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Nvidia Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Vista Drivers
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Feb 02, 2007 09:23 PM
from the can't-see-anything dept.
from the can't-see-anything dept.
Cocoshimmy writes "Nvidia is facing a class action lawsuit for false advertising by not providing stable working drivers for Vista. Nvidia has been accused of closing threads on Nvidia's forum and banning users that request a response from Nvidia, post that their Nvidia hardware does not work under Vista, post that Nvidia software does not work under Vista, post that Nvidia is guilty of false advertising, or threaten to sue Nvidia. Several disgruntled users have set up their own site for discussing their legal options."
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Technology: NVIDIA's Drivers Caused 28.8% Of Vista Crashes In 2007 344 comments
PaisteUser tips us to an Ars Technica report discussing how 28.8% of Vista's crashes over a period in 2007 were due to faulty NVIDIA drivers. The information comes out of the 158 pages of Microsoft emails that were handed over at the request of a judge in the Vista-capable lawsuit. NVIDIA has already faced a class-action lawsuit over the drivers. From Ars Technica:
"NVIDIA had significant problems when it came time to transition its shiny, new G80 architecture from Windows XP to Windows Vista. The company's first G80-compatible Vista driver ended up being delayed from December to the end of January, and even then was available only as a beta download. In this case, full compatibility and stability did not come quickly, and the Internet is scattered with reports detailing graphics driver issues when using G80 processors for the entirely of 2007. There was always a question, however, of whether or not the problems were really that bad, or if reporting bias was painting a more negative picture of the current situation than what was actually occurring."
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Vista (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Vista DRM helps (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't Really Matter (DRM) technology ensures that if you have a complaint, you can't visit an Nvidia or Microsoft website to lodge it.
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You forgot... (Score:4, Funny)
Dangerous, Raging Monkeyboy
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Re:Vista (Score:5, Funny)
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Just use the 'nv' driver (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just use the 'nv' driver (Score:5, Funny)
Having done a Linux kernel upgrade today, I had to type "emerge nvidia-drivers" at the command line and wait *A WHOLE THREE MINUTES* for the drivers to download and compile the module - during that time I had *NO* 3D acceleration on my Gnome desktop.
It was *NOT* pleasant, I can tell you!
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Re:Just use the 'nv' driver (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Just use the 'nv' driver (Score:5, Funny)
No, this is Gnome - silly settings like "unpleasant acceleration speed" have been hidden from me.
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Not funny, but actually hapenned with 3DFx (Score:5, Interesting)
Most Windows XP 32/64 and Vista 32 drivers for 3DFx Voodoo cards are partially done by backporting libglide3x and mesa3d from linux to windows (and thus also earned the privilege of being among the few graphic boards supported in XP64)
Although not actually Windows XP/Vista per se, the Linux USB stack has been also ported to ReactOS (opensource clone of Windows NT family) and Cromwell (opensource BIOS for XBox).
Therefore, some simple driver, with no 3D acceleration could be possibly done out of source available in linux.
(And if nVidia still doesn't fix the problem*, maybe some useful infos from the Nouveau project could be used to add the 3D functionnality. Having a complete opensource driver next to the commercial one isn't something unheard of in the Win32 world : Audigy sound cards have both official drivers from Creative and the kX project).
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* : Isn't completly unlikely. Their main audience, from which they earn most money are game players. Given the fact that almost all current games run on Windows XP + DX9, they'ld better spend more money in improving the WinXP support, to have a higher position in tests to sell more to gamers, rather than spend the same money on Vista, and thus risking to loose customer due to better Catalyst. I won't be surprised if, appart for their made-for-DX10 flagship products and business oriented cards, progress of Vista drivers are as slow as for linux, until games start to appear that target Vist DX10.
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Re:Just use the 'nv' driver (Score:4, Informative)
By default the 64 bit version wants this but it is easily turned off if you like.
So... No.
