Anyone got those third party Creative Vista drivers?

[Joe 90]

Read yesterday that someone had done Creative's job for them and released some fully functional Vista drivers.

Don't suppose anybody has them do they? I also read that Creative have closed the download down so didn't bother to look for it but would certainly appreciate some proper drivers for my Audigy 4! :)

[Garp]

Yup, Creative officially suck.

Oh gnoes, someone did what we can't be arsed to do, providing all the functionality our hardware was sold as possessing, under Vista.

[divine]

From a legal standpoint, Creative are entirely in the clear really, they never advertised any Audigy cards as being Vista compatible, never said they would support new OS's etc. and the guy was soliciting money for releasing hacked drivers that not only allowed Audigy cards to work but opened functionality on Vista that Creative didn't have licenses for and so could have been sued for, as the drivers appeared identical and identified themselves as Creative drivers.

Still, ethically, they suck balls.

The drivers themselves are all over the net, take your pick:

http://www.google.com/search?q=daniel_k+vista+drivers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

[Joe 90]

cheers dude. the news story i read didn't mension any of those issues with regards to any legality beyond the fact that this was unauthorised third party drivers.

what functionality do they open up in vista btw?

[divine]

I think it's something to do with Dolby Digital, not entirely sure. Whatever it is, Creative only licensed it for use within XP, not Vista, I think Auzentech own the Vista rights, and seeing as Auzentech buy X-Fi chips from Creative, they won't want to go stepping on their toes by blatantly allowing people to distribute modified drivers, on their own forums.

I think a lot of facts regarding the actual issues got lost behind the mass hysteria of Creative taking action against the bloke.

[Justsomebloke]

I read the posts well & understood there reasoning but my anger comes from them not resolving the issue themselves & stopping somebody actually helping end users.
What i would have accepted was him to be told to stop taking donations for them & creativbe sorting the legal issues out themselves.
They can't be responsible for some hacker enabling there software to do what it Wasn't designed for sort of thing.
I can't believe they haven't got it sorted themselves after all this time.

By the way my sound card is one of the issues i have preventing me installing Vista, I'm not Bitter though :evil:

[Zirax]

This sums up my annoyance very well with soundcards at the moment. I still maintain that my Videologic Sonicfury had the best music reproduction i've heard thus far in all the cards i've owned. This was based on a tweaked Turtle Beach card iirc.

Eventually this card stopped being supported and caused odd effects in games. I knew about Creatives shoddy drivers, so I went to an Auzentech card. This is great for DDL/DTS encoding but it doesn't support the latest EAX. So in games i'm losing effects.

This guy did some cracking work and had I found these drivers back when I upgraded I would have gotten a Creative card. The crippled drivers is just shameful. However Nvidia is doing exactly the same thing with 8800 cards, the last official drivers were in Nov/Dec. You have to mod the .inf files of the "new 9800" ones to get them to recognise the card. Total tosh when an 8800 = 9800

[Mark]

So much for nVidia being the 'friendlier' of the two (t'was the reason I got a 7300 for Linux use). The cynic in me would actually rate that as worse than Creative. At least Creative managed to screw the whole lot up - X-Fi included.

Given that I thought Forceware was unified I'd love to know what their excuse was (beyond the obvious, of course).

[Garp]

Still, ethically, they suck balls.

If Creative's driver support was generally good I wouldn't be too fussed, but their after market care is notoriously bad, either in providing advertised functionality, or fixing nasty bugs.

[Zirax]

So much for nVidia being the 'friendlier' of the two (t'was the reason I got a 7300 for Linux use). The cynic in me would actually rate that as worse than Creative. At least Creative managed to screw the whole lot up - X-Fi included.

Given that I thought Forceware was unified I'd love to know what their excuse was (beyond the obvious, of course).

Off topic, but to show Mark what they are doing.
8800gts 512 (G92 core)
ForceWare Release 169 WHQL
Version: 169.21
Release Date: 19.12.2007

9800 (G92 core) virtually the same damn card, gtx is just a clocked 8800gts. My 8800gts clocks faster than the 9800gtx
GeForce Release 174 WHQL
Version: 174.74
Release Date: 01.04.2008

So..... the reason for this bar pumping the new (same) cards? Change the .inf on the 9800 only drivers, shock horror, new drivers for my 8800. There are now rumours now that the new G200 core is iffy :/ I hope ATI can pull something out of the bag as it's looking very likely my next card will be an ATI. Really not impressed with the shocking support of the card.

[Mark]

I know. I'd already looked on nVidia's site (I'd have been screwed with my 7300 too). :)

[Toby]

I'm sure I read somewhere recently that NVidia drivers were responsible for more Vista error reports to MS than any other manufacturer's drivers!

As for Creative - I have to say that their latest Vista x64 drivers are working fine for me on my X-Fi. Is there anything to be gained by using these hacked ones or are they targetted mainly at Audigy users?

[Mark]

Given the number of graphics-related crashes I've had from my laptop (Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M), I can believe that statement. To be fair though I'm usually trying to run four VMs at once (>95% of 4GB RAM in use), use up all available CPU horsepower, melt the disk, and then Windows+Tab through the lot when it goes bang. ;D

[LeperousDust]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html

nVidia are pretty carp with the whole driver scene, you lot are alright on your desktops. They don't even support the 7400GO (http://www.nvidia.com/page/go_7300.html) on vista at all... They brought the card out and silently dropped it after selling it to a million and one laptop makers as a great mobility card capable of some decent graphical work... Its shocking tbh. Modding the inf's sorts my problems out with new vista drivers compared to the crap dell try and give away, but i shouldnt have to be doing this, and i wonder how many people there are stuck out there thinking their laptop is crap when its nVidia holding them back?