Hmm, I won't keep any sides here, but try to point out a global observation:
Most of these crashes are driver related! So all the GPU manufacturers Intel, ATi, nVidia should get their friggin' game together and start releasing decent drivers that actually work! I'm sick of bad drivers!
I use nVidia at work and ATi at home: what can I say, the drivers are both crap! Most of the times you have to wait months before a new product gets decent drivers!
Good thing CPUs don't have "ever improving" drivers...

better idea ShinyG, ms should get their act togather and stop puting out os's in beta stage quility insted of waiting till its really ready.........

newtekie1Show me an ATi card that meets those requirements. There is one on newegg, a 2900XT. Vivo is dead. People aren't buying graphics cards for VIVO anymore. Not even the 9800 series has it. I don't know what you are going on about now.

He's probably referring to AVIVO codec support.

shame vista can't keepup with the speed of an Nvidia pc :roll:

Too bad for Nvidia... but I am not surprised.

NyteHe's probably referring to AVIVO codec support.

Probably, but then again that doesn't make much since considering the nVidia eqivalent(PureVideo) has worked with cards all the way back to the 6000 series.*shrug*

Oh well, one he doesn't know what he it talking about. Just one more person added to my ignored user list right next to Addsub.

can we get back on topic

newtekkie : you called me a fanboi before because i was defending an ATi product in a separate thread, meanwhile the SAME day i was advising a fellow forum member to purchase an Nvidia product over ATi, and have done so on other occasions.

i am in no way a fanboi.

i kinda have to agree with some of the others thoughts about you.

didnt purevideo or W/E have serious problems on the 6series cards in the begining? it took them quite a while to get it running properly did it not? and Nvidia has ALWAYS had problems with thier drivers, more so than ATi.

im out

:toast:

want to get back on topic there are a few things u gotta do.

1. give me a blueberry muffin ;)

2. add newtekie1 to your iggy list

3. give me another blueberry muffin :D

i will do # 1&3

Purevideo wasn't free at first and has improved over time. It rivals AVIVO which wasn't out until the X1K series.

I'm sure I didn't call you a fanboy directly. If so I appologize.

intel igentnewtekkie : you called me a fanboi before because i was defending an ATi product in a separate thread, meanwhile the SAME day i was advising a fellow forum member to purchase an Nvidia product over ATi, and have done so on other occasions.

i am in no way a fanboi.

i kinda have to agree with some of the others thoughts about you.

didnt purevideo or W/E have serious problems on the 6series cards in the begining? it took them quite a while to get it running properly did it not? and Nvidia has ALWAYS had problems with thier driverers, more so than ATi.

:toast:

pure video till th 8 seirse didnt work correctly, i have had 6 and 7 seirse cards, and if u could get it to work it onlyworked partialy, and poorly even then, nvidia acctualy for a while droped driver support for it because it was effectivly unuseable.

i dont agree about nvidia alwase having more problens, now if you go by alwase meaning fx line and newer i agree, but the gf4 and lower had better drivers then the rage/rage128/radeon cards, till amd went to catlyist drivers their driver support was shit, its why i use to be a huge nvidiot, we live and learn.

and check pricewatch or froogle u can get ViVo 2400 and 2600 ati cards for a decent price, as to avivo, its alwase worked better then purevideo, and hell all the way back to the early DVD days ati has had hardware mpeg2 acceleration/decoding, nvidia didnt add that till the 5 cards and it was hopelessly broken on them, 6 and 7 pure video was a dog, and on the 8400-8600 its SLOWER with lower IQ then avivo on a x1300se(64bit 1300) let alone a hd2400-2600 where the acceleration can pull most of the decoding onto the videocard for h264,divx/xvid,mpeg2,and WMV(and even some other codecs if the player supports it)

newtekie1And nVidia has twice the number of graphics card in Vista machines compared to ATi, and I would guess the highest market share of graphics cards in Vista machines.

A more accurate measure would be the number of crashes per user. These numbers don't tell use that nVidia's drivers are bad in any way, or even that ATi's drivers are better than nVidia and Intel's. Though I'm sure it will be used by the fanboys to try and make it seem that way.

Let me just set up an example for you all:

Say we have 100,000 Vista users that participated in the survey.

Lets say 60,000 use nVidia cards, 20,000 use ATi cards, and 20,000 use Intel cards.

Using their percentages.

17,900 people experienced crashes because of nVidia. That means 35.8% of nVidia users had crashes caused by nVidia.

9,300 people experienced crashes because of AMD(ATi). That means 46.5% of ATi users had crashes caused by AMD.

