Not enjoying the view

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2007...ying_the_view/

[samkiller42]

Im glad someone has spoken in this way, the amount of people who tell me there systems dont work with Vista and blaming it on Vista, for once its everyone elses fault, including the Vista owners.
It was a fantastic read, thanks Brett.

Sam

[kenco_uk]

Originally Posted by Brett

Did nobody plug two cards in and say, "Wow, this doesn't work!"?

Heh, I like that line. Driver support has always been a bit meh at times. I loved my Fortissimo II card to bits with 98se, but XP refused to acknowledge more than two speakers, which forced me to buy a card that would.

[DXR_13KE]

great article, this remembers me when i got a tv card from pinnacle, it cost me like.... 100€, it was nice.. it worked with XP service pack 1..... but.... when i updated to XP service pack 2 all hell broke loose, it would not work, i searched for drivers for it with no success, now pinnacle is on my hardware black list...... nvidia is almost there... but they do support linux better than ATI.

lets see what intel has for us in the GC department. and what is the power of the R600.

[z3rb]

Nice to see someone speak out against NVIDIA rather than Misrosoft, for once.

[gvblake22]

Originally Posted by z3rb

Nice to see someone speak out against NVIDIA rather than Misrosoft, for once.

Indeed!
Someone had to say it, and you did an excellent job of getting the word out about the difference between "business support" and "customer support". Definitely not something you think about every day so it's always good to take a step back and look at the current market with a suspicious eye. Interesting to see that ATI could somehow manage good drivers while nVidia is "struggling" to lock down something solid.

[Krikkit]

All true there Brett tbh. nVidia's attitude to this whole thing has been shameful.

Even AMD-Ti, who are famed for poor driver efforts, have managed to get a proper set going for Vista. What does that say about the big green?

[inflatable]

Totally agree with the article, it's a disgrace so many current hardware isn't properly supported under Vista yet.. I have a Nividia 7900GS (Asus TOP edition) and SB Audigy 2 ZS soundcard, and the whole driver situation also keeps me from upgrading to Windows Vista atm.. I'll probably upgrade to Vista when the 1st DX10 games are released and the drivers issues are resolved.. And if the driver issues are not resloved I'll simply change brands.. I'm not brandloyal in any way, I buy what's best for me at any particular moment, Nvidia or ATI, I don't care.. So if Nvidia or Creative don't want me to use their current products under Vista because they don't have proper drivers, I'll just buy another brand.. Their loss, not mine..

I do wonder though what MS's whole position is with these issues.. I don't think they are happy so many hardware still isn't properly supported, and it keeps people from upgrading to their new Windows.. And what was the situation with Win 98 -> Win XP, anyone remember?

[specofdust]

Originally Posted by samkiller42

It was a fantastic read, thanks Brett.

QFT. A great article, I just hope Nvidia are reading and taking this sort of thing on board.

[Veles]

I also find it completely bizarre, sure nVidia want everyone to buy their nice new 8800GTX, but have they forgotten that the majority of their graphics cards sales are the lower end stuff thats had better performance:price? They seem to be shooting themselves in the foot here.

[specofdust]

People have already paid all they're going to pay for the older cards. If you own a 7900GT in SLI you're not going to give them anything extra to get SLI drivers. But having SLI drivers for 8800GTX's mean they can market it as a good idea to buy a second, and people will be overall more likely to purchase them. This is simply Nvidia treating their customers like ****.

[m0ng0lh0rde]

I just recently bought a new rig, and went with nVidia, as I wanted a new vid card, and wanted to get eye candy when DX10 came out (a bit of future proofing). So, I bought a shiny new 8800GTS.

I'm with Brett, it isn't M$ fault that nVidia doesn't have working, stable drivers for Vista. I did load Vista as a dual boot, and after having seen some of the articles, and forum postings elsewhere about the current drivers for Vista being unstable, I'm sticking with my XP boot for now.

Makes me kind of wish I'd held on for a few more months, and gone with an ATI setup (been using Radeons since the first one came out, this is my first nVidia card, ever)

[Ringold]

Originally Posted by Brett

All of this underscores a serious problem in the business ethics of companies comfortably "at the top" of the gaming world.

