Mussels Nvidia makes their newest drivers mostly for the latest GPUs just like ATI does.
For example i used the latest Catalysts with a 9800pro and i got LESS Fps than the version i was using in that rig which was 1 year old...However the latest Catalysts provide a boost in the X2900..
So why should Nvidia provide support for lets say the gf 4ti or the Gf5 since their drivers wouldnt have any impact and if they would it would propably be negative ? Doesnt make sense...

newconroer@Wile

That statement is based off of the fabled and much hyped 2900 being competitive to the GTS and not the GTX,(also taking into account the Ultra exists AND the 8900 is in development).

It's intended to compete with the GTS, not the GTX. And the jury is still out on the performance champ, anyway. But that's not the point here.

"So often" is the phrase that I thought should be qualified. Looking back, it seems to me that ATI has been in the lead more often, with a few bumps in the road here and there.

I jumped ship and went with ATI 2900XT becuase Nvidia driver support and lack of customer releations just plain SUCKS.... I spent the last 6 months dealing the the worst drivers for Vista that we just plain not usable with my EVGA 7900GTKO. All I ever got wheile trying to use my PC was this:

i31.photobucket.com/albums/c389/Achaleon/HPIM0390.jpg

And numerous bug reports to Nvidia got me no-where, not even a responce that I was breathing.... However my first bug report with ATI was with their ticket system in which I had a dialog with a HUMAN, can you belive that?? and guess what they acnowledged that there was a driver bug and reported to the driver team...

NVIDIA has gotten up so far on its horse it could care less about its customers that do not have the 8800... Lets not forget the 7900 is no 9800 card, it is the model GPU right before the 8800 so considering it an outdated card just does not fly.. I spent thousand on their products building machines for PC gamers and never even considered ATI. Sorry ATI, But now forget it would never consider using Nvidia again...

The class action suite that have been threatened against Nvidia for poor driver support and selling the 8800 as Vista ready, well I am no lawyer but I think the claims are justifiable. ATI all the way man and not turning back, benchmark this or benchmark that, more power less power, mean nothing to me as long as the company I purchase from cares to hear from its customer base and actually listens to them when they have issues...

Rock on NGOHQ.com, you are doing the community a great service from a whoring company who could care less about people who have supported them and made them what they are!!!

Thank you ATI! :toast:

Seany1212Why are these companies becoming like the mafia? firstly that microsoft one now this :shadedshu

Buddy -- companies ain't never been any different. Read up a little bit about American History around the turn of the 19th/20th century -- companies back then were the epitome of evil, and they're just starting to get that way again.

MarcusTaz are you really trying to say that ATI has better drivers than Nvidia ???
Ever since the first RAGE GPU ATI has had driver problems...Even now with the X2900 their drivers have worse AA support than the X1900 series...As for drivers updates Nvidia releases 3 times as many drivers as ATI...Yes 2 out of 3 are Beta but at least they are something...

HellasVagabond.As for drivers updates Nvidia releases 3 times as many drivers as ATI...Yes 2 out of 3 are Beta but at least they are something...

The number of releases doesn't matter if none of them do their job properly. You may not be having issues, but look at all those that are, especially in Vista. That was one of the major deciding factors on going for the 2900 for me.

HellasVagabondMarcusTaz are you really trying to say that ATI has better drivers than Nvidia ???
Ever since the first RAGE GPU ATI has had driver problems...Even now with the X2900 their drivers have worse AA support than the X1900 series...As for drivers updates Nvidia releases 3 times as many drivers as ATI...Yes 2 out of 3 are Beta but at least they are something...

HellasVagabond I know you are a Nvidia fan , I have established that in other threads with you and I am mearly stating the facts that yes indeed ATI Vista drivers are light years more stable then Nvidia. I am not going to waste my time debating this with you as my personal experiance with the 2 brought me to this conclusion.. Nvidia is struggling to make a stable driver to just run without crashing with the, dreaded Nvlddmkm Stopped responding just to name one... There are so many people at nvnews.net that have just about had enough of Nvidia and I was one of them... if you do not belive me go read for yourself:

www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=55

As for me my Rig now runs as stable as it ever did with Vista....

