Nvidia driver quality

T

The King of Pants

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 7, 2004
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I'm seriously leaning in the direction of picking up a 8800gts this week. I stopped using Nvidia cards back in '03 after a required driver update broke my PC's dvd playback completely, it didn't matter what program i tried.

So here i am, a 9800pro and a 800xl later, and i'm looking at the 8800gts which seems to be sitting right in the performance sweetspot relitive to the 1950xtx and the 8800gtx.

And now I keep hearing that the driver support for these new cards is spotty. Crap is definently not too strong a word.

So my question is this: How has nVidia been doing lately as far as driver maintainance goes? Have there been any fixes for the issues with the 8800 series cards yet or are they on the horizon?

Damn this card looks like a much better buy than the 1950xtx, crap i hate tradeoffs.
 
For XP, it's alright. Just get yourself 97.44 and you're good to go in most applications. For Vista, it's nonexistent.
 
As long as you aren't running Windows Vista and don't plan to until it's officially on store shelves, then there is no reason you shouldn't go for the G80 boards. They are quite simply kickass. :)

There are some small issues with compatability with older games but they are being worked out with each new driver release. It's very slow going right now because nVidia's driver development team is stretched double-thin trying to get G80 Vista drivers out as well as make advances to the existing XP driver model.
 
Vista isn't going on this box, I don't see myself upgrading for at least another year, probably two. So this is really an Win XP DX 8/9 gaming box.
With that said, I've got a PC gaming backlog you wouldn't belive. Probably the oldest i'll be messing with are some late Quake 2 engine titles, but I am concerned about compatibility to some extent.

Another thing, how is XP driver likely to hold up after Vista launches? Is it possible XP is going to get next to no driver love?
 
Oh you can look forward to regular Windows XP driver releases accompanying the Vista releases - nVidia isn't about to alienate those people who aren't jumping right into Vista.

Hell some of us are wondering if nVidia plans on releasing a Vista driver for the G80 at all. :D
 
Well after running ATI cards for the past two years and now owning a 8800GTX, I would say NV's driver support is spotty at best right now. Amazing people actually still think ATI is behind in the driver department.
 
Meh to Nvidia drivers. I get OCing issues with their drivers, the new ones at least. Funny thing is I actually prefer the UI of N vs A.
 
Cyrilix said:
For XP, it's alright. Just get yourself 97.44 and you're good to go in most applications. For Vista, it's nonexistent.
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i just switch from ati to nvidia. i got the 8800gtx and so far everything is great. i don't have any problem as other people have stated
 
Cyrilix said:
For XP, it's alright. Just get yourself 97.44 and you're good to go in most applications. For Vista, it's nonexistent.
Click to expand...
I would recommend AGAINST getting 97.44 and going with the earlier 97.02. I'm one of the many people (check the nVNews forums and other areas for such reports) that has had far more texture-corruption issues and problems with 97.44; backing up to 97.02 has fixed the majority of the issues.

To the OP, 8800GTS/GTX drivers aren't perfect. Depending on the games you play, they're probably between 80-90% of perfect. But, in most cases, it doesn't interfere with the enjoyment of gaming with the card. My 8800GTS is the most impressive card performance-wise that I've had since I started gaming in `92 (although my original Voodoo I and Radeon 9700 are close seconds for their day). But, if your gaming performance is acceptable for the moment, it may be worth waiting several weeks for ATI's R600 release (if it is on time), which may add competition and lower graphics card prices. I've had an X800XL, and if you're gaming at 1280x1024 or less (on challenging titles, 1024x768), I'd say waiting just a bit is worth it. In my case, I needed the upgrade if I wished to game at the full 1920x1200 native resolution my display offers.

While I wouldn't purchase an X1950XT or XTX new right now, the driver quality (in terms of stability) is better than the 8800 cards. But they've had longer to work on them, like nVidia has had with the G70 series. R600 is a new, unified architecture like nVidia's G80 is, so new drivers will be required. We'll have to wait and see who is better at the time of release.
 
LoneWolf said:
I would recommend AGAINST getting 97.44 and going with the earlier 97.02. I'm one of the many people (check the nVNews forums and other areas for such reports) that has had far more texture-corruption issues and problems with 97.44; backing up to 97.02 has fixed the majority of the issues.

To the OP, 8800GTS/GTX drivers aren't perfect. Depending on the games you play, they're probably between 80-90% of perfect. But, in most cases, it doesn't interfere with the enjoyment of gaming with the card. My 8800GTS is the most impressive card performance-wise that I've had since I started gaming in `92 (although my original Voodoo I and Radeon 9700 are close seconds for their day). But, if your gaming performance is acceptable for the moment, it may be worth waiting several weeks for ATI's R600 release (if it is on time), which may add competition and lower graphics card prices. I've had an X800XL, and if you're gaming at 1280x1024 or less (on challenging titles, 1024x768), I'd say waiting just a bit is worth it. In my case, I needed the upgrade if I wished to game at the full 1920x1200 native resolution my display offers.