To be fair, there's a lot of good drivers out, but NVIDIA sure did miss the boat. A lot of others need improvements.. it seems a common theme when people review Vista; it performs well but seems to be held back by unoptimized drivers.

If management is worth its salt over at Nvidia they'll find who's responsible and, once this is resolved, take them out back and summarily execute them (or their careers at Nvidia). This definitely calls for more than not giving them their christmas bonus... I've got a feeling it won't happen, but... alas.

I was dead set on getting an 8800GTS, so this makes me a bit sad. Now I've got to wait until R600 to build my new system, but.. ethics can't let me reward their poor behavior so wait I must. My X2 3800+ and X800XL marches on.

[zr_ox]

Very well written and informative.

I have Vista running on a Dell Optiplex at the moment and all I can say is nice job Microsoft. It really is a dream to use when there is proper hardware compatibility.

I have almost finished modding my Stacker 830 and am ready to connect up my new uber fast components, however I'm not going to. I want to run Vista with full hardware support from day one, sure there are beta's for my 8800 & Creative card. As a consumer I expect the drivers to be available on release day, easpecially when they are such major components. I would expect a delay for my TV capture card, or even raid adapter but not Audio & Video cards.

I hate to say it but who do we have other than Creative for our audio needs???(Dont answer that...I know). ATi & Nvidia are the ONLY two GPU's that anyone with half a brain would consider as gaming cards....so why are ATi only represented with Vista? This really is a shocking state of affairs.

Creative & Nvidia have become way too big for their boots and somebody needs to give them a shake. Perhaps Ati will scare the hell out of Nvidia at Cebit with the RD600, let hope so. That just leaves Creative now perhaps Razer can help by redesigning their Audio card to be a real contender.

[edmoses]

It is also worth saying that one of the main reasons for the delay between the business and consumer releases of Vista was to allow the various hardware makers to get their drivers in order. The business community were always going to put the new O/S into a test cycle to work out how to deploy it - so not having all of the various drivers is just a part of the process.

For any consumer upgrading to Vista they need it to work on their hardware out of the box (okay with a few Internet downloads). Most of the manufacturers seem to have understood this and have decent drivers out there that work - with the promise of more optimisation in the case of companies such as ATI. The fact that some companies seem to have not taken this onboard seems to indicate that they do not want our support as a community in the future......

Ed

[naokaji]

vista was released later than originally planned.... yet certain company's still fail to deliver good driver support for it....

as for creative..... well..... there's not only the rushed out audigy drivers for vista...
where are the pci express version of the x-fi lineup?

[Havok154]

I have a good feeling I may move over to the ATI camp next time I need a vid card upgrade. I've always loved Nvidia, but the way they are treating customers this time around is just not something I'll take lightly. I won't be buying any card from the 8800, R600 series, but the one after that I probably will, I'll have to see how I feel about them at that point. It's definatly a bad thing for me to actually consider ATI after using Nvidia since the Riva TNT cards. (I did have a 3dFX card at one point, but when they died, I went back to Nvidia)

[Brooxy]

Well this has to be the most true to life thing i've read in a while. I have Vista...in fact it's on the machine i'm using right now to ype this on, and it's a very nice system.

Another company I belive that needs a kick up the backside would have to be Belkin...to get a belkin wifi dongle working properly working, you have to go trawling through google, until you find the chip driver and not the wifi stick driver.

Although looking on the bright side, I have a wifi connection, without all the resource hogging belkin software...

[antiHero]

Damn I never thought about it this way, but its true.
Very good read Brett, thanks!

[ralph.pickering]

Ah! The all too familiar wails of anguish of the early adopter. Kids, lean forward - listen closely to what ol' grandpa Ralph gotta say. Never, EVER buy a Microsoft OS before service pack 1.

Yes. nVidia are crap for not bringing out the drivers on time. Creative are pure scum for trying to pull a fast one. But come on. It's the same thing time and again. XP. Yep. 2000? Definitely. Win98... not so much, but then it was really only 95 with the Plus pack and a few tweaks. Windows 95 - hoo boy, fun times! Win 3.11... Well I'm not that old.

Seriously though, until DX10 games start shipping en masse, is there any real reason to upgrade? I'm sure I'll find out... just as soon as SP1 is out