Reguarding Nvidia's 8800GTX, and my fury.

[gt81]

Doesn't fill me with confidence, I'm ordering an 8800GTS on Friday. However, my dad got his xfx 8800gtx early days and hasn't had a problem with it. It is a disgrace that Vista drivers weren't available on Vista's launch though.

The thing I'd like to know is - when are drivers going to be scrapped altogether for a simple plug and play solution, the Amiga never needed drivers for every little piece of hardware you added to it, consoles don't need joypad drivers, DVD player drivers, light-gun drivers, so why PC's? It seems ludicrous that powerful hardware is bottlenecked by a tiny little piece of code, seems to me it's just a cop-out when it comes to designing hardware to work as it should, much like many games are released in a knowingly bugged/unfinished state these days. I remember PC magaziines being critical of drivers 10 years ago, and it's only got worse since.

[alsenior]

The thing I'd like to know is - when are drivers going to be scrapped altogether for a simple plug and play solution, the Amiga never needed drivers for every little piece of hardware you added to it, consoles don't need joypad drivers, DVD player drivers, light-gun drivers, so why PC's? It seems ludicrous that powerful hardware is bottlenecked by a tiny little piece of code, seems to me it's just a cop-out when it comes to designing hardware to work as it should, much like many games are released in a knowingly bugged/unfinished state these days. I remember PC magaziines being critical of drivers 10 years ago, and it's only got worse since.

consoles only have a limited subset of devices. so did amiga. the all use the same driver. plus when it comes to tuning hardware who knows the hardware better that the vendor.

[Clunk]

plus when it comes to tuning hardware who knows the hardware better that the vendor.

Not Nvidia

[gt81]

consoles only have a limited subset of devices. so did amiga. the all use the same driver. plus when it comes to tuning hardware who knows the hardware better that the vendor.

Ok, maybe with consoles, but at the time there was little that the Amiga couldn't do better than the PC, except 3D graphics in games. The hardware range though, was broadly the same. It's ridiculous that nowadays you need drivers for mice and monitors to get optimum performance, never had that with the Amiga, just plugged everything and off you went.

How I miss those days. Imagine a computer where you could play games like the Amiga, booting straight from the media like a console, but also having a software-OS to do everything else.

[aidanjt]

You mean like a PS3 with Yellow Dog Linux?

Everything needs drivers dude, even the Amiga needed drivers, the difference is the hardware is 100000000000000 times complex, thus so are the drivers.

[amdavies]

While I'm aware of the regulations covering the sale of goods, and I wish more people were tbh, the vast majority of companies operating in the UK will only follow the regulations at the most. Many companies will even deny consumer law exists unless you press them on it "we only give credit notes" when you try to return faulty parts or seemingly not realizing that the courier is their agent and they have responsibility for them.
Actual, honest-to-goodness, customer service is very in-frequent from English companies and this can also carry across to foreign companies and their CS people. My father actually commented once on how nice the CS was when he ordered a coat from Land's End. "Yes, sir" the operator told him "we're an American company."

[Toobad]

Section 14 of the Sale of Goods Act bangs on about "all goods must be of merchantable quality and fit for purpose". Unfortunately this protection is directly at odds with a very British trait - the policy of "Don't make a fuss". Factor in the modern maxim of "Effort?- Britain doesn't do effort!" and you can see how easy it is for companies to flaunt the law in pusuit of corporate gain.

I have an Asus GTS here just waiting for my G0 (currently in the bowels of Scan's warehouse, I'm assured). So, in more than one sense, the phrase "Let the games begin." should be deemed appropriate.

[Mutley]

While I'm aware of the regulations covering the sale of goods, and I wish more people were tbh, the vast majority of companies operating in the UK will only follow the regulations at the most. Many companies will even deny consumer law exists unless you press them on it "we only give credit notes" when you try to return faulty parts or seemingly not realizing that the courier is their agent and they have responsibility for them.
Actual, honest-to-goodness, customer service is very in-frequent from English companies and this can also carry across to foreign companies and their CS people. My father actually commented once on how nice the CS was when he ordered a coat from Land's End. "Yes, sir" the operator told him "we're an American company."

To be honest, I would say there are plenty of examples of very very bad customer service from American shops as well. It comes down to the attitude of the business and how they train their staff.

