Question ITT I complain about Intel driver support

[PingSpike]

If you want to use Coffeelake Intel UHD 630, you're stuck with Windows 10 if you want to use Windows. Nevermind that Windows 7 and 8.1 are still supported versions...no drivers were ever released for them. Coffeelake wasn't even when they started doing this, I think they released a kabylake 7 beta driver and then pretended it didn't exist. Its actually pretty shocking how lame they are on support here.

AMD has been getting worse over the years, dropping support earlier as well. I guess lowering themselves to Intel's poor standard. At least AMD can reasonably pretend to be broke in comparison.

Nvidia can be jerks in many ways but they remain the gold standard here. Obviously they aren't supporting XP drivers on their new stuff but they continue to release new drivers for pretty old cards and for operating systems that are still being supported. RTX 2080 Ti? Yeah, they released 7 drivers for that.

No USB drivers either. You know who did find time to release drivers for Windows 7 for their new USB controllers? Asmedia. Yes, might Asmedia. They must have bankrupted themselves with the effort though so obviously Intel couldn't be expected to follow suit.

Intel support in general seems to be going right in the toilet. They're removing bios updates for their own motherboards up to ivybridge and haswell now? These are the people that are going to shake things up by entering the GPU market? They can't even support the stuff they already make! Doesn't Intel have something like 10,000 software engineers?

After all my whining I think I figured out a way to get this to work!

 

[Stuka87]

As somebody that works in software development, I 100% agree with Intel's decision to not support OS's that were already well into decline before a given product was released.

Windows 10 has been out for over 4 years, and has over 50% market share. Windows 8/8.1 has a whopping 4.83% combined. And yes, Windows 7 still has 30.34% (30.34% of windows machines, not among all OS, and the vast majority are in China), but thats all legacy hardware. NOBODY should be building a brand new Windows 7 machine. Developing a whole other set of drivers for a handful of users that actually build a Windows 7 machine for some reason is a waste of resources. I have worked on developing windows drivers, which included drivers for XP, 7, and 10. Going from older to newer, isn't *that* bad. However, going from newer to older is a PITA. If you design a driver for 10, trying to go back to an older kernel requires WAY more work, because all of the nice new features you use, no longer exist.

Windows 7 is a legacy OS that MS itself only releases critical security fixes for. Its a 10 year old OS, don't expect the latest hardware to support it.

 

[MajinCry]

The only Windows 10 version that you should get over Windows 7, is LTSC 2019, because you can actually turn off all the spyware and bloatware. But it still breaks backwards compatibility with older games and programs, which defeats the whole purpose of x86 computers. Only moved to Windows 10 because the Vega 56 has horrid microstutter in borderless windowed D3D9 games when run on Windows 7.

 

[PingSpike]

The only Windows 10 version that you should get over Windows 7, is LTSC 2019, because you can actually turn off all the spyware and bloatware. But it still breaks backwards compatibility with older games and programs, which defeats the whole purpose of x86 computers. Only moved to Windows 10 because the Vega 56 has horrid microstutter in borderless windowed D3D9 games when run on Windows 7.

So I tried using LTSC the other day and found the Intel GPU drivers wouldn't install. There was a message that they weren't supported on this version of Windows or something like that. I had them working on a Pro 1709 install. Now I'm running these in virtual machines but I was also running it in 1709.

Is compatibility that bad? I know its not perfect but I actually haven't tried running a lot of old stuff lately so I don't have much experience with it.

 

[mopardude87]

Nvidia can be jerks in many ways but they remain the gold standard here. Obviously they aren't supporting XP drivers on their new stuff but they continue to release new drivers for pretty old cards and for operating systems that are still being supported. RTX 2080 Ti? Yeah, they released 7 drivers for that.

Yeah i did some Windows Xp retro gaming a little bit ago and was amazed there was a 368.81 driver for Xp and a gtx960 from 2016. Tested a Gigabyte gtx285 yesterday i got from a retro 2009 era build and i found a 342.01 driver from 2016 for W10.

 

[jpiniero]

I got the impression it wasn't Intel's decision to not do W7 drivers for Coffee Lake.

 

[Spjut]

Yeah i did some Windows Xp retro gaming a little bit ago and was amazed there was a 368.81 driver for Xp and a gtx960 from 2016. Tested a Gigabyte gtx285 yesterday i got from a retro 2009 era build and i found a 342.01 driver from 2016 for W10.

Ye Nvidia's long term support is great. It's a relief to use their old cards with modern OSes, or old OSes with more modern cards (XP, Vista supported until 2016, AMD only supported until 2013)

I've used Geforce 6600 with Win10 too, and didn't notice any issues, but users with DX9 ATI cards say they aren't that lucky. The DX10 AMD cards technically have an official WDDM 1.1 Win10 driver provided via Windows update, but it's without the Catalyst suite. The Nvidia DX10 driver is WDDM 1.2 and has the Nvidia control panel working.


I'm fundamentally opposed against dropping support because "meh it's old get new", and WDDM 1.2 drivers were supposed to be compatible back to Vista.
But for Windows 10, it's WDDM 2.0 drivers, and if they have to spend alot of resources supporting Win7 as well, I can understand why they finally pulled the plug for this newer generation.

 

[MajinCry]

So I tried using LTSC the other day and found the Intel GPU drivers wouldn't install. There was a message that they weren't supported on this version of Windows or something like that. I had them working on a Pro 1709 install. Now I'm running these in virtual machines but I was also running it in 1709.

Is compatibility that bad? I know its not perfect but I actually haven't tried running a lot of old stuff lately so I don't have much experience with it.