As for Nvidia drivers....:banghead:

lol @ this . .

newconroer@Xerphon

That is such ignorance. And this is an example of what I mentioned above concerning people freaking out. What do you really care about some rinky-dink website and their products? Do you hold or show patronage to that Israeli site, and to such an extent that you would basically blindly inhibit yourself from obtaining what you want in effort to promote some sort of boycott? Come on?!? You wanted the GTX, it's an Nvidia product. Nvidia doesn't worship Satan, slaughter babies or committ genocide. That's like people saying "Oh, well, I'm going to renounce my American citizenship because I don't like the way Bush is handling things.' RIGHT...sure....

In no way am I being ignorant. I personally don't use NGO's drivers, I'm stating modified drivers in general. My personal preference, after spending however many hundreds of dollars on a product, I'd like to have it working to the best of it's capabilities. For the most part, I've had more success with modified drivers than those that are actually put out by the manufacturer. Sure, I wanted a GTX, but I'll be more than happy with a 2900XT. All I want is a good DirectX 10 card, and luckily there is more than one option for that now. I understand your point about it being Nvidia's product and being there choice. Just as it is my choice to decide on whether or not I'll continue to buy their product. Ignorance? Please...

Yep that is the thread that references the possible Class Action Lawsuit againt them...

That is just how frustrated people are with them...

all i see in that thread is non 8800 owners complaining and jumping ship to ati, or 8800 owners saying how good the drivers are,

spud107all i see in that thread is non 8800 owners complaining and jumping ship to ati, or 8800 owners saying how good the drivers are,

mate the 8800 owners are far from happy...

I am really starting to get annoyed with both ATI and NVidia. NVidia for not being able to provide proper software for their hardware and ATI for not even being able to provide acceptable hardware.

i didnt read through too many pages lol, so just the odd few happy nv owners,

101

spud107all i see in that thread is non 8800 owners complaining and jumping ship to ati, or 8800 owners saying how good the drivers are,

EKKK! Speaking of myself as an 8800 owner, getting this card is a big regret.
- Drivers that were released by Nvidia for my 8800 card "embarassed" me with the games I bought---> I'm not asking my card to get me to the new games' max setting but at least run them as an 8800GTS suppposed to run. Until I downloaded the modded drivers from the modders around the web, the games run better. I can go on and on about the modded drivers and how thankful I was to them.
- When I had problem running Stalkers with Vista, I contacted them and guess what? NO ANSWERS, not even an automated-message to confirm your request/question.
- Many of my good buddies here and at online web forums suffered support from them. I care for people who cares for me, like many of my good friends. 8800 owners are no difference. Yet I'm still trying to move on carrying along the experience I've learned by using the modded drivers. Without them, I'd return the card a long as time ago.
- Now seeing one of the sites got "picked" on!!?? I've been followed the story over at NGO, read on comments and what people around there and many other forums have to say about it, from the beginning 'til now. Yes it isn't my business, but it's always something to know and keep in mind about.
- ...

Right on man Nvidia lack of direct support to it's owners it plain wrong... Help those who help you by buying your product and this is the main reason I got turned off and left them..

NGOHQ is doing nothing wrong but just trying to help out the community. Heck if you post on Nvidia's official forums you have to be careful or they just plain delete your post without warning...

So the fact that ATI drivers dont crash in Vista is the decisive factor here ?
That the AA in the X2900 sucks aint ? Various game incompatibilites ( more than nvidia proven through the years ) aint ? The fact that their VIVO software sucks aint ?

Bla. Vivo rocks man, where do you get your info from... Whatever....:rolleyes:

I had the 9700pro-9800pro-9800xt-X1950XT cards and the X2900...With the exception of the X2900 which has a HDMI the rest of the cards couldnt easily be configured to play with TVs. Even the X1950XT couldnt syncronize with my 55' TV so im getting my info from ME.

