I hate NVidia with a passion!!! :(

[SUBMAN1]

ATI used to have the bad driver reputation back in the 5 and early 6 series a few years back, but NVidia has taken the cake and increased the frustration level further than any ATI doings in the past.

Finially I am done with them as a company. This list is endless as to what is irritating me, but three things stand out more than any other, and they all relate to DRIVERS:

1. Where are the driver updates for their 8800's? How long has it been? Every GPU has issues with some game or another, so driver updates monthly are mandatory, as well as updates for further performance improvements. ATI can manage this monthly, so why not NVidia? Where is the support? I want a driver update for an 8800 GTS, but I guess I'm SOL. They haven't made any since LAST YEAR!!!! :o

2. This has yet to be confirmed by me (though it is from a source at MS) - They have ceased support on NForce 4 and earlier boards for Vista. There are some initial divers dating back to at least a year ago, but thats all you get. Problems and all. I have 4x NForce boards sitting near me right now. :nope:

3. Now my biggest irk - I have an NVidia made southbridge in my system that has a timing issue with the current drivers. These current drivers where made 1.5 years ago, yet they haven't bothered to fix it? Excuse me? :o:o:o I finially after all this time have found a driver hack online to fix the issue. Nice. I have to use a hack to fix a driver issue.

What a crappy company. Sorry - done venting.

-S

[Dowly]

Good luck with ATI. The rumour is that Nvidia is going to get working with AMD. That makes it a partner for both Intel & AMD. Tough times ahead for ATI (Good, I hate the bstards!). :yep:

I've had my 8800 for almost a year and have never had any problems with the drivers. Every game I have new or old worked just fine even with two updates old drivers I had before I remembered to get the new ones month or so back.

[antikristuseke]

**** them to hell and back for droping support for Nf4 boards because my lovely MSI K8N Sli Platinum just happens to have one of thsoe chips, great chip and board at that.

[SUBMAN1]

Good luck with ATI. The rumour is that Nvidia is going to get working with AMD. That makes it a partner for both Intel & AMD. Tough times ahead for ATI (Good, I hate the bstards!). :yep:

I've had my 8800 for almost a year and have never had any problems with the drivers. Every game I have new or old worked just fine even with two updates old drivers I had before I remembered to get the new ones month or so back.What you are looking for is glitches. With ATI, they find and fix them. WIth this damn 8800, tough luck. Also, ATI is continually putting out perf enhancements for their boards - and you get squat from NVidia. I have both here and ATI is the way better of the two.

NVidia may no longer be a company soon as well. They are at a disadvatage to both Intel and their raster engine and AMD/ATI with Fusion. If NVidia doesn't make the right move right now, they will cease to exist in their present form. Their only move is to buy AMD. If not, its checkmate. Maybe this is why they aren't spending any money on driver support - they are saving all their cash for the one and only move they have left. In the end, the consumer loses with them.

-S

[Eyebiter]

NVidia also stopped supporting upgrading laptop drivers. "Contact your vendor for supported drivers"... yeah right. Only way I could update to later versions was to fool windows into thinking a desktop NVIDIA card was installed.

[GlobalExplorer]

I just recently downloaded a driver for a GeForce3 Ti200 - no problems - my friend is now happily running my old system with these drivers.

So much for video cards. If they did indeed drop support for chipsets it must suck if you have such a board. But atm the intel chipsets are better anyway.

I don't want to sound like a fanboi or AMD hater(writing this on a AthlonXP with Nforce2 chipset), but right now the best choice is Intel CPU + Intel Chipset + NVidia GPU.

[SUBMAN1]

I just recently downloaded a driver for a GeForce3 Ti200 - no problems - my friend is now happily running my old system with these drivers.

So much for video cards. If they did indeed drop support for chipsets it must suck if you have such a board. But atm the intel chipsets are better anyway.

I don't want to sound like a fanboi or AMD hater(writing this on a AthlonXP with Nforce2 chipset), but right now the best choice is Intel CPU + Intel Chipset + NVidia GPU.Correction - ATI GPU. ATI is currently the fastest vid card you can get - the 3870X2

[GlobalExplorer]

Good luck with ATI. The rumour is that Nvidia is going to get working with AMD. That makes it a partner for both Intel & AMD. Tough times ahead for ATI (Good, I hate the bstards!). :yep:

I thought ATI is AMD now?