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Re:Just use the 'nv' driver (Score:5, Informative)
There's no drivers for any nForce motherboard chipsets whatsoever.
Yeah, enough drivers to basically boot are loaded "in the box" with Vista, but little things like a sound drivers, RAID drivers and a gigabit LAN driver that works faster than 10 base T aren't available anywhere. Not even beta drivers are available.
At the same time they're touting their nForce 4 boards as "Vista Ready"... which is completely untrue. Today they changed the verbiage to "Vista Capable" which is softer, but still BS.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/nforce4_family.html [nvidia.com]
Don't tell me nVidia didn't have *years* to prepare for launch. Their public RC1 and RC2 drivers never even made it close to a stable state.
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ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Funny)
Personally I just blame canada... i mean come on, they aren't even a real country anyways
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering Microsoft is still in the process of patching Vista, including a major patch issued just as Vista went out the door, can we really stick all the blame on Nvidia?
Did the patches affect the video driver layer? If they did, then maybe Microsoft should share some of the blame. If not, then the blame is squarely on nVidia. It's not like nVidia hasn't had plenty of time to develop drivers for Vista.
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Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Informative)
I went to this page http://www.nvidia.com/object/7_series_techspecs.ht ml [nvidia.com] for my video card and it says:
Now, if I purchased this card to run on my new Vista machine, I would be pretty upset when it didn't work right. Wouldn't you?
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Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno. One of the points says "best possible experience". I guess it depends on what that means. If this were Windows Me, I'd expect shorting out motherboard contacts randomly with soaking-wet weasels might get better performance than putting in a carefully designed graphics board.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This was my secon
Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Funny)
Just because it was built for it doesn't mean it will.
I mean, Bruce Springsteen was born to run, but how often do you see him jogging around?
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Port Linux NVidia Drivers to Vista (Score:5, Funny)
Linux support (Score:5, Interesting)
No NForce2 drivers (Score:5, Informative)
Just upgraded a machine, network & sound works, but when I scroll in Firefox, I get choppy audio playback in Winamp; in the process of trying to figure out if it's Winamp at fault or the audio driver.
Re:No NForce2 drivers (Score:4, Interesting)
Just upgraded a machine, network & sound works, but when I scroll in Firefox, I get choppy audio playback in Winamp; in the process of trying to figure out if it's Winamp at fault or the audio driver.
Does your AGP bus run under the PCI to PCI bridge like my Nforce 1 does? If so that could easily be the problem. Nvidia decided to not write drivers for the AGP bus. To check look under Device manager, system devices and look for PCI Standard PCI to PCI Bridge.
I'm not terribly happy with Nvidia, but of course I don't have any basis to sue them either.
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Yet again..... (Score:3, Insightful)
ok this seems bad enough but... (Score:5, Funny)
At least they got this one right. That's what you get for upgrading: huge hole in your wallet, crappy OS and nvidia forum mods poking fun at you...
No Need To Sue (Score:5, Insightful)
Let your money do the talking and stop helping lawyers make money on stuff like this.
Re:No Need To Sue (Score:4, Insightful)
These customers have done all they should have to. nVidia is clearly screwing their customers on this one.
I have not owned a non-nVidia video card for years. I have never owned an ATI. Why? Because nVidia's drivers were SO much better, even though their hardware was inferior. The opposite is now true, if you use Vista. (I don't yet... Doubt I will for quite a long time.) ATI's drivers have gotten MUCH better in the past 5 years, and their hardware is still top notch. nVidia has now proven that they no longer know how to write stable drivers, and their hardware is inferior.
I am NOT looking forward to my next card being an ATI, but unless nVidia gets really smart, really quick, that's what's going to happen. And I'm planning to purchase all new hardware pretty soon, too. -sigh-
(I worked for PC Repair shops for years, so I have some experience with the quality of each manufacturers' past products.)
