WHQL Certification Waivers

[WaltC]

Ugh.. You don't know anything do you ?

The only thing preventing a same install running on all hardware is the device id detection mechanism by Microsoft.
Other than that, if you already have installed a driver for each device id, any update you did will benefit all other devices (but sometime it is better to reinstall because of the registry..)

Ugh...yourself...

Yea, wow, those 15-25mb driver install packages are just coincidental to supporting whole families of gpus whose development is separated by years and whose hardware is sometimes as different as night & day... I mean, everybody knows a *single* driver file for a *single* 3d gpu has always weighed in at about 15mbs minimum, right?... Also, kind of makes a mockery of nVidia's "compiler optimizations" doesn't it, if an nV20 driver is the same driver that supports an nV40, doesn't it? Not to mention bug fixes, hardware feature support differences (no matter what driver you use you can't turn an nV3x into a DX9-level nV40), etc. ad infinitum. Sorry to burst your "UDA bubble"--but there it is. The multiple drivers are "unified" indeed into a single install package--but there's way more than a single driver inside--you can bet on it...

 

[Geo]

Ugh.. You don't know anything do you ?

The only thing preventing a same install running on all hardware is the device id detection mechanism by Microsoft.
Other than that, if you already have installed a driver for each device id, any update you did will benefit all other devices (but sometime it is better to reinstall because of the registry..)

Ugh...yourself...

Yea, wow, those 15-25mb driver install packages are just coincidental to supporting whole families of gpus whose development is separated by years and whose hardware is sometimes as different as night & day... I mean, everybody knows a *single* driver file for a *single* 3d gpu has always weighed in at about 15mbs minimum, right?... Also, kind of makes a mockery of nVidia's "compiler optimizations" doesn't it, if an nV20 driver is the same driver that supports an nV40, doesn't it? Not to mention bug fixes, hardware feature support differences (no matter what driver you use you can't turn an nV3x into a DX9-level nV40), etc. ad infinitum. Sorry to burst your "UDA bubble"--but there it is. The multiple drivers are "unified" indeed into a single install package--but there's way more than a single driver inside--you can bet on it...

It would be fun to know what percentage of the code in the UDA actually applies to all of the cards the UDA supports at this point. No fair counting the install/uninstall routines as part of the percentage, however!

 

[Smurfie]

Yea, wow, those 15-25mb driver install packages are just coincidental to supporting whole families of gpus whose development is separated by years and whose hardware is sometimes as different as night & day... Sorry to burst your "UDA bubble"--but there it is. The multiple drivers are "unified" indeed into a single install package--but there's way more than a single driver inside--you can bet on it...

Having developed printer drivers for a large printer company in the past, I can tell you that you are a little more than wrong on this.

There was once a printer driver which we developed to support more than 40 different models of printers, which were in varying sizes, had vastly different finishing capabilities, different print speeds and were in either B&W or color. This same driver was even provided for OEM manufacturers! Yet the base code was all the same. The installed DLLs were huge, no doubt. Did it pass WHQL? You bet it did. Code bloat? No comment.