Vista - The quality of nVidia's Vista drivers?

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
_________________________________________________
Qu0llSixFour@xxxxxx
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

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.
"Qu0ll" <Qu0llSixFour@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OD$6XdQIIHA.5352@xxxxxx

I don't think its a driver problem. The artefacting you mention could be a result of overheating. Has the card been overclocked? And what size PSU does you system have? Insufficient power being delived to the graphics card can also cause problems.

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

"Steve Thackery" <thack@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ups1s5SIIHA.3400@xxxxxx
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
_________________________________________________
Qu0llSixFour@xxxxxx
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

"BigJim" <bigjim@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:N9adnblr6sWE8qzanZ2dnUVZ_rCtnZ2d@xxxxxx
I can't believe it's this way if there's nothing wrong with the hardware.
It's pathetic.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
Qu0llSixFour@xxxxxx
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

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




"Qu0ll" <Qu0llSixFour@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O$QMYHTIIHA.2268@xxxxxx

"Dominic Payer" <dcp@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:61F07ADA-8008-44CD-A5C2-61308C853DD5@xxxxxx
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
_________________________________________________
Qu0llSixFour@xxxxxx
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

Qu0ll wrote:
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

It definitely sounds like a hardware problem, more than likely with the display card's memory. I had this issue YEARS ago on my 386's Trident TVGA9000. Replacing the memory chips on that card solved the issue.

Doing the same isn't so easy anymore, so try putting the display card into another PC to see if the problem happens there too. At the same time, try a different display card card in your machine.