A
AirRaid
Nvidia Names Stability as Top Priority for Windows Vista Drivers
[ 04/12/2007 | 10:42 PM ]
An official from Nvidia, a leading designer of system chipsets and
graphics processors, admitted that the company had underestimated
resources it needed to develop proper drivers for Windows Vista, but
said the issues would be shortly resolved. Besides, the company has
outlined its priorities when developing drivers for the new operating
system (OS).
Several days after Microsoft Windows Vista operating system was
released, hundreds of end-users reported complaints about
instabilities, erratic behaviour, driver bugs and other kind of issues
that they faced because of Nvidia's ForceWare drivers designed for the
new OS. End-users with various graphics cards, including the latest
top-of-the-range GeForce 8800-series, criticized Nvidia ForceWare for
poor performance and stability, something, which logotype "Vista
Ready" is not meant to say.
One person, who wanted to remain fully anonymous, even launched a web-
site called NvidiaClassAction.org in early February to collect the
information about ForceWare issues with Windows Vista, however, in
early March the web-site has been taken down due to an unknown reason.
Nearly two months have passed since the last WHQL-certified release of
Windows Vista ForceWare drivers and there is a number of end-users who
still experience issues with their machines and the GeForce graphics
cards. But Nvidia's Keita Iada, who is responsible for content
development at the company, said in an interview with IGN web-site
that the new drivers are near.
"We're ramping up the frequency of our Vista driver releases. Users
will probably understand that we release a number of beta drivers on
our site, so we're making incremental progress. We believe that, in a
very short time we will have addressed the vast majority, if not all
of the issues. We've had teams who were working on other projects who
have mobilised to make sure that as quickly as possible we have the
drivers fixed. I'm not going to give you an exact timeframe, but it's
going to be very soon," said Mr. Iada.
The director of content management at Nvidia also explained the
reasons why the ForceWare drivers appear to have issues with the new
operating system by Microsoft. According to him, the first priority
for the company was to enable content developers with ability to
create titles for DirectX 10, which is strategically important for the
company. As a consequence, the firm underestimated resources it needed
to design drivers for end-users.
"On a high level, we had to prioritise. In our case, we have DX9,
DX10, multiple APIs, Vista and XP - the driver models are completely
different, and the DX9 and 10 drivers are completely different. Then
you have single- and multi-card SLI - there are many variables to
consider. Given that we were so far ahead with DX10 hardware, we've
had to make sure that the drivers, although not necessarily available
to a wide degree, or not stable, were good enough from a development
standpoint," Mr. Iada said.
But even though the initial priority of Nvidia when developing drivers
were content developers, right now the company has the priority of
delivering stable drivers for Vista to end-users. It is remarkable
that Nvidia even put performance of its drivers on the second place.
"We've had to balance our priorities between making sure we have
proper DX10 feature-supported drivers to facilitate development of
DX10 content, but also make sure that the end user will have a good
experience on Vista. To some degree, I think that we may have
underestimated how many resources were necessary to have a stable
Vista driver off the bat. I can assure you and your readers that our
first priority right now is not performance, not anything else; it is
stability and all the features supported on Vista," the director of
content management at Nvidia added.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20070412224213.html
[ 04/12/2007 | 10:42 PM ]
An official from Nvidia, a leading designer of system chipsets and
graphics processors, admitted that the company had underestimated
resources it needed to develop proper drivers for Windows Vista, but
said the issues would be shortly resolved. Besides, the company has
outlined its priorities when developing drivers for the new operating
system (OS).
Several days after Microsoft Windows Vista operating system was
released, hundreds of end-users reported complaints about
instabilities, erratic behaviour, driver bugs and other kind of issues
that they faced because of Nvidia's ForceWare drivers designed for the
new OS. End-users with various graphics cards, including the latest
top-of-the-range GeForce 8800-series, criticized Nvidia ForceWare for
poor performance and stability, something, which logotype "Vista
Ready" is not meant to say.
One person, who wanted to remain fully anonymous, even launched a web-
site called NvidiaClassAction.org in early February to collect the
information about ForceWare issues with Windows Vista, however, in
early March the web-site has been taken down due to an unknown reason.
Nearly two months have passed since the last WHQL-certified release of
Windows Vista ForceWare drivers and there is a number of end-users who
still experience issues with their machines and the GeForce graphics
cards. But Nvidia's Keita Iada, who is responsible for content
development at the company, said in an interview with IGN web-site
that the new drivers are near.
"We're ramping up the frequency of our Vista driver releases. Users
will probably understand that we release a number of beta drivers on
our site, so we're making incremental progress. We believe that, in a
very short time we will have addressed the vast majority, if not all
of the issues. We've had teams who were working on other projects who
have mobilised to make sure that as quickly as possible we have the
drivers fixed. I'm not going to give you an exact timeframe, but it's
going to be very soon," said Mr. Iada.
The director of content management at Nvidia also explained the
reasons why the ForceWare drivers appear to have issues with the new
operating system by Microsoft. According to him, the first priority
for the company was to enable content developers with ability to
create titles for DirectX 10, which is strategically important for the
company. As a consequence, the firm underestimated resources it needed
to design drivers for end-users.
"On a high level, we had to prioritise. In our case, we have DX9,
DX10, multiple APIs, Vista and XP - the driver models are completely
different, and the DX9 and 10 drivers are completely different. Then
you have single- and multi-card SLI - there are many variables to
consider. Given that we were so far ahead with DX10 hardware, we've
had to make sure that the drivers, although not necessarily available
to a wide degree, or not stable, were good enough from a development
standpoint," Mr. Iada said.
But even though the initial priority of Nvidia when developing drivers
were content developers, right now the company has the priority of
delivering stable drivers for Vista to end-users. It is remarkable
that Nvidia even put performance of its drivers on the second place.
"We've had to balance our priorities between making sure we have
proper DX10 feature-supported drivers to facilitate development of
DX10 content, but also make sure that the end user will have a good
experience on Vista. To some degree, I think that we may have
underestimated how many resources were necessary to have a stable
Vista driver off the bat. I can assure you and your readers that our
first priority right now is not performance, not anything else; it is
stability and all the features supported on Vista," the director of
content management at Nvidia added.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20070412224213.html