Where are the NVIDIA 8800 Vista Drivers? |
In previous articles about NVIDIA Cards ( BFG GeForce 8800 GTS and Asus EN8800 GTX ) we mentioned the fact that the only thing missing was the DirectX 10 games. That’s true but there is also something else missing that’s pretty vital, the drivers! It appears that NVIDIA has delayed releasing drivers to the general public for the N80 line of video cards.
From NVIDIA’s Vista page: ** GeForce 8800 requires updated drivers for Vista, which will be available to download when Vista is available at retail in late January..
So all of you gamers that are anxious to get your hands on this line of cards to try out the performance in Vista may want to hold off at least until the end of January. Of course if you are planning on sticking with Windows XP then you should have no problem as you will get some serious graphics power with these cards.
|
 |  |  |  |
Try to go discuss this huge limitation on NVIDIA’s user forums and the mods will delete many critical posts and ban the outspoken critics. The big problem is the disclaimer mentioned in the article above only recently appeared. Prior to that, the 8800 line was listed as “Ready for Vista Today” - leading many enthusiasts to purchase under false pretense. Now they are left with a $500-$650 door stop and no comment/explanation from NVIDIA other than the drivers “will be available to download when Vista is available at retail in late January”. Not enough for many of us.
Nvidia are the scum of the earth, me like many people we made to believe that if they will buy an 8800 will be able to enjoy windows vista to the max, only to find out that there is any drivers for it after I spend 750 pounds for 2 8800gtx.
One thing to say to Nvidia YOU ARE deceitful M****RF****RS
I am as mad as anyone else who owns an 8800, but people shouldn’t let their anger cloud their judgment. Anger, impatience, immaturity, whatever you want to call it. Vista ready means the card is ready for Vista. The card being the physical object you buy. Vista isn’t in stores, and it is at stores where most of the gamers will get their legal copies of Vista. Drivers come out for free, so there is no rush to publish them when they aren’t ready and the majority of individuals can’t get their hands on a legal copy of Vista. The copies released are meant for businesses, and businesses don’t always rush to buy new things, nor do they need 8800’s.
The card is definitely NOT a doorstop, it works wonders in the CURRENT Microsoft OS, Windows XP. It is the most powerful card out there, and thats what you get. When Vista is properly released, the drivers will be as well. Patience is a virtue. I think nVidia is doing a great job, they are the first company to supply DX10 cards, can ATI/AMD get you ready for the release of Vista yet? No, well at least not with DX10.
Juusu, that’s a load of crap… I buy a product, not just a card.. what you propose is equal to being sold a car, you pay for it and then the salesperson say, the ignition key wont be available for another 2 months.
Zerp u r absolutely right. I already replay to juusu, but the moderator didn’t post my replay to him, but I will say it AGAIN JUUSU U ARE AN IDIOT MORON….
Looks like Juusu has some common sense where the rest are children. RELAX people, I’m disappointed too but Vista isn’t even retail yet. If you jumped both feet first into Vista already before release or are using one of the warez releases you only have yourself to blame. I’m on dual boot with XP+Vista until I know everything I use works well with Vista, because video card drivers will NOT be your only concern.
But hey, if you can’t control yourself for 2-3 more weeks and prefer to type insults in caps you have more things to worry about than drivers. LOL
A lot of us out here are developers and invest thousands of dollars in Microsoft subscription, so when the RTM becomes available we normally have to jump on it to port old code or write patches and such. Meaning we have to live with this legal copy, bought and paid for, in order to prepare. A far as we’re concerned it is released to us.
Reason why the OS have both RC1 and RC2 is so that companies like NVidia can develop their drivers to be ready for the release. RCs are post beta and core functionality is there but minor tweaks and bugs fixes are handled. NVidia should have started their driver development sooner on this, much sooner.
Sure I could always run a dual boot to XP and vista both but why in the world should I have to, why duplicate all my settings and software. Having to deal with security and drive locks and other issues of the sort.
So I have basically waited since October and knowing how drivers turns out to be the first time, regardless how much a company like NVidia tells us they have really polished them up, we probably won’t have real good drivers until 3 months after first release, if then. Since they have not released beta drivers to the masses they also have not had the ability to receive well covered feedback to handle bugs and issues.
NVidia messed up but they are surely not going to admit it.
Just to play devil’s advocate, do any of your think that this might be a problem with Vista instead of NVIDIA? NVIDIA has always seemed to play it pretty straight with gamers (well most of the time) where as M$ has had some major problems with Vista. I’m wondering if bugs, etc in Vista are making it a pain to get a good stable driver created.
