NVIDIA drivers responsible for nearly 30% of Vista crashes in 2007

[Pupik]

and btw what gadget is that that monitors gpu activity?

The one that I pasted a screenshot of? It's a part of CCC (Catalyst Control Center) and comes with the Catalyst drivers.

[abcdefg]

a balloon says "Your driver has crashed and has been recovered or something" in xp the result would have been a BSOD.

Really? I used to see those balloons in XP three years ago. I had those AND some BSODs.

BSOD BSOD. BOOT. :laugh:

[jwjw1]

All others/unknown?

Is there really a difference? I mean there is but they could have included unknown with all others.

they are probably more MS related..giving MS its own 34% of causing its own crashes..on its own Platform

[hagjohn]

This does not surprise me one bit, in fact I thought it would have been higher.

+1 ... the only real issue I've had with Vista as been the Nvidia drivers.

[neufuse Veteran]

Almost any modern videocard wasn't created to work at 100% all the time. Aero will not push the videocard for the 100% of the capacity but near to.

So yes, Aero sooner or later will kill your hardware (shorting their lifespan), starting with the default fan of your video card.

If that was true then Accelerated 2D in windows XP should do the same thing :rolleyes:

[Mordkanin]

Almost any modern videocard wasn't created to work at 100% all the time. Aero will not push the videocard for the 100% of the capacity but near to.

So yes, Aero sooner or later will kill your hardware (shorting their lifespan), starting with the default fan of your video card.

Aero doesn't push your card anywhere near full.

In fact, just the act of running puts more strain on the card than Aero does.

Really? I used to see those balloons in XP three years ago. I had those AND some BSODs.

BSOD BSOD. BOOT.

You're full of crap.

XP is _not_ capable of recovering from a video driver crash. Vista, however, is capable under certain conditions. This is what causes that balloon popup.

[Tomoko]

Maybe this will embarass nvidia enough to get them to quit screwing around and put out some quality drivers again. I know programming drivers isn't easy, but if ATI can do it anyone should be able to.

[rdmiller]

I had a whole bunch of Nvidia 'device driver restarted' messages from Vista until Dell made a new device driver available. The messages were more annoying than the restarts.

[guru]

wow, If you have an Intel + nvidia system. now you know who's to blame ~40% of the time :p

[Emile]

When I used the forceware drivers, it almost always crashed during 'My Pictures' screensaver. Sometimes it would auto-recover, sometimes not. I don't use the forceware anymore and since then I have had 1 nvidia crash in the last 3 months.

[abulfares]

hmm, I have been using an 8800 GTS with Vista Ultimate since the day it came out. I am always up to date on drivers installing the newest one as it comes out and not a single crash for me. In fact, Vista never crashed on me. a year went by wit no formats :o u would never see that with xp.

[Emile]

hmm, I have been using an 8800 GTS with Vista Ultimate since the day it came out. I am always up to date on drivers installing the newest one as it comes out and not a single crash for me. In fact, Vista never crashed on me. a year went by wit no formats :o u would never see that with xp.

Are you installing new beta drivers or new full release?

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Well, to be honest, nVidia's drivers have taken a huge turn for the worse. They take forever to come out, and when they do, it's usually exclusively game fixes (*cough* Crysis cough*). They really aren't working on stability anymore it seems.

Then you have ATI on the other hand, who have greatly improved their drivers from way back in the Rage3D era. The releases are every month, and always have significant changes. Sure, their hardware is a bit lacking right now, but their drivers are awesome.

It really looks like nVidia is turning into the next Creative.... That would be scary.

I must agree with you on that, except the part about NVIDIA becoming the next Creative. It'll be interesting to see what my friend says about this. Ever since Vista was released, he's been touting NVIDIA as the best in terms of driver stability.

[RPDL]

Yeah, when I had a nVidia card it didn't stop crashing and giving me blue screens, not only in Vista. I know they're more powerful, but they have like, 5 underpaid employees working on drivers. This goes to show that benchmarks and numbers arent the only thing you should think about when purchasing a graphics card.

PS:Someone mentioned Creative. lol I have like 10 of those 1999-2001 Sound Blaster Live! sound cards, lying around in drawers and extra PCI slots.

[RPDL]

Yeah, when I had a nVidia card it didn't stop crashing and giving me blue screens, not only in Vista. I know they're more powerful, but they have like, 5 underpaid employees working on drivers. This goes to show that benchmarks and numbers arent the only thing you should think about when purchasing a graphics card.

