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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."
I'd post first, but my monitor's on the fritz. Stupid new OS.
I'm sure someone can port it to Vista. Tell me again about how Windows has better hardware support than Linux.
http://www.mhall119.com
Considering Microsoft is still in the process of patching Vista, including a major patch issued just as Vista went out the door, can we really stick all the blame on Nvidia?
Maybe someone at Microsoft should work on porting the Linux nvidia drivers to Vista. The work well on Linux, so maybe the drivers can be "reverse engineered" to work with Vista.
It seems that for once, there's a major piece of computer hardware with better driver support for Linux than for Windows.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
False advertising. Nvidia claimed that the cards were "Vista Ready."
While this class action seems to be about high-end graphics cards, which I have ever expectation that NVIDIA are working hard on drivers for, it's worth pointing out that they don't intend to support the NForce/2/3 motherboards with Windows Vista drivers.
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.
False advertising.
Nvidia claimed it would work, people spent time and money based on their promise.
Tort law is the ONLY avenue people have to defend themselves against the actions of a corporation.
It has nothing to do with entitlement.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
another good reason not to upgrade.
I bought a nVidia card yesterday (after the Vista launch) to upgrade my aging 9800. There's a huge fucking sticker on the box saying 'Windows Vista Ready', so, I expect it to work with Vista. (It does, but I swear my ATi 9800 ran Aero slightly faster).
At least they got this one right. That's what you get for upgrading: huge hole in your wallet, crappy OS and nvidia forum mods poking fun at you...
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
While I understand why these people are upset, why do people always feel the need to sue? It's in Nvidia's best interest to keep their customers happy, and as such will probably be releasing drivers that DO work very soon. If they don't, these customers will just go to one of their competitors the next time they're in the market for a high end video card.
Let your money do the talking and stop helping lawyers make money on stuff like this.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
It's that new Vista DRM feature, brought to you by the fine people at Nvidia:
Doesn't Really Matter (DRM) technology ensures that if you have a complaint, you can't visit an Nvidia or Microsoft website to lodge it.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
This has nothing to do with that.
They had stable vista drivers out for their older cards for somettime. This is specifically to do with a brand new card that has such a different archetecture that they had to redo the driver from the ground up and seriously underestimated the time it would take.
Marketing went ahead and sold the hardware as "The first vista ready video card" (DX 10 whee), engineering was not ready. It really is borderline plausible that they could be gulty of false advertising.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
I'm trying to think of any other product where you can buy it at time X, it suits your purpose and you're happy, then at time X+1 something changes, it no longer suits your purpose and that is somehow the manufacturer's fault. Honestly, if you bought your card to use with XP and it now doesn't work with Vista, don't you solely have the option of not using Vista? Or buying a new card? And if Nvidia are yet to sell any new cards that work with Vista, aint you just shit out of luck?
Now, of course, if Nvidia are claiming that their cards work with Vista and you're buying the card solely for use with Vista, and it doesn't work, take your card back for a full refund and go without.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The site is now down. Was this ever a serious threat to start a lawsuit?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I don't have any cooling problems with my Mac mini. As for games, I have a Nintendo DS and a Wii, where programmers can max out the hardware because everyone has the same system specs.
Must be your video card.
I feel your pain, brother. Can you believe on my Ubuntu install I had to click twice, once to download Automatix, and one to run it, and as an intermediate step, I was actually forced to click a check mark agreeing that the Nvidia driver would be installed?
Two clicks PLUS a checkmark, to get an Nvidia driver installed in, like, not just one second, or two seconds, but like SEVERAL seconds!
I'm telling you - this new-fangled Linux thing is going to take a lo-o-o-ong time to be functional as a desktop. Why, it will take YEARS for it to catch up to all the glitches and disturbances that Windows has to offer!
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).
----
* : 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.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Let's all go down to our local computer stores tomorrow, stand near the Microsoft Vista display and snigger quietly to ourselves whenever a Joe Average picks up a Vista box?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Windows Vista is an absolute disaster! From an engineer's point of view, the system is not built for security and stability, its just patched up with holes left for the recording industries. If a virus was to take advantage of these holes, then I doubt anything could stop it. Combined with all the out-of-the-box DRM and restrictions, the system is a lot more complicated for no apparent reason. For the NVIDIA drivers to work properly in Vista, there is a LOT of work and possible debugging due to Vista's chaos. Don't blame NVIDIA for this, its Microsoft's fault for the whole DRM fiasco. Now NVIDIA and ATI have to comply. ATI already told the masses that Microsoft's idea is crap and customers would be paying for this big bucks. Microsoft are no longer the leader/monopolist they once were. If you have an issue, don't buy Vista (like most of us), and get REAL high performance, or switch to an even better OS. The choice is there, suing and wining gets you nowhere.
