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Nvidia Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Vista Drivers 445

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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Nvidia Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Vista Drivers

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  • Vista (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:24PM (#17868434)
    I'd post first, but my monitor's on the fritz. Stupid new OS.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'd post first, but my monitor's on the fritz. Stupid new OS.
      You'll get no sympathy here if you 'upgraded' to Vista.
      • Re:Vista (Score:5, Funny)

        by SoCalChris ( 573049 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @10:00PM (#17869230) Journal

        I'd post first, but my monitor's on the fritz. Stupid new OS.
        You'll get no sympathy here if you 'upgraded' to Vista.
        How do you know he's not using linux with an ATI card?
        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by jbrader ( 697703 )
          I'm using linux with an ATI notebook card and it works great. Except when it doesn't, like when I want to log out or restart X, then I'm screwed.
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by zecg ( 521666 )
            I'm using linux on my notebook with an ATI card and everything works excellent with the open x.org radeon driver.
    • by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:44PM (#17868654) Homepage Journal
      It's that new Vista DRM feature, brought to you by the fine people at Nvidia:
      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.
  • by mhall119 ( 1035984 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:27PM (#17868454) Homepage Journal
    I'm sure someone can port it to Vista. Tell me again about how Windows has better hardware support than Linux.
    • by mark-t ( 151149 )
      Aren't all drivers required to be authorized by Microsoft to work with Vista?
    • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:49PM (#17868694)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:52PM (#17868732)
        I imagine it was still 'unpleasant' when they finally downloaded and compiled, after all, you're using Gnome
      • by Anonymous Coward
        I feel your pain, brother. Can you believe on my Ubuntu install I had to click twice, once to download Automatix, and one to run it, and as an intermediate step, I was actually forced to click a check mark agreeing that the Nvidia driver would be installed?

        Two clicks PLUS a checkmark, to get an Nvidia driver installed in, like, not just one second, or two seconds, but like SEVERAL seconds!

        I'm telling you - this new-fangled Linux thing is going to take a lo-o-o-ong time to be functional as a desktop. Why,
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by sumdumass ( 711423 )

          I'm telling you - this new-fangled Linux thing is going to take a lo-o-o-ong time to be functional as a desktop. Why, it will take YEARS for it to catch up to all the glitches and disturbances that Windows has to offer!

          Yea, especialy when BillyG has the marketing hounds out claiming "Vista is teh bomb" and after 10 years of trying, everyone is giving up on linux cause it won't work.

          I mean, what kind of marketing is better then a campian that looks like it came from the heart. Let me know when linux is re

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Psykechan ( 255694 )
        I know that the comment you made is supposed to be a joke but thanks to Nvida shipping binary x86 drivers instead of source, using a 3D accelerated desktop on a PowerPC based system is impossible.

        They won't even release binary PowerPC drivers.
    • by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @09:14PM (#17868914) Homepage

      Just use the 'nv' driver. I'm sure someone can port it to Vista.
      Someone moded you funny, but in fact, it does make sense.
      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).

      ----

      * : 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.

    • Just use the 'nv' driver

      No ways, 'vesa' is teh fast0r!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Or use the equivalent, the built in Windows driver that works with my 6600 right out of the box (does aero and at least the 3d screensavers fine out of he box). Or you could download the drivers from here [nvidia.com]...

      I mean what does this: "for false advertising by not providing stable working drivers for Vista." really mean? The drivers I downloaded are "stable" and "working". Of course I'm not one to drop ~$600 for a new piece of frivolous hardware every 6 months, and even if I were, I wouldn't expect the first c

      • by dr00g911 ( 531736 ) on Saturday February 03, 2007 @04:21AM (#17871328)
        Actually, the problem is bigger than that.

        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.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        I was rather stunned after reading your post. After all, the company in question (nVidia) is selling a product which is advertised to work with another product (Microsoft Windows Vista) and after it is pointed out that actually the product doesn't work at all as advertised and it is broken to boot you claim that not only it is normal but also should be expected?

        Wow... Just... Wow...

        It just goes to show the state in where we find ourselves today. Like the parent poster, there are quite a few people who buy h
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gbjbaanb ( 229885 )
        Go to Nvidia web site, look for the drivers - they're there for graphics cards if not for motherboards - and read the release notes.

