Nvidia to switch to Monthly Driver Update Schedule
Posted by Emil Protalinski on 09 February 2007 - 00:36 · 45 comments & 14021 views
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(1 reply)
#1 Posted by Mikee4fun on 09 Feb 2007 - 00:44
- Bring on the SLI support for the 7950GX2's for Vista Nvidia. No excuses.. You have plenty of time to develop a working drivers.
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#1.1 Posted by Nose Nuggets on 09 Feb 2007 - 01:11
- Quote - (Mikee4fun said @ #1)Bring on the SLI support for the 7950GX2's for Vista Nvidia. No excuses.. You have plenty of time to develop a working drivers.
seriously! MARCH?!?!?! what the hell! i would be SO ****ED if i actually had to buy my copy of vista. its gotten to the point where i am almost considering buying an ATI card to replace my 7950gx2....
how sad is that?
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(3 replies)
#4 Posted by Jexel on 09 Feb 2007 - 00:57
- So how come there haven't been much news of ATI having so many problems with their drivers?
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#4.2 Posted by Osprey on 09 Feb 2007 - 01:50
- Quote - (yakumo said @ #4.1)see post 3 & 3.1.That's not why. The vast majority of the performance problems are with DX9 software. Both companies have to write drivers for that, so I don't for one minute buy the excuse that ATi has better drivers because they don't have DX10 hardware.
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#4.3 Posted by +Octol on 10 Feb 2007 - 03:29
- Quote - (Osprey said @ #4.2)I don't for one minute buy the excuse that ATi has better drivers because they don't have DX10 hardware.
I don't for one minute buy the assertion that ATI has better drivers at all – especially where Vista is concerned. In any case, ATI drivers have always caused me more grief than Nvidia drivers on any operating system or hardware.
Last edited by Octol on 10 Feb 2007 - 03:34
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(3 replies)
#5 Posted by El-Diablo on 09 Feb 2007 - 00:58
- Because, they're drivers really aren't as bad as people claim. I personally have had more trouble with Nvidia drivers vs ATi DRivers.
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#5.1 Posted by Napalm Frog on 09 Feb 2007 - 01:43
- Exactly, that's what I am so confused about. Yes, they were horrendous in the pre-Radeon 8500 days, but have been amazing since the 9700 was out.
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#5.2 Posted by Frogboy on 09 Feb 2007 - 04:56
- Oh, the nVidia drivers are a real problem for us. We have to do a lot of compatibility testing in our lab and a recent generation nVidia on Vista has been painful.
And on a personal note, as the owner of two nVidia 7950s in Quad-SLI, I'm not a happy camper about that part either. -
#5.3 Posted by Kushan on 09 Feb 2007 - 06:58
- I don't really want to start an argument here, but I'd like to say that ATI's drivers, back when I had a 9800, were the reason I switched to nvidia and to this day I'm glad I made the switch.
However, I will admit that the last few driver releases from nVidia have been terrible, and not just the Vista ones.
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#6 Posted by Justin03248 on 09 Feb 2007 - 01:32
- The reason I chose ATI was it's monthly driver schedule...
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(5 replies)
#7 Posted by _dandy_ on 09 Feb 2007 - 02:16
- > Each Vista driver supposedly contains 20 million lines of code
Anybody else not buying that?
Vista itself has been estimated at around 50 million lines of code. -
#7.1 Posted by Robgig1088 on 09 Feb 2007 - 04:52
- you doubt it? Right because Nvidia is going to lie about the size of the drivers on the internet where people are occasionally intelligent and can expose lies? Seriously think about it. Yes it will take 20 million x 6.
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#7.2 Posted by CheeseCow on 09 Feb 2007 - 08:22
- Quote -Each Vista driver supposedly contains 20 million lines of code. Anybody else not buying that?
I'm not buying it. They are confusing their hardware driver with that bloated control center AND the advanced properties tab they include in their driver. They should develop and ship it separatly. -
#7.3 Posted by Jugalator on 09 Feb 2007 - 09:35
- Quote -I'm not buying it. They are confusing their hardware driver with that bloated control center AND the advanced properties tab they include in their driver.
