- Jan 20, 2004
- 3,752
- 0
- 0
ATI first with WHQL drivers for Windows 7
- Thread starter Sylvanas
- Start date
VirtualLarry
No Lifer
- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,570
- 10,205
- 126
It figures. They strip out the X1900 and X800 driver code, JUST BEFORE they release the Win7 drivers, so owners of prior graphics cards get totally screwed.
Fuck stupid ATI.
Fuck stupid ATI.
if you are going to buy windows 7, I'm sure you up on the newest tech and you would have replaced your circa 2005 GPU by now. A $50 or less hd3850 is better than anything of that generation and you could probbly sell your "old" harware to someone with an "old" OS for about that amount of money. Not that I don't think it is a little silly to exclude these cards but I think a "F#ck Stupid ATi" (btw should be AMD) reponse is a little overboard.
nitromullet
Diamond Member
- Jan 7, 2004
- 9,031
- 36
- 91
What exactly does "WHQL" for a release candidate mean? I thought the whole point of beta and RC were to try it out to find bugs and provide feedback.
cusideabelincoln
Diamond Member
- Aug 3, 2008
- 3,275
- 46
- 91
akugami
Diamond Member
- Feb 14, 2005
- 6,210
- 2,551
- 136
You must be new here. This is par for the course. If it was nVidia, Wreckage would be pimping this like Jesus himself WHQL certified it.
With that said, I'm going to agree with VirtualLarry. AMD/ATI seems to have pretty much thrown everyone who owns a perfectly fine older video card under the bus by stopping support for some video cards that are only three to five years old.
Now, that doesn't mean these cards won't work under Win7. Likely it'll be using Microsoft's drivers which will work but give very crappy performance and likely no video acceleration. This isn't just for the OS visual effects but for stuff like video decoding as well.
A lot of people have perfectly fine secondary or older systems that still have X800's and X1900's in them. There is no reason why someone would need to spend another $50 (or run through hoops buying and selling) on top of buying a new OS to enable accelerated video. Now, saying "F ATI" might be a tad overboard but at the same time, as in the case of a X1900, people spent $200+ for some of these cards only to have to buy new cards just to enable accelerated video.
They should have supported many of these older video cards since Vista and Win7 uses the same basic driver model. It shouldn't take much effort to enable full support for these older cards in Win7. They could have supported these video cards until the end of the year, which will fully cover Win7 and then cut off support. I think this would have been the optimal solution.
WHQL means jack. All it means is that is passes Microsoft's DTM tests. Doesn't mean that it isn't buggy or that it is better than a non-WHQL driver. It just means that it gives the system builder that uses that driver with other WHQL parts permission to paste the Windows Vista Ready on the computer.
what about the fact that ati went through the rounds of submitting their driver package for WHQL testing/certification? it has to count for something, at least along the lines that ati is striving for certification of their driver rather than leaving it not certified.
there are those that require WHQL certification to push their inventory out right? maybe its just me, but we all should be accounting for ATI's push for this cert as somewhat positive.
if i owned one of the said cards that has been cut out of this driver support i would probably be irritated. at the same time, i myself know the difficulties of maintaining older technologies in a system that gets the floor deployment day in and day out. sometimes it really slows the process down and creates other problems...
there are those that require WHQL certification to push their inventory out right? maybe its just me, but we all should be accounting for ATI's push for this cert as somewhat positive.
if i owned one of the said cards that has been cut out of this driver support i would probably be irritated. at the same time, i myself know the difficulties of maintaining older technologies in a system that gets the floor deployment day in and day out. sometimes it really slows the process down and creates other problems...
With DX11 around the corner, why should ATi still focus on outdated DX9 only hardware?
The focus now should be on DX10, DX10.1, and DX11 hardware.