While I wouldn't purchase an X1950XT or XTX new right now, the driver quality (in terms of stability) is better than the 8800 cards. But they've had longer to work on them, like nVidia has had with the G70 series. R600 is a new, unified architecture like nVidia's G80 is, so new drivers will be required. We'll have to wait and see who is better at the time of release.
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On which games did you get texture corruption, more specifically? I don't think I noticed anything, but you might be able to give me a lead as to where I should be looking.
 
So far I'm aware there are issues with shadows in some Source engine titles. It's really aggravating, The 1950XTX is the fastest DX9 single card solution, but it can't handle Oblivion and CoH at 1680x1050 with all the eye candy. So you go over to the 8800 series, which have all the power you need to handle those most demanding titles, but they have problems playing older games correctly.

I don't know about you guys, But Homeworld, SoF2, Q2, and the C&C games are some of my favorites, to name a few, that I like to go back and replay a few times a year. Shit, it seems like most of the games i really love were released prior to '03. Like i said, I'm not planing to make the DX10 jump for well over a year, but i do want a card that can handle pretty much any DX9 and older title at my native res, or at 1:1 if need be for those stubborn titles. Right now I'm just not sure the 8800 series can deliver that.

:mad: God this is annoying.
 
Cyrilix said:
On which games did you get texture corruption, more specifically? I don't think I noticed anything, but you might be able to give me a lead as to where I should be looking.
Click to expand...

Well, the entire IL-2 series, for one. It's worth pointing out that the corruption appears to be memory allocation related, and only happens on the larger maps with 8800s (doesn't seem to happen at all on the 7-series cards or earlier).
 
Well I guess i'm just glad i haven't shelled out the cash for my new display yet since I can't seem to find a good GPU option. The IL-2 thing really frosts my cookies.
 
R1ckCa1n said:
Well after running ATI cards for the past two years and now owning a 8800GTX, I would say NV's driver support is spotty at best right now. Amazing people actually still think ATI is behind in the driver department.
Click to expand...

See, I always had the opposite experiences until the 8800GTX

I feel once they get a good driver released it will be good like the rest of their drivers
 
Cyrilix said:
On which games did you get texture corruption, more specifically? I don't think I noticed anything, but you might be able to give me a lead as to where I should be looking.
Click to expand...
Oblivion was far and away the worst. When outdoors, the tips of plant/tree leaves would corrupt and extend into the sky, blocking out light. Rolling back to 97.02 resolves this issue, though I still sometimes see a small line or two in the screen like portions of the rendered image weren't "stitched" together properly.

Best links to follow these are on nVNews' forums that include other peoples' issues with 97.44. So far, the concensus there seems to be to run using either 97.02, 97.28, or 96.89, depending on which you have the least number of issues with.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=82074
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=81976

I had some other issues as well, but I didn't keep the drivers for long. I still have occasional minor ones in 97.02 where isolated textures in some games (cutscenes in Tomb Raider: Legends are an example) become blue in color.

I've had 3DMark06 crashes with both 97.02 and 97.44, though 97.44 was worse. I had to uninstall and reinstall 3DMark06 twice to get the tests to run fully, and I still don't know that it is stable.
 
Hardware problems differ from pc to pc, one example was my friend had issues all the time with him 9600pro and after reinstalling the OS it was mint. Both manufacturers had their ups and downs, I remember the 9xxx series of the ati's had a issue with GTA games and it displayed some error because it would try to run 32bit color instead of 24bit color, 9xxx series were 16/24 bit not 32bit colors, it took a year before it was fixed, other way around was to use 16bit colors. I remember my 6800gt had a issue with guild wars, a texture problem, it was fixed in a patch, had to live with it for a month. Honestly I have never liked catalyst drivers/software, my friend uses some other form, I think it's called Omega drivers, I don't think ATI makes bad cards, they make really nice cards. If you are not in a rush and you got a pretty nice card I would wait till the new ATI comes out then comparing it to the nvidia card, they will probably release an updated 8800gtx to compete against the new ATI.
I was given a free upgrade from my company, I had to buy it last year so 8800gtx was the way to go, it was the right price. It has plenty of gusto to push around, but I had faulty memory delivered so I have to wait till they finish the whole RMA ordeal.
 
Forcewear X drivers are set to be out in about 23 days... They should fix most of the problems everyone is having.

For the record, my GTS is flawless.
 
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