The only thing good about Nvidia is the 8800. They made an outstanding card. Unfortunately, like all of thier other products thier driver support is crap, and I don't ever see that changing.

Id say that Nvidia have bitten off more then they can chew....

& as NGO have come out of the fight snarling like a rabid dog about to bite into something flesh Id say that Nvidia best drop the charges to avoid further loss of face

HellasVagabondSo the fact that ATI drivers dont crash in Vista is the decisive factor here ?
That the AA in the X2900 sucks aint ? Various game incompatibilites ( more than nvidia proven through the years ) aint ? The fact that their VIVO software sucks aint ?

lol......the vivo converter converts video faster than I have seen ever...I can convert a 9 gig file in less than 5 minutes convert from AVI to any form of Mpeg or divx ...lol lets see you do that on an nvidia rig!!! ;)

PS some of the best quality conversions I have ever seen too.
Video never out of sync with sound .
I will race any non ati rig in video conversion ...even you killa C2D guys !!

Some people dont even read what i say
:)

Speaking as an XP user who owns an 8800GTS, I have had no problems with any of the 8800 drivers, I have had nothing to complain about for any of my games, image quality has been great and performance at 1920x1200 has been exceptional, Ive yet to see any serious problems occur with any system running XP with the 8800 series that hasnt been addressed, or expected.

Now speaking of vista, I do have my complaints with the drivers. But Nvidia is not the only company that is seriously lacking in vista support, I have a system running a 9600 AIW and another running an x1300 AIW. I consistently get graphical corruption on my desktop with the 9600 to the point where the entire screen gets unreadable and I have to move the mouse around the whole screen before I can get a visible desktop, the latest drivers from AMD have seemed to have fixed this issue, but I built the box from day 1 of vista release and it has taken quite a while to be addressed. I should also mention that I still have NO capture or tv tuner support for either of the cards, making the main draw for the cards completely useless. AMD seem to have much better support in Vista for the games, but they are neglecting quite a heavy portion of us, the only saving grace is the fact that most people can go out and buy a supported Hauppauge tuner to use instead. Nvidias support in vista is terrible, I have no problem repeating that...but Vista is Vista, and probably about 60% of the hardware and software out there does not function to its fullest either, so I really dont think vista should be grounds for any argument about software or hardware issues from any company.

As for how I feel about Nvidias actions against NGOHQ, I do see Nvidias side of things. NGOHQ have received requests to remove content in the past, and have chosen not to comply with any of them. When things became elevated because of either (or both...) sides, NGO didnt back down and continued to attack Nvidia. Sure I dont mind seeing modified drivers but when you modify work done by someone else, if they dont like it you should agree to remove it and either rework things or simply avoid trying to piss off the company. Im sure TPU would not like it if someone took their tools, modified them, and then re-released them without any approval from TPU, if the work was done to improve things or not, its still the property of the creator.
Its nice to see sites stand up for their rights, but in this case I think NGOHQ are just doing it to get attention and sympathy. They complain a lot about Nvidia, but does anyone else notice the only video card reviews done by NGOHQ are of Nvidia? 6600GT, 7300GT, 7600GS, 7800GT, and 7800GTX, it seems to me that if Nvidia has a grudge against them NGO would have a reason to heavily criticize Nvidia, yet every review scores a gold award and a 9/10 or 10/10, and a complete lack of reviews for ATI/AMD or even any modern video cards, really makes me wonder why I would want to use their modified drivers when the site itself doesnt prove any advantage to using them.


It seems to me that all NGOHQ wants to do is cause trouble so they can get some attention. Their articles are poorly written, behind the times, and their best work is to be considered mediocre at best in comparison to the amount of effort put forth by other, more serious contributers to the hardware community. Their 5 minutes of fame will soon fade and their website will continue to be ranked just slightly above the occasional rantings of the cynical hardware blogger.

I'll support a website that is being oppressed by "The Man", but this is just BS and I dont see how Nvidia or anyone else could take these guys seriously.