ATi Windows 7 Preview drivers.

[waruikoohii]

Windows 7 uses same driver model like Vista. It should not be a big of deal this time around. Also i'm sure ATI and NVIDIA will play with DX11 on Vista platform.

Windows 7 actually uses WDDM 1.1. It's backwards compatible with WDDM 1.0, but 1.1 drivers are preferable.

[XerXis]

The problem is BIOS flash people do on their Nvidia cards. I have seen people with exact system i have with that problem. It mostly happens with SLI, didn't see it happening with GTX200 series but i heard of it. Things like mismatch cards with different clock speed will cause it as well.

I never had this problem. I used SLI 8800GTX, now i'm on GTX280 SLI. Not sure what to tell you. Enjoy your ATI card i suppose.

after reading this thread i know for sure you are on nvidia's payroll ;)

Come on, wake up and admit the truth, the nvidia drivers WERE goddamn awfull. Remember the diagnostic data Microsoft released after some time indicating that a large part of the bsods were because of the early nvidia drivers. Glad you didn't have problems with them, however, a lot of customers did. And the problem definitely wasn't the user

[Ambroos]

Thing is current nVidia drivers already work with 7. Bad thing is nVidia is no longer developing drivers for 8000 series cards, so all those users might not get new drivers for Win7, which is a shame. A lot of people have a 8000 series card.

[ViperAFK]

Thing is current nVidia drivers already work with 7. Bad thing is nVidia is no longer developing drivers for 8000 series cards, so all those users might not get new drivers for Win7, which is a shame. A lot of people have a 8000 series card.

what? they've really stopped giving new drivers to 8 series users? Making me glad I got a 9 series. that's ridiculous. those are incredibly common cards.

[jjrambo]

what? they've really stopped giving new drivers to 8 series users? Making me glad I got a 9 series. that's ridiculous. those are incredibly common cards.

Are you serious?

You guys are smoking crack.

Here is the latest Forceware with full physics support for 8000 series.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_180.48_whql.html

Same drivers i use for my GTX280

after reading this thread i know for sure you are on nvidia's payroll ;)

Come on, wake up and admit the truth, the nvidia drivers WERE goddamn awfull. Remember the diagnostic data Microsoft released after some time indicating that a large part of the bsods were because of the early nvidia drivers. Glad you didn't have problems with them, however, a lot of customers did. And the problem definitely wasn't the user

If some people tried to run Vista on Nforce 4 chipset with 1 or 1.5 gb of RAM is not Nvidia problem.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

I don't have many problems with Nvidia's Vista drivers these days, but when Vista launched and for a while afterward, Nvidia's drivers were TERRIBLE.

Only Intel had a really great set of WDDM drivers in the Vista launch timeframe. I didn't have much experience with ATI's, but they seemed to fall somewhere in the middle.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

If some people tried to run Vista on Nforce 4 chipset with 1 or 1.5 gb of RAM is not Nvidia problem.

Of course it is, if their drivers are causing problems. Other companies didn't have the degree of problems that Nvidia had. And an nForce 4 with 1GB of RAM is plenty for running Vista.

[briangw]

Thing is current nVidia drivers already work with 7. Bad thing is nVidia is no longer developing drivers for 8000 series cards, so all those users might not get new drivers for Win7, which is a shame. A lot of people have a 8000 series card.

Yeah, you can go to LaptopVideo2Go and see that that isn't the case. I just got a driver update from there last week that came from Nvidia.

[Denis W. Veteran]

I've had poor performance with the earlier Vista drivers and even to this day drivers for my laptop's GeForce Go 7400 are sketchy at best (some of them cause random UI slowdowns, for instance). But I've never had drivers that caused a massive stream of nvlddkm errors, so I'll have to agree with jjrambo in this case.

Having said all that however, in Vista's first year of life my PC had a motherboard with a nForce4 chipset... and it was one giant data corrupting POS. :hmmm:

[ToneKnee]

Right, enough of the ATi vs nVidia bitching. Can someone tell us how these drivers performed against normal Vista drivers? I don't have a 'HD' based Radeon series card (I have a X1650) and these drivers are WDDM 1.1 based, so I'm wondering how the DWM usage has gone down by etc.

[Digitalx]

Right, enough of the ATi vs nVidia bitching. Can someone tell us how these drivers performed against normal Vista drivers? I don't have a 'HD' based Radeon series card (I have a X1650) and these drivers are WDDM 1.1 based, so I'm wondering how the DWM usage has gone down by etc.

It's only DX10 supported hardware at the moment supported with these so yeah, i'll be trying them soon and i'll report back.

[Digitalx]

Well i've just installed them it's looking quite positive, it may just be me but aero seems alot more responsive and smoother with them over vista drivers i've not yet tried gaming and stuff but we'll see soon but early looks with these drivers is positive.

[KiHu]

Link on front page doesnt seem to be working for me =/..

and it does not mention my card series, X1950

[Digitalx]

As it shows, only directx 10.x hardware is supported. plus if akamai leech blocking doesn't work follow source and it'll work to download.

[Ambroos]

Thing is current nVidia drivers already work with 7. Bad thing is nVidia is no longer developing drivers for 8000 series cards, so all those users might not get new drivers for Win7, which is a shame. A lot of people have a 8000 series card.

Sorry, I was unclear. The 8800+ series are still supported. My 8600GTS is (officially) out of the driver.

Yeah, you can go to LaptopVideo2Go and see that that isn't the case. I just got a driver update from there last week that came from Nvidia.

