Nvidia cards stability in Vista?

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MrCrispy

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I'm considering an 8800GTS 320MB for my new pc which will be running Vista Ultimate 32-bit. Are the current Nvidia drivers stable enough to support full Aero as well as games without any stability issues/blue screens/resets.

A coworker ordered the 7600GT and has had nothing but horror stories to tell. I don't want to spend $300 on a card if it won't be usable.
 
MrCrispy said:
A coworker ordered the 7600GT and has had nothing but horror stories to tell. I don't want to spend $300 on a card if it won't be usable.
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I haven't had any crashes with my 7600GT in Vista x64, on the desktop, in any applications or while playing games.
 
i had greta luck in vista until going to sli. lots of crashes, games eating up all memory, not much perf gains. ive been told numerous times to go back to XP for sli support so im thinking about doing that now. i had no issues with whql drivers and a single card though.
 
I moved to Vista just last week and did a lot of benchmarking between the two (im currently dual booting them). Vista is 100% the performance of XP in the vast, vast majority of games.
No problems encountered yet.
 
While there are plenty of things I don't like about Vista, mostly the horrible interface vs. XP -- the inability to go back to real "windows classic" style no-toolbars windows, for the most part -- it has been stable and has yet to give me any major issues aside from incompatibility with a few Windows 98 era games I've tried.
 
silent-circuit said:
While there are plenty of things I don't like about Vista, mostly the horrible interface vs. XP -- the inability to go back to real "windows classic" style no-toolbars windows, for the most part -- it has been stable and has yet to give me any major issues aside from incompatibility with a few Windows 98 era games I've tried.
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People will always be hateful of new stuff. :rolleyes:
 
That's good to hear! I think I will go ahead - the card I'm considering is the XFX 8800GTS XXX edition. Since its going to be a big upgrade for me, just wanted to be sure.

I run Vista Enterprise at my work and when I go home to XP, I have to admit I miss the nice little touches in the Vista UI - Flip 3D, live previews, and esp the live video in Alt-tab etc. I thought the transparency would bother me at first but its nice.
 
CptFalcon said:
People will always be hateful of new stuff. :rolleyes:
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It's not just new, it's useless. I don't make use of any of those toolbars, and see absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be a checkbox somewhere that will allow me to disable them. There has been in every previous version of Windows. Now I have to waste space on my screen with little bars with giant "organize", "burn" and "views" buttons in them I never had to before. It's a very poor design decision.
 
The universal search is IMO one of the most useful features in Vista. I agree with you about the stupid burn button and other crap thats been dumbed down. But you have to remember that Explorer has always been just about the worst way to browse files in any Windows OS. It doesn't expose half the features the OS has.

Use something like xplorer2 or Directory Opus and its a much nicer experience.
 
Raidium said:
i had greta luck in vista until going to sli. lots of crashes, games eating up all memory, not much perf gains. ive been told numerous times to go back to XP for sli support so im thinking about doing that now. i had no issues with whql drivers and a single card though.
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The reason for this is quite simple. Vista does not support SLI or Crossfire. There is a patch from MS to fix that, though (it's not a driver issue).
 
silent-circuit said:
It's not just new, it's useless. I don't make use of any of those toolbars, and see absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be a checkbox somewhere that will allow me to disable them. There has been in every previous version of Windows. Now I have to waste space on my screen with little bars with search fields and "burn" buttons in them I never had to before. It's a very poor design decision.
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Its a convenience to must people not to open more than window in order to burn a music file or an image to a CD or DVD. I'll admit that I rarely use the bars at the top if at all however you could just embrace the convenience or ignore it. Also what is wrong with the new GUI?i find it a lot better to see the windows smoothly fade in than have the normal XP window that just appears.

Either way, its whatever floats whose ever boat. :)
 
MrCrispy said:
Use something like xplorer2 or Directory Opus and its a much nicer experience.
Click to expand...

They require that Explorer is still running, eating up memory, and they both look to be bloated full of stuff I would never use. I prefer individual windows to an "explorer" style side-pane setup because it lets me see where things are coming from, where they're going, and what's already in both places all at once. I don't want more buttons, I want fewer. Like... 3. Close, maximize, minimize. I also like being able to position and resize those individual windows however I want, and having them come back in the same place the next time I open them. I don't think either of those pieces of software would allow that sort of behavior.

Oh, and the idea of having to pay $30 more to actually manage my files when I already paid $200 for the OS itself and the features I'm looking for are simple and should be included disgusts me.
 
CptFalcon said:
Its a convenience to must people not to open more than window in order to burn a music file or an image to a CD or DVD. I'll admit that I rarely use the bars at the top if at all however you could just embrace the convenience or ignore it. Also what is wrong with the new GUI?i find it a lot better to see the windows smoothly fade in than have the normal XP window that just appears.

