Nvidia Releases 181.71 Windows 7 Drivers

[ryanlord]

NVIDIA shows once again that they are on the ball with the Windows 7 beta, as they have just released new 32-bit and 64-bit NVIDIA Windows 7 beta drivers.

Nvidia Releases 181.71 Windows 7 Drivers : Read more

 

[hop]

Nice!

 

[bustapr]

Like most of the time, a head start over ati, but ati will throw some way better drivers when the time comes, and the slowly crumbling nvidia(lawsuits and cheap hd4800) will fall lower and lower.

ATI rocks!!!!!

 

[FrustratedRhino]

Now if more companies did this for vista 90% of the REAL complaints of Vista wouldn't exist.

 

[alvine]

ati won this time with their good price vs performawnce ratio. im sorry but nvidia failed this time and idc how big fanboy of nvidia or ati you are but the red team won this time, and we as customes benefit the most ($150 4870 pl0x!)

 

[thedipper]

ATI has had Windows7 drivers available for months now.

 

[scrumhalf]

[citation][nom]bustapr[/nom]Like most of the time, a head start over ati, but ati will throw some way better drivers when the time comes, and the slowly crumbling nvidia(lawsuits and cheap hd4800) will fall lower and lower.ATI rocks!!!!![/citation]
Fanboyism is getting old. History has shown that Nvidia usually has better drivers. By the time ATI writes better drivers, Nvidia will have updated theirs as well. Just because you have and love ATI cards (and they are great cards), doesn't mean you should wish for Nvidia to fail. All that will do is kill competition and stagnate progress. Please keep opinions out of factual matters.

 

[scrumhalf]

[citation][nom]thedipper[/nom]ATI has had Windows7 drivers available for months now.[/citation]
So has Nvidia. Yay for everybody.

 

[B-Unit]

I was using the latest 181 release for Vista on the Win7 beta with no issues, but then Windows Update replaced them with 17x.xx something.

O well, now I have legit 181 drivers.

 

[thedipper]

[citation][nom]scrumhalf[/nom]So has Nvidia. Yay for everybody.[/citation]

Right, so why the hell is this news?

Toms is a great place, I get my tech news from here, but news posts like this make me wonder why I even bother. You don't see Toms licking on ATI's bum every time they update their Win7 drivers.

 

[jaragon13]

[citation][nom]thedipper[/nom]Right, so why the hell is this news? Toms is a great place, I get my tech news from here, but news posts like this make me wonder why I even bother. You don't see Toms licking on ATI's bum every time they update their Win7 drivers.[/citation]
Because these are official Windows 7 drivers,not Vista drivers that "work" with Windows 7 aswell.

Assclown.

 

[magicandy]

[citation][nom]jaragon13[/nom]Because these are official Windows 7 drivers,not Vista drivers that "work" with Windows 7 aswell.Assclown.[/citation]

That still doesn't change the fact that Tom's caters to nvidia at every chance.....

 

[grieve]

NICE!

Now we just need Windows 7 to be released

 

[ag3nt smith]

Hooray! Windows 7 drivers! Perhaps nVidia should help the Vista people out and release updated drivers for us now. But in my raw opinion I think Vista and 7 should both be released in 64-bit ONLY. The end of 32-bit OSes, now we won't have to worry about memory restrictions for quite some time (128GB anyone?)

 

[thedipper]

[citation][nom]magicandy[/nom]That still doesn't change the fact that Tom's caters to nvidia at every chance.....[/citation]
You call me an assclown, but the ATI drivers, released months ago, are also Win7 drivers.

WDDM1.1, all the good bits.

 

[thedipper]

Sorry, quoted the wrong person.

 

[radiowars]

[citation][nom]magicandy[/nom]That still doesn't change the fact that Tom's caters to nvidia at every chance.....[/citation]
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964.html
Say what?

 

[ravenware]

[citation][nom]bustapr[/nom]Like most of the time, a head start over ati, but ati will throw some way better drivers when the time comes, and the slowly crumbling nvidia(lawsuits and cheap hd4800) will fall lower and lower.ATI rocks!!!!![/citation]

Not sure that they need em. I used the vista drivers on win7 beta with my 4870 with no problems, while running crysis at max detail and fear2.

 

[gorgerax]

These new drivers solved a problem I was having under Win 7. The fan on my old 7600GT was running full tilt ALL the TIME! No more!

 

[kato128]

Can't say there's been much ati/amd news aside from the new phenom 2's so its not like Tom's isn't reporting all the news. There just isn't any from the red corner.

 

[Guest]

is it driver only for desktop models? coz my notebook with GeForce 8400M GS refused to install.

 

[Guest]

is it driver only for desktop models? coz my notebook with GeForce 8400M GS refused to install.

 

[nekatreven]

[citation][nom]scrumhalf[/nom]So has Nvidia. Yay for everybody.[/citation]

Yea, but I'd argue that the only reason Nvidia is able to do this is that they haven't released any new hardware in so long. Its much easier to rework and certify the same drivers for the same crap you've been churning out for months than it is to rework and certify new drivers for new hardware.

 

[Guest]

I have an old 8800GTS 640MB and have been having nothing but problems with many Nvidia driver releases. Crashes in Vista have gone from fairly common to rare occurrence in Vista thankfully. But they still happen. I had to wait... over a year for things to be comfortably stable?

The Windows 7 Drivers seem to do well enough for the desktop, but fall short in popular games:

Fallout 3 crashes in the outside world.

WaW crashes.

COD4 works occasionally until it randomly encounters a corruption issue where the screen is garbled beyond recognition. Only remedy is a system restart to get a usable game. Sometimes objects and walls randomly disappear.

Haven't tested Mass Effect yet, but I don't expect much better.

Meanwhile my friends who have ATI cards report games work fine in Windows 7 and observe that they've experienced few if any graphics related crashes in their system's lifetime.

Nvidia always makes technically superior hardware to ATI, but at least over the past two years I've had with Nvidia their drivers are not comparable. The Vista crash data seems to corroborate this, otherwise I would guess it is merely my particular card.

As it stands, Nvidia is losing on two fronts and only winning on one.

Price/Performance: ATI

Driver Quality: ATI

Performance: Nvidia

Pricing is a different arena than this issue, but nonetheless it gives ATI further overall advantage. I don't care if I can get a higher FPS if the game crashes. Along with their refusal to implement DirectX 10.1 (Why?) I find myself fed up with them. I hope for their sake the Ion platform is a huge success in the burgeoning netbook market because I can only see ATI doing better in the desktop market.