Nvidia rant tell me what ya think of it :)

Also feel free to post about your issues ideas and w/e comes to mind.

Drivers worse than ever!?

-Micro stutter


-Game slow down with good frame rates


-Poor fps over previous drivers


-Alternate Frame Rendering only? What happened to using Split Frame Rendering?


-Enabling SLI wreaks havoc on my desktop icons, is slow to enable / disable and sometimes will completely disable secondary display adapter.


-Some driver versions lack support for some monitors completely, as in you can not fix to have them enabled at all

-Drivers have removed the basic refresh rates for CRT's (meaning you have to setup a custom profile, enable DMT, and then set refresh rate, save profile only for it to disable the profile you just made, and you must go back, try and enable it again, and pray it shows up to select it from the basic screen resolution page)

-Display settings in windows has caused some very frustrating driver problems. For example, I clicked on advanced settings button, windows pauses............ , display goes black, I hear the sound for new hardware being installed, pause......, then a few min later it plays the sound of hardware being disconnected then reconnected and so on... I had to hard boot, restart, no display. The only way to get my displays back was to uninstall the driver in safe mode, restart, go back into safe mode, do a driver cleaner (for some reason there driver cleaner will not remove the proper entries).... then, go to install the latest driver in normal mode, only to have it finish the install with red rail road tracks across the screen..... wtf.. srsly? Restart, go into safe mode, and do it all over again. The second time it installed okay.

This is by far not the first time things of this nature have happened with the nvidia drivers, nor will it be the last I'm sure, as it seems to me nvidia could care less (or so it seems from the people I have talked to on the phone and on the forums or lack thereof on the forums...)

So, after being a hard core nvidia fan for the past 10 years, I am sorry to say, but you have forced me to see red. Not once, not twice, but 14 times now I have purchased ATI Graphics cards because, and only because, your drivers are not even sub-par IMHO.

That's 14 sales lost to you nvidia! And I'm sorry but i just cant recommend a friend, or even a customer, to pay more and get less. I would love to hear back from anyone at nvidia but I highly doubt it, as you have shamelessly ignored other posts from me. And from what I have read on other forums, you have actually BANNED! people for complaining about your poor drivers and non existent customer support! What gives? You hate taking my money? lol I mean honestly, I don't know how you haven't gotten a far worse reputation by the review sites out there.

Why? Because at the end of the day, I want to sit down at my computer and play a game with a smooth, enjoyable frame rate. So, I could give a **** less if I can get 130fps. It makes no difference, if the game is slow, jerky, stuttery, w/e its no fun!

And, I do not want to have to work on problems with my video drivers when I get done with work! So, for the past 2 years I have noticed that ATI cards are more power efficient, cheaper, and result in same if not better than IQ, and better, smoother game play.

So what is my incentive to buy green? (heh, how ironic green team is the most wasteful team around lol for power, for money, and for great game play) But seriously, I love my nvidia cards!! But I can't buy a product that is nothing but headaches for me with no support what so ever... (on that note, I wish you all could have heard some of the tech support I have had setting up my htpc from ATI it was seriously above and beyond. I was floored! at how much they wanted to know what, and why I was having issues, and how they could help immediately, and how they can improve there next driver release!)

Now just think, I am only one person with very simple video setups and I do not use all the utilities these cards are made to do.

So, I can only imagine the problems that occur to others who are trying to utilize more of the features these cards have. Thus, I believe I am only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what is really going on out there.

 

Tri-SLI has always been glitchy. According to your setup you have 3x GTX 280's. That's more of a hardcore benchers setup anyway. If you want to game, I highly recommend just 2x SLI. If you still experience these issues, the problem usually lies in the fact it's not getting enough power.

If the PSU is fine, then the next logical thing is that you do a total clean install of the latest Official WHQL or beta driver from Nvidia's site.

I've used 2x GTX 280's in the past without very many problems.

 

Hey thx for your reply. I have used only 2 cards in sli many times also have played around with single card config, i run at 2560x1600 so single is a bit lacky on the gpu horse power but i have had really good luck with running tri-sli only issue i have is with newer drivers the old drivers tend to run alot smother in some of the games i play. it seems to me that any of the drivers past the 180.xx mark have only hurt alot of my games perfomance. And have never gotten any better

 

hrm, thats the opposite of me. I used to go mostly red, and then a little green for the past 10 years. Now I have what I have because I couldnt stand the ATI 5000 series drivers. Sold my 5770 to go towards the GTX470 and its completly fine heh.