Food for thought.
Devil’s advocate you say. This is the term used to introduce a different viewpoint. Isn’t that somewhat wasted in this discussion considering NVIDIA have not yet released BEAT drivers. The only point of view these drivers have today is NVIDIA’s own systems and some of their close partners. Could also be hardware issues not just with GeForce 8800 cards but MoBos, RAM, Firmware, etc.
Sure could simply be a Vista issue by MS but how can they be sure unless they open up their testing and get definitive and broad test results from various systems and configurations.
I love NVIDIA products and have been with them since day one, but I’m not that naive to think that they wouldn’t drop the ball now and again and simply take the good ‘ol corporate out….”if we don’t say nothing, nothing is wrong”… Doesn’t mean I won’t buy more NVIDIA products but I do think means I’ve earned my right to voice my dissatisfaction.
“do any of your think that this might be a problem with Vista instead of NVIDIA?â€, question I have is, should we have to? Shouldn’t NVIDIA be willing to share this information so that we don’t have to guess what the problem might be, perhaps give us opportunity to help test and validate their drivers?
Secrecy or silence is not always the best policy. I understand it in the event you’re developing a new product or concept but definitely not while developing drivers for a product you have already released. This type of behavior does nothing but ensure frustration from the consumer
NVIDIA just released another driver update. “Supports GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS GPUs.” Unfortunately, it’s just for XP at this point.
NVIDIA Driver Download
Guess we’ll have to wait a little longer. sigh…
I’m having gaming withdrawals….
http://www.guru3d.com/
Has a link for both x86 and x64 Vista drivers for the 8800
Well My MS Action Pack turned up today with the retail version of vista, my AMD X2 4200 is ready to go, 2 x 160gb samsung drives in Raid 0, oh hang on I have an nVidia 8800 GTS erm……..
I have phoned nVidia as the firm I work for are a Microsoft Partner (hence my action pack), hopefully they call back, looks like I am trying the beta, beta 100 drivers off guru3d.com
Will let you know how it goes
Dave
I was quite annoyed when I installed Vista Home Premium and it did not recognize my graphics card (8800 GTX). I tried nvidia.com but there was nothing to be found there either. I’m really glad I found this site and the leaked driver.
Currently my system is running fine with the leaked drivers although I have yet to try any games.
I’m looking forward to getting some official drivers from nvidia soon
Today is the release of vista and nvidia stil has not released any drivers or comments about why not. I have dualboot and can live with XP for some more time. I am abit upset however that now even afetr release the drivers are still missing.
I have read all the comments above and its sad to say that there are still no Vista drivers release by Nvidia for the 8800 series. the most disappointing part is that all gaming pc’s at microsoft were tested with a single 8800 GTX. Nvidia claim to be the “leader in graphics technologies” ,and seen that microsoft were using 8800 GTX’s for their testing, they would in turn supply Nvidia with final copies of Vista and ample time to produce drivers.
I now have my retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, a brand new Core 2 extreme quad QX6700 cpu pc with 2 8800 GTX’s “which runs awesome in XP” ,but no driver for vista. So i’m hesitant to install my vista until the driver is out.
Good going Nvidia
If i manage to get drivers i’ll post a link
Laterz!
woah! speak of the devil. Nvidia released Vista drivers today and it is available on their site.
Well done Nvidia
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
Yay, nvidia released some beta drivers that are crap on release for single card 8800 and day after release some crappy sli beta drivers that barely give you access to the 2nd gpu such as fan control that doesn’t work on 2nd gpu. Rivatuner isn’t vista capatible. so basically i just had to reinstall xp so as to not burn up 1k US bucks in hardware. oh and i am not mad, just frustrated i think they should have rephraed the “vista Ready to “DX10 Ready” because nvidia as a company wasn’t even ready for vista.
Its 20th May now and I have just bought one of these ‘housebricks’ and I still cant get it to even be recognised in Vista.
I tried installing vista with my 8800 a while ago, didn’t work. Couldn’t get drivers to work (tried to install 32 bit, said I wasn’t running 32 bit os, tried 64 bit, said I wasn’t running 64 bit, tried XP drivers, said I wasn’t running XP. So apparently I was running an OS that doesn’t exist.)
I just went back to XP. I’ll probably try to install vista again one of these days when I forget all of the stress trying to get vista to work causes… until then… XP it is.
i’ve got the 8600M GS and the exact same thing happened to me