Beta Sucks
Hello,
As an American, I have become somewhat desensitized to the various class action suits which seem to have become water and fodder for the legal industry, but this strikes me as being just sad.
Today is February 2, 2007 and Microsoft publicly released the consumer-oriented versions of Microsoft Windows Vista (the Home and Ultimate Editions) on January 30th, just three days ago. I participated in the testing of Windows Vista and installed the RTW version (Build 6000) on my primary desktop and laptop computers when it became available in November of last year. During testing, nVidia was good--not stellar, but not bad--about providing device drivers, and any problems I experienced during my testing with nVidia 6800GT and 7900GT-chipset based cards generally disappeared as new builds of the operating system and device drivers became available.
Right now, there is a huge installed base of nVidia GPUs out there (5200 and up are officially supported according to this) which people are using with Windows Vista and I am sure the percentage of those users with 8800-series GPUs out there hovers around a single percentage point or two.
Given that Microsoft Windows Vista is a brand new operating system in many respects, such as introducing a completely new video device driver model, and that, likewise, the 8800 series represents nVidia's own most complex product to date and so far has only a small market penetration, why is anyone alarmed (or even surprised) that WHQL-certified device drivers are not available yet which take advantage of all its features?
Also, while I would imagine that nVidia has a large staff of developers writing device drivers for their various bits and blogs of silicon, I would imagine the size of that staff is finite and that nVidia has to prioritize their work based on hard business decisions, such as the number of customers using a particular product with a particular operating system. Was it wrong of nVidia to focus their driver development efforts on satisfying the needs of the largest percentage of their installed base? Or should they have focused their efforts on their newest customers and satisfy the needs of thousands or tens of thousands instead of tens of millions?
What I do know is that, generally-speaking, nVidia has historically done a good job of providing decent support for their products and nothing I have seen or read in TFA has changed my opinion. Frankly, the number of nVidia owners who have 8800-series GPUs is a small majority. While these early adopters have paid a premium for their latest-and-greatest video cards and do deserve to be treated with respect by nVidia, I suspect that right now nVidia's engineers are working very hard on device drivers with support all the new features of their video cards and will probably have them available in a few days or a week or two.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
Let's see...
_ cost.html):
Why would nvidia's drivers work with Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Linux (32 and 64 bit), Solaris and FreeBSD - but not with Vista?
Do you think that nvidia forgot how to code video drivers? No, that doesn't seem logical.
Well what is different between Vista and all of the others?
How about all the stupid Vista DRM features? You know, the ones that ATI was bitching about when they said (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista
An ATI product manager responsible for producing the actual hardware says:
"These costs are passed on to the consumer"
"This cost is passed on to all consumers"
"This cost is passed on to purchasers of multimedia PC's"
"Costs are passed on to consumers"
"Costs are passed on to consumers, especially early adopters"
I'm sure that the lion's share of these costs are software related. More software cost means more code. More code means more opportunity for unexpected features (aka "bugs").
Don't blame nvidia. Blame Microsoft.
Text of website, as seen through .nyud.net:8090
_______
Ok...I've put the site up so that I don't get any annoying messages from the likes of Chris_S stating "We don't use NVidia's forums to collect legal information."
This site is intended to:
* Post your screen shots / box covers, etc...where Vista compatibility is stated outright or implied.
* Collect contact information about the class (done via your user account - email addresses are fine)
The issue is currently under review by one legal firm and a response is expected within three business days. I will attempt to work with two additional firms if necessary to have the case reviewed and will post findings here. In the event it is declined across the board, the site will be disabled.
Please be very careful about what you post - this isn't a place to rant - we've done that enough. This is a place to provide useful, constructive information conducive to supporting a legal action. While the content is not strictly moderated, spot reviews will be conducted at random and any posts contrary to this will be deleted - period. If the posts begin getting out of control, again, the site will be shut down.
Any repeated posts will be considered spam and the user will be a.) deleted from the site, b.) banned by IP address/block or c.) have their network operator contacted.
We've all come here for a reason - let's be constructive in our pursuit of this.
Admin's Note - Due to some of the posts being made, registration is being required in order to view the forums. I've already followed up with the ISPs corresponding to several of the abusive posts to have them blocked on the ISP side.
why is anyone alarmed (or even surprised) that WHQL-certified device drivers are not available yet which take advantage of all its features?
Because the manufacturer claimed that they were, and people made purchases based on that claim.
What would Lemmy do?
"Also, while I would imagine that nVidia has a large staff of developers writing device drivers for their various bits and blogs of silicon, I would imagine the size of that staff is finite and that nVidia has to prioritize their work based on hard business decisions, such as the number of customers using a particular product with a particular operating system. Was it wrong of nVidia to focus their driver development efforts on satisfying the needs of the largest percentage of their installed base? Or should they have focused their efforts on their newest customers and satisfy the needs of thousands or tens of thousands instead of tens of millions?"