8,800 people experienced crashes because of Intel. That means 44% of Intel users had crashes caused by Intel.

That paints a very different picture doesn't it? Now we don't actually know the numbers of actual users of each card that were included in the survery, I just made those numbers up to show that the real picture depends on those numbers. And because they are not presented to us, we can't accurately say that nVidia's drivers are any worse than the others, even if the article tries to claim that. Without that needed information that conclusion can't be made or justified.

You have a good point there, but it's 28,8% of crashes due to Nvidia and applied to your logic 48% of Nvidia users have experienced crashes.

Probably Nvidia users are having more crashes and problems in general, but we don't have to blame Nvidia drivers for this, but users. There are many factors, but it's mostly user's fault. The factors are these:

- Nvidia releases beta drivers almost every week.
- Beta drivers are usually model specific, yet people will use them with a tweak/hack allowing them to run a card that is not supported.
- There are lots of different Nvidia cards that generate a large base of model specific beta drivers. The bigger driver number, yields a bigger error number. More cards > more different card specific drivers > people using more drivers (that they shouldn't use) > more crashes. 2 + 2 = 4

Those three factors are what are makig Nvidia users to have more crashes. I have never had a driver related crash, not with Nvidia and only 1 with Ati long long time ago, in the days of 9600pro. And it's easy, to get that stability this is what I do:

-I never use drivers that are not suposed to be for my card. If they are not for your card, they didn't include any change/fix for your card, so that driver and the one you previously had are the same for you, or maybe they screwed up something for your card in order to fix something in the card that the driver is aimed at.
- I only use beta drivers if they perform better than the old ones. I try the new ones on the games that I play more often as well as in newer ones. If there isn't any significant difference, let's say less than 2%, I go back to the old ones. This is the key, since most people, at least the ones that I know, will keep the newer drivers until they find something wrong. That's an error.

I'm still using 169.25 and I have zero problems with any game. There isn't any reason to move to newer drivers on this card, but people will use the latest ones, just for the sake of having the latest ones. It's always the same with everything... :)

that not good...for n

BumbRushpure video till th 8 seirse didnt work correctly, i have had 6 and 7 seirse cards, and if u could get it to work it onlyworked partialy, and poorly even then, nvidia acctualy for a while droped driver support for it because it was effectivly unuseable.

i dont agree about nvidia alwase having more problens, now if you go by alwase meaning fx line and newer i agree, but the gf4 and lower had better drivers then the rage/rage128/radeon cards, till amd went to catlyist drivers their driver support was shit, its why i use to be a huge nvidiot, we live and learn.

and check pricewatch or froogle u can get ViVo 2400 and 2600 ati cards for a decent price, as to avivo, its alwase worked better then purevideo, and hell all the way back to the early DVD days ati has had hardware mpeg2 acceleration/decoding, nvidia didnt add that till the 5 cards and it was hopelessly broken on them, 6 and 7 pure video was a dog, and on the 8400-8600 its SLOWER with lower IQ then avivo on a x1300se(64bit 1300) let alone a hd2400-2600 where the acceleration can pull most of the decoding onto the videocard for h264,divx/xvid,mpeg2,and WMV(and even some other codecs if the player supports it)

I have had 6800 GT and 7900 GTX and PureVideo worked well. At least I could see a difference.
Anyway I have to say that video playback is not an strong argument for me. I use the standalone DVD player for that and it does a lot better than any video card, but I have recomended Ati cards to my family and friends in the past though, because according to reviews video playback was better. I couldn't see any difference, but still.

Ok guys, please stop the arguments and get the thread back on topic.

The only PC that I have Vista installed on would be my laptop... and that was because I had no other choice for OS. I did manage to install XP and now can choose XP or Vista when I boot up. It has the X1200 ATI integrated graphics.

Under XP, everything has been great... no problems at all. Vista has been crash free as well, but I hardly EVER boot into it. Even with the extra 1 GB or memory that I added, Vista is just to slow, and games seem to take a hit on performance.

As for the fanboys... I do not mind hearing what they have to say. As long as they keep it technical and not personal, then I am happy. :)

Hidden inside this article is a subliminal message which says, "Unleash your inner troll."

this does not surprise me at all, every nvidia card I have ever owned had artifacting/crashing issues.

No surprise. If all of these guys are having issues, youd have to think they have a common denominator. Vista. So I think the problem starts there. Its hard to make something work and work properly on a piece of garbage...

All you guys arguing over video cards I musta missed where it said the video was the problem?

Back on topic. ;)

Don't know why we are focusing so much on graphics cards when the article doesn't say anything.

