"Where are my G80 Vista drivers??"

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
Vista is just a beta to me, wake me when it hits SP1. What worries me more is the number of HP printers that will not be supported at all.....sigh at least XP had 2000 to pave the way. Now everyone gets to beta test Vista.

So far, Vista has more hardware work "out-of-the-box" for me than any OS I've ever used on non-propietary hardware. Vista recognized my NVRAID array just like it was a single disk, had a driver for my Epson printer, Silicon Image RAID controller, and everything associated with nForce4 as well. The only drivers I had to download were ForceWare and XiFi drivers. Regrettably, Creative's interface for their drivers sucks compared to what I had in XP, but the NV control planel works the same.

While the whole NV/Vista/DX10 driver situation isn't exactly ideal, it boils down to this: I have a functional driver for my top of the line single video card under Vista that so far runs everything that I have thrown at it.

Originally posted by: Raider1284
People are pissed cause Nvidia lied/false advertised that their new cards were vista ready, when they obviously aren't. If nvidia had made it clear from the start to its buyers that the drivers weren't rdy yet, but that they were working on it, then i think the nvidia community would be alright with it. I would be pissed right now if I had an 8800 with vista. You spend ~$600 on a new card and you cant run it properly!?

The fact of the matter is that the hardware was Vista ready, but the drivers simply weren't made available until the OS was PUBLICLY launched. The OS is now publicly available and so are drivers. This is how it worked for me: I went to a retail store, picked up Vista Ultimate, installed it on my PC, and downloaded functional drivers for my GeForce 8800GTX. Where's the problem?

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: Raider1284
People are pissed cause Nvidia lied/false advertised that their new cards were vista ready, when they obviously aren't. If nvidia had made it clear from the start to its buyers that the drivers weren't rdy yet, but that they were working on it, then i think the nvidia community would be alright with it. I would be pissed right now if I had an 8800 with vista. You spend ~$600 on a new card and you cant run it properly!?

The fact of the matter is that the hardware was Vista ready, but the drivers simply weren't made available until the OS was PUBLICLY launched. The OS is now publicly available and so are drivers. This is how it worked for me: I went to a retail store, picked up Vista Ultimate, installed it on my PC, and downloaded functional drivers for my GeForce 8800GTX. Where's the problem?

OK, here it is, plain and simple. As you know, Microsoft set a Jan. 30th public release.

However, what you didn't know is that some people could get Vista RTM by purchasing volume licenses of Vista Business to make it work. Now, some of those "business users" just happened to be l33t g9m3rz w/ dual 8800 GTX's and nVidia had no G80 drivers out.

See my point? Vista was *available* but *nVidia* had no *drivers*.

Not only that, but we got to the Jan. 30th, and sure enough nVidia had no drivers out at 4:00 a.m. This is totally unacceptable!!!

*pounding table dogmatically*

Finally, we reached Jan. 30th, and there were no SLI-capable drivers. Being one day late just doesn't cut it here. nVidia *lied* to a lot of *gamers*. The very fabric of our society is unravelling!!

As if that weren't bad enough, these *late* drivers didn't support SLI in OpenGL apps. There are tons of these games, like Quake 4...and a bunch of games that are almost identical except for minor differences in story and weapons. That's a lot of gamers that nVidia just totally screwed for no reason at all.

What put the final nail in the coffin was when nVidia announced that there would be no DX10 driver for a long time. It doesn't matter that there are no DX10 games out for at least six weeks. G80 was billed as a DX10 part, and we want to not-use our G80's with all the games not yet on the market!

Where are the DX10 drivers we were promised!?

/satire

 

[nitromullet]

However, what you didn't know is that some people could get Vista RTM by purchasing volume licenses of Vista Business to make it work. Now, some of those "business users" just happened to be l33t g9m3rz w/ dual 8800 GTX's and nVidia had no G80 drivers out.

See my point? Vista was *available* but *nVidia* had no *drivers*.

If MS decides to sell RTM to businesses before the actual release date, it's not NVIDIA's fault.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: josh6079

It isn't that easy in 64 bit Vista, it requires signed drivers.

Then why is nVidia suggesting we use a driver that isn't signed?

