I’ve been pretty happy with Vista – I’ve played by it’s rules and I haven’t gotten hurt. Well at least not as much as I’d like to have been. But one thing is completely puzzling me: what happened to NVidia? You would think that when you stamp a driver with “WHQL” (Windows Hardware Quality Labs certified) that, well, it works. Interestingly enough – it sort of works, but not if you want it to play video games (which is why you have the card right?) or boost your frame rate to something above 20. Why do I have a video card at all is what i’m wonderin!
Whenever my maching wakes from Sleep mode, my screen (my monitor is a 24″ Dell Flatty) is a nice melange of jagged lines. Also, when I play WoW (which I really shouldn’t be doing anyway) and the graphics driver resets the display – same thing. The only thing I can do is power cycle the box (in some cases it stops responding).
Curiously, the only driver that will work is the beta driver (WDDM Microsoft driver, 7.14.10.9686) – with that at least I can get my WoW on (with a nice amount of screen-tearing).
I’ve been patiently waiting and reading a lot about Vista and NVidia, and the negligent lack of driver support that Vista’s getting from NVidia and I have to give that a giant red WTF. Paid a lot of money for this card and I have to think that NVidia has a nice copy of Vista over there that they sleep-cycle, and also that they play the world’s most favorite video game on…
Anyway- I stumbled on this post on Channel 9 and it really helped a lot. I’ll cut to the chase here:
NVidia’s “RTM” driver for it’s ForceWare cards is currently 97.46 (released 1/5) and if you have a GeForce card, you will get this driver during AutoUpdate if you have that option turned on. It will work your machine so get rid of it. There is some sort of issue with power settings and the video card; I have no idea what that could be (I wish I was Scott Hanselman then I could figure it out).
NVidia has another driver coming out, 100.59 and it’s been “leaked” evidently but is also solving many of these issues. This is not a production driver (well, they haven’t released it that is) but it has solved all my problems. My FPS still sucks for some reason, but my machine’s a ton more stable now and the card works like it should. The power settings are still giving me a problem (I set my machine to sleep after 60 mins of inactivity) – but resetting my power settings to “High Performance” seems to have stemmed that, for now.
Hopefully this will get resolved soon – but if you’re having issues like me, here’s your answer (I hope).
