built-in video support in vista

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Guest

I'd like to know what video cards have native support in Vista RTM.

When I tried Vista RC1 on a PC with an ATI Radeon 7000 card, I only got
standard VGA support, which meant that I wasn't able to run at the native
resolution (1440x900) of my LCD monitor, and the performance was poor.
Since the card was old, ATI's Vista drivers didn't support it

For desktop systems, upgrading to a later video card is an option. This is
less so for laptops. I would love to upgrade my Inspiron 8200 to Vista. It
has a nVidia GeForce 4 440 Go video card, and it looks like nVidia doesn't
support that with Vista drivers. So I am concerned that I won't get native
resolution (1600x1200) on the display, and have other limitations.

I have to imagine that there are many people in my boat that would like to
upgrade capable systems to Vista, without changing hardware.
 
If you run the upgrade advisor, you will find out what is supported and what
is not.

If you have a card that is not now supported you will have to wait till the
companies decide "if" they will support Vista. Many cards can not. Soon
there will be video boards that are advertised as designed for Vista. You
can then buy one.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Richard,

I did run the upgrade advisor on my laptop, and it says laptop will support
Vista Home Basic. For Home Premium, it said the video card doesn't support
the requirements for Aero.

The problem I have with that answer is that it doesn't indicate the level of
support in Home Basic. I.e. if it supports the card with the generic vga
driver, I'd lose hardware acceleration, and possibly not be able to use the
1600x1200 resolution of my laptop.

If I buy an upgrade and find that the screen runs at 1024x768, can I return
it?

BTW, the XP video drivers I run on my laptop (a Dell Inspiron 8200) are from
Microsoft's update site - the Dell supplied ones were crashing too
frequently, and they did not have later nVidia drivers "ported" for my laptop.

I'd be happy if the XP video drivers were updated for Vista. FYI, I am
using XP video drivers for the Radeon 7000 on my desktop with Vista RC1 - the
only defect is that the system BSD's on shutdown/hibernate. But it does
allow me to run 1440x900 for my LCD monitor, and does enable enough hardware
acceleration to let me play chess in 3D.
 
Your laptop shouldn't have an issue running home basic, Vista should have
drivers that support your video card. It may be a generic Windows driver, or
it could, like nVidia, have the manufacturer drivers. 1600 x 1200? I couldn't
tell you, the highest my laptop goes is 1400 X 900.
As for desktops, most nVidia cards are supported. Me, I use the 7300GS, and
Vista had the drivers already for it. And nVidia has an updated driver (which
doesn't really increase the abilities of the card any), but they do have it.
ATI has already released some Vista drivers as well, from my understanding,
so you may want to check their site for updated drivers for Vista.

Hope this helps. :-)
 
I don't know about other cards but the Windows XP drivers for Intel's GMA
900 and 950 work in Vista, just without Aero Glass.

I have been using the XDDM drivers because of issues in the WDDM drivers
with dual displays/laptop display switching.
 
But that's the point - I don't want generic drivers if they don't allow me to
run the LCD's native resolution. For my Inspiron 8200, that is 1600x1200.
Any other resolution won't look as clear. Also losing hardware acceleration
would really be bad since that would probably prevent me from watching a DVD
on the laptop.

I have checked the nVidia site for the GeForce 4 400 Go (laptop) as well as
the ATI web site for the Radeon 7000 (desktop), but they are not supported by
the drivers they have out currently. ATI only lists the Radeon 9500 and
later. For laptops, nVidia doesn't directly support video drivers, and Dell
stopped updating the drivers 3 years ago.
 
RE: "I don't know about other cards but the Windows XP drivers for
Intel's GMA 900 and 950 work in Vista, just without Aero Glass."

GMA950 was supposed to support Glass. Does anyone know if it does, with
certainty? MANY laptops are being sold with "Vista Premium Ready" that
have GMA950.
 
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