.

smilingcrow
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Re: Who else is getting pissed at nVidia?

Post by smilingcrow » Sat May 03, 2008 12:58 pm

tehfire wrote:The only thing is, I'm sitting here, four months later, and still using the same exact drivers! I know ATi has updated their drivers a couple of times
What have the new ATI drivers actually brought to the table? If they’ve pushed the performance of ATI cards beyond your NVidia card then I can understand your disappointment, otherwise I don’t see a problem.
I’m wary of manufacturers bringing out driver updates too frequently as I feel quality totally beats quantity.

Licaon
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Post by Licaon » Sun May 04, 2008 7:10 am

tehfire wrote:I've had problems with beta drivers and a few games. The most notable one was Madden '08. In all honesty, it was probably EA's fault for sucking so bad at writing code, but at the end of the day I switched back to the WHQL'd drivers and the game worked fine.
exactly, the official drivers are the ones that were WHQL'd.
since every WHQL logo/tag/stature/whatever means to put >$40000 in Microsofts pockets, i understand nVidia's gesture to have 15 beta versions for the users to test and debug, and only 1 WHQL'd version once every 6 months.

anyway, since your WHQL'd version works ok, stick with it
there is 175.12 beta version for Vista64 from April 28, 2008. ( remember to read the Release Notes just in case )

Licaon
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Post by Licaon » Tue May 13, 2008 1:24 pm


Aris
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Post by Aris » Thu May 22, 2008 3:56 pm

4 month old nvidia drivers are still better than any driver from ATI.

honestly who cares? all i hear is "QQ i want more optimization to make MY video card run faster than it did when i originally bought it".

If you want a faster video card, then buy one. Until then, be happy with what you have. Its not their job to tweak your video card over n over to increase your framerates. Long as their drivers work, and their card performances are competative with similar cards of like cost from other companies, thats all i expect.

Nvidia cards typically run cooler, run faster (at similar price points), and have less driver issue's.

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Post by thejamppa » Fri May 23, 2008 2:20 am

Driver issues are unique and dependable on hardware really. I haven't had problem's in Ati card's but those bloody nVidia driver's have killed three times my Xorg... And they supposed to be better than Ati in Linux...

But I am most disapointed in nVidia's current attittude, flooding markets with same cards with barely any changes just with some new name added and general attitude of nVidia managment.

I mean prior last octorber there was Four 8800-series cards. All used same chipset. Now we have 7 8800-series card's using two different chip and also 9-series using same chip that some 88-series uses...

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