I’ve been using Vista for several months on four different computers. Out of all of those computers there have been no issues (well, file transfers are a little slow but this fixed that), and I’ve only seen one blue screen of death (BSoD). Sometimes it sounds like my experience has been far too pleasant with the operating system when comparing it to what some people have gone through.
I was reading an article by Ed Bott this morning that detailed the root of his problems: the Nvidia graphics cards. He mentioned that Nvidia just released another drive update for both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista last week, but there are still a full 10-pages of open issues remaining (read about them in this PDF).
So what did he do to fix his problems? Have a look:
Over the weekend I yanked Nvidia cards out of both systems. On one, I went back to the onboard Intel GMA950 graphics. On the Vista Media Center PC, I installed an ATI Radeon X1300 Pro card with the most recent ATI drivers (Catalyst Version 7.7, released July 19, 2007).
The difference is night and day. Sleep works perfectly again. I can switch effortlessly between Media Center and the Windows desktop on the HDTV, and the full desktop is visible. (ATI’s drivers aren’t bug-free, but the list of known issues with Windows Vista is dramatically shorter – one page, not ten.)
This actually explains a lot because every system I own is using an ATI graphics card. And looking back at some of the problems I’ve heard about regarding Vista have been from people using Nvidia cards.
So if you’re having troubles with Vista and you’re using a Nvidia graphics card, you might want to get an ATI card. I’ve got a Radeon X300, Radeon X1950, and two Radeon Mobile X1400. I’ve had no problems with any of those on Vista.
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Tags: Hardware, Computers, Windows Vista
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Bulls**t (according to that what i have personally tested).
ATI’s drivers with R600 cards are much more crap then nVidia’s drivers with 8800 series. My friend has vista64 and 2900xt and he cannot play anything else but source engine games (with buggy graphics) and two worlds. Any other games tested do not even start. With older cards nvidia drivers are as good as ati drivers.
I ever have had any other problems with my 7800gt then that NFS carbon crashes drivers sometimes. Normally them are recovered and game keeps running after about 2sec. Very unusual is that i have bsod. 8800 series has much more problems but not as much as r600!
I have the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS in my desktop on Vista Ultimate and I have had no problems whatsoever. The only issue I had was during install, which had to do with Vista not restarting after shutdown. I re-installed the drivers and it worked fine. I bought the card right when it came out.
I have not updated the drivers at all either, and I guess I am one of the few lucky ones according to what has been going around.
I recommend you to download 163.11 drivers for your 8800. Those have been reported to be awesome drivers for it. Also, with drivers later then version 100 there haven’t been much installation problems after setup was fixed.
If my system is working just fine for everything that I do with it, then why download new drivers that can potentially screw it up?
Yeah, I wouldn’t upgrade your drivers either. I hardly ever upgrade my drivers if my hardware is running fine. From the sounds of it the 8800 is one of the better Vista-compatible graphics cards, so it looks like you made a good choice in getting that one.
Yeah, I had heard of problems with the very top end one, so I stayed with the 8800. Good Choice!