As yogurt_21 said, most probably the problem is in the chipsets. And Nvidia has definately a lot more chipsets out there than AMD/Ati, and by a great margin. In chipsets both Nvidia and Ati have a lot less than Intel, but there are some factors that help Intel:

- They make the CPUs too, so it's normal that they have less problems. According to this same argument, it's true that AMD is not doing very well, but...

- among enthusiasts, Nvidia and Ati are more popular than on the mainstream market. And I would bet that it's on enthusiasts or semi-enthusiasts* were most of the crashes happened.

*those that will try to do what enthusiasts do without a clue of what they are doing.

DarkMatterYou have a good point there, but it's 28,8% of crashes due to Nvidia and applied to your logic 48% of Nvidia users have experienced crashes.

Probably Nvidia users are having more crashes and problems in general, but we don't have to blame Nvidia drivers for this, but users. There are many factors, but it's mostly user's fault. The factors are these:

- Nvidia releases beta drivers almost every week.
- Beta drivers are usually model specific, yet people will use them with a tweak/hack allowing them to run a card that is not supported.
- There are lots of different Nvidia cards that generate a large base of model specific beta drivers. The bigger driver number, yields a bigger error number. More cards > more different card specific drivers > people using more drivers (that they shouldn't use) > more crashes. 2 + 2 = 4

Those three factors are what are makig Nvidia users to have more crashes. I have never had a driver related crash, not with Nvidia and only 1 with Ati long long time ago, in the days of 9600pro. And it's easy, to get that stability this is what I do:

-I never use drivers that are not suposed to be for my card. If they are not for your card, they didn't include any change/fix for your card, so that driver and the one you previously had are the same for you, or maybe they screwed up something for your card in order to fix something in the card that the driver is aimed at.
- I only use beta drivers if they perform better than the old ones. I try the new ones on the games that I play more often as well as in newer ones. If there isn't any significant difference, let's say less than 2%, I go back to the old ones. This is the key, since most people, at least the ones that I know, will keep the newer drivers until they find something wrong. That's an error.

I'm still using 169.25 and I have zero problems with any game. There isn't any reason to move to newer drivers on this card, but people will use the latest ones, just for the sake of having the latest ones. It's always the same with everything... :)

mostly true, but you also gotta remmber that the g92 used on the 9800 and g94 on the 9600 are just versions of the same chip the new 8800gs/gt/gts use, and as such you CAN see a bennifit, from using them, i have been using the 174.16 drivers for a week now, and i got a perf boost with AA from them, nvidia is purly targeting their newist cards only because they want to keep the margin between them and the 8800's as high as possable till most ofthe reviews are out so that people will rush out and spent 600bucks on a new 9800 card......blah......

and what about cross-breed systems?

how many people are running an Intel based motherboard, with an ATI southbridge and running an nVidia GPU?

how many users have had multiple crashes related to each individual hardware component, and do we factor out any known conflicting issues that tend to cause crashes in XP?

BumbRushmostly true, but you also gotta remmber that the g92 used on the 9800 and g94 on the 9600 are just versions of the same chip the new 8800gs/gt/gts use, and as such you CAN see a bennifit, from using them, i have been using the 174.16 drivers for a week now, and i got a perf boost with AA from them, nvidia is purly targeting their newist cards only because they want to keep the margin between them and the 8800's as high as possable till most ofthe reviews are out so that people will rush out and spent 600bucks on a new 9800 card......blah......

Agreed, sometimes they can help, but at the same time they can hurt more than what they help and you can't see it on the surface.
GForce 9000 series are based on G92, just as 8800 GS/GT/GTS. "Based" is the key word. I have read somewhere that 9 series could have some minor tweaks in the internal units, that would lead to 9600 GT performing so well compared to 8800 GT and 9800 GX2 being as fast (sometimes faster) than 8800 GTS SLI despite it's 10% slower core. Those internal changes are indeed more hazardous than what you could first think. Anyway a simple tweak to balance the computing power to different SP numbers could lead to a crash. Most crashes are related to resource management not done well.

imperialreignand what about cross-breed systems?

how many people are running an Intel based motherboard, with an ATI southbridge and running an nVidia GPU?

how many users have had multiple crashes related to each individual hardware component, and do we factor out any known conflicting issues that tend to cause crashes in XP?

That's also part of what I wanted to point out.

Intel only does Intel-Intel (chipset-cpu), Ati does Ati-Intel (very few really, but still) and Ati-Amd, and Nvidia does also Amd and Intel with the added factor that even nowadays there are more Nvidia-Amd than Ati-Amd.