NVidia, not ready for prime time

[dcunning30]

So I bought this Geforce 7600 GS with 512MB.  The box said if is Vista ready.  I plopped it into my brand new Gateway computer with Vista Home Premium and went on my merry way engaging into gaming bliss.  After some time, I noticed graphics artifacts and outright crashes with the screen all scrambled which I needed to to a hard reboot to recover from.  I had loaded the original NVidia driver and two updates with the latest dated May 2.  I still get hard craches with the screen all scrambled.

Now, this is a seperate issue from the online lagging I get with FPS gaming, although others on various message boards keep insisting my networking issues is the result of the video driver.  Clearly these are seperate issues.  But anyway, I've seen several complaints on the net about NVidia Vista driver issues.  There's even one person who's trying to start a class action suit againt NVidia.  To me, that's like trying to kill spiders in your basement by dynamiting your whole house.

So, if you have Vista and considering an NVidia graphics card, do your homework first.  However, I'm expecting NVidia will get this resolved.  Other than the bugs, I like my video performance and I've had past good expierence with other NVidia cards.

[ctjoyce]

Yup, this is a well documented issue if you read around. Nvidia drivers fight with vista. ATi is doing a much better job, in fact they got the big happy symbol from M$.

According to nVidia they are going to resolve these issues by SP1. Another thing you can try, that worked for me, is using the beta drivers.

Cheers
Cameron

[dcunning30]

well, Nvidia has yet another Vista driver update.  This'll be the 4th, yup!  4th Vista driver for my graphics card in 2 months.  We'll see....

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_158.24.html

[ctjoyce]

Not too much better desktop side, but the laptop drivers keep getting better and better. However SLi is now supported, and finally its not BSODing anymore.

Cheers
Cameron