[Mark]

Yesterday NVIDIA released an updated set of ForceWare drivers for Geforce 8800 users who jumped on the Vista bandwagon. The drivers primarily add support for the 8800 GTS 320MB, but also feature a few game and control panel fixes, among other things.

Be warned that these are beta drivers and are not the WHQL certified set that had been previously promised for release this month.

Downloads are available for Vista 32-bit and Vista 64-bit. The release notes for this driver set are here (PDF).

[Tim Murray]

The site's acting wonky every so often, so you'll probably need to try more than once. Alternately:

100.64 32-bit
100.64 64-bit

[digitalwanderer]

Did they promise WHQL every month or just new drivers?

[Ateo]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

Did they promise WHQL every month or just new drivers?

I think they wanted to copy ATI's approach, even if I can't understand why.
And I can't remember the last time I ran a WHQL driver for my graphics card...

[loekf]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

Did they promise WHQL every month or just new drivers?

Even not that, just an attempt to get a working driver for Vista. It looks like they laid off their whole driver department and got a bunch of newly grads instead.

If trial and error, even after 5 years of beta testing and one month since the commercial release is not enough to come up with drivers from a respectable semicon company.... I dunno

Oh the worst thing is they are not the only one, there's another company out there... starts with a capital C and they make sounds cards..

And the funny thing is... it's sooo tempting to go out and buy that 299 euro 880GTS (320 MB) card...

[digitalwanderer]

My audigy2 worked out ok in Vista if I recall, but I've been sticking to XP because I keep freaking out on my Vista install for some reason and rebooting in a panic.

I'm not good with change, it takes me a while. I'm working on it early this time though, and hopefully by the time Vista gets all the bugs worked out I'll be ready to switch.

[Ateo]

Originally Posted by loekf

Even not that, just an attempt to get a working driver for Vista. It looks like they laid off their whole driver department and got a bunch of newly grads instead.

If trial and error, even after 5 years of beta testing and one month since the commercial release is not enough to come up with drivers from a respectable semicon company.... I dunno

Oh the worst thing is they are not the only one, there's another company out there... starts with a capital C and they make sounds cards..

And the funny thing is... it's sooo tempting to go out and buy that 299 euro 880GTS (320 MB) card...

You do know the differences in the driver from XP to Vista right?
In XP you only needed one driver.
In vista you need:
-a driver for DX9
-a driver for DX10
-a driver for SLI DX9
-a driver for SLI DX10 ect...

Not to mention it's a new driver model all together

Get the picture?

[Ateo]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

My audigy2 worked out ok in Vista if I recall, but I've been sticking to XP because I keep freaking out on my Vista install for some reason and rebooting in a panic.

I'm not good with change, it takes me a while. I'm working on it early this time though, and hopefully by the time Vista gets all the bugs worked out I'll be ready to switch.

I won't go Vista untill at LEAST SP1 (Fiji)

So don't feel alone

[Moloch]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

My audigy2 worked out ok in Vista if I recall, but I've been sticking to XP because I keep freaking out on my Vista install for some reason and rebooting in a panic.

I'm not good with change, it takes me a while. I'm working on it early this time though, and hopefully by the time Vista gets all the bugs worked out I'll be ready to switch.

Your audigy works, but you dont get any EAX support, which is one reason why XP is still my primary OS, the other being lack of support for me new logitech G25 racing wheel.
To be expected, even though vista didn't exactly show up out of no where.

[Ateo]

Originally Posted by radeonic2

Your audigy works, but you dont get any EAX support, which is one reason why XP is still my primary OS, the other being lack of support for me new logitech G25 racing wheel.
To be expected, even though vista didn't exactly show up out of no where.

The no EAX is Microsofts doing, they have removed DirectSound and put in a software mixer instead.
The Creative ALchemy might be able to help in none-OpenAL titles, but Creatvie (like any other hardware company) focuses on the lastest hardware first, thus the X-Fi's are fist in line or support.

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Am I the only one having quasi-major issues with these drivers? Ex. the summed-area variance shadow mapping demo (DX9) that I posted recently does not work properly (i.e. no shadows show up). Furthermore I can't get anti-aliasing of *any* kind in DX10 apps (haven't tried DX9) - either by requesting it through the API or by forcing it in the control panel. Anyone else having issues?

I'm going to revert and see if the problems are gone...

[Edit] Back to the previous drivers and it seems that MSAA just doesn't work in DX10 period... can anyone confirm?

[Tokelil]

Originally Posted by Ateo

In vista you need:
-a driver for DX9
-a driver for DX10
-a driver for SLI DX9
-a driver for SLI DX10 ect...

SLI takes separate driver? Why would it need that?

[Ateo]

Originally Posted by Tokelil

SLI takes separate driver? Why would it need that?

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=357

For Windows XP, NVIDIA simply needed to create two main driver components; really two separate drivers. One for DirectX rendering and one for OpenGL rendering. With Vista though, things have changed, and NVIDIA now needs to develop six separate drivers. One for DX9 single card, one for DX9 SLI, one for DX10 single card, one for DX10 SLI, one for OpenGL single card and one for OpenGL SLI modes. While you might just think the move from Windows XP’s DX9 driver to Windows Vista’s DX9 driver should be an easy port, the move to the new driver model changed all of that. Microsoft moved the driver stack into the user space in the operating system, effectively making the graphics driver a part of the external OS instead of the OS kernel. This keeps the kernel much more stable in the long run, but adds another layer of abstraction for NVIDIA’s software to get through before directly accessing the hardware.

That is why