IANAL, but I think this is entirely irrelevant to the current discussion. Nvidia advertised the Geforce 8 series as "the first to support DirectX 10". Vista is the only DirectX 10 capable operating system. If a user purchased a Geforce 8 product, expecting full support under Windows Vista, the first DirectX 10 OS, then that user conceivably has a false advertising claim. Their argument would be that Nvidia made claims about their new part, then failed to back up those claims with a fully functional product. If the level of DirectX 10 support Nvidia claimed was not reasonably attainable given their software engineering capabilities, then they really should not have made the claims in the first place.
"Given that Microsoft Windows Vista is a brand new operating system in many respects, such as introducing a completely new video device driver model, and that, likewise, the 8800 series represents nVidia's own most complex product to date and so far has only a small market penetration, why is anyone alarmed (or even surprised) that WHQL-certified device drivers are not available yet which take advantage of all its features?"
Because Nvidia claimed that they do support those features, and not that they will support those features. If you're a customer who bought an 8800 specifically for its advertised level of Vista support, then it would be both surprising and alarming indeed.
Yes, yes, we all know what happened. The mouths of Nvidia's marketers wrote a check that the collective asses of Nvidia's engineers could not hope to cash. While on a personal level you or I may sumpathize with the company, particularily with its beleaguered engineering team, on a legal level all of these excuses mean exactly nothing. At the same time, you and I may feel that the folks who were actually foolish enough to buy the first of anything, let alone two firsts (first DX10 card and first DX10 OS), deserve the full measure of the early adopter's curse they're suffering through now. But again, from a legal standpoint I don't think that has any bearing.
You suckers got pwned! Hopefully this teaches you a lesson on why drivers and documentation should be open.
I just did what I swore I would never do. I had to purchase a replacement laptop for my stepson, but it was impossible to find a decent one (decently fast with 1G of RAM or greater) that came without Vista, and all but impossible to find any that didn't come with a microsoft OS. I walked into best buy after trying 5 or 6 stores - only one place would sell me an Ubuntu laptop and theirs was an average of $2K, way out of my budget! I called many places and drove around to a number of stores. Future shop had a big vista banner hung outside their store.
It was a totally ludicrous situation. When I went into best buy, the staff were playing about with the shiny new desktops trying to figure out how stuff worked. Customers were asking what games or legacy would run on the new OS, and the staff sort of shrugged. They obviously had this dropped on them and didn't have a clue either. So I bought the laptop with Vista ( the kid is a windows lover and whines that his favorite game du jour doesn't work under Linux)
So I get the damned thing home, and try to connect through my wireless home LAN. (Linksys WRT54GS running the latest firmware) Guess what? Can't reach beyond my local network - something about TCP scaling problems with the primary DNS server!!! I never had this much trouble with basic networking under SuSE, Ubuntu, or XP. I was even able to get the kids PS2 and PSP networked with less trouble than this!
There has to be some sort of laws put in place to ensure betas (and that is exactly what this is) are not being rammed down everybody's throat like this. The whole situation is utterly insane. I am going to be up half the night trying to get the damned piece of crap connected to the internet.
My rights don't need management.
BEER RANT
.Net runtime in order to adjust your display card settings. Talk about software suckage.
That crappy little C# CATALYST program sucks. The ATI hardware box advertises: compatible with Windows 98/2000/XP. Make sure you download 32megs of worthless
Nvidia is not the only hardware company having problems with Vista. Creative is prepared (OpenAL), no one else is. AC97 soundcard? Buy a new one. S3 Graphics? Buy a new one. VIA graphics? Buy a new one.
My Nvidia drivers rock for Windows (98/2000/XP) and Linux. Thank you Nvidia. I'll buy your products again.
FOSS supporters need to recognize that Nvidia is not going to open up thier drivers as long as ATI is around. Am I the only Linux user left that remembers when we had no graphic card (Zero, Zilch, Nada) support or recognition?
If i recall correctly from my MSDN alerts/newletters, Microsoft changed the driver model twice during Vista development. Case closed.
End Beer Rant
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
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.
They're using their grammar skills there.
There are 2 problems:
1.Nvidia claimed that these cards were "vista ready" "Direct3D 10 ready" etc. Since they do not have usable vista drivers for these cards, those claims are a lie. The cards are not usable with Vista.
and more to the point 2.They refuse to acknowledge any of the problems. In fact, they are actively censoring mention of anything to do with these cards and vista.
I suspect that if they came out and said "yeah, we know these cards don't work so good on vista. We are working on it and will have drivers available for Vista as soon as we can" instead of trying to censor the discussion and deny that anyone would ever want to use an 8800 series card with Vista it would make people a lot happier.
Just thought I should warn a few of you about an annoying bug in the new "Windows Mail" (vista equivalent of Outlook Express).