Either way, its whatever floats whose ever boat. :)
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I turn all that stuff off. All of it. I don't even run Aero because I don't make use of it, I think the new theme is ugly compared to something like Royal Noir for XP, and it makes just enough use of 3D to put my 8800 GTX in to 3D clock mode, making it run hotter and use more power. I don't want to wait for the windows to fade in and out, either -- when I click on something, a dual-core 3.2Ghz CPU should mean it's up instantly. Eye candy is something I want reserved for games, not slowing down basic tasks. Pure minimalist. I guess Vista just "isn't for me" but unfortunately, if I want DX10 support Microsoft has seen fit to give me no other option.
 
I hear you and agree - which is why Vista is a disappointment to a lot of us who have been following its progress from the early days. Believe me, the Longhorn concept shown back at PDC in 2003 when Vista was introduced to the world was nothing like the feature crippled abomination we have today :)
 
MrCrispy said:
I hear you and agree - which is why Vista is a disappointment to a lot of us who have been following its progress from the early days. Believe me, the Longhorn concept shown back at PDC in 2003 when Vista was introduced to the world was nothing like the feature crippled abomination we have today :)
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So then what is the difference since I wasn't a PC enthusiast when I was 11 years of age.
 
knight3058 said:
The reason for this is quite simple. Vista does not support SLI or Crossfire. There is a patch from MS to fix that, though (it's not a driver issue).
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The hotfix doesnt fix the crashing. I have also read that the hotfix files were allready updated via the newer beta driver installs, which I have tried all of.

Read the release notes from nvidia and they flat out tell you what is their problem, and what remains microsofts problem.
 
silent-circuit said:
It had actual new features, like WinFS, and just generally wasn't as bloated, ugly, and unconfigurable.
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A lot happens in 4 years when you have a stage demo and actually releasing a product with more requirements than most people can afford. (Not Vista mind you, I have Vista Ultimate running on a 5 year old HP Pavilion 770c w/P4 1.9GHz & 512MB of RAM.)
 
CptFalcon said:
Its a convenience to must people not to open more than window in order to burn a music file or an image to a CD or DVD. I'll admit that I rarely use the bars at the top if at all however you could just embrace the convenience or ignore it. Also what is wrong with the new GUI?i find it a lot better to see the windows smoothly fade in than have the normal XP window that just appears.

Either way, its whatever floats whose ever boat. :)
Click to expand...

I'm not on my machine (at work now), but there's a simple option to turn on the regular toolbar (File, Edit, Copy, etc.). You go to organize then folder options if I remember correctly. Easy to change, no real fuss to be honest. I don't think most people have actually dealt with the OS ususally, either that or they haven't poked around it. Having a stripped down GUI is good for those who like it, they just want everything to be instant and simple, and that's cool.

It's the same as XP when you've got it fading in and out, etc. Actually I think Vista's more responsive than XP. There's more gripes with for sure, small ones for me. At least a service pack is coming some-what soon, nearly all will convert to it eventually so what else is new with a new Windows OS...
 
I have not had any problems that are deal killers for me.

The biggest one is that "High memory usage" games (Read: Supreme Commander) will crash when they hit the User addressable, single process, 32-bit RAM limit and Vista allows that to happen more often that does XP.

It has only happened once since I was aware of that as an issue, and that was when I hosted a LAN game for me and my roommate and we fought 6 AI opponents on the Earth Conquest map @ 750 for the unit cap. We played a long while, then suddenly I crash out. Supreme Commander was at ~2.2GB RAM usage. Hasn't happened since, but we don't do that exactly, anymore. :eek:

Occasionally, Oblivion will get a "...stopped working and has been closed" message, but that is rather infrequent and happens only after I choose to Exit out of Oblivion. Doesn't happen in-game.

Otherwise, no issues. I have my second XFX 8800GTS 640MB "out for delivery", right now. It will take me a while to get it water cooled and into a case that will actually support another WC loop like the one I already have, as that is what I will be moving to before I will switch to SLI.
 
Betrayer00GT said:
Occasionally, Oblivion will get a "...stopped working and has been closed" message, but that is rather infrequent and happens only after I choose to Exit out of Oblivion. Doesn't happen in-game.
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This happened to me in XP with my old machine, even. Comes down to Bethesda's inability to code.
 
There are some quirks in Vista and Nvidia, but I must say this launch has gone alot more smoothly compared to XP's initial introduction
 
MrCrispy said:
I'm considering an 8800GTS 320MB for my new pc which will be running Vista Ultimate 32-bit. Are the current Nvidia drivers stable enough to support full Aero as well as games without any stability issues/blue screens/resets.

A coworker ordered the 7600GT and has had nothing but horror stories to tell. I don't want to spend $300 on a card if it won't be usable.
Click to expand...

Don't listen to the scare mongers, Nvidias support for Vista was sub par for a long time but most of the crash and blue screen issues were worked very quickly after release and most of the driver features are fully implimented now which just leaves performance the main thing to work on.