Besides it's not like they give up on older cards DX9 cards, it's just they'll get quarterly WHQL driver updates. If you really in a rush with those older card you can just edit the INF files and most ATi cards will work with windows 7. Heck I made a Radeon Xpress 200 work with Windows 7 with aeros enabled.
nitromullet
Diamond Member
- Jan 7, 2004
- 9,031
- 36
- 91
Wasn't a troll post on my part, just curious as to what WHQL means for a RC candidate. I really don't even know what it means for a retail OS because quite frankly NVIDIA and ATI beta and release drivers are seldom very different in quality (they're never perfect, but generally work pretty well). The point was really more about how much stock can one put into a certification done by a company for a product that they themselves are not quite sure they have finished yet.
akugami
Diamond Member
- Feb 14, 2005
- 6,210
- 2,551
- 136
Joe Computer won't know how to do it and won't even know to google the issue.
Heck, I didn't even realize they were moving to a quarterly schedule for the older cards. I thought they were discontinuing new driver development for them altogether. Regardless, people spent good money for these cards and shouldn't be treated as second class citizens for computer and computer parts they bought likely within the last two years.
I know I had a Radeon X2400 and the latest ATI drivers don't support them. As a reasonably tech savvy person I find what ATI is doing will only confuse and frustrate its customers. If the tech savvy folks get confused, Joe Computer definitely will. And the tech savvy folks usually help Joe Computer make buying decisions. I'd say this is definitely a negative for ATI.
- Jan 20, 2004
- 3,752
- 0
- 0
Of course older cards will still be supported in windows 7, just there will be quarterly updates as opposed to monthly. There is no more performance improvements to be had for a 9600pro in Crysis so it makes sense for ATI to free up resources and put more developers towards optimizing the current and upcoming products. Nvidia have a similar legacy schedual for their GPUs.
Read
Read
ghost recon88
Diamond Member
- Oct 2, 2005
- 6,196
- 1
- 81
cusideabelincoln
Diamond Member
- Aug 3, 2008
- 3,275
- 46
- 91
Concerning those with non-DX10 hardware, even though ATI is slowing support for such cards it sounds like all DX9 hardware won't be taking advantage of some of Win7's tweaks as noted here.
I wasn't referring to your post. Like others have noted, Wreckage would be praising Nvidia if they had WHQL drivers and not calling it the "worst piece of marketing" he's ever seen. Saying something like "so and so is the worst blah blah blah" is pretty trollish.
I wasn't referring to your post. Like others have noted, Wreckage would be praising Nvidia if they had WHQL drivers and not calling it the "worst piece of marketing" he's ever seen. Saying something like "so and so is the worst blah blah blah" is pretty trollish.
taltamir
Lifer
- Mar 21, 2004
- 13,576
- 6
- 76
the whole point of windows 7 is that it is faster and lighter than windows XP and windows vista... this will address a lot of people who do not wish to upgrade from XP to vista due to older hardware. Not providing drivers completely torpedoes that plan.
Why should they continue to provide drivers? because it is expected the by customers, should they choose not to people can take their business elsewhere.
Besides which, they REMOVED portions of the driver that made older cards work, that is intentional sabotage to sell more cards, there is no reason to do so.
As for WHQL itself, utterly worthless, it actually causes harm, but allows MS to squeeze hardware vendors for a little more money.
Why should they continue to provide drivers? because it is expected the by customers, should they choose not to people can take their business elsewhere.
Besides which, they REMOVED portions of the driver that made older cards work, that is intentional sabotage to sell more cards, there is no reason to do so.
As for WHQL itself, utterly worthless, it actually causes harm, but allows MS to squeeze hardware vendors for a little more money.
nitromullet
Diamond Member
- Jan 7, 2004
- 9,031
- 36
- 91
This is true. NVIDIA support for Vista was sorely missed during beta, RC, and even RTM pre-retail; and was one of the big reasons I didn't bother running the beta for very long. Although, I don't think it's totally fair to compare the two since NVIDIA actually had DX10 hardware at that time and ATI didn't. ATI didn't have a DX10 card out until months after Vista launched to retail.
Actually this is not true. ATI drivers sucked at launch also. It's just that they did not suck nearly as much as NVIDIA's did.
TRENDING THREADS
-
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)- Started by DisEnchantment
- Replies: 24K
-
Discussion Intel Meteor, Arrow, Lunar & Panther Lakes Discussion Threads
- Started by Tigerick
- Replies: 21K
-
Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread- Started by TheF34RChannel
- Replies: 23K
-
-
Facebook
Twitter