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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.
Government Graphics Software The Courts Hardware News
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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Nvidia Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Vista Drivers 25 Comments More /

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  • Just use the 'nv' driver (Score:5, Funny)

    by mhall119 (1035984) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:27PM (#17868454) Homepage Journal
    I'm sure someone can port it to Vista. Tell me again about how Windows has better hardware support than Linux.

    • Re:Just use the 'nv' driver (Score:5, Funny)

      by pandrijeczko (588093) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:49PM (#17868694)
      Please do not mock the Vista/Nvidia users - I can really sympathise with how they feel.

      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!

    • Not funny, but actually hapenned with 3DFx (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DrYak (748999) on Friday February 02 2007, @10:14PM (#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.

  • ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheSHAD0W (258774) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:28PM (#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?

    • Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Raynor (925006) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:33PM (#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 ;)

    • Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Vellmont (569020) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:34PM (#17868538)

      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.

    • Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Matt Perry (793115) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:44PM (#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?

    • Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Meatloaf Surprise (1017210) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:47PM (#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?

      • Re:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Funny)

        by gardyloo (512791) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:55PM (#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:ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges... (Score:5, Funny)

        by tkrotchko (124118) * on Friday February 02 2007, @10:35PM (#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?

  • Port Linux NVidia Drivers to Vista (Score:5, Funny)

    by andy314159pi (787550) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:30PM (#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, @09:30PM (#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.

  • No NForce2 drivers (Score:5, Informative)

    by Plug (14127) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:35PM (#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.
  • 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, @09:44PM (#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.

  • How's this for paranoia? (Score:5, Funny)

    by pandrijeczko (588093) on Friday February 02 2007, @10:19PM (#17868950)
    Let's all go down to our local computer stores tomorrow, stand near the Microsoft Vista display and snigger quietly to ourselves whenever a Joe Average picks up a Vista box?

    • Re:Can you blame them? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheAwfulTruth (325623) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:44PM (#17868656) Homepage
      This has nothing to do with that.

      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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