Whatever, I think it would be logical if all three team up against intel, because if intel releases a killer GPU they will all three be f_cked (see my post above about intel CPU and chipsets).

[SUBMAN1]

Good luck with ATI. The rumour is that Nvidia is going to get working with AMD. That makes it a partner for both Intel & AMD. Tough times ahead for ATI (Good, I hate the bstards!). :yep:
I thought ATI is AMD now?

Whatever, I think it would be logical if all three team up against intel, because if intel releases a killer GPU they will all three be f_cked (see my post above about intel CPU and chipsets).Check it:

http://images.tomshardware.com/2008/01/28/ati_r680_the_rage_fury_maxx_2/image015.png

You are right on the ATI being AMD though - but they will always be ATI in my mind.

Intel is pushing a different tech that shows promise, but I doubt it is going anywhere yet.

-S

[SUBMAN1]

Correction - THe 9800 GX2 is now king card. Seems NVidia fixed its driver issues with this one (amazing they fixed any driver issue at all!)

-S

Toms take on it:

Having said this, we do not recommend buying a GeForce 9800 GX2 for those who rarely change graphic cards and want to invest in a very high end card and keep it for a long time. There are times when a card like this should excel, like when games are played at high resolutions and with demanding settings, but the 9800 GX2 is barely better than a simple GeForce 8800 Ultra. The problem, as is the case with the 3870 X2, is the relatively meager 512 MB of memory, which is incompatible with very high resolutions and when antialiasing is activated. The numbers speak for themselves: the 9800 GX2 out performs the 8800 Ultra (with 768 MB) by 29% on average and up to 41% at a resolution of 2560x1600, while activating antialiasing at this resolution shortens the gap to 13%. Yet, for many games, it's the only mode that still isn't smooth and the 9800 GX2 doesn't deliver much.


At the same time, this is clearly the new very high end card from NVIDIA and it's sold as such. The Point Of View model was announced at €500 ($791) and even with the lower price announced by NVIDIA ($600), the price difference compared to the 3870 X2 that we can find for less than $400, barely matches the average performance gap. The price-performance ratio of the 9800 GX2 isn't the best and gets worse at very high resolutions. So, the card is in the very high-end price category, but it doesn't rank very high when it comes to price-per-performance.

[Nightmare]

Correction - ATI GPU. ATI is currently the fastest vid card you can get - the 3870X2Actually, that is no longer correct. Now that the 9800 GX2 is available every hardware review site so far has shown that the 9800 GX2 is faster than the 3870 X2. You really pay for it though.

Tom's Hardware review of the 9800 GX2 (http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/03/18/nvidia_geforce_9800_gx2_review/index.html)

EDIT: Subman beat me to the post

[GlobalExplorer]

I don't care too much about who has the best performance. Atm the NVidia 9600 are the best bang for the buck (150€ for nearly a 8800's performance), and they stay extremely cool (~50C under load). Imo better buy the more mature technology when it has become cheap, and never spend more than ~200€ for a video adapter.

[Wolfehunter]

Even if the latest card is been out a few years never buy the latest generation. Always buy 2 generations down! Cost is reasonable and it WORKS. Right now all those companies are using guys. Your paying top dollar to be there beta testers. Figure that out?:yep: Who do you think is laughing to the bank?:hmm:

Let the next dude be a sucker and spend a $600+ card for nothing.

Now if your trying to compete who has the bigger card well...may the force be with you.:nope:

[SUBMAN1]

I don't care too much about who has the best performance. Atm the NVidia 9600 are the best bang for the buck (150€ for nearly a 8800's performance), and they stay extremely cool (~50C under load). Imo better buy the more mature technology when it has become cheap, and never spend more than ~200€ for a video adapter.Though TOm's says its a tie price perf wise with the 3870 back a month ago - all thats about to change. Subtract $80 from the cost of the 9600 andyou will have a 3870 which is faster than the 9600. I assume the 9600 will fall in price shortly too, so we will see. Regardless though - no driver support leaves only one real choice.