 

Ty for your response. I would love to hear about your 5000 series driver issues if you don't mind. I am interested in hearing about them very much

 

Also i would never purchase any video cards with anything less than 256bit interface (i know its ddr5) because i feel memory bandwidth is where you get your smooth game play from.

 

Well with the 5000 series, even though it is the better buy because of its price, the drivers drove me and many others nuts. There are of course people that had no problems at all, but the most common problem was the "gray screen of death". You would be playing a game, then all of a sudden it just turned white or gray and you had to restart your PC.
I have a buddy who recently built his first rig with my input and has a 5870 that he's having problems with and now I kinda feel bad for recommending it to him. The ATI series sounds good because of exactly what you said; lower temps, less power, cheaper, etc, but all that comes with a price of frustration.
Its like having a mechanic who works on your car but doesnt really fix the problem so you have to keep going to his shop because you dont know how to do it yourself. If I knew what it took to make an effing driver work, I would do it.

 

Yikes you makes me worry i haven't had anyone come to me with any problems like that yet..... "knocks on wood"

 

The grey screen of death thing was sorted ages ago wasn't it?

 

I like my 5870, but it took a year before all of driver related issues were fixed.

-Slow video playback
-multi display issues where the 2nd display would suddenly become scrambled
-GSOD
-RSOD
-Not displaying an image after waking up from sleep mode or when booting up
-Shadow issues in games

Since all of those thing's have been fixed, I haven't had any issues other then when I run 2XAA in BFBC2 on the map White Pass, I get black artifacts. If I turn AA off or set it to 4X or 8X it doesn't happen.

As for nvidia they've been alright for the most part, my last nvidia card was a GTX 285 Superpipe.

It never had any issues other then occasionally it would show artifacts on videos, my GTX 260 C216 did the same thing..

 

I sure hope so...

 

What sort of play back program did you see this in? I have yet to notice this.

 

Streaming video's (e.g YouTube) and mkv format videos (I used VLC).

 

Ive been using nvidia since riva tnt 2 and rarely have issues. The odd time you get a buggy driver but 99% of the time I have zero issues. People scream bloody murder about these issues but I never see them.

 

yea i saw it in the past and now, then are known to break things or make new issues that never existed,..and sometimes take a long time to repair it again or just leave it broken and say its not their fault lol:bang:

 

I don't like their marketing tactics.

 

OK, some 'random advice from the internet'. Remove all VGA drivers, start off with one card, install drivers, shutdown, pop in the other two, reboot. Done? Flashing the same bios to all cards, or even an eVGA bios, flashing the MB with the latest BIOS, should all improve stability, combined with the first lol. Ranting about nVidia here doesn't help improve the situation. I still keep getting new drivers for the 2004 card in this system, btw.

 

True you get support with new drivers, but they rarely improve performance if at all for 6 series, let alone 7-GTX 200. It's mainly a minor bug fix if anything.

 

Well from what i have experienced the installing one card on a "clean install" is old news something that had to be done a few years ago. And to be quite honest for me doing that would involve removing about a gallon of water from my water cooling set up and then removing the clamp i have on cards to make sure they dont move apart as the connections Danger Den provided are not exactly the cats meow when it comes to sealing them up nicely. I don't know for sure if that is still needed as i haven't had to do that in well idk how long back in the 16x.xx drivers? Also i believe i stated i have done a clean install in my OP...

And you are right ranting here will do me no good other than to spend some time talking to fine folks like your self that have nothing better to do for what ever reason mine personally i haven't any games that have really gathered my interest greatly since hellgate london? or maybe GTA4 and Crysis but even those get old after a few months of hard core action
still have my RTS's that i love but Star-Craft 2 was a major let down to me
after i had played the original Supreme commander and FA. But the reason i was posting here was in hopes of stirring up some good converstaion and possibly some good fellows to post on the nvidia forums with me about there issues because it seems they just truly don't care about one persons at a time.. and maybe just maybe if we get enough people to act on the issues they have that we can save the company from cutting there own throat and leaving ATI with no competition at all (worst case obviously but it could happen). The end result is i would like to have a better experience for all nvidia users you and me alike

And if i'm lucky i just might learn something along the way

 

No offense...but the rig in your sig is rather archaic these days....now, that said...

When someone spends $300 - $600+ on a product, especialy during a weak or flailing economy, they expect the product to work as described. If the product exceeds what they expected, they're happy....but when that product can't even function as described and has limited or no support, people tend to get upset. Now, for me....if I have to use some drawn out BS procedure to install my hardware....I won't buy from the same manufacturer again. Having to remove 2 of 3 graphics cards, to install a simple drive indicates a failure on the manufacturer's part to write a proper installer and makes me seriously question their ability to write a properly functioning driver.