        These NVIDA Windows Vista drivers are under development. This version is not fully optimized for full 3D performance and may not include all available features available on different operating systems. NVIDIA, along with the industry, is continuing to update its Windows Vista drivers to ensure maximum performance on 3D applications and add support for features. These drivers are provided "AS IS." NVIDIA MAKES NO [BLAH BLAH BLAH]

        Unfortunately the front page for nvidia.com has a huge advert how Nvidia is 'Essential for the best windows vista experience' :)

        They have a new set of drivers out as of the 31st jan, but they're still beta.

  • by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:28PM (#17868462) Homepage
    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?
    • by Raynor ( 925006 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:33PM (#17868532) Journal
      I think we are blaming NVidia's treatment of their customers, not the problems themselves.

      Personally I just blame canada... i mean come on, they aren't even a real country anyways ;)
    • by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:34PM (#17868538) Homepage

      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.
    • by Matt Perry ( 793115 ) <perry.matt54@nosPAm.yahoo.com> on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:44PM (#17868648)

      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?
      That depends. Are all the other video drivers having problems too or is it just NVidea's drivers?
    • by Meatloaf Surprise ( 1017210 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:47PM (#17868682)

      I went to this page http://www.nvidia.com/object/7_series_techspecs.ht ml [nvidia.com] for my video card and it says:

      Built for Microsoft® Windows Vista(TM)

      * Third-generation GPU architecture built for Windows Vista
      * Delivers best possible experience when running Windows Vista 3D graphical user interface
      * New OS supported by renowned NVIDIA® Unified Driver Architecture (UDA) for maximum stability and reliability
      * NVIDIA® PureVideo(TM) technology delivers high-quality VMR pipeline for best-in-class video for Windows Vista

      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?

      • by gardyloo ( 512791 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:55PM (#17868762)
        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?

              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.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by laffer1 ( 701823 )
        PureVideo is not supported in Vista x64 either. That is false advertising. I did upgrade to vista and can tell you that the nvidia drivers are terrible. As of Vista launch day, only the 8000 series had working opengl officially. You can actually install that driver and it will work with the 7000 series as well. I have a 7300 GS which was purchased in november. It should work with vista. I run windows for gaming and right now I can play more games in MidnightBSD which no one supports.

        This was my secon
        • by Danga ( 307709 )
          This was my second nvidia card and first in my primary desktop. I will not buy another one. AMD gets my money next time. Their drivers suck and they don't support any BSD, but at least they aren't rude.

          I think you mean ATI? :-)

          I will say that ATI's drivers do suck, I would say that 80% of the computers I have put together in the last 4-5 years with ATI cards were BITCHES to get working without problems like constantly crashing, not running at full speed, etc. 0% of the machines I put nVidia cards in failed
      • by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) * on Friday February 02, 2007 @09:35PM (#17869060) Homepage
        "* Third-generation GPU architecture built for Windows Vista "

        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?
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DangVarmit ( 79074 )
      nVidia.. didn't they make the graphics chips for the first XBox console and then fight with MS over the royalties or something like that?

      I think I'd file this story under the 'Microsoft dirty tricks' heading ..
  • by andy314159pi ( 787550 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:30PM (#17868486) Journal
    Maybe someone at Microsoft should work on porting the Linux nvidia drivers to Vista. The work well on Linux, so maybe the drivers can be "reverse engineered" to work with Vista.
  • Linux support (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:30PM (#17868490) Homepage Journal
    It seems that for once, there's a major piece of computer hardware with better driver support for Linux than for Windows.
    • FWIW, I did try the public beta of Vista and the Nvidia drivers worked perfectly fine, both 32-bit and 64-bit.

      Also, to be fair to M$ (and I hate admitting this) the media center works amazingly well. I wish MythTV worked so well.
  • No NForce2 drivers (Score:5, Informative)

    by Plug ( 14127 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:35PM (#17868554) Homepage
    While this class action seems to be about high-end graphics cards, which I have ever expectation that NVIDIA are working hard on drivers for, it's worth pointing out that they don't intend to support the NForce/2/3 motherboards with Windows Vista drivers. [theinquirer.net]

    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.
    • by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:47PM (#17868674) Homepage

      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.
      • by Plug ( 14127 )
        Yep, it does. I take it that means there's no separate transport for the AGP, so the PCI bus gets held up when you're doing anything graphically intense?

        (Seems a visualisation in WMP triggered the fault before too - and its happened again as I write this sentence - everything just slows down...)
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by r_naked ( 150044 )
      I have an Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe and had all kinds of audio problems with the stock Vista nForce 2 audio driver till I grabbed the Vista driver from Realtek's site [realtek.com.tw].