Since a software driver is far more complex than a control panel applet, how can you not be buying that, but buy that the control panel applet would be as complex as an operating system? It sounds like you're just trying to make nVidia look bad by inventing your own reasons for the driver complexity, with zero factual basis.
And even if the applet size was included here, it's still pretty amazing sizes we're dealing with. -
#7.4 Posted by CheeseCow on 09 Feb 2007 - 12:11
- Quote - (Jugalator said @ #7.3)Quote -I'm not buying it. They are confusing their hardware driver with that bloated control center AND the advanced properties tab they include in their driver.
Since a software driver is far more complex than a control panel applet, how can you not be buying that, but buy that the control panel applet would be as complex as an operating system? It sounds like you're just trying to make nVidia look bad by inventing your own reasons for the driver complexity, with zero factual basis. And even if the applet size was included here, it's still pretty amazing sizes we're dealing with.
If you look at their installation files, you will notice the largest file is the one for the Control Panel. Yes, there are images inside, but applications require many things low-level drivers do not, such as help files and translations. These are often included in the number of codelines.
I am not 'inventing my own reasons', I am saying I do not buy that their driver need to be so complex. All they have to do is translate the calls made by DirectX into something their own hardware can understand. If that requires 60M lines of code, they should move more of it to hardware.
My personal opinion is that they are moving in the direction Creative has always been going, with extremely shiny (and lumpy) driver configuration applets. And they should really stop including both the new and the old control panel in their drivers.
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(4 replies)
#8 Posted by Raptor on 09 Feb 2007 - 02:18
- Umm... when you have as many lines of code in your GFX card driver as a release of the windows NT line (even 4.0), you have issues.
And yes, I am a software developer.
I can only assume much of that code is legacy support for older cards (I really hope that's the case).. -
#8.1 Posted by Jugalator on 09 Feb 2007 - 09:38
- You better get a job at nVidia as a driver developer -- I hear they're on the look out of devs skilled at optimizing drivers while preserving performance and features.
Seriously, we're probably talking about some of the best men and women in driver business here. I doubt it's anything like unecessary bloat. It would then make more sense that much of it is legacy support. -
#8.2 Posted by CheeseCow on 09 Feb 2007 - 12:15
- Quote - (Jugalator said @ #8.1)Seriously, we're probably talking about some of the best men and women in driver business here. I doubt it's anything like unecessary bloat. It would then make more sense that much of it is legacy support.
It is more a matter of choices, their "all in one" driver model have worked great for many years. Perhaps it is time to change that model. -
#8.3 Posted by Raptor on 09 Feb 2007 - 14:11
- Quote - (Jugalator said @ #8.1)You better get a job at nVidia as a driver developer -- I hear they're on the look out of devs skilled at optimizing drivers while preserving performance and features. Seriously, we're probably talking about some of the best men and women in driver business here. I doubt it's anything like unecessary bloat. It would then make more sense that much of it is legacy support.
Just because you're the best doesn't mean you don't do stupid mistakes. NASA learned that with Apollo1 and the Challenger.
You have no idea what 20 million lines of code looks like. -
#8.4 Posted by Kurse on 09 Feb 2007 - 15:11
- Quote - (Jugalator said @ #8.1)You better get a job at nVidia as a driver developer -- I hear they're on the look out of devs skilled at optimizing drivers while preserving performance and features. Seriously, we're probably talking about some of the best men and women in driver business here. I doubt it's anything like unecessary bloat. It would then make more sense that much of it is legacy support.
^^
Quite possibly one of the most uninformed persons I have seen posting on NW. You have no idea what you are posting about.
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(2 replies)
#9 Posted by strekship on 09 Feb 2007 - 02:36
- If they are telling the truth about the lines of code, then they have some issues. No way in hell should a driver take up as many lines of code as a whole operating system.