-S

[Blacklight]

Lately, the Nvidia Forceware drivers for my card have been crappy bug adled things that are causeing all kinds of problems with various games that I have. If I want to run one game, I need to roll back the drivers. If I want to play another one, I need to update the drivers. etc... This is the case for SEVERAL of my games that I play FREQUENTLY !! :nope:

Each new update lately has caused more problems with my games than the prior release. :nope: I don't know what they're doing up there at Nvidia's driver design department, but they certainly aren't bug testing very much.

Is it just me or are software manufacturers doing hardly any bug testing in general and just releasing software to have the end user "bug test" the product and give them feedback so they can patch it (but only if they sold a certain amount of the product... otherwise.. forget it).

[SUBMAN1]

Lately, the Nvidia Forceware drivers for my card have been crappy bug adled things that are causeing all kinds of problems with various games that I have. If I want to run one game, I need to roll back the drivers. If I want to play another one, I need to update the drivers. etc... This is the case for SEVERAL of my games that I play FREQUENTLY !! :nope:

Each new update lately has caused more problems with my games than the prior release. :nope: I don't know what they're doing up there at Nvidia's driver design department, but they certainly aren't bug testing very much.

Is it just me or are software manufacturers doing hardly any bug testing in general and just releasing software to have the end user "bug test" the product and give them feedback so they can patch it (but only if they sold a certain amount of the product... otherwise.. forget it).My point exactly. I quote myself from above:

1. Where are the driver updates for their 8800's? How long has it been? Every GPU has issues with some game or another, so driver updates monthly are mandatory, as well as updates for further performance improvements. ATI can manage this monthly, so why not NVidia? Where is the support? I want a driver update for an 8800 GTS, but I guess I'm SOL. They haven't made any since LAST YEAR!!!! :o
-S

[Blacklight]

They seem to come out with an update for my card every three or four months.. but like I said... the drivers have been garbage and the newer the driver, the more issues that it caused.

It's a shame because before, when I got this card maybe three or four years ago, Nvidia drivers were pretty rock solid and ATI's drivers were godawful. Now it's reversing.

When I first started playing City of Heroes, all you ever saw complaints on the tech support boards about was ATI drivers. Now, Nvidia driver complaints are through the roof (Their latest driver makes the scenery get covered in stripes AND makes the game unstable with multiple monitors running... something I have no problem with the old drivers).

[JSLTIGER]

Lately, the Nvidia Forceware drivers for my card have been crappy bug adled things that are causeing all kinds of problems with various games that I have. If I want to run one game, I need to roll back the drivers. If I want to play another one, I need to update the drivers. etc... This is the case for SEVERAL of my games that I play FREQUENTLY !! :nope:

Each new update lately has caused more problems with my games than the prior release. :nope: I don't know what they're doing up there at Nvidia's driver design department, but they certainly aren't bug testing very much.

Is it just me or are software manufacturers doing hardly any bug testing in general and just releasing software to have the end user "bug test" the product and give them feedback so they can patch it (but only if they sold a certain amount of the product... otherwise.. forget it).My point exactly. I quote myself from above:

1. Where are the driver updates for their 8800's? How long has it been? Every GPU has issues with some game or another, so driver updates monthly are mandatory, as well as updates for further performance improvements. ATI can manage this monthly, so why not NVidia? Where is the support? I want a driver update for an 8800 GTS, but I guess I'm SOL. They haven't made any since LAST YEAR!!!! :o
-S

You're only looking at WHQL drivers. The latest was released a couple of weeks ago: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_169.44.html

Part of the problem is that Microsoft has to give the all clear on the WHQL rating, so it's not entirely nvidia's fault. At the same time, I've been frustrated by the lack of new WHQL drivers as well. I don't like being a guinea pig with beta software.

I never understood the complaints about ATI's drivers. I had a Radeon 9700 Pro for years (until June 2007; my brother uses it now) and never had a single problem.

[SUBMAN1]

ATI can get WHQL drivers out 'monthly'. They have 12 releases a year, but NVidia can't? Nvidia feeds you untested Beta's? Thats the last thing I want in a production environment. I don't feel like Beta testing for anyone thanks! :D

I know the Beta's exist, but yeah, I'll pass. I have enough Driver problems with NVidia as it is.

-S