      While not ideal (no Dolby Digital encoding), it did solve all my stuttering problems that the stock Vista driver had.

      Also, if you need them, Silicon Image has Vista drivers for the Sil3112 SATA chip. I know most boards from that era that used the nForce 2 chipset also used the Sil3112.
  • Yet again..... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by edwardpickman ( 965122 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:39PM (#17868592)
    another good reason not to upgrade.
  • by whathappenedtomonday ( 581634 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:40PM (#17868618) Journal
    one of the NVidia forums moderator's suggestions that there's no reason to upgrade to Vista (link [tgdaily.com])


    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)

    by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:44PM (#17868650) Homepage Journal
    While I understand why these people are upset, why do people always feel the need to sue? It's in Nvidia's best interest to keep their customers happy, and as such will probably be releasing drivers that DO work very soon. If they don't, these customers will just go to one of their competitors the next time they're in the market for a high end video card.

    Let your money do the talking and stop helping lawyers make money on stuff like this.
    • by dirk ( 87083 )
      While in general I agree, they are suing because of the handling of the issue more than the issue itself. It's not like Nvidia has said "yes there are problems and we are working on them." They are denying problems and deleting posts that say there is a problem. In other words, there is no indication that Nvidia is doing anything at all besides sticking their heads in the sand. If Nvidia wanted to keep their customers happy, they would acknowledge the problem and say they are working on getting it corre
  • by QuantumG ( 50515 ) * <qg@biodome.org> on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:44PM (#17868658) Homepage Journal
    I'm trying to think of any other product where you can buy it at time X, it suits your purpose and you're happy, then at time X+1 something changes, it no longer suits your purpose and that is somehow the manufacturer's fault. Honestly, if you bought your card to use with XP and it now doesn't work with Vista, don't you solely have the option of not using Vista? Or buying a new card? And if Nvidia are yet to sell any new cards that work with Vista, aint you just shit out of luck?

    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)

      ...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.

      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

      • by QuantumG ( 50515 ) *
        Why can't you return it?

        If you bought it for use with Vista because they advertised that it worked with Vista then returning it is exactly what you should be doing. And if people actually did this, instead of just whining, Nvidia would *much* more quickly get the picture. Take your card back to whoever you bought it from and get a refund.
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Sancho ( 17056 ) *
          That poster said that the card was purchased "months ago". It was advertised as being Vista-ready at that time. Allegedly, it is not Vista-ready.

          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
    • by TheNetAvenger ( 624455 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @11:40PM (#17869976)
      I'm trying to think of any other product where you can buy it at time X, it suits your purpose and you're happy, then at time X+1 something changes, it no longer suits your purpose and that is somehow the manufacturer's fault. Honestly, if you bought your card to use with XP and it now doesn't work with Vista, don't you solely have the option of not using Vista? Or buying a new card?

      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.

  • by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:46PM (#17868672) Journal
    The site is now down. Was this ever a serious threat to start a lawsuit?
  • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Reboot? To load a kernel module?

      What do you think this is, Windows?

      .

      .

      .

      .
      Oh, wait....

      (And I am using a Gentoo box with nvidia-drivers right now)
  • Or the poster is one of the group trying to raise awareness and garner support for their "class action suit." The reason I say this is that their own site [nvidiaclassaction.org] is not even finished and yet it makes the front page of /. and what better place to get anti MS troops than good old /.?

  • Many people and I noticed the newer drivers after 8x.xx series are worse and buggier (can't use the older drivers with my EVGA GeForce 7950 GT KO card). First, they made that new control panel like ATI/AMD did. Everyone seems to hate it. I also hated it. Who knows when the old control panel will be gone since ATI/AMD removed its old one after a few versions.

    Secondly with TV out, the newer drivers seem to have problems with full screen overlays. Also, NVIDIA drop TV out support in their 8800 cards! I am not
  • For every 10 users who feel neglected by a free software producer, there's 1 who wants to be compensated. nVidia doesn't charge money for their drivers. It was once ludicrous to sue over something you didn't have to pay for. Now people are suing over free stuff. It's now OK because although the software didn't cost money, it didn't have source code and was in support of a piece of hardware which cost money. The envelope of what is considered a fair lawsuit has expanded one more step.