Click

The signed driver requirement is that the drivers need to be signed, it doesn't stipulate by who. For $500, you too can get a authenticode certificate to sign your own drivers. Indeed this is what ATI and Nvidia have been doing for their non-WHQL drivers. Vista x64 doesn't require WHQL drivers any more than Vista x86 or XP does.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

However, what you didn't know is that some people could get Vista RTM by purchasing volume licenses of Vista Business to make it work. Now, some of those "business users" just happened to be l33t g9m3rz w/ dual 8800 GTX's and nVidia had no G80 drivers out.

See my point? Vista was *available* but *nVidia* had no *drivers*.

If MS decides to sell RTM to businesses before the actual release date, it's not NVIDIA's fault.

I agree. Apparently you missed the /satire tag.

Good luck w/ Vista BTW.

 

[josh6079]

The signed driver requirement is that the drivers need to be signed, it doesn't stipulate by who. For $500, you too can get a authenticode certificate to sign your own drivers. Indeed this is what ATI and Nvidia have been doing for their non-WHQL drivers. Vista x64 doesn't require WHQL drivers any more than Vista x86 or XP does.

So what's the difference between WHQL and "signed" drivers? I'm under the impression that WHQL means that a driver is signed.

 

[ViRGE]

A WHQL driver is a driver that has been submitted to Microsoft(which I'd like to note costs a fair chunk of coin) and has passed their feature tests for that type of device; these drivers get signed by Microsoft themselves in a special way to indicate they've passed WHQL. Otherwise if a driver is self-signed, all it means is that the signer is confirming that they've vouched for these drivers(both so that they're authentic and tamper-free, and in the case of x64, as a safeguard against rootkits where hackers won't pay money for certificates).

 

[jasonja]

Originally posted by: schneiderguy

Originally posted by: thilan29

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Its coded in the DX 10 path however does not posess the ability to "drive" the card to render DX 10 features.

-Kevin

So using the current driver, a DX10 capable card such as a 8800 won't be able to run DX10 games??

correct

They are two seperate user mode drivers which use two entirely different interfaces. There is a DX9 and prior driver which gets loaded by any DX3-DX9 app and then there will be a seperate user mode driver that will get loaded only for DX10 apps. Currently only the DX9 driver is available.

 

[Genx87]

What does WHQL get me?

 

[DeathReborn]

Originally posted by: Genx87
What does WHQL get me?

A signature from Microsoft saying "we certify these drivers as working properly". That's pretty much it. WHQL gives you no performance boosts, bug fixes or anything of worth.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: DeathReborn

Originally posted by: Genx87
What does WHQL get me?

A signature from Microsoft saying "we certify these drivers as working properly". That's pretty much it. WHQL gives you no performance boosts, bug fixes or anything of worth.

I figured as much hehe. I remember ATI and their catalyst 3.1 drivers that hardlocked HL1 and HL1 engine games. WHQL == marketing fluff.

 

[jasonja]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: DeathReborn

Originally posted by: Genx87
What does WHQL get me?

A signature from Microsoft saying "we certify these drivers as working properly". That's pretty much it. WHQL gives you no performance boosts, bug fixes or anything of worth.

I figured as much hehe. I remember ATI and their catalyst 3.1 drivers that hardlocked HL1 and HL1 engine games. WHQL == marketing fluff.

It's not solely marketing fluff. It's a level of confidence for MS. MS is going to be the one fielding tech support calls for Vista for most people so they want to have a way to determine the quality of drivers. WHQL are a VERY extensive set of tests that test stabilty and quality of a number of things. For video cards, it makes certain that they are not only stable but also rendering things according to specifications of DirectX/GDI/OpenGL. If a driver can pass these tests then they are realitively stable (you can never test everything). It's kind of like a college diploma... it doesn't guarantee success, but it shows people you're not a complete waste of oxygen either.

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: Kango2020
And there will never be a DX10 game or other programs that use it until DX10 drivers are available. Your thinking is pretty narrow. You have to develop programs in order for them to be available for use by consumers. And you can't develop new software without the drivers to support the development effort.

I guess you should tell that to all the game devs that are developing DX10 games right now? Company of Heroes will have a DX10 patch in March, Hellgate london was shown off running in DX10, Crysis supports DX10, etc.