I've actually never blue screened in Vista, it's practically impossible to do so without broken hardware since the drivers are completely decoupled from the kernel now, if they crash then most of the time Vista simply recovers from it, I've only ever had 1-2 lockups since Nov and they've been with beta drivers.

Maybe I was just lucky but my experience with Vista has been very good, the only problem I had was waiting for decent SLI support in the early days, the 7950GX2 ran quite happily on one core though.

In all honesty games have been fine with Vista for months now, performance is catching up quite quickly and for most games it's within 5-10% of XP which is hardly noticeable in a lot of cases.
 
ive been running vista for 3 months now and the nvidia drivers are fine. never once had a blue screen or crash.
its amazing how anytime anyone mentions vista its like the gates of hell open and out come the besieged masses of vista victims. oh lord explorer is using 19k of my 2 gigs of ram! or vista ate my puppy then took a big number 2 on my carpet when i tried to turn off that power hungry aero interface!
its funny because i remember the same comments when xp first came out and how ugly, bloated, and useless it was. change is good.
 
rhexis said:
ive been running vista for 3 months now and the nvidia drivers are fine. never once had a blue screen or crash.
its amazing how anytime anyone mentions vista its like the gates of hell open and out come the besieged masses of vista victims. oh lord explorer is using 19k of my 2 gigs of ram! or vista ate my puppy then took a big number 2 on my carpet when i tried to turn off that power hungry aero interface!
its funny because i remember the same comments when xp first came out and how ugly, bloated, and useless it was. change is good.
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QFT!
 
I am running Vista 32 bit with a 7800GT and it works flawlessly. The Nvidia drivers have always worked flawlessly for me regardless of OS.
 
silent-circuit said:
I turn all that stuff off. All of it. I don't even run Aero because I don't make use of it, I think the new theme is ugly compared to something like Royal Noir for XP, and it makes just enough use of 3D to put my 8800 GTX in to 3D clock mode, making it run hotter and use more power. I don't want to wait for the windows to fade in and out, either -- when I click on something, a dual-core 3.2Ghz CPU should mean it's up instantly. Eye candy is something I want reserved for games, not slowing down basic tasks. Pure minimalist. I guess Vista just "isn't for me" but unfortunately, if I want DX10 support Microsoft has seen fit to give me no other option.
Click to expand...

I'm in the exact same boat. The only reason I bought Vista Ultimate, is for DX10 games. I installed Vista, and everything looked okay, but the first thing I did was change the theme to Windows classic, and adjust everything for best performance, and that does it for me. No more Aero, and other bullshit. But still, I play games off of Xp b/c it's more stable for some reason. (I run both on a dual boot with Vista 32 on a Seagate 320gb hd, and Xp Pro on another Seagate 320gb hd)

I have a 8800GTX also, and I can't play the Lost Planet demo, or any game without some stupid driver error coming up, and having to restart my computer. So until better DX10 games come out, or until that problem's fixed, i'm sticking with my Xp Pro.

P.S. Fuck "change is good," why settle for something that's broken when I could just as easily use Xp with no problems whatsoever? I never got a blue screen, or crash, just a weird video glitch which keeps coming back and back no matter what I do. Besides, all of us here more-or-less bought Vista for DX10, so that doesn't mean we need to use the rest of the useless shit they put on there.
 
zamardii, there is something wrong with your setup. Get the latest betas -- 163.11, the ones released specifically to improve World In Conflict Beta performance. They've been doing great for me. Maybe something else in your system is the source of the problem, but I doubt it's the GTX.
 
ya Zam... I'd be interested to know what the error is you get, because the game runs fine. Something is awry with your setup and I might be able to help you figure out what.
 
Sixthsense said:
There are some quirks in Vista and Nvidia, but I must say this launch has gone alot more smoothly compared to XP's initial introduction
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This is what I always try to emphasize. Did everyone forget already? I had less problems with Vista 2 months in than I was having with a fully tweaked XP.
 
zamardii said:
But still, I play games off of Xp b/c it's more stable for some reason. (I run both on a dual boot with Vista 32 on a Seagate 320gb hd, and Xp Pro on another Seagate 320gb hd)

I have a 8800GTX also,
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The why XP is more stable for your may be in this article:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3044

CoH with 8800GTX: Check the difference in addressable Ram usage:

XP: 1.3GB
Vista: 2.1GB.

Over 2GB addressable used, your game will crash out.

Note this is addressable memory, not physical memory, you still have a 2GB limit on addressable whether you have 512MB installed or 4GB installed. This is not a NVidia issue, it is a Vista issue, the same thing happens with ATI cards.
 
People do tend to forget that support for new OS's takes time, in my opinion the support and general usage of Vista when compared to XP has been far better than XP's first 6 months, in fact it wasn't until SP2 XP really started to shine and there was a lot re-done in SP2.

There have been a fair few issues with Vista but I think partly due to the new problem reporting tools most of these issues have been worked out, now we're starting to see Nvidia improve the performance of games in Vista,I very much doubt XP will remain performance king for long.
 
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