Wow. I wasn't aware of how bad the Nvidia drivers for Vista were...

...until I downloaded the new drivers that were released this week!

I don't game on the computer too much (other than a bit of Starcraft ), but when I played Plasma Pong it never got more than 10 FPS.  Now with the update it's up to 60.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/

By the way, I have an Nvideo GeForce 7600 GT, and it's noisy.

Has anyone else installed the updated driver and seen as dramatic a change as I have?

On a side note, the update didn't appear in Windows Update.  Will it eventually?

Yes. NVidia Suck. It's official. They actually Suck noodles, straws and monkey trumpets. They Suck upwards, downwards, side to side and all the way around, and nobody with any sense to them would ever buy a product from them ever again having seen their abysmal performance with Vista graphics drivers, particularly given the way they lied to customers via their "Made for Windows Vista" logos that they are happy to distribute with their not-working-on-windows-vista products.

grr.

Vista has been running well for me with my 7900, so it will be interesting if I can notice any performance improvements.

Thanks for the link.

evildictaitor wrote:

Yes. NVidia Suck. It's official. They actually Suck noodles, straws and monkey trumpets. They Suck upwards, downwards, side to side and all the way around, and nobody with any sense to them would ever buy a product from them ever again having seen their abysmal performance with Vista graphics drivers, particularly given the way they lied to customers via their "Made for Windows Vista" logos that they are happy to distribute with their not-working-on-windows-vista products.

grr.

well... the only reason I noticed how crappy they were is in comparison with how well they work now.

I've got an earlier version of the Nvidia drivers and they work perfectly, so I'm not updating!

My ati system on the other hand...

webmonkey wrote:


My ati system on the other hand...

LOL!   I'm the other way round, thinking of ditching nVidia in favour of ATI 

PerfectPhase wrote:



webmonkey wrote:  My ati system on the other hand...

LOL!   I'm the other way round, thinking of ditching nVidia in favour of ATI 

My bad experience with nVidia during the Vista beta has caused me to buy an ATI card for my new computer, and I haven't regretted it one second. The drivers work perfectly.

Sven Groot wrote:



PerfectPhase wrote:  webmonkey wrote:  My ati system on the other hand... LOL!   I'm the other way round, thinking of ditching nVidia in favour of ATI

My bad experience with nVidia during the Vista beta has caused me to buy an ATI card for my new computer, and I haven't regretted it one second. The drivers work perfectly.

I second this, not to mention the horror stories you can read online about the NVIDIA drivers.  Even if I hadn't switched to ATI based on my own experience, I wouldn't have purchased an NVIDIA card after doing research on what Vista-ready video card to buy.

I guess its just the ATI/AMD chipset drivers then.

I'd never had an nVidia card before this, always gone to ATI before.

mig wrote:

I second this, not to mention the horror stories you can read online about the NVIDIA drivers.  Even if I hadn't switched to ATI based on my own experience, I wouldn't have purchased an NVIDIA card after doing research on what Vista-ready video card to buy.

You'd think I'd learn, considering nVidia were just as bad (if not worse) during the Windows 2000 beta (I had a GeForce DDR back then).

To be quite honest, I've had absolutely NOTHING but trouble using ATI cards in the past.  I've bought 3, and I've had 3 die on me, or simply not work at all.  For one of them I was able to get it to work by using Omega drivers (ATI's drivers crashed my machine endlessly, and I'm simply assuming it was their drivers because as soon as I uninstalled them, it never crashed again).

My personal preference will still continue to be nVidia, because I've never had a problem with them on vista yet.  I continue to get 50-60 FPS on any game I play, regardless of settings usually.

To answer the original point, however: I didn't notice a difference in these drivers from the last ones.  From a performance standpoint, that is.

Indeed, ATI rocks! NVIDIA sucks! Intel... sucks even more...


Hmmm... V2:
ATI sucks a little, NVIDIA just sucks, Intel Crappy Media Accelerators sucks a lot!

Kental wrote:



To be quite honest, I've had absolutely NOTHING but trouble using ATI cards in the past.  I've bought 3, and I've had 3 die on me, or simply not work at all.  For one of them I was able to get it to work by using Omega drivers (ATI's drivers crashed my machine endlessly, and I'm simply assuming it was their drivers because as soon as I uninstalled them, it never crashed again).

My personal preference will still continue to be nVidia, because I've never had a problem with them on vista yet.  I continue to get 50-60 FPS on any game I play, regardless of settings usually.

To answer the original point, however: I didn't notice a difference in these drivers from the last ones.  From a performance standpoint, that is.

Never overclock your system. Never buy cheap video cards and overclock them. Never buy cards with passive cooling.
Simple rules. I never had any problems with ATI cards.

I have a Geforce 8800 GTS. I haven't had any problems with my Nvidia card. My Vista machine is rock-stable and performance is great.

Can't go ATI, because they don't ship usable drivers for Linux, so I'd be even more out of luck with my OS of choice.

BlackTiger wrote:



Kental wrote:  To be quite honest, I've had absolutely NOTHING but trouble using ATI cards in the past.  I've bought 3, and I've had 3 die on me, or simply not work at all.  For one of them I was able to get it to work by using Omega drivers (ATI's drivers crashed my machine endlessly, and I'm simply assuming it was their drivers because as soon as I uninstalled them, it never crashed again). My personal preference will still continue to be nVidia, because I've never had a problem with them on vista yet.  I continue to get 50-60 FPS on any game I play, regardless of settings usually. To answer the original point, however: I didn't notice a difference in these drivers from the last ones.  From a performance standpoint, that is.

Never overclock your system. Never buy cheap video cards and overclock them. Never buy cards with passive cooling.
Simple rules. I never had any problems with ATI cards.

Have a gigabyte 7600 GT with passive cooling; it works just fine, including at full load; It even overclocks without issue (although I don't personally, just tried it to see).. So I don't know about that. Moreover, it sits at 50c-60c.

While those "simple rules" might have some amount of truth in them, they are simply vague guidelines, and what it comes down to is research what you buy and make an informed decision.

For me that means staying the hell away from ATI, with their awful driver quality (XP, linux - don't know about vista), and having 3 of the damn cards die on me over the years. NV has never given me issues, but it seems different for everyone; Either they have tons of issues with nvidia, or tons of issues with ATI.

Stebet wrote:

I have a Geforce 8800 GTS. I haven't had any problems with my Nvidia card. My Vista machine is rock-stable and performance is great.

Same for me, 768MB 8800GTS using the 158.24 drivers and it works quite well. I don't know if I want to mess with the new 1662.22  WHQL drivers or not.

I had DIRT crash once, but it could be a problem with the game and not Nvidia's drivers.