The quality of nVidia's Vista drivers?

Q

Qu0ll

Perhaps it's just a 64-bit thing but I have found nVidia's Vista drivers for
my machine's GeForce 7900GTX card absolutely woeful. Every time I install
the latest version (like I just did) I expect more and get less. There are
random screen artifacts consisting of horizontal white or black lines and
also random squares of colour. And every so often the display driver stops
responding and gets recovered.

So what's the deal? Does everyone have the same experience with nVidia's
drivers or is there something wrong with my system?

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)
 
B

BigJim

you are not alone I use a 7600gt and vista 32 bit and the same thing happens
to me. Must be the 7xxx series drivers.
 
S

Steve Thackery

I'm running 32-bit, but I also have found the latest nVidia drivers to be
hopeless.

My card is a 7600GS, and the driver that came with Vista works beautifully
(although I believe various 3D and OpenGL accelerations are missing -
irrelevant to me).

The performance score for graphics is 5.9, and for gaming graphics is 5.5
(yes, I know they don't mean much really).

However, each time I've tried the latest nVidia driver, the performance
scores have fallen (can't remember how far now, unfortunately, and a
horrible screen flicker occurs when logging on and every so often during
normal use.

The picture kind of shudders and "tears" sideways. It only lasts a moment,
though, and I haven't had any of the pixellation or crashing the OP reports.
Nevertheless, it's still really annoying and distracting.

So, each time I revert back to the original Vista driver and everything
works beautifully.

Something is deeply wrong if nVidia can't get their driver sorted out after
all this time. The one in the box is dated August 2006. What are they
playing at?

SteveT
 
Q

Qu0ll

I'm running 32-bit, but I also have found the latest nVidia drivers to be
hopeless.

My card is a 7600GS, and the driver that came with Vista works beautifully
(although I believe various 3D and OpenGL accelerations are missing -
irrelevant to me).

The performance score for graphics is 5.9, and for gaming graphics is 5.5
(yes, I know they don't mean much really).

However, each time I've tried the latest nVidia driver, the performance
scores have fallen (can't remember how far now, unfortunately, and a
horrible screen flicker occurs when logging on and every so often during
normal use.

The picture kind of shudders and "tears" sideways. It only lasts a
moment, though, and I haven't had any of the pixellation or crashing the
OP reports. Nevertheless, it's still really annoying and distracting.

So, each time I revert back to the original Vista driver and everything
works beautifully.

Something is deeply wrong if nVidia can't get their driver sorted out
after all this time. The one in the box is dated August 2006. What are
they playing at?

Well even the Vista-standard driver has the problems of artifacts for me but
it's much worse under the nVidia drivers. But perhaps this is a 64-bit
thing (not that that is an excuse).

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)
 
Q

Qu0ll

you are not alone I use a 7600gt and vista 32 bit and the same thing
happens to me. Must be the 7xxx series drivers.

I can't believe it's this way if there's nothing wrong with the hardware.
It's pathetic.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)
 
Q

Qu0ll

Are you following the official driver installation hints?
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/driver_installation_hints.html

Uninstall the drivers you have, reboot, close ALL applications including
antivirus - exit anything running in the system tray - then install the
new > drivers and reboot.

Yes, that's exactly what I have been doing and I still get lots of artifacts
(mostly horizontal white lines) and these appear whether or not I am running
Dreamscene. Playing videos on YouTube for example is particularly
problematic.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)
 
C

Charlie Tame

Qu0ll said:
Yes, that's exactly what I have been doing and I still get lots of
artifacts (mostly horizontal white lines) and these appear whether or
not I am running Dreamscene. Playing videos on YouTube for example is
particularly problematic.


Hmm, I have always found that with NVidia drivers (going back 6 years
here) that newer is not always better. For my older cards I usually
gained something but lost something else. That is why I always download
the archives and keep them until absolutely sure a newer version is
actually better. IE Keep the last known good one.

Partly I think this is because no single manufacturer implements the
hardware, so you get variations in component performance - but that is
of course just opinion.

Sorry to hear some are having problems, mine have been fine except for
one beta I tried, but none have managed performance to match XP. I have
a couple of 7600s and a 7950, and a 7900 OC that is fried :)
 
Q

Qu0ll

Hmm, I have always found that with NVidia drivers (going back 6 years
here) that newer is not always better. For my older cards I usually gained
something but lost something else. That is why I always download the
archives and keep them until absolutely sure a newer version is actually
better. IE Keep the last known good one.

Partly I think this is because no single manufacturer implements the
hardware, so you get variations in component performance - but that is of
course just opinion.