[aidanjt]

Yeah, Clunk got a lot of crap from Mountian Mods.

[acrobat]

Doesn't fill me with confidence, I'm ordering an 8800GTS on Friday.

I'm sure it'll be alright. I think the more recent batches are ok, and even from the older batches, it wasn't every card because there are plenty of people with working ones (like your dad I suppose). Although, if it did crash, atleast you would know what it is

To be honest, I would say there are plenty of examples of very very bad customer service from American shops as well. It comes down to the attitude of the business and how they train their staff.

Yeah, I've found that too.

I also know a few companies who started out really great, and then when they made their fortune, they either sell out / get bought out / give up caring... and everything goes down the tubes.

Bad business seems common now though. So many are all about absolute maximum profit, and customer service / reliability / etc... gets shoved wayyy down the list of priorities. It can sometimes be maddening. I think the best example of the worst company I've had to deal with in recent years, is maybe British Telecom. They are like a joke. They are the kind of company who would overcharge you on purpose, and when you phone them to get your money back, they will say, "Yeah yeah whatever, shut up while I put you through to my supervisor". And then they just hang up on you

[Fatboy40]

My little bro is having odd quirks with his 8800GTX, seems to be occuring with HL2 and CS: Source.

It is driver related but seems to occur when high levels of AA/AF/HDR are used, it would be interesting know what happens if you try and run CoH at a modest resolution with AA off or set to only x2 ?.

I'm on the verge of buying a 8800GTS for myself and I have to admit that the state of the drivers is becoming more than just a niggling doubt as to whether or not I buy one...

[g8ina]

I'm still trying to get my son's new PC working with a replacement Asus 8600GTS (we did have a EVGA to start with and that was NBG).

Sadly I dropped a clanger with this build (not saying what but it doesn't affect the vid card) and it will be a few more days before I can try again, but I'll post my results here too.

[acrobat]

My little bro is having odd quirks with his 8800GTX, seems to be occuring with HL2 and CS: Source.

It is driver related but seems to occur when high levels of AA/AF/HDR are used, it would be interesting know what happens if you try and run CoH at a modest resolution with AA off or set to only x2 ?.

I'm on the verge of buying a 8800GTS for myself and I have to admit that the state of the drivers is becoming more than just a niggling doubt as to whether or not I buy one...

Ahh thats an interesting suggestion! I forgot to mention that too though I actually ran the game with no AA/AF/HDR and it still crashed. But I then tried running the game at low resolution with all of the settings set to minimum, and I played it for a few hours straight and it didn't crash. Which is nice but.. I didn't spend almost £400 on a graphics card alone to run games at minimum settings

I then tried increasing the setttings from minimum, and I was intending to increase each one, one by one, because maybe then I could identify the specific settings which caused it to crash. But I had tried about three settings... and then I played one of the maps for about 42 minutes before it crashed... So I realised, if you multiply 42 minutes by the dozens and dozens of settings I would have to work through, it equalled a whole lot of time I couldn't be arsed spending So I gave up.

I think, if I thought me practically Beta testing their product, would actually pay off, then I might consider doing it properly one weekend. But I don't seem to actually be able to contact Nvidia anyway... so it would be pointless. I can't even give them feedback. I went to their official website and there is no contact information. The forum they have is run by an independant party, and they tell me that Nvidia do not read the forum. The nearest thing they had to a way of contacting them, was a "submit feedback" button on the website, which I clicked only to be asked which version of Vista I have... (I am using Windows XP). So for those of us on XP, we are basically not supported, it seems. And they do not want to hear from their own customers.

So Im just hoping my replacement card will work anyway. If not, I'm pretty much screwed, and will have to wait for a driver to fix it, and who knows how long that will take :O It hasn't appeared in the last 9 months odd, so maybe it will take another 9 months - or more.

Up until me making this thread, I had tried every available driver, up to the, "162.18_forceware_winxp_international_whql.exe" driver. And since this thread, thats still the latest driver, but there is another beta driver available called, "163.44_forceware_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe". But I installed that last night, and it didn't work either.

So I'm really desperately hoping the replacement card will work, because these drivers certainly arent

P.S. I'm not sure it should put you off. But I would feel bad if you bought one and had the same problem. The tricky part is that although there are loads of people out there with this problem, its not everybody. But its impossible to say how many people have the problem, as a percentage or whatever. I am also not sure if this is just a faulty batch of cards, that was maybe around in February (when I got this most recent replacement), and maybe the cards you buy today are from a more recent batch which no longer has any problems? I wish I knew.

