NVIDIA: "We Underestimated Necessary Resources for Vista Driver Development"

Charlie Wilkes wrote:
On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 19:46:07 -0400, joey wrote:

I cannot
begin to presume what is important to you, so I can't convince you that
you should upgrade to Vista right now. But, if your hardware supports
it and you plan to have the same hardware two years from now, you might
as well start using it now because getting used to it will save you from
being behind the learning curve from the rest of the corporate world.

Vista has nothing I care about enough to accept the license terms under
which it is sold. After more than a decade of buying/using Windows, I
have switched to Linux. Microsoft would have to come up with something
really enticing to lure me back.

Welcome to the fold brother.

joey wrote:

Is DX10 something that inherently needs Vista, or is it something
Microsoft will only develop for Vista? In any case, I don't believe
there are any game releases that require DX10 as of yet.

There are important operating system changes that facilitate DX10. I
don't know how much the audience here knows about operating system
design, but it is fair to say it is substantial.

It is more like there were substantial 3d graphics system changes to
facilitate the operating system.

3d rendering is integrated in the operating system so you can have ********
3d eye candy on your desktop, you can't even play freecell in vista without
hardware 3d graphics card support.

A different DX10 offering the same performance improvements in games could
have been created for XP but a DX10 which integrates with vista won't fit
in XP.

for free. Not a smart move for any company -- best to make it a
feature of the next version of the OS which includes some other things
users might be willing to pay for

Again it is more like the next version of the OS includes other things
which users are not willing to pay for but if they want DX10 they will be
forced to pay for them anyway. And not just not willing to pay for them but
not wanting them at all. At the moment I wouldn't install vista if they
were giving it away.
--

On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 11:18:41 +0930, FoolsGold wrote:

joey wrote:
On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 23:35:25 GMT, Charlie Wilkes
wrote:

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:12:20 -0400, joey wrote:

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:03:08 GMT, Charlie Wilkes
wrote:

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 08:41:38 -0400, joey wrote:
I was specifically addressing the post by bubaloo or whatever, but to
address the problem you're describing, that same phenomenon has
occurred with every MS OS release since the early days of DOS.

Win 95 didnt have the responsiveness that Win 3.1 had. Win 98 didn't
load apps as fast as 95, and so on and so forth through XP.
The difference is that each of those operating systems brought new
capabilities that users really wanted... win95 brought 32 bit support
and a better GUI; 98 brought support for USB and much larger hdds; 2k/XP
brought support for more RAM and even bigger hdds. What does Vista
bring that anyone really cares about?
1. For gamers, DX10.
Is DX10 something that inherently needs Vista, or is it something
Microsoft will only develop for Vista? In any case, I don't believe
there are any game releases that require DX10 as of yet.

There are important operating system changes that facilitate DX10. I
don't know how much the audience here knows about operating system
design, but it is fair to say it is substantial. To make it brief, I
do not think DX10 is possible on XP without a HUGE service pack that
would effectively replace the operating system kernel (making it a
completely new OS version). Such an effort is extremely costly for
MS, and its unlikely in my opinion that they will ever make such a
dramatic "patch" for XP, because a patch implies they are providing a
huge amount of development dollars (millions) to the general public
for free. Not a smart move for any company -- best to make it a
feature of the next version of the OS which includes some other things
users might be willing to pay for -- and, if they aren't willing to
pay for an upgrade to their current PC, they are sure to get it
installed for them on their next new PC purchase.

It's still a "lock-in" feature no matter which way you cut it. MS could
get DX10 to work in XP if they wanted to (****, they MADE DirectX, they
can get it to work wherever they want),

They could, but as I said it would be an entirely new operating system
at that point. There is no law regulating at what point a series of
"patches" or "addons" becomes large enough to warrant calling it an
entirely new operating system, that is completely up to the vendor to
set nomenclature and pricing, and it is completely up to the consumer
to make the decision to purchase -- to vote for their wallet. Vista
has sold far more copies than XP did in its first fiscal sales
quarter, so unfortunately for those hoping to avoid the inevitable
upgrade, the odds are not in their favor.

but of course their business
model requires people to get forced onto another OS just for one little
feature, otherwise they won't move willingly.

Their business model only requires them to make money (that's what
businesses do) if they want to sustain it. Making money requires
offering the consumer something of added value. In the case of
gamers, the added value is that DirectX 10 can perform certain
operations five to ten times faster than DX 9. Unfortunately DX9 is
on its way out, and the games we are playing now are based on that, so
many folks don't see the need to upgrade right now -- that's fine, I'm
not either on my gaming machine.

But I'm not under any delusions that I will still be gaming on XP 2
years from now. Microsoft, in their ongoing quest to remain
profitable, will continue to focus support on Vista, while maintaining
support for XP for a couple more years. After that point, continuing
to run XP is just asking for viruses and security problems.

2. It solves a major problem: software development companies that have
been continually releasing software that requires admin rights on the
end user PC will find it very difficult to operate in the world of
Vista.
That probably has value, but I wonder if anyone perceives the value,
especially if they are using an XP system with a firewall and AV and not
having problems.

