Fastest WS-class AGP card

[T2k]

I'm rolling out W7 at work and I just realized that some of our older 3D stations won't have proper W7 Nvidia drivers (running Quadro 4000 and 3000s).... I could SWEAR there were some W7 AGP drivers from Nvidia at some point (I even have some non-signed beta which installs but won't work after a restart) but now they all seem to be gone from their site.
I know that by deafult Nvidia is an greedy PoS company but is there any chance they have these somewhere stashed away...?
Right now the only solution would be Vista 64-bit drivers which are WDDM1.0 not WDDM1.1 and God knows what else would be broken under 3dsmax 2009/2010 or Fusion...

If there's no driver what is the best WS-level (I need 3dsmax performance drivers) AGP cards w/ W7 drivers out there? If they would cost me $$$$ then I will just skip the upgrades on these XP x64 machines until I get newer machines for these animators instead...

 

[DominionSeraph]

Have you asked Nvidia?

And perhaps my Google-fu is rusty, but the neither the Quadro 4000 nor 3000 are DirectX 10 products, so of what relevance is WDDM 1.1?

 

[CKTurbo128]

There are 7 64-bit drivers for the Quadro FX4000 listed (http://www.nvidia.com/object/Quadro_win7_winvista_64bit_191.66_whql.html), but as for the Quadro FX 3000, there are only Vista drivers (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_96.85_2.html). It's not too surprising, since nVIDIA dropped Vista driver updates for the GeForce FX series (which the FX 3000 is based on) a while back.

Regarding WDDM 1.1, since the Quadro FX 4000 & FX 3000 are DX 9 cards, it appears that you can only use WDDM 1.0. According to Wikipedia:

If the graphics hardware only supports Direct3D 9, or in the absence of a WDDM 1.1 driver, the Desktop Window Manager in Windows 7 uses the DirectX 10 Level 9 driver to render Aero.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model

 

[T2k]

Have you asked Nvidia?

And perhaps my Google-fu is rusty, but the neither the Quadro 4000 nor 3000 are DirectX 10 products, so of what relevance is WDDM 1.1?

Aside of maintaining a professional environment for high-end 3D stations (at home I don't care either but here I have to be sure artists can do their job), aside of DX10 HW being optional for WDDM1.1 (see W7 using D3D Level 9 for non-DX10 HW) I also want it for fully accelerated GDI/D2D etc.

BTW Vista had a nasty problem with WDDM1.0 (open 30-40 windows and watch your memory use raising into hundreds of megabytes range)...

 

[T2k]

There are 7 64-bit drivers for the Quadro FX4000 listed (http://www.nvidia.com/object/Quadro_win7_winvista_64bit_191.66_whql.html),

Thanks, I probably missed it... anyway, majority of them are 3000s so I cannot really do crap.

but as for the Quadro FX 3000, there are only Vista drivers (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_96.85_2.html). It's not too surprising, since nVIDIA dropped Vista driver updates for the GeForce FX series (which the FX 3000 is based on) a while back.

Regarding WDDM 1.1, since the Quadro FX 4000 & FX 3000 are DX 9 cards, it appears that you can only use WDDM 1.0. According to Wikipedia:

Well, if it were official W7 drivers then I wouldn't care but I cannot rely on some hacked-Vista-type of drivers, obviously.

Thanks for the replies, it seems my original hunch was close, I'll have to replace these machines sooner than I thought (w/ the exception of FX4000 ones.)

 

[Modelworks]

Using a quadro 4600 I really don't see much difference with the max performance drivers. I think I read that after this release they were not going to continue them because the directx performance of Max has become good enough to not need them.

I would look at replacing the machines when you can . Something with an AGP slot can't be too good a Max workstation compared with something like a quad core cpu.

 

[T2k]

FYI there's a difference between 3000 vs 4000 vs 4600...
Also we tend to go pretty high-rez (4K) so even a little bit of performance difference can turn into seconds...