I'm still trying to get my son's new PC working with a replacement Asus 8600GTS (we did have a EVGA to start with and that was NBG).

Nbg = no bloody good? What was wrong with it?

Sadly I dropped a clanger with this build (not saying what but it doesn't affect the vid card) and it will be a few more days before I can try again, but I'll post my results here too.

Cool, I'd be interested to know. I hope it works well! I think it should do, because I get the impression this problem is fairly uncommon. But like I said above, its impossible to know. It could be 50% or it could be 2% and I really dont know Good luck with it anyway.

[dangel]

My 8600GTS is about to be retired - i'm simply sick of nVidia's pathetic excuse for drivers. It's in a media centre PC which kinda means reliability is an issue. So i've ordered in a HD2400XT to replace it - a quarter of the power/price and still has hardware decoding built in. 14 whole watts it uses. Wow. I know i'll face issues with ATI's drivers but, on the whole, my experience in the past year or so of running Vista work/home is that you're generally happier in ATI land with it. Of course with my main rig i'm tied to the 8800GTX because, despite being a buggy piece of ****, it's a faster than a vindaloo in the morning (an appropriate analogy).

I believe nVidia will get there, eventually, with their drivers - the problem is the months keep rolling by and before long they'll launch a new card and.. Not only that i've had to play GRAW2 with no shadows (they just fixed this) and C&C3 with white-out on maps with lightrays enabled (post processing effect).

[acrobat]

My 8600GTS is about to be retired - i'm simply sick of nVidia's pathetic excuse for drivers. It's in a media centre PC which kinda means reliability is an issue. So i've ordered in a HD2400XT to replace it - a quarter of the power/price and still has hardware decoding built in. 14 whole watts it uses. Wow. I know i'll face issues with ATI's drivers but, on the whole, my experience in the past year or so of running Vista work/home is that you're generally happier in ATI land with it. Of course with my main rig i'm tied to the 8800GTX because, despite being a buggy piece of ****, it's a faster than a vindaloo in the morning (an appropriate analogy).

Yes. If it wasn't so fast, I would have just got my money back by now and bought an alternative. But as there are none, I am screwed (No way I'm going to buy an alternative that is slower).

What problems with the drivers have you had by the way? I didn't mention anything with the drivers so far, but I've had a few issues myself too. One of them was that every time I did start -> control panel -> display... my PC would hang. (Crazy eh?). This was on a brand new PC, with a very brand new fresh install of Windows XP. So I was amazed by it. Luckily, that problem was fixed by one of the new drivers (in about January or February or so).

Another issue I still have, and that is using DualView. I can use "Clone" so I can output my computer on to my TV. But because I am using an old (Not HD) TV, I have to set the resolution of my computer to 640x480..... Which actually makes using the computer almost impossible. If DualView actually worked, I would be able to leave the resolution on this screen alone, and then the TV could use a different resolution. But the Nvidia control panel just doesn't work properly and doesn't let me do that. Also, I am convinced you should be able to activate the clone view from windows, but I have to reboot my PC to make it work, and I'm not sure that would be necessary if everything was working properly.

There are other problems too, like when I tried to run some kind of Overclocking test through the control panel, and it froze up my PC and nearly gave me a heartattack.

Basically, its so bloody flaky feeling, I am scared to even open up my Nvidia control panel.... Which isn't good is it? The only reason I go in there is if I need to tell it to force vsync on certain games etc, and to change the resolution ready for my TV, and I always do that with my fingers crossed

[dangel]

Problems thus far (spread across a number of Vista/XP systems)

1. BSOD
2. The Black Screen Of Undeath (failure to reinit desplay post-resume - a well known issue until of late)
3. Failure to sleep (and not just me worrying about it)
4. Fails to set correct resolution for desktop (DVI-HDMI on 40" LCD)
5. 1080P not working at 50/60hz (can't remember which)
6. Control panel using 100% cpu and having to kill the task.
7. Resize HDTV desktop does bugger all (XP).
8. Graphic problems in games (GRAW2 no shadows, C&C3 no lightray post effects [the screen goes white])

Just off the top of me 'ead like - i've had much mirth with nVidia