Sorry to hear some are having problems, mine have been fine except for one
beta I tried, but none have managed performance to match XP. I have a
couple of 7600s and a 7950, and a 7900 OC that is fried :)

OK thanks Charlie for the info. Are you using 64-bit Vista? I am trying to
establish whether the problems I am experiencing are typical of a 7xxx
series nVidia GPU and 64-bit Vista or if there is some underlying hardware
or software problem. It seems that at least one other person has a similar
experience to me but this is hardly indicative of the general population.
So I am hoping more people will reply with positive and negative reports on
their 64-bit Vista nVidia situation.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)
 
D

Dominic Payer

I have a 7600GS with 64-bit Vista and have not had any of the problems you
are seeing with any of the nVidia drivers. I am currently using 169.04 beta,
and have tried all the beta and WHQL versions as they came out.

I assume you have checked that the card is properly seated, there is no
debris in the card slot, the card's cooling system is operating properly and
all your motherboard BIOS settings are correct.

Does your Event Log show problems anywhere? And have you tested the system
memory with e.g. Memtest and your disk(s) with the manufacturer's test
utility?

The symptoms you describe indicate a hardware or driver problem, but I have
known cases where a clean install of Vista solved such problems and it
appeared that the original install did not complete correctly.
 
C

Charlie Tame

Qu0ll said:
OK thanks Charlie for the info. Are you using 64-bit Vista? I am
trying to establish whether the problems I am experiencing are typical
of a 7xxx series nVidia GPU and 64-bit Vista or if there is some
underlying hardware or software problem. It seems that at least one
other person has a similar experience to me but this is hardly
indicative of the general population. So I am hoping more people will
reply with positive and negative reports on their 64-bit Vista nVidia
situation.


Okay, well I think I have only one drive with a 64 system fully
installed on it and that's for a 7600 card (I think) but will be happy
to give it a try when I get home if it proves to be practical. Can't
promise 'cos I am not sure which drive is which (duh!) but it's only a
matter of pushing a SATA drive into a slot so can probably manage that
all by myself :)

I only have Steam and things like Half Life installed - is it likely to
show up in there or on the desktop in general?

I tend to agree that it "May" be hardware, I have a couple of cards
(BFG) that are overclocked and honestly they are hot running and I will
be avoiding anything BFG and or overclocked in future.
 
S

Steve Thackery

Uninstall the drivers you have, reboot, close ALL applications including
antivirus - exit anything running in the system tray - then install the
new drivers and reboot.

Yep, done that (although I don't run an antivirus package).

SteveT
 
S

Steve Thackery

The symptoms you describe indicate a hardware or driver problem, but I
have known cases where a clean install of Vista solved such problems and
it appeared that the original install did not complete correctly.

I don't think so in my case.

I've installed Vista on my machine twice. The first time it worked
perfectly until I upgraded the driver, and then I got the funny
tearing/flicker effect. So I rolled back to the original driver.

Then I reformatted the hard disk, reinstalled Vista and used it for months
on the original Vista driver. Three days ago I tried the latest WHQL driver
from NVidia and immediately the tearing came back.

Did a System Restore and all is perfect again.

The chances of this being a hardware fault are vanishingly small, I'm sure
you'd agree. The signs are that this is a problem with the latest drivers
combined with my particular make of 7600GS card.

SteveT
 
Q

Qu0ll

Okay, tested it for a couple of hours with normal use and Half Life 2
Episode 2 for 30 minutes and no sign of any problem, or any great
difference at all really, and the card is a 7600 GT by the way, so no
problems here. Well two problems actually, tired and can't get past that
damned Guardian critter, but none see so far with the card.

Thanks for your efforts. Unfortunately I see the artifacts pretty much all
the time even with basic desktop tasks. It's looking as though it may not
be a nVidia driver issue per se but rather an OS-level problem or even a
hardware issue. I will see if I can try this card in a another machine.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)
 
C

Charlie Tame

Qu0ll said:
OK thanks Charlie for the info. Are you using 64-bit Vista? I am
trying to establish whether the problems I am experiencing are typical
of a 7xxx series nVidia GPU and 64-bit Vista or if there is some
underlying hardware or software problem. It seems that at least one
other person has a similar experience to me but this is hardly
indicative of the general population. So I am hoping more people will
reply with positive and negative reports on their 64-bit Vista nVidia
situation.


Okay, tested it for a couple of hours with normal use and Half Life 2
Episode 2 for 30 minutes and no sign of any problem, or any great
difference at all really, and the card is a 7600 GT by the way, so no
problems here. Well two problems actually, tired and can't get past that
damned Guardian critter, but none see so far with the card.
 
A

Autumnale

I tried upgrading to the 64bit OS from the 32 Vista a week ago, and one thing
I noticed was that the 32 only used 350MB of ram idling while the 64 used
850MB of ram while idling. I only have 1GB of ram so it really, REALLY
slowed my computer down. Maybe the same thing is happening with your
computer?
 

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