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#9.1 Posted by twistedddx on 09 Feb 2007 - 06:04
- I assume huge chunks of a highly optimized driver is in assembler, 1 line of assembler does not get as much done as one line of c/c++. Hell even the way you format what you are writing affects the line count. They could be counting all the blank lines used for visual ease and lines of comments.
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#9.2 Posted by quintesse on 09 Feb 2007 - 10:16
- Yeah but that also means that if each line of assembly would compile to a one-byte statement (which is highly unlikely, the average statement size will be much bigger) the driver alone would take up at least 20MB (but more likely double or triple of that)!
No, I call BS.
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#10 Posted by PsykX on 09 Feb 2007 - 04:07
- OHHHH pretty nice news for all the nVidia video card owners out there
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(2 replies)
#11 Posted by NightmarE D on 09 Feb 2007 - 04:44
- I think I'm one a few that's running an Nvidia card in Vista and hasn't had any issues yet.
The card I'm using is the 256mb GeForce 6200 AGP 8X made by PNY Technologies. I'm using the most recent Vista drivers and everything runs smoothly. I've had no issues. -
#11.1 Posted by Kushan on 09 Feb 2007 - 07:01
- Nope, you're not alone. I have a 6800Ultra and on Vista it runs fine. There is a very noticeable performance drop from XP, but apart from that I can't complain.
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#11.2 Posted by PureLegend on 09 Feb 2007 - 08:07
- NightmarE D,
I have that exact card, latest drivers, and it's buggy as hell.
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(2 replies)
#12 Posted by Robgig1088 on 09 Feb 2007 - 04:51
- very good, microsoft. Thats exactly what you need. ANOTHER layer of abstraction (generally result in slower performance.) Nvidia drivers in linux still kick arse and i will always be an Nvidia supporter.
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#12.1 Posted by HawkMan on 09 Feb 2007 - 06:51
- Except the drivers Vista when proeprly optimized for vista will be faster than XP and havign the driver in user space is just better.
you being a Linu person should know that right... since that's what allows you to restart the drivers at wil, and not have to reboot and crap.
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(2 replies)
#13 Posted by Budious on 09 Feb 2007 - 06:37
- Does this include mobile products... the GO products haven't gotten a new official driver since July.
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#13.1 Posted by kaiwai on 09 Feb 2007 - 07:24
- Quote - (Budious said @ #13)Does this include mobile products... the GO products haven't gotten a new official driver since July.
Bah, I haven't used the official drivers yet, its not worth it; download the Vista drivers and use the modded inf file. -
#13.2 Posted by +Shadowdruid on 09 Feb 2007 - 08:48
- Quote - (kaiwai said @ #13.1)Quote - (Budious said @ #13)Does this include mobile products... the GO products haven't gotten a new official driver since July.
Bah, I haven't used the official drivers yet, its not worth it; download the Vista drivers and use the modded inf file.
97.46 from windows update works on go..and that was in november lol
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#14 Posted by GP007 on 09 Feb 2007 - 08:18
- It just seems like they're making more excuses again, "we have to make 6 different drivers", Why? Is the new WDDM that different that it's forcing you to make them like that? Aren't nVidias drivers still unifide anyways?
I understand the need for a new DX10 driver, since DX10 is so different from DX9, but drivers for OpenGL and SLi for DX9, those should be close to the same as they are on XP. But then they go on to say "MS changed the driver stack into user space.", ok, and this was known about way before Vista went RTM in Nov '06, this, to me, just sounds like nVidia trying to push some of the blame back on MS for making changes.
So ok, nVidia has a DX10 card, ATi doesn't, so you can argue that ATi has less work to do for Vista right now, but even though nVidia has it's DX10 card, do we have any DX10 games yet? No. The priority should still be DX9 and OpenGL on Vista. And just because ATi doesn't have it's DX10 card yet doesn't mean it doesn't have a DX10 driver ready, when the new Radeon cards hit before the end of Feb, or March, watch ATi release a nice new WHQL Catalyst 7.3 driver without delay.