Normal ppl who just upgrade their pc don't know that site. It's still modding, not an original driver.

[Mayhem]

even today Nvidia drivers are not top notch but its more the case for 7900- series, they clearly left to dust and focused only on 8000+ series

yes they support that cards on their latest drivers but that isn't the same that they are working for them also

the drivers now are +/- the same fps against XP but clearly on Vista there is some kind of "lag" on the image and on XP runs smootly and this on 2 clean systems and core2duo with 2gb ram

its somewhat "normal" that they are not caring about us with 7000series, soon enough will be the 8000 series also because are cards that are on the market for some time and are already sold, so they focus only on the new ones

its the normal company standart to care only to the latest card to be good and faster than the competition but they forget that doing that, not "caring" about all the customers and only wanting to get new ones will make them a bad name (like ATI has on Laptops) and maybe 50% will not buy the next card from them and going to the competition

saw so many people (i worked on a computer shop) doing that and going to ATI simply because they dont want to buy the latest card and in a year, 1,5 year Nvidia simply not caring anymore and this cards being still great to play games and not having proper drivers

now with ATI many times we see that they still optimize old cards in new games (sadly dont on laptops)

i have nvidia but if i buy a new one will be ATI even having their fan problems, only needed to put a new fan on the card

[Soldiers33]

have been an ati user for as long as i can remember, and have never had a driver problem with them.

[Typhoon87]

have been an ati user for as long as i can remember, and have never had a driver problem with them.

Same here. My first desktop an IBM Aptive S had a 2meg ATI Rage 128 Pro, My current desktop has a 9800 Pro and TV Wonder Pro with Remote, The two desktops I helped my friends build had ATI Radeon x1600 and x1200

Never had an issue.

[jjrambo]

even today Nvidia drivers are not top notch but its more the case for 7900- series, they clearly left to dust and focused only on 8000+ series

yes they support that cards on their latest drivers but that isn't the same that they are working for them also

the drivers now are +/- the same fps against XP but clearly on Vista there is some kind of "lag" on the image and on XP runs smootly and this on 2 clean systems and core2duo with 2gb ram

its somewhat "normal" that they are not caring about us with 7000series, soon enough will be the 8000 series also because are cards that are on the market for some time and are already sold, so they focus only on the new ones

its the normal company standart to care only to the latest card to be good and faster than the competition but they forget that doing that, not "caring" about all the customers and only wanting to get new ones will make them a bad name (like ATI has on Laptops) and maybe 50% will not buy the next card from them and going to the competition

saw so many people (i worked on a computer shop) doing that and going to ATI simply because they dont want to buy the latest card and in a year, 1,5 year Nvidia simply not caring anymore and this cards being still great to play games and not having proper drivers

now with ATI many times we see that they still optimize old cards in new games (sadly dont on laptops)

i have nvidia but if i buy a new one will be ATI even having their fan problems, only needed to put a new fan on the card

that's how it goes. Playing Crysis with 7000 series is a bit :rolleyes:

[ToneKnee]

The 8000 series Radeon cards support was stopped over a year ago wasn't it?

The problem with older Graphics card, and even older hardware in general is that, the drivers for those products have matured so much that they don't need any more updates. Even worse, games, applications, operating systems and so on are getting more hardware intensives. So intensive that older hardware just can't keep up, or they are based on legacy chipsets which aren't compatible with new products.

[Mayhem]

that's how it goes. Playing Crysis with 7000 series is a bit :rolleyes:

sorry but even if are right not everything "runs" around Crysis, there are other games

[briangw]

Normal ppl who just upgrade their pc don't know that site. It's still modding, not an original driver.

Well, these aren't "normal" people. They are people looking to tweak their laptops for gaming and there are consistently updated Nvidia beta drivers for 8000 series cards, so your comment wasn't true. I'm just pointing out that Nvidia does care about owners of 8000 series cards.

And actually, they are original. The only modified things are the .inf files to install these original drivers on laptops.

[Ambroos]

Well, these aren't "normal" people. They are people looking to tweak their laptops for gaming and there are consistently updated Nvidia beta drivers for 8000 series cards, so your comment wasn't true. I'm just pointing out that Nvidia does care about owners of 8000 series cards.

And actually, they are original. The only modified things are the .inf files to install these original drivers on laptops.

I meant in general. nVidia's latest driver (which is compatible with cards older than 8800 with a modded inf) doesn't, by default, support anything else than 8800+. So, I highly doubt if nVidia will be releasing any new official drivers that officially support the 8600 or older without having to use a modified inf. Because the average person who uses (will be) Windows (7) has no idea of how to modify an inf.

[briangw]

I meant in general. nVidia's latest driver (which is compatible with cards older than 8800 with a modded inf) doesn't, by default, support anything else than 8800+. So, I highly doubt if nVidia will be releasing any new official drivers that officially support the 8600 or older without having to use a modified inf. Because the average person who uses (will be) Windows (7) has no idea of how to modify an inf.

That still doesn't fly. I have an EVGA 8600 GT card in my Desktop and those drivers from LaptopVideo2Go install without any modified .inf.

[Ambroos]

That still doesn't fly. I have an EVGA 8600 GT card in my Desktop and those drivers from LaptopVideo2Go install without any modified .inf.

As far as I know LaptopVideo2Go is NOT nVidia... Most people won't know where to look, and by the way, the drivers on LaptpoVideo2Go usually have their INF's prepatched. Their might still be support for the hardware, but there won't be any new bugfixes, and new features in the drivers might even create new bugs that won't get resolved.

So yes, it flies.