In any case... thank you for taking the time to provide a substantive and
intelligible response.

Keep in mind I'm not implying that everyone should upgrade today. My
primary gaming machine does not run Vista yet, because I am waiting
for drivers to mature and for DX10 titles to make it worth my while. I
just don't like to see users crap all over Vista for uninformed
reasons.

As long as you're willing to accept people disliking Vista for their own
reasons, that's fine. They might not be in line with your own
perspective though (eg. my above perspective on DX10).

I understand fully why people dislike Vista. They see it as something
that won't run their current games any better (even slower in some
cases), something that requires them to re-learn how to do some of the
things they were already to do without thinking, and potentially cost
them more money for what they see as merely cosmetic improvements.

I am only pointing out that I've heard this same argument for over 25
years with each new iteration of an operating system, and the root
cause is that people resist change unless they see immediate
gratification. My thought is that we will all be using Vista two
years from now, so the sooner we condition ourselves to adapt to
change, the better off we all are.

I have no problem with the fact some people will want to run XP until
the very end. But the defining moment will come with some
application, or game, or a piece of hardware like a Zune or iPod or
whatever is only supported on Vista will come along, and every single
one of those people who feel righteous in their stand against Vista
today will inevitably cave in and switch over. The only way to avoid
the continuous upgrade cycle is to live like the unibomber in a cabin
in the woods and swear off technology completely.

On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 04:54:08 +0100, nospam
wrote:

joey wrote:

Is DX10 something that inherently needs Vista, or is it something
Microsoft will only develop for Vista? In any case, I don't believe
there are any game releases that require DX10 as of yet.

There are important operating system changes that facilitate DX10. I
don't know how much the audience here knows about operating system
design, but it is fair to say it is substantial.

It is more like there were substantial 3d graphics system changes to
facilitate the operating system.

3d rendering is integrated in the operating system so you can have ********
3d eye candy on your desktop, you can't even play freecell in vista without
hardware 3d graphics card support.

A different DX10 offering the same performance improvements in games could
have been created for XP but a DX10 which integrates with vista won't fit
in XP.

for free. Not a smart move for any company -- best to make it a
feature of the next version of the OS which includes some other things
users might be willing to pay for

Again it is more like the next version of the OS includes other things
which users are not willing to pay for but if they want DX10 they will be
forced to pay for them anyway. And not just not willing to pay for them but
not wanting them at all. At the moment I wouldn't install vista if they
were giving it away.

At the moment, sure... but this too shall pass..

"FoolsGold" wrote in message
...
joey wrote:
On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 19:51:48 -0400, No One
wrote:

joey wrote:
On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 11:35:41 +0100, Conor
wrote:


In article , joey says...

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:39:55 GMT, "babaloo"
wrote:


It is not the drivers that suck. It is Vista that sucks.
Spoken by a true technology expert (yawn).

It's not Vista that interacts with the video card. The code between
the graphics system of the of an operating system and the driver is
all the same. The driver lies between the OS and the video card, and
the driver is where people are having problems. Drivers are written
by video card vendors, not Microsoft.


Vista is the worst product every issued by Microsoft, an
unbelievable fiasco.
People said the same thing about XP at first.

Ruling out graphics card drivers because we're not talking 3D
gaming....

I've just installed XP and apps etc on a XP1500 system with 512MB RAM.

It boots, opens apps and runs faster than my X2 4800, 2GB system with
Vista on.

I was fkin disgusted.

I was specifically addressing the post by bubaloo or whatever, but to
address the problem you're describing, that same phenomenon has
occurred with every MS OS release since the early days of DOS.
Win 95 didnt have the responsiveness that Win 3.1 had. Win 98 didn't
load apps as fast as 95, and so on and so forth through XP.

NT 3.5 and 4 loaded things faster than Win 95 or 98, especially if you
threw more RAM at it. XP is slower than 2000. Vista slower still.

And DOS runs faster than any of them on single threaded apps, maybe we
all should downgrade.

DOS does not have the functionality that we require though, hence we use
newer operating systems. Convincing people to upgrade from XP to Vista is
tricky if the experience is slower without a SUFFICIENT gain in
functionality.

You will need it to play DirectX-10 games. Could be some years till they
arrive though.

Matthias

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 22:58:54 -0400, No One
wrote:

joey wrote:
On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:03:08 GMT, Charlie Wilkes
wrote:


On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 08:41:38 -0400, joey wrote:

I was specifically addressing the post by bubaloo or whatever, but to
address the problem you're describing, that same phenomenon has occurred
with every MS OS release since the early days of DOS.

Win 95 didnt have the responsiveness that Win 3.1 had. Win 98 didn't
load apps as fast as 95, and so on and so forth through XP.

The difference is that each of those operating systems brought new
capabilities that users really wanted... win95 brought 32 bit support and
a better GUI; 98 brought support for USB and much larger hdds; 2k/XP
