Culver City (CA) - A group of Nvidia customers are upset over the company’s lack of final Vista drivers and are now threatening a class action lawsuit against the graphics card giant. The customers claim that the cards don’t adequately work with Microsoft’s newest operating system and feel that the company isn’t being truthful about being "Vista Ready". One customer, who we can only name as ’Nathan’, has even created a website nvidiaclassaction.org and is seeking legal help for a possible lawsuit.

On Nvidia’s own forums, several users complained about video problems inside of Vista and started a massive message thread that has since been locked. Many of the complaints came from owners of Nvidia’s 8800 series of video cards and the customers feel misled about Vista and DirectX10 compatibility. Nvidia’s forum administrators say the thread was locked because of flaming and several users were banned, but Nathan sees things differently.

He tells TG Daily, "I suppose this is true to some extent, but I wouldn’t characterize posts asking for a response, a date or action to be taken as flaming." Forum administrators admonished forum goers to keep things civilized and have started another thread, which has already reached 68 pages.

Nvidia has been trying to make Vista compatible drivers and on January 31st 2007 released version 100.59 of its ForceWare graphics drivers. While some users have had no problems running the driver with Vista other people haven’t been so lucky. Of course, every new operating system brings its share of problems and the compatibility issue could just as well be a fault with Microsoft. Nvidia clearly states the driver is in beta and this is upsetting customers who want a final, problem-free, solution.

Nathan feels that Nvidia should face some penalties because customers are losing money by buying a card that doesn’t work fully or even crashes under Vista. To bolster his claims, Nathan hashed together his nvidiaclassaction.org website and is now asking for people to post retail box pictures and screen captures of websites promising Vista compatibility. The website was set up in less than half an hour and according to Nathan was done on the "spur of the moment".

Unlike the forums on Nvidia’s website, Nathan wants a decent and civil discussion about "real" damages that come from the alleged incompatibilities. "The site’s intent is gathering information that could be used to justify our position - it’s not a place to vent," Nathan said. He adds that some people have wasted hundreds of dollars on a card that simply doesn’t work.

Of course lawsuits are expensive and long battles, something that both sides would probably want to avoid. Nathan told TG Daily that he would drop the entire thing if Nvidia would simply apologize and give a date for the final driver release. He believes the company should also throw in some stuff to show that it cares adding, "Some token gesture would be nice - I don’t know... send us free T-Shirts, a game, rebate coupon... something."

Nathan gave TG Daily this statement,

"People are tired of getting banned left and right from NVidia’s forums simply because they express that they feel that some action should be taken other than waiting around for the next beta driver (which they’ve done ad nauseum at the behest of the moderators) that may or may not work - they feel that they were promised something that simply wasn’t delivered. The goal of the site is to allow those people a place to express their frustration in a reasonable and constructive manner by providing their reasoning behind why they felt they were mislead and hopefully it will lead to something being done one way or another. I and many others would love a driver that allows us to use the card on Vista to the full extent of its capabilities rather than following one of the NVidia forums moderator’s suggestions that there’s no reason to upgrade to Vista."

Nvidia representatives could not be reached for comment on the possible lawsuit or the website.