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This has got to be a first... (Score:3)
Now, of course, if Nvidia are claiming that their cards work with Vista and you're buying the card solely for use with Vista, and it doesn't work, take your card back for a full refund and go without.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The problem I have with that in particular is that I bought an 8800 GTX months before Vista came out. I especifically bought it because it claimed that it was Vista Ready. Well, it's not, and my options are quite limited. I can't return it, and I don't really want to purchase another card after I already spent over $600 for this one. In my case, I can't "let my wallet
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most stores have fairly limited return policies. Without a receipt, the best you can get is store credit. With a receipt, you typically have something like 30 days to return a purchase. After that, you have to go through the manufacturer.
The manufacturer, in this case, is allegedly refusing to acknowledge the problem. This means that any warranty that came wi
Re:This has got to be a first... (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, I really don't agree with the people's arguments or the lawsuit, as for the most part, NVidia has delivered Vista drivers that are better than the XP drivers at this point.
However, the reason your argument is wrong, is when NVidia came out with the 7800 and other 7xxx series Geforce cards, their advertising SPECIFICALLY said that this generation of card was already Vista Ready and had Vista WDDM called LDDM drivers availble for them. However, as many people in the beta of Vista would know, NVidia DID NOT have Vista drivers even at that time period, and they didn't even start dropping stable non-debug drivers until this month, which is a long time from June of 2005 when they advertised their cards were ALREADY Vista Ready.
As for the whole lawsuit, I disagree with it completely, yes NVidia was late, but they DID get good drivers out by the time Vista released.
As for people on here discounting NVidia or Vista, please remember that Vista has a Video driver model that is different than is used in ANY OTHER OS. It supports things like GPU multi-tasking and system RAM smart-realtime sharing with GPU RAM, as well as the driver is no longer a kernel level driver and runs in User mode, in addition to several very technical differences.
The other problem with the argument of this lawsuit is the pure fact, that WindowsXP drivers work on Vista, just as they worked on WindowsXP. They will not get AERO/Glass or the features I mentioned above that are new to the WDDM in Vista, but they will perform EXACTLY like they did in XP.
This is not like NVidia has screwed over users in any way, although during the beta process I could have smacked the marketing deptment of NVidia for advertising WDDM Vista Ready for the 7xxx series of cards when this was simply not even close to being true. And in fact, ATI had the first and most stable drivers during the entire Vista Beta, even though ATI didn't release OpenGL support until this month as well for their drivers.
A month ago, our techs would have told gamers to skip Vista for a while, but with the drivers released this month from both ATI and NVidia at the 11th hour for the Vista release, things have dramatically changed.
Both companies have a few glitches with a few games, but for the most part the drivers are solid, and deliver better FPS on Vista even when running with Glass still on and even in a Window. You can also run with higher quality textures than you could in XP since the WDDM shares system RAM with the GPU intelligently, so turn up the High Quality Textures that your Video card couldn't handle before and enjoy the view.
Another thing to notice is that in Vista you can run multiple games at the same time without worry about running out of GPU RAM, and even with multiple games running do the Glass Flip 3D with all the games and applicaitons. And even in Flip 3D the games FPS only drops maybe 2-5fps, even though it and other games are running at the same time on the screen in flip 3D. This is impressive and shows that Vista can squeeze a lot of performance out of the hardware and games beyond what any other OS, including XP has been able to acheive.
Now most people won't be running multiple games, but if you want to run WoW or Oblivion or CoH in a Glassy Window while you have Vent or TeamSpeak open and your messenger and a movie playing, you can, and without losing framerates like you would have in XP or any other OS, because of how Vista handles the Memory and GPU multi-tasking with the WDDM in Vista.
So everyone out there ha-ha-ing Vista's Video, instead of laughing at things you don't understand, you should be taking notes on what MS has done right with Vista technically, some of it is impressive architectually, especially if you are an OS theorist/engineer.
