Nvidia Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Vista Drivers

Cocoshimmy writes "Nvidia is facing a class action lawsuit for false advertising by not providing stable working drivers for Vista. Nvidia has been accused of closing threads on Nvidia's forum and banning users that request a response from Nvidia, post that their Nvidia hardware does not work under Vista, post that Nvidia software does not work under Vista, post that Nvidia is guilty of false advertising, or threaten to sue Nvidia. Several disgruntled users have set up their own site for discussing their legal options."

Comments

Linux support

[Carnildo]

It seems that for once, there's a major piece of computer hardware with better driver support for Linux than for Windows.

Re:No NForce2 drivers

[Vellmont]

Just upgraded a machine, network & sound works, but when I scroll in Firefox, I get choppy audio playback in Winamp; in the process of trying to figure out if it's Winamp at fault or the audio driver.

Does your AGP bus run under the PCI to PCI bridge like my Nforce 1 does? If so that could easily be the problem. Nvidia decided to not write drivers for the AGP bus. To check look under Device manager, system devices and look for PCI Standard PCI to PCI Bridge.

I'm not terribly happy with Nvidia, but of course I don't have any basis to sue them either.

Not funny, but actually hapenned with 3DFx

[DrYak]

Just use the 'nv' driver. I'm sure someone can port it to Vista.

Someone moded you funny, but in fact, it does make sense.
Most Windows XP 32/64 and Vista 32 drivers for 3DFx Voodoo cards are partially done by backporting libglide3x and mesa3d from linux to windows (and thus also earned the privilege of being among the few graphic boards supported in XP64)

Although not actually Windows XP/Vista per se, the Linux USB stack has been also ported to ReactOS (opensource clone of Windows NT family) and Cromwell (opensource BIOS for XBox).

Therefore, some simple driver, with no 3D acceleration could be possibly done out of source available in linux.
(And if nVidia still doesn't fix the problem*, maybe some useful infos from the Nouveau project could be used to add the 3D functionnality. Having a complete opensource driver next to the commercial one isn't something unheard of in the Win32 world : Audigy sound cards have both official drivers from Creative and the kX project).

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* : Isn't completly unlikely. Their main audience, from which they earn most money are game players. Given the fact that almost all current games run on Windows XP + DX9, they'ld better spend more money in improving the WinXP support, to have a higher position in tests to sell more to gamers, rather than spend the same money on Vista, and thus risking to loose customer due to better Catalyst. I won't be surprised if, appart for their made-for-DX10 flagship products and business oriented cards, progress of Vista drivers are as slow as for linux, until games start to appear that target Vist DX10.

nvidia needs to fix these issues though

[DragonTHC]

I exchanged emails with nvidia PR man Ken Brown asking for an official response from nvidia about the Vista/nvidia DVD playback kludge with tv-out

basically, if you have TV-out enabled, like to watch a DVD on your HDTV over VIVO component cables, vista disables the dvd playback by breaking the overlay on any application/video stack. This, I confirmed, worked just fine on the same HDTV over VGA though.

Naturally, after thanking me for bringing the "issue" to their attention, Mr. Brown ignored my last email. Maybe now, Mr. Brown will take the time out of his busy day to respond.

we're waiting.

Nvidia and ATI both have power to kill DRM

[cheekyboy]

They both just have to BOYCOTT drivers for Vista, they are not required by law or contract to make drivers.

They can just say, NO, until we can do it OUR WAY.

Vista will sell like ZERO sales.... MS will force NO DRM on FUIA.

So who else is the choice besides these two for good 3d? nothing, absolutely nothing, matrox? no not really...

They hold the cards, either make buggy drivers, and MSs DX10 vista scheme will die, or just dont support vista, due
to less than 50m install base marketing idealogy.

MS holds no power, their DX10 + DRM is useless with no supported 3d cards apart from intels chipsets which are crap.