NVIDIA's Drivers Caused 28.8% Of Vista Crashes In 2007

[Cheator]

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/03/28/0326209.shtml

Interesting. I did have trouble with their vista drivers but not to an insane extent.

[redrumy3]

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/03/28/0326209.shtml

Interesting. I did have trouble with their vista drivers but not to an insane extent.
weird i never had a problem hmmmph

[deathman20]

I could easily see this as an issue. I know I've had issues ever since I moved to nVidia and drivers for Vista. Wish it was fixed but nVidia seems to be on the slow track for fixes to crashes and other issues and more on getting products out the door.

[Shell]

After seeing people say ATI's drivers suck for so long, all I have to say is:

WHERE'S YOUR ATI DRIVERS NOW?

I've never had any big problems with ATi or nVidia drivers, they crap out just as often, but ATI's little useful feature "VPU Recovery" saves me from having to restart.

[Cheator]

After seeing people say ATI's drivers suck for so long, all I have to say is:

WHERE'S YOUR ATI DRIVERS NOW?

I've never had any big problems with ATi or nVidia drivers, they crap out just as often, but ATI's little useful feature "VPU Recovery" saves me from having to restart.

That happened to my onboard 8600GT M. The vpu recovered after a crash and it was in vista. could be a driver issue but I don't know.

[VinnyTAMU]

That happened to my onboard 8600GT M. The vpu recovered after a crash and it was in vista. could be a driver issue but I don't know.

I still have issues with my nVidia 8800GTS (G92) + VISTA (32-bit) + Steam (HL2 games) setup. If ATI had better support for Linux I would seriously consider buying more ATI cards.

[Albuquerque]

Out of fairness (being an ATI fanboi at this moment), it could have also been NV chipsets... Further, what was NV's market penetration during this year versus AMD's? If NV had three times the market penetration, then that would explain the 3x error rate of NV versus ATI.

[Shell]

I still have issues with my nVidia 8800GTS (G92) + VISTA (32-bit) + Steam (HL2 games) setup. If ATI had better support for Linux I would seriously consider buying more ATI cards. ATi is under AMD's order to make their Linux drivers "professional grade" for workstation stuff and whatnot, and because OEMs want to make Linux available even with ATi hardware... Ubuntu works just fine with my X1900XT.

[Omsion]

Out of fairness (being an ATI fanboi at this moment), it could have also been NV chipsets... Further, what was NV's market penetration during this year versus AMD's? If NV had three times the market penetration, then that would explain the 3x error rate of NV versus ATI.IIRC, Nvidia has ~2x times the market share of ATI atm (don't recall source). So ATI is doing better with their Vista drivers, at least (original source (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html) has them at ~9% of all crashes - also they note that how errors are reported are unknown).

Now, the funny part (or not so funny) is that MS drivers account for 18% of crashes :rolleyes:

[Cheator]

Out of fairness (being an ATI fanboi at this moment), it could have also been NV chipsets... Further, what was NV's market penetration during this year versus AMD's? If NV had three times the market penetration, then that would explain the 3x error rate of NV versus ATI.

Well the article indicates video chipsets. Mainly the g80

[deathman20]

After seeing people say ATI's drivers suck for so long, all I have to say is:

WHERE'S YOUR ATI DRIVERS NOW?

I've never had any big problems with ATi or nVidia drivers, they crap out just as often, but ATI's little useful feature "VPU Recovery" saves me from having to restart.

I surely have never said that I loved my ATI drivers. And looking forward to moving back actually.

That happened to my onboard 8600GT M. The vpu recovered after a crash and it was in vista. could be a driver issue but I don't know.

Ditto, mine does it sometimes more recently its been doing BSOD's though. Typically I get that VPU recovery on the desktop and it stalls for a bit but then continues. I got that early on in the nVidia drivers for the 8800GT, in Crysis.

[VinnyTAMU]

ATi is under AMD's order to make their Linux drivers "professional grade" for workstation stuff and whatnot, and because OEMs want to make Linux available even with ATi hardware... Ubuntu works just fine with my X1900XT.

I think in the future ATi will have better Linux drivers, however at this point nVidia does a much better job. Also have you ever tired to get a dual monitor setup to run under linux with an ATi card? Its not fun!

[Neuromancer]

After seeing people say ATI's drivers suck for so long, all I have to say is:

WHERE'S YOUR ATI DRIVERS NOW?

I've never had any big problems with ATi or nVidia drivers, they crap out just as often, but ATI's little useful feature "VPU Recovery" saves me from having to restart.

The only problem I had with ATI drivers I also had with nVidia drivers. A few years back their website was not clear as to when the newest drivers stopped properly supporting old hardware.

This is still true to an extent, but not nearly to the degree it used to be (having to read every drivers whitesheet to see what models they talk about and from that make a guesstimation as to whether or not they stopped supporting XXXX card.