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Site down -- was this ever serious? (Score:3, Informative)
How's this for paranoia? (Score:5, Funny)
Stop your wining and open your eyes! (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not sure whether to be amused or disappointed (Score:4, Insightful)
As an American, I have become somewhat desensitized to the various class action suits which seem to have become water and fodder for the legal industry, but this strikes me as being just sad.
Today is February 2, 2007 and Microsoft publicly released the consumer-oriented versions of Microsoft Windows Vista (the Home and Ultimate Editions) on January 30th, just three days ago. I participated in the testing of Windows Vista and installed the RTW version (Build 6000) on my primary desktop and laptop computers when it became available in November of last year. During testing, nVidia was good--not stellar, but not bad--about providing device drivers, and any problems I experienced during my testing with nVidia 6800GT and 7900GT-chipset based cards generally disappeared as new builds of the operating system and device drivers became available.
Right now, there is a huge installed base of nVidia GPUs out there (5200 and up are officially supported according to this [nvidia.com]) which people are using with Windows Vista and I am sure the percentage of those users with 8800-series GPUs out there hovers around a single percentage point or two.
Given that Microsoft Windows Vista is a brand new operating system in many respects, such as introducing a completely new video device driver model, and that, likewise, the 8800 series represents nVidia's own most complex product to date and so far has only a small market penetration, why is anyone alarmed (or even surprised) that WHQL-certified device drivers are not available yet which take advantage of all its features?
Also, while I would imagine that nVidia has a large staff of developers writing device drivers for their various bits and blogs of silicon, I would imagine the size of that staff is finite and that nVidia has to prioritize their work based on hard business decisions, such as the number of customers using a particular product with a particular operating system. Was it wrong of nVidia to focus their driver development efforts on satisfying the needs of the largest percentage of their installed base? Or should they have focused their efforts on their newest customers and satisfy the needs of thousands or tens of thousands instead of tens of millions?
What I do know is that, generally-speaking, nVidia has historically done a good job of providing decent support for their products and nothing I have seen or read in TFA has changed my opinion. Frankly, the number of nVidia owners who have 8800-series GPUs is a small majority. While these early adopters have paid a premium for their latest-and-greatest video cards and do deserve to be treated with respect by nVidia, I suspect that right now nVidia's engineers are working very hard on device drivers with support all the new features of their video cards and will probably have them available in a few days or a week or two.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Re:I am not sure whether to be amused or disappoin (Score:5, Informative)
why is anyone alarmed (or even surprised) that WHQL-certified device drivers are not available yet which take advantage of all its features?
Because the manufacturer claimed that they were, and people made purchases based on that claim.
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Re:I am not sure whether to be amused or disappoin (Score:3, Insightful)
The bugs are due to the new Vista DRM "features" (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would nvidia's drivers work with Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Linux (32 and 64 bit), Solaris and FreeBSD - but not with Vista?
Do you think that nvidia forgot how to code video drivers? No, that doesn't seem logical.
Well what is different between Vista and all of the others?
How about all the stupid Vista DRM features? You know, the ones that ATI was bitching about when they said (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista
An ATI product manager responsible for producing the actual hardware says:
"These costs are passed on to the consumer"
"This cost is passed on to all consumers"
"This cost is passed on to purchasers of multimedia PC's"
"Costs are passed on to consumers"
"Costs are passed on to consumers, especially early adopters"
I'm sure that the lion's share of these costs are software related. More software cost means more code. More code means more opportunity for unexpected features (aka "bugs").
Don't blame nvidia. Blame Microsoft.
Vista (Score:4, Informative)
It was a totally ludicrous situation. When I went into best buy, the staff were playing about with the shiny new desktops trying to figure out how stuff worked. Customers were asking what games or legacy would run on the new OS, and the staff sort of shrugged. They obviously had this dropped on them and didn't have a clue either. So I bought the laptop with Vista ( the kid is a windows lover and whines that his favorite game du jour doesn't work under Linux)
So I get the damned thing home, and try to connect through my wireless home LAN. (Linksys WRT54GS running the latest firmware) Guess what? Can't reach beyond my local network - something about TCP scaling problems with the primary DNS server!!! I never had this much trouble with basic networking under SuSE, Ubuntu, or XP. I was even able to get the kids PS2 and PSP networked with less trouble than this!