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#15 Posted by cork1958 on 09 Feb 2007 - 08:24
- Persnally, I think nvidia sucks anyway. Especially in Linux, but I quit using that anyway. Monthly releases for video drivers. How much more bloated can they make them? Glad I'm not a gamer just so I don't have to worry about this kind of stuff. Onboard graphics are quite sufficient for me!! (Although most of my machines have ATI in them!!
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#16 Posted by MiG- on 09 Feb 2007 - 08:53
- The current Nvida drivers in Vista are pretty poor... their new control centre is atrocious and im killing my FPS by the minute.
I can't even get CSS running good.. on a 7800GT
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(1 reply)
#17 Posted by Islander on 09 Feb 2007 - 09:06
- Actually they really need to do that. The nForce driver released early this week (and which finally boost up my hard disk to XP speeds and remove performance problems) broke the hibernate option within Vista, it doesn't work anymore... I really wonder if nVidia got something called testers
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#17.1 Posted by GP007 on 09 Feb 2007 - 11:53
- That's just sad, all these years people have been knocking ATi for poor drivers, but now what will they say about nVidia?
Nothing wrong with monthly drivers, but it's like, they fix one problem (performence), but manage to somehow break something else. And people wonder why Intel leads in overall chipset and onboard gfx sales, their stuff just works, and intel has some great software coders who write drivers and other apps.
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#18 Posted by Tal Greywolf on 09 Feb 2007 - 12:53
- Ok, let me start by saying that I have Windows Vista Ultimate, running on an NVidia 6800 PCI Express card. I have had no real noticable issues with the drivers, and yes, I do have the latest releases on my system.
That having been said, I also need to state that I do not use my system as a gaming platform. For me (and likely for the majority of users) as long as everything looks correct, as long as Word and Firefox and whatever other production software we use works and displays correctly, as long as we can do our work we could care less about performance of the video card on whatever current games are hot. Folks who work with graphics programs, that's a different matter as there are some issues with the OpenGL implementation, but that's a small subset of the majority, just as gamers are a small subset of the total users with NVidia cards. Just because performance is sub-standard (from your point of view) doesn't mean that performance overall is bad. Most users wouldn't even know a frame rate if it snuck up behind them, just as it's likely you don't know how to perform a mean deviation on an Excel spreadsheet.
NVidia is not the only company with driver issues and having waited until the last moment. Creative Labs, Linksys and others also played the waiting game, mostly because Microsoft kept changing little things in the way Vista worked with drivers with each revision. (As for x64 support, there are companies that still haven't released drivers for Windows XP x64, much less working with Vista x64).
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#19 Posted by Aero Ultimate on 09 Feb 2007 - 15:37
- Whoa... now they plan to have proper drivers ready by end of februrary
Yeah right, could just as well believe in the tooth fairy if you believe that
Sli is additionally postponed to sometime in March.
Then, having as much lines in the driver as in the whole NT 4.0 is really the über-bloat
Congrats, nVidia, you always manage to reach new records in incompetence
Diercks explained that with Windows XP, NVIDIA simply needed to create two separate drivers: one for DirectX rendering and one for OpenGL rendering, while for Vista, NVIDIA has to develop six separate drivers: SLI and non-SLI versions for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and OpenGL. In Vista, Microsoft moved the driver stack into the user space in the operating system, effectively making the kernel much more stable, but adding another layer of abstraction for NVIDIA’s software to get through before directly accessing the hardware. Each Vista driver supposedly contains 20 million lines of code (roughly the same number of lines as Windows NT 4.0).
Diercks has said that the new ForceWare drivers will be release on a monthly schedule, much like AMD's Catalyst drivers, unless of course there are major bugs found between releases. A WHQL-certified ForceWare release for Windows Vista is expected before the end of February. Nvidia also plans to release another update in March with GeForce 7 SLI capabilities and better TV output support. April is the month where support for DirectX 10 SLI and H.264 video acceleration is planned to be addressed.