There are a couple of LTSC versions. LTSC 2019 Uses 1809, which is what I have on my desktop and server. If it's as far as compatibility is concerned, my old but good Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium's old driver works just fine, albeit needing to use Creative Support Pack to install the various driver programs as Creative only ported the driver itself to Windows 10.

My Vega 56 runs just fine on it, as does the HD 4000 on my server's i7 3770.

 

[mopardude87]

Ye Nvidia's long term support is great. It's a relief to use their old cards with modern OSes, or old OSes with more modern cards (XP, Vista supported until 2016, AMD only supported until 2013)

I've used Geforce 6600 with Win10 too, and didn't notice any issues, but users with DX9 ATI cards say they aren't that lucky. The DX10 AMD cards technically have an official WDDM 1.1 Win10 driver provided via Windows update, but it's without the Catalyst suite. The Nvidia DX10 driver is WDDM 1.2 and has the Nvidia control panel working.

Only issues i had was odd performance with a E8500 with that 960 in BF2. I had unexpected dips under 60 which i never had back in 2007 with a E6750 and 8800gts. As far as AMD DX10 experience goes in W10,i had more issues with W10 not wanting to function with the hdmi audio out from the onboard video of a old 780g based motherboard on a friends computer. Had other issues making a 1080p resolution stick as well .Only real fix for now has been reverting back to W7 where it works flawlessly Got a downclocked 8350 in there so idk what to do with this computer of his lol. If i do a Ryzen 4000 upgrade next year maybe we will rotate the 3 computers in the house and he will be sitting on a i5 4670 and W10 sooner rather then later.

I could have spent a great deal of time maybe trying to fix the 60fps issue with BF2 and XP on that 960 but i just wanted to see how overkill of a xp tower i could make. I hear often times on retro gaming builds newer parts just don't agree with older games. Conflict with newer drivers i guess too. Most likely broken drivers cause i had dips closer to 70 on the 285 under W10 paired with a 4670. A much stronger cpu then a 3Ghz based Q6600 was where i pinged 100fps back in the day.

 

[PingSpike]

There are a couple of LTSC versions. LTSC 2019 Uses 1809, which is what I have on my desktop and server. If it's as far as compatibility is concerned, my old but good Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium's old driver works just fine, albeit needing to use Creative Support Pack to install the various driver programs as Creative only ported the driver itself to Windows 10.

My Vega 56 runs just fine on it, as does the HD 4000 on my server's i7 3770.

So I figured out why the drivers weren't working. While googling about the problem I came across an article I'd read long ago, Intel were now switching to a new driver model and only distributing the driver on the Windows Store. LTSC doesn't have a store. I dug around and found the last driver before the store model (which isn't available on Intel's site anymore) and that installed and worked fine. Of course, it only supported up to first generation coffeelake so if you're using 9000 series this is not going to work. You can get the store installed on this version (I've heard). Of course, getting away from the store is part of this version of Window's appeal.

The whole thing is ridiculous for several reasons.

1) Error message basically just said "This version of Windows isn't supported". Nothing about the store.

2) Not all versions of Windows 10 even have the store. You can hack the store in I'm told, but I guess on server OSes you probably just can't install Intel IGPU drivers because who wants the store on their server? You have to mod Windows to install a graphics driver?

3) Windows store is a sewer. Microsoft itself has been pretty hesitant to eat their own poor quality dog food here which sends a strong signal to me that its going to eventually whither and die. Which means Intel will just end up having to decouple from the store when its abandon-canceled.

I guess this explains the real reason why they only have Windows 10 drivers though. Because they went all in on the Windows Store for some bizarre reason.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I thought that just the "Intel Control Panel" (user UI) was available on the MS Store, but the driver itself came through Windows Update. Furthermore, the newer drivers are DCH, so that the control panel is somehow decoupled from the drivers.

I didn't think that the actual bona fide driver portion was on the Store.

 

[Stuka87]

I thought that just the "Intel Control Panel" (user UI) was available on the MS Store, but the driver itself came through Windows Update. Furthermore, the newer drivers are DCH, so that the control panel is somehow decoupled from the drivers.

I didn't think that the actual bona fide driver portion was on the Store.

You are correct, the control panel and the driver are separate, and you can use the driver without ever installing the control panel.

 

[PingSpike]

I thought that just the "Intel Control Panel" (user UI) was available on the MS Store, but the driver itself came through Windows Update. Furthermore, the newer drivers are DCH, so that the control panel is somehow decoupled from the drivers.

I didn't think that the actual bona fide driver portion was on the Store.

I never downloaded anything from the store. I'll try some other drivers tonight to see if I get any further.

 

[PingSpike]

Odd update.

After trying a bunch of questionable drivers and guides to this I'd given up. People claim to have gotten kabylake to work with older drivers but it seemed like coffeelake was a bridge to far.

Last night I recalled reading a thread where people were talking about the drivers biostar made available for their H310 motherboards. You may recall reading some headlines where these boards supported Windows 7, likely intended primary for the Chinese market. On their page about installing these boards they include igpu drivers. I'd seen a couple reports in a thread that people had their i3 8100 igpu working.

It was not a smooth experience but I eventually got this driver to install. It correctly lists as UHD 630, but given the driver date is October 2017 it seems like they must have modded older drivers. It remains to be seen how stable this is, but I had no problems during my limited tests. I ran heaven benchmark on it and it actually turned in marginally higher numbers than my Windows 10 tests had, not sure why that is.

The drivers are from here:

Windows tool

www.biostar.com.tw

I ended up following suggestions from a youtube guide on installing Intel igpu drivers that are refusing to install. The guide was actually for Windows 10, which apparently breaks with updates often and *may* explain my previous difficulties on that OS with LTSC.

 

[Stuka87]

Glad you got them working for you, and for following up. I am sure somebody will run across this thread with the same issue down the road and be thankful for it.