There has to be some sort of laws put in place to ensure betas (and that is exactly what this is) are not being rammed down everybody's throat like this. The whole situation is utterly insane. I am going to be up half the night trying to get the damned piece of crap connected to the internet.
Thats Ok, ATI is in Microsofts pants (Score:3, Insightful)
That crappy little C# CATALYST program sucks. The ATI hardware box advertises: compatible with Windows 98/2000/XP. Make sure you download 32megs of worthless
Nvidia is not the only hardware company having problems with Vista. Creative is prepared (OpenAL), no one else is. AC97 soundcard? Buy a new one. S3 Graphics? Buy a new one. VIA graphics? Buy a new one.
My Nvidia drivers rock for Windows (98/2000/XP) and Linux. Thank you Nvidia. I'll buy your products again.
FOSS supporters need to recognize that Nvidia is not going to open up thier drivers as long as ATI is around. Am I the only Linux user left that remembers when we had no graphic card (Zero, Zilch, Nada) support or recognition?
If i recall correctly from my MSDN alerts/newletters, Microsoft changed the driver model twice during Vista development. Case closed.
End Beer Rant
Enjoy,
nvidia needs to fix these issues though (Score:4, Interesting)
basically, if you have TV-out enabled, like to watch a DVD on your HDTV over VIVO component cables, vista disables the dvd playback by breaking the overlay on any application/video stack. This, I confirmed, worked just fine on the same HDTV over VGA though.
Naturally, after thanking me for bringing the "issue" to their attention, Mr. Brown ignored my last email. Maybe now, Mr. Brown will take the time out of his busy day to respond.
we're waiting.
Re:sue for what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nvidia claimed it would work, people spent time and money based on their promise.
Tort law is the ONLY avenue people have to defend themselves against the actions of a corporation.
It has nothing to do with entitlement.
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Re:sue for what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Can you blame them? (Score:5, Insightful)
They had stable vista drivers out for their older cards for somettime. This is specifically to do with a brand new card that has such a different archetecture that they had to redo the driver from the ground up and seriously underestimated the time it would take.
Marketing went ahead and sold the hardware as "The first vista ready video card" (DX 10 whee), engineering was not ready. It really is borderline plausible that they could be gulty of false advertising.
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Re:Can you blame them? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have two EVGA Nvidia 8800 GTX video cards with 768 megabytes of ram.
I purchased Windows Vista Ultimate at Midnight on Monday.
I installed the 64 bit version of Vista Wednesday morning (24 hours later) using beta drivers released by Nvidia earlier (found off of guru3d.com I believe).
I checked the Nvidia web site later that day and they had release drivers (one of my monitors was not being recognized for its full resolution capabilities with the beta drivers).
I downloaded and installed the release drivers from the Nvidia web site.
I have had no video problems at all. I am able to drive 3 monitors at once (two 30" 2560x1600 monitors and one rotated 1600x1200 monitor), play games at full 2560x1600 resolution with comparable screen rates as prior to Vista upgrade, use the nifty Aero Interface, etc.
I think if this goes to court, someone will ask - so when did Microsoft release Vista to the public? Ok, how long after that did you have to wait for your drivers? One day? Why are we here today?
Compared to time consuming frustration on getting all my other business applications running, the idea that someone is suing over nvidia drivers is comical to me. Too bad their web site is slashdotted as I would love to sign on there and call all of them morons. I wonder if they'll trim those posts.
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Re:Can you blame them? (Score:5, Funny)
I purchased Windows Vista Ultimate at Midnight on Monday.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Funny)
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