PS:Someone mentioned Creative. lol I have like 10 of those 1999-2001 Sound Blaster Live! sound cards, lying around in drawers and extra PCI slots.

[zachman123]

On the nvidia set of drivers that vista came with, I was crashing every day...

ps RPDL, do you have any plain old Live! cards with hardware mixing? I'd gladly send you some money to get one :-D

Shoot me a pm.

[Azmodan]

No wonder they're afraid to open their drivers to Linux.

[toadeater]

Um no... Aero won't push modern card close to 100% at all. My cards idle temp is 42 degrees, when I play any games it

s at least 53. Turning aero off decreases the temp like 1 degree, same was true for my old 7600gs.

He's exaggerating what he heard about Aero putting video cards in 3D mode, which it does do. This doesn't make much of a difference for desktops, but it makes a big difference for laptops. Vista with Aero running significantly reduces laptop battery life. This is a fact which MS (specifically MS propagandist Nick White, who claimed an only 4% drop) has tried to deny, but real world tests have proven.

OK, so what did I find? Under Windows XP, my Acer TravelMate 8200 enjoyed a comfortable 3 hours and 15 minutes of battery life--more than enough to watch any major motion picture released these days. But under Windows Vista Aero, my battery life dropped considerably, to a mere 2 hours. Under Windows Vista Standard, battery life did improve--to a whopping 2 hours and 15 minutes

That doesn't look like 4% to me.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6534816.html

In Lenovo's own tests, Vista was also shown to have significantly shorter battery life compared to XP. Unfortunately, they're in Chinese, but I think they're easy to understand.

http://www-900.ibm.com/lenovoinfo/cn/think...00/feature.html

[HalcyonX12]

oh man,and then the linux and mac zeaolts come here up in arms,and say that Vista is a faulty OS.

Thank god there are info that clarifies the situation here

?? MS certified those drivers, and they passed nVidia's QA as well...

Any reports that the same thing occurs on Linux or Mac? Perhaps they do things differently and the driver doesn't crash the OS in the same situation, or perhaps there are even certain safeguards that keep the problem from happening.

On Linux you have the option of using a non-nVidia driver, anyone know if it's ported to Windows or Mac?

[Joshie]

Unknown = Quicktime? Haw.

[markwolfe Veteran]

...

On Linux you have the option of using a non-nVidia driver, anyone know if it's ported to Windows or Mac?

If you are talking about the standard "nv" driver, it has never had 3D support, so I am assuming you are talking about the Open Source nouveau project. It is still experimental

Currently, there is 2D-support, and a very limited 3D support for extremely lucky developers.

So, even in Linux, if you want 3D on nVidia, you really don't have a choice.

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

oh man,and then the linux and mac zeaolts come here up in arms,and say that Vista is a faulty OS.

Spoken by the biggest Microsoft zealot there is.

Frankly you must be completely naive if you think Vista isn't a faulty OS.

[mrk Reviews]

This is what happens when the most used GFX card brand is nVidia and the most leaked drivers are for nVidia cards ALL of which are BETA and people install new drivers willy nilly without clean-uninstalling the old ones first.

As a matter of fact I've never had a "Vista Crash" due to an nVidia driver and I have a 8800GT. I also have an XFI and no issues whatsoever.

There are a large number of people just like me who don't have any Vista crashes at all - we built our systems and overclocked them like a champ.

[Elliot B.]

This is what happens when the most used GFX card brand is nVidia and the most leaked drivers are for nVidia cards ALL of which are BETA and people install new drivers willy nilly without clean-uninstalling the old ones first.

As a matter of fact I've never had a "Vista Crash" due to an nVidia driver and I have a 8800GT. I also have an XFI and no issues whatsoever.

There are a large number of people just like me who don't have any Vista crashes at all - we built our systems and overclocked them like a champ.

It's true. There are so, so many betas drivers floating around. It doesn't help the statistics.

[mrk Reviews]

Look at the past few months, 95% of drivers are leaked from third parties and 95% of those are designed for specific cards ONLY be they laptop cards or newer models only but people modify the INF files to support all nVidia cards and then release them to the web.

It's just a can of worms waiting to happen.

My principal is to only install official BETA drivers and the latest came out just recently: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_174.74.html

These drivers are in fact better than the WHQL by all reports so far and my findings are that the control panel bugs are all resolved with a few new extra entries for multiscreen and video control.