    Combined with huma
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @09:19PM (#17868950)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by AcidPhish ( 785961 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @09:20PM (#17868956) Homepage
    Windows Vista is an absolute disaster! From an engineer's point of view, the system is not built for security and stability, its just patched up with holes left for the recording industries. If a virus was to take advantage of these holes, then I doubt anything could stop it. Combined with all the out-of-the-box DRM and restrictions, the system is a lot more complicated for no apparent reason. For the NVIDIA drivers to work properly in Vista, there is a LOT of work and possible debugging due to Vista's chaos. Don't blame NVIDIA for this, its Microsoft's fault for the whole DRM fiasco. Now NVIDIA and ATI have to comply. ATI already told the masses that Microsoft's idea is crap and customers would be paying for this big bucks. Microsoft are no longer the leader/monopolist they once were. If you have an issue, don't buy Vista (like most of us), and get REAL high performance, or switch to an even better OS. The choice is there, suing and wining gets you nowhere.
  • by Aryeh Goretsky ( 129230 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @09:21PM (#17868968) Homepage
    Hello,

    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
    • by UncleFluffy ( 164860 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @09:45PM (#17869128)

      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.

    • "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 shoul
    • There are 2 problems:
      1.Nvidia claimed that these cards were "vista ready" "Direct3D 10 ready" etc. Since they do not have usable vista drivers for these cards, those claims are a lie. The cards are not usable with Vista.
      and more to the point 2.They refuse to acknowledge any of the problems. In fact, they are actively censoring mention of anything to do with these cards and vista.

      I suspect that if they came out and said "yeah, we know these cards don't work so good on vista. We are working on it and will hav
  • by seeks2know ( 702160 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @09:31PM (#17869028)
    Let's see...

    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_ cost.html):

    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.
  • Text of website, as seen through .nyud.net:8090

    _______

    Ok...I've put the site up so that I don't get any annoying messages from the likes of Chris_S stating "We don't use NVidia's forums to collect legal information."

    This site is intended to:

    * Post your screen shots / box covers, etc...where Vista compatibility is stated outright or implied.
    * Collect contact information about the class (done via your user account - email addresses are fine)

    The issue i
  • Vista (Score:4, Informative)

    by earthforce_1 ( 454968 ) <<moc.oohay> <ta> <1_ecrofhtrae>> on Friday February 02, 2007 @10:11PM (#17869320) Journal
    I just did what I swore I would never do. I had to purchase a replacement laptop for my stepson, but it was impossible to find a decent one (decently fast with 1G of RAM or greater) that came without Vista, and all but impossible to find any that didn't come with a microsoft OS. I walked into best buy after trying 5 or 6 stores - only one place would sell me an Ubuntu laptop and theirs was an average of $2K, way out of my budget! I called many places and drove around to a number of stores. Future shop had a big vista banner hung outside their store.

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      In other words, IT DOESNT WORK. Take the piece of shit back.

      My god, please say that you put it on your credit card, so you can charge-back for bad hardware/software.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      I just did what I swore I would never do. I had to purchase a replacement laptop for my stepson, but it was impossible to find a decent one (decently fast with 1G of RAM or greater) that came without Vista, and all but impossible to find any that didn't come with a microsoft OS. I walked into best buy after trying 5 or 6 stores - only one place would sell me an Ubuntu laptop and theirs was an average of $2K, way out of my budget! I called many places and drove around to a number of stores. Future shop had a
  • by NullProg ( 70833 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @10:17PM (#17869370) Homepage Journal
    BEER RANT

    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 .Net runtime in order to adjust your display card settings. Talk about software suckage.

    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,
  • by DragonTHC ( 208439 ) <Dragon.gamerslastwill@com> on Friday February 02, 2007 @10:36PM (#17869490) Homepage Journal
    I exchanged emails with nvidia PR man Ken Brown asking for an official response from nvidia about the Vista/nvidia DVD playback kludge with tv-out

    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.
  • by B5_geek ( 638928 ) on Friday February 02, 2007 @10:50PM (#17869624)
    Just thought I should warn a few of you about an annoying bug in the new "Windows Mail" (vista equivalent of Outlook Express).

    In Mail each email is downloaded and saved to the computer as an .eml file (as opposed to OE where it all gets downloaded to a .dbx database).

    If you are sent a virus and have anti-virus software running the AV software will catch & delete the .eml file (sounds ok so far)

    The bitch of the situation is that Win-Mail will still show that email in your inbox, but you cannot remove it (or view it) because the file is missing.

    So the only fix is to restore to a previous version, disable the AV, download the message & delete it.

    This could be annoying/amusing.

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