.eml file (as opposed to OE where it all gets downloaded to a .dbx database).
.eml file (sounds ok so far)
In Mail each email is downloaded and saved to the computer as an
If you are sent a virus and have anti-virus software running the AV software will catch & delete the
The bitch of the situation is that Win-Mail will still show that email in your inbox, but you cannot remove it (or view it) because the file is missing.
So the only fix is to restore to a previous version, disable the AV, download the message & delete it.
This could be annoying/amusing.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
My Nvidia + Windows Vista experience has been essentially *perfect*.
;-)
I have two EVGA Nvidia 8800 GTX video cards with 768 megabytes of ram.
I purchased Windows Vista Ultimate at Midnight on Monday.
I installed the 64 bit version of Vista Wednesday morning (24 hours later) using beta drivers released by Nvidia earlier (found off of guru3d.com I believe).
I checked the Nvidia web site later that day and they had release drivers (one of my monitors was not being recognized for its full resolution capabilities with the beta drivers).
I downloaded and installed the release drivers from the Nvidia web site.
I have had no video problems at all. I am able to drive 3 monitors at once (two 30" 2560x1600 monitors and one rotated 1600x1200 monitor), play games at full 2560x1600 resolution with comparable screen rates as prior to Vista upgrade, use the nifty Aero Interface, etc.
I think if this goes to court, someone will ask - so when did Microsoft release Vista to the public? Ok, how long after that did you have to wait for your drivers? One day? Why are we here today?
Compared to time consuming frustration on getting all my other business applications running, the idea that someone is suing over nvidia drivers is comical to me. Too bad their web site is slashdotted as I would love to sign on there and call all of them morons. I wonder if they'll trim those posts.
NVIDIA isn't providing free software. They are providing a means to use their hardware. Unfortunately in this case, Vista users are stuck with a card that doesn't work as advertised because the drivers that provide the means for the card to work... don't work.
Have you tried watching videos in Quicktime or iTunes? That doesn't work for me, I just get garbage (VLC works great, though) and I'm not sure if it's Apple's fault or NVidia's. It's an annoying side effect of my "upgrade", though, and it would be nice to have it fixed.
Dry Remarks: MicroSoft
Deftness Rarely Manifests;
Detractors Reap Malice.
Don't Risk Mastication.
You missed the obvious one:
Donkey Rape, Motherfucker!
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I purchased Windows Vista Ultimate at Midnight on Monday. You need a life. Seriously.
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.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The site is italian but they also have english translation of most important information.
On this site, you need 2 things :
- The latest Amiga Merlin drivers : the latest stable drivers from the community with all necessary tools. (3DFX Tools, additional control panels, etc..)
- The latest SFFT alpha drivers : the latest experimental drivers based on the open-source glide, the open-source Mesa 3d (mesafx module), and a new DirectX driver that was rewritten by Super Furry Funny Thing.
The SFFT driver doesn't have a installer so either :
- you replace the "driver2k" directory of Amiga Merlin with SFFT alpha. And use its installer
- or, ou first install Amiga Merlin (to get the tool) and then subsequently manually install SFFT, using the graphics control pannel, the choose "update drivers", skip the automatic search, and use the "Have a disk" button to indicates where you've decompressed SFFT.
The DirectX 9 support in SFFT is rather new. Maybe some recent games won't work correctly. Look at SFFT's forum thread (there's also an english board on this site). Maybe some previous version doesn't have the bugs. Or you have to change the texuting options (3Tile vs 4Tile, Managed vs. UnManaged, etc...) and reboot. Or, maybe a new version will come shortly that fixes the problems.
The development is very active : you get a new version of SFFT every few weeks.
Currently Voodoo 5 has enough punch for most slow games (Point'n'Click dventure, strategy, turn-based RPG, board games, etc...) and the display is decent on most games that don't use lot of pixel-shader tricks. Most geometry tricks (T&L, vertex shaders, etc..) are emulated using SIMD technologies on the CPU.
Note that Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and Quake 4, all three of them work, albeit with drastically reduced quality for D3 and Q4.
Almost all old games that were around during the Voodoo era (DX7, Glide or OpenGL) work perfectly with this (Decent, old Quakes, most Unreals, p'n'click adventures like Longest Journey or Syberia).
Some games like D3 and Q4 may require patching. Other games ma require 3D Analyzer to force SIMD emulation of T&L / Vertex shader. Have a look on the english forums, and don't be afraid to ask questions.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
...the most obvious one:
Dangerous, Raging Monkeyboy
The view was horrible and the smell was even worse; Julie severely regretted becoming a proctologist.
eml from outlook is a binary format dumped from the MAPI data.. unless they've changed it with vista. It's not compliant with anything.
I used to get the occasional misconfigured exchange server send me it instead of the message and I'd have to reply 'what is this binary junk?' to get them to fix it.
A blue screen of death.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.