Latest NVIDIA Windows Vista Driver News

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: josh6079

LOL, doesn't the OS write the pixels to the screen?

No wait, it's the BIOS that makes it one card isn't it?

No, that can't be right because the software has nothing to do with hardware.

haha, lol. I never get tired of hearing that.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: josh6079

LOL, doesn't the OS write the pixels to the screen?

No wait, it's the BIOS that makes it one card isn't it?

No, that can't be right because the software has nothing to do with hardware.

GX2 is just SLI in 1 slot, anyone who buys one thinking otherwise isn't doing their homework. If the reviews showing 2 cards smushed together didn't give it away, I don't know what else would.

Its well-known SLI is unpolished and will continue to be for some time. Neither camp is going to emphasize getting 2 card configurations working before a single card solution. If you look at the big picture, the enthusiast market that purchases cards capable of running in SLI is relatively small, and the percentage of that small market that runs in a 2 card configuration makes those people insignificant.

Overall it looks like NV is making significant progress with their Vista drivers though. After the initial wave of "Zomg ganna sue some NV bc no Vista drivers" threads, its been relatively quiet on the driver front. Not too bad considering Vista has been out for a month? Down side is NV has totally neglected XP drivers and although stuff like SLI would be nice, general game compatibility and performance for a single card solution are going to be the priority. Would be nice if they fixed 1:1 scaling in XP as well, but I'll manage.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: josh6079

LOL, doesn't the OS write the pixels to the screen?

No wait, it's the BIOS that makes it one card isn't it?

No, that can't be right because the software has nothing to do with hardware.

GX2 is just SLI in 1 slot, anyone who buys one thinking otherwise isn't doing their homework. If the reviews showing 2 cards smushed together didn't give it away, I don't know what else would.

Its well-known SLI is unpolished and will continue to be for some time. Neither camp is going to emphasize getting 2 card configurations working before a single card solution. If you look at the big picture, the enthusiast market that purchases cards capable of running in SLI is relatively small, and the percentage of that small market that runs in a 2 card configuration makes those people insignificant.

Overall it looks like NV is making significant progress with their Vista drivers though. After the initial wave of "Zomg ganna sue some NV bc no Vista drivers" threads, its been relatively quiet on the driver front. Not too bad considering Vista has been out for a month? Down side is NV has totally neglected XP drivers and although stuff like SLI would be nice, general game compatibility and performance for a single card solution are going to be the priority. Would be nice if they fixed 1:1 scaling in XP as well, but I'll manage.

I don't understand how they broke all those features.

And while we can try to excuse the vista drivers, since its virgin territory on a very new OS with a new part...what exactly is the excuse for the now neglected XP drivers that are missing key functionality pieces? XP wasn't released yesterday, its 5 years old. There was no dearth of information preventing them from getting those drivers together.

One of the main reasons I've been thinking of switching to an nvidia part is for all their troubles, fixed aspect ratio scaling has actually worked on their cards. It hasn't always, but at least they tried. Which is more then I can say for ATI in that regard, who have entirely ignored that problem.

 

[Tegeril]

Fixed aspect ratio scaling does not currently work on series 8 cards in Vista.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: lopri

On resume from hibernate or sleep, the monitor only shows black but the computer is powered on. This can be worked around by completely turning off your computer and then restarting it.

:laugh:

Link to the full content

http://www.nvidia.com/object/vista_driver_news_022207.html

Glad they came up with this workaround. I hear the fix is waiting for the development time to get rescued from an escalator. Seems the power failed and they got stuck.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

I don't understand how they broke all those features.

And while we can try to excuse the vista drivers, since its virgin territory on a very new OS with a new part...what exactly is the excuse for the now neglected XP drivers that are missing key functionality pieces? XP wasn't released yesterday, its 5 years old. There was no dearth of information preventing them from getting those drivers together.

One of the main reasons I've been thinking of switching to an nvidia part is for all their troubles, fixed aspect ratio scaling has actually worked on their cards. It hasn't always, but at least they tried. Which is more then I can say for ATI in that regard, who have entirely ignored that problem.

Well, G80 is still relatively new in the grand scheme of things. The launch of Vista just complicated matters. So even though XP is a mature OS, you still have the same problems associated with new hardware, except they've tossed those problems on the back burner for Vista. XP drivers aren't without problems, but they are in pretty good shape. The only problem I think G80/XP users have with NV drivers now is the lack of progress over the last 2 months knocking out those last few bugs, and that's clearly a result of Vista's launch.

Sadly, I think NV is trying to phase out XP support by focusing all of their efforts on Vista drivers. It makes sense though. They've already cut support for cards lower than the 6 series in Vista (Vista drivers are "Unified" for 6,7,8 series cards) and they're getting ready to launch a comprehensive line-up of DX10 cards. All they need now is a reason for people to move to Vista. Office/work users will be fine in either XP or Vista, but enthusiasts need some games, hardware that fits their needs and working drivers to justify the switch.

 

[CaiNaM]

Originally posted by: lopri
CaiNaM, while I do think NV's explanation makes sense to an extent, it's true at the same time that we don't hear such excuses from AMD.

true, but they also lack any functioning DX10 hardware at this time.

And I'd take anything NV says (in PR) as a grain of salt. (unlike what their CEOs say in stock holders' meeting)

well, the intention of my post wasn't meant to be anything other than an example of the complexity of what nvidia faces. just trying to balance out the point of views

The thing is, in my opinion NV's programmers are somewhat better than AMD's and they should have better drivers out than current ones at this time. How a company's resources are used are very much dependent on market competition. Who knows? Maybe half of NV engineers are relocated to CPU projects? (It's a pure imagination but you get the point)

20 million lines of code - times 6 (tho there's certainly some overlap i'm sure).. but think about that.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Tegeril
Fixed aspect ratio scaling does not currently work on series 8 cards in Vista.

Or XP, I'm not really interested in vista drivers for myself but I'm sure there are plenty of people that bought these cards for DX10 and are pissed about this for vista as well. My point was, there is a broken control panel option and some mumbling about those features being in a later driver release from nvidia. Thats a crappy state of things for the drivers, but with regards to fixed aspect ratio scaling support thats still miles ahead of ATI...whose responses have included "thats a monitor problem" and a deliberate misunderstanding of what users need that feature to be. And given that nvidia had the feature working in the 7 series its pretty likely that after some foot dragging it'll be enabled again.

 

[Ackmed]

I have to say Im not used to this type of driver display from nVidia. It doesnt effect me, so I dont really care. Sucks for the people with these cards though. GX2? Its not very old at all, and not working in Vista in SLI mode? If I read it right, thats unacceptable. Far too many problems.

 

[BFG10K]

"One difference between developing SLI for Windows XP was drastically different than it was for Windows Vista is that the NVIDIA hardware and driver could basically work together to make SLI function without letting the OS know what was going on.

This is all well and good but I'm pretty sure ATi have Crossfire working on Vista.