As for nVidia being responsble for the large number of Vista crashes, I find that totally believable. the first people to move to the new OS are enthusiasts. Enthusiasts tend to have the latest hardware. The G80 series is the series that had the problem (I wonder if this has anything to do with DX10.1 or not??? Ohh that brings up an interesting side issue on nVidias performance boost in DX10 that ATI takes a hit with). There is a very long thread on the nvida BSODs in Vista and I beleive it is a sticky.


It would be great if they listed the top ten culprits.

[David]

I still have issues with my nVidia 8800GTS (G92) + VISTA (32-bit) + Steam (HL2 games) setup. If ATI had better support for Linux I would seriously consider buying more ATI cards.

This influenced the last PC I built and the last laptop I bought.


ATi is under AMD's order to make their Linux drivers "professional grade" for workstation stuff and whatnot, and because OEMs want to make Linux available even with ATi hardware... Ubuntu works just fine with my X1900XT.

This is good news - always glad to see vendors supporting Linux.


I did hear a lot about nVidia graphics drivers (a year or two ago?) which were causing widespread problems.

[meionm]

The 158-page bundle of internal Microsoft e-mails (PDF) that Judge Martha Pechman ordered unsealed as part of the ongoing "Vista Capable" lawsuit contains a great deal of interesting information. We've previously covered how the e-mails within the evidentiary document describe the changes Microsoft made to the definition of Vista Capable in order to improve Intel's quarterly earnings, but that's not the only gem within the document. According to Microsoft's own included documentation, the widespread reports of NVIDIA Vista driver issues were by no means exaggerated during Vista's first months.

Related StoriesIntel-NVIDIA merger rumors hard to justify
NVIDIA shares surge on Intel buyout rumors
New beer in wine bottles: NVIDIA to rebrand G80 as supercomputer chip
Gainward CARDEXpert TNT
NVIDIA had significant problems when it came time to transition its shiny, new G80 architecture from Windows XP to Windows Vista. The company's first G80-compatible Vista driver ended up being delayed from December to the end of January, and even then was available only as a beta download. In this case, full compatibility and stability did not come quickly, and the Internet is scattered with reports detailing graphics driver issues when using G80 processors for the entirely of 2007. There was always a question, however, of whether or not the problems were really that bad, or if reporting bias was painting a more negative picture of the current situation than what was actually occurring.

Microsoft's data strongly indicates that the problems were real. Damon Poeter at CRN dug through the documentation to find that on page 47 of the PDF, NVIDIA drivers were identified as the cause of over 479,000 crashes, or just under 29 percent of all the crashes Microsoft logged. Microsoft's own drivers follow, at 17.9 percent, and the "Unknown" category takes third place at 17 percent. ATI is in fourth place (9.3 percent) and Intel in fifth place (8.83 percent).


The data points in the table cover an unspecified period in 2007, and Microsoft makes no attempt to break the aggregate data down into which device drivers, specifically, returned the highest number of crashes. If the number of failures were split by month and then graphed, we'd presumably see the number of NVIDIA driver failures per month decreasing as the company slowly brought its driver issues under control.

The data clearly indicates that NVIDIA had a driver problem, but it's impossible to quantify the scope of that problem given the numbers above. NVIDIA holds a greater percentage of the market than ATI, which means that there will inevitably be a higher percentage of NVIDIA driver crashes than ATI driver crashes; however, the degree to which such market share considerations have affected the results above is hard to determine in the absence of more data. There's also the matter of data collection; Microsoft's charts do not clarify if multiple crashes from a single system each counted as separate events. In theory, NVIDIA's proportion of total driver crashes could be inflated by a relatively small handful of systems with severe driver issues.

Driver problems are nothing new, particularly during the launch of a new OS, but the high incidence of NVIDIA driver crashes may have fueled public perception of Vista as an unstable and buggy OS. Microsoft has always billed DirectX 10 as a next-generation enthusiast feature, but in early 2007 the only DX10-capable parts were limping under the combined burden of buggy drivers and the increased computational demands of DX10 games. NVIDIA's early-to-midyear Vista issues may not have counted for much, given that few consumers actually purchase enthusiast-level graphics cards, but the company's problems were an additional drag on the perception of Vista at a time when Redmond could least afford it.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html

http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/vistacrash-1.jpg

I thought there would be more total crashes under vista than 1.7m out of 100m copies sold.

[Albuquerque]

Well the article indicates video chipsets. Mainly the g80

The article might lean towards video chipset, but the original source data doesn't -- which means it's not all video-related crashes.

And we're also talking about market penetration for the entire year of 2007 -- and we're comparing the installed base of NV chipsets + NV video versus ATI video and AMD chipsets.

I have a feeling there's a pretty easy 3:1 ratio going there, but that's just my guess.

[Rattle]

i think the interesting thing which is being ignored is how many users with nv hardware?
check out this steam survey alone, 2x more nvidia users
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

not to defend NV but wouldnt they by default have 2x more driver crashes than ATI since there's roughly 2x more NV users???

Sometimes people dont look at the REAL picture.

