8800 GTS/Vista 64: Use Nvidia or after-market drivers?

Sainty · Post by **Sainty** » Sun Aug 26, 2007 8:55 pm

I'm going to be making the delve very shortly to Vista 64. There are always those that swear by vendor supplied drivers and those who prefer after-market ones like Omega drivers. For those of you who have used Vista 64 and have Nvidia cards, which do you prefer? The standard Nvidia ones or after-market? Based upon your personal experiences, do one set offer an advantage/disadvantage over another?

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Mon Aug 27, 2007 12:53 am

I haven't used vista 64, but in XP's and 32-bit vista hacked drivers do bring things that are missing from official releases or make cards faster. There are very good forum with a lot's of experts in: http://www.guru3d.com/. I've got a lot help from there in my VGA-card related troubles and questions. You also do get all vga-card drivers there, fro, archived nVidia and Ati drivers to brand new and all the thrid party drivers.

However with Vista 64, I will pray success for you. As so far all peoples who have used 64-bit windows ( I know 9 of them ) Have eventually cursed Vista 64's drivers and problems there are, which are not present in 32-bit.

Sainty · Post by **Sainty** » Mon Aug 27, 2007 1:35 am

Let's hope that ten is a lucky number then!

RAM is so cheap these days that I couldn't help but getting 4gigs of DD2. As I"m sure you're aware, 32-bit systems won't cut the mustard with high quantities of memory. Thanks for the link. It will be bookmarked once Vista *hopefully* boots up.

nzone · Post by **nzone** » Mon Aug 27, 2007 9:51 am

I am running Windows Vista 64-bit Ultimate Edition. I use nVidia driver for my 8800 GTX. I have never had any drivers related issue using Vista (32 or 64 bit). I think the Vista (32 or 64 bit) issues are blown out of proportion and some even go to extend to exaggerate it. Here are some of the reasons some people said (Vista sucks, Vista blows, and etc):

1. Can't overclock video card
2. Can't install one of their favorite game
3. Extreme overclocking and system becomes unstable
4. Drop ## FPS (not exact but some thing like along the line)
5. Use of drivers not being certified.
6. etc...

All of these generated to Vista sucks, blows, craps.... if you use certified drivers you'll be fine!

My other experience scenarios:

1. Network is down; they couldn't access their e-mails
(they will say email server sucks! change to something else)
2. When web-based application doesn't work
(they will say it's the database)

It's so typical and users always finger point to the obvious (so they think) one.

Sainty · Post by **Sainty** » Mon Aug 27, 2007 10:21 am

That is true how sometimes issues can be blown out of proportion to their actual conditions. It is just one of those things where you don't want to shell out bucu bucks to MS if the product isn't up to snuff. Hopefully everything will be pulled off smoothly.

klankymen · Post by **klankymen** » Mon Aug 27, 2007 4:52 pm

nzone wrote: I think the Vista (32 or 64 bit) issues are blown out of proportion

I too use vista and think the Vista issues are blown out of proportion. But it's not really a Vista issue we're talking about, but rather a 64-bit issue.
I've used xp32, xp64 and Vista32, and I'll say that xp64 was by far the worst, with so many drivers simply not working, and sometimes no replacement drivers available.
I doubt there are any new drivers for 64 bit simply based on the release of Vista64, since it seems that most people use Vista32.
So, it depends on the hardware and software you want to use - YMMV

nzone · Post by **nzone** » Tue Aug 28, 2007 7:49 am

I think, IMO, that it is safe to assume all latest hardware will come with 32/64 bit vista driver. All hardware released before Vista may or may not have the driver for either vista (32 or 64 bit); it depends on the vendors discretions. If one has legacy hardware (before vista released) he or she must contact their appropriate hardware vendor technical support before jumping straight to install vista (32 or 64 bit). Also it is up to customers to check what they buy (new hardware) whether it will work on what they have. I think Microsoft has vista upgrade hardware/software validation utility to check your current system before upgrade.

This is just example of what I have and they work on 64-bit flawlessly.

Hardware:
HP Scanjet 4600
Canon PIXMA 5000 printer
Sony Digital camera
Canon Digital camera G2 (no driver for either 32 or 64 bit vista; use card reader as workaround)
ATI TV tuner 550 and ATI TV HD
nVidia 8800GTX
Creative ExtremeMusic Soundcard
All onboard devices for 680i motherboard
Sony cardreader
Microsoft Xbox360 controller for PC
Logitech keyboard and mouse