[PhysX]

ive got an 880gt in my dt no problems and an 8400m gs in my gfs lt, no problems.

[Niku-Sama]

since when did this become something for sue over?
i mean if this is happening when where are all the other class action law suits for incompatabilities from the past? what about when people went from windows 98 or 2000 to xp?
what about when people went from windows 98 to me and to 98 again
what about the people what went from windows 95 to 98?

i am sure there were issues but i dont rember any lawsuits, and frankly if any lawsuit should be started it should be about windows ME

[Albuquerque]

since when did this become something for sue over?

The lawsuit that was mentioned is not linked specifically to the outcome we're discussing -- this data was correlating evidence in a completely seperate discussion about Microsoft's "Vista Compatible" program.

i think the interesting thing which is being ignored is how many users with nv hardware?
If you think it's being ignored, then I don't think you read this entire thread :beer:

[Neuromancer]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html

http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/vistacrash-1.jpg

I thought there would be more total crashes under vista than 1.7m out of 100m copies sold.

Sweet I guess I did not scroll down far enough I did not see that piechart :)

As for more then 1.7% having crashes? I think thats rather a high number.

I would bet that of the 17% associated with MS and "other" that a good portion of those are overclocking related crashes probably somer of the ati/nvidia ones too. I have never seen a BSOD on Vista that was not OC related... but I dont have a G80 card.

I did see crashes in Longhorn though, when I was beta testing. Mainly from incompatible software like Alcohol 120 and daemon tools. "big name" antivirus..etc.

[VinnyTAMU]

i think the interesting thing which is being ignored is how many users with nv hardware?
check out this steam survey alone, 2x more nvidia users
http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

not to defend NV but wouldnt they by default have 2x more driver crashes than ATI since there's roughly 2x more NV users???

Sometimes people dont look at the REAL picture.

I see your point, however this article is indicating that the G80 nvidia cards are the problems here. Also for nvidia the G80 cards as per steam only make up only 8% of the nvidia population.

I never had a problem with VISTA and nvidia with my 7 series card just my 8 series.

[Rattle]

yeah well i take it all with a grain of salt after having 5 different g80's at last count on vista and not having driver crashes it make you wonder.

[Albuquerque]

I see your point, however this article is indicating that the G80 nvidia cards are the problems here. Also for nvidia the G80 cards as per steam only make up only 8% of the nvidia population.

I never had a problem with VISTA and nvidia with my 7 series card just my 8 series.

Again, the article suggests a relation to video issues, but the source data does not. The pie chart is broken down by manufacturer, not by device class. Thus, NV chipset, NV video, hell even NV audio from the old NForce 3 / 4 people who might be using Vista will still show up.

[Xris]

Vista 64 ran fine on my old system. Now, I have issues with both video drivers and SATA drivers. I believe it. I should have stuck with Intel boards.

[VinnyTAMU]

Again, the article suggests a relation to video issues, but the source data does not. The pie chart is broken down by manufacturer, not by device class. Thus, NV chipset, NV video, hell even NV audio from the old NForce 3 / 4 people who might be using Vista will still show up.

No I agree, the source data does not say that all issues were related to video drivers, however just for the fun of it I did a google advanced search on the topic and this is what I got:
All searches were google advanced searches for a time frame of up to one year.
Google search on "nvidia vista +chipset problem OR issue OR error" yielded 177,000 pages
Google search on "nvidia vista +video problem OR issue OR error" yielded 2,550,000 pages
Google search on "nvidia vista +nforce problem OR issue OR error" yielded 120,000 pages
Google search on "nvidia vista +forceware problem OR issue OR error" yielded 561,000 pages
Google search on "nvidia vista +audio problem OR issue OR error" yielded 1,390,000 pagesSo it looks like the majority of problems are having to do with video issues, however there were quite a few audio problems.

However I don't really blame nvidia 100% for this mess, I think MS did a poor job on evaluating hardware that was given the "VISTA Ready" stamp of approval, and I feel that nvidia in an attempt to produce the biggest/baddest/fastest graphics card sacrificed stability for performance.

That being said I may have to move back to XP till my 8800GTS (G92) + VISTA (32-bit) + steam (HL2) issues are worked out. Also I have done everything on THIS (https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5688-IFHZ-2170) page but did not help.

[freeagent]

yeah well i take it all with a grain of salt after having 5 different g80's at last count on vista and not having driver crashes it make you wonder.



me to, i havent had any troubles either, maybe back when vista came out, nvidias drivers sucked donkey you know what. but now? i dunno.. maybe some of you guys should check out your overclocks..

edit: some of you guys are haveing way too much fun with this.. quit putting so much emotion into a company, geez.

[VinnyTAMU]

thought I was editing my above post

[MikeyLikesItSI]

I have had the occasional game crash with windows vista reporting the video driver has recovered. But i won't complain for the most part, my computer has been pretty stable. It crashes more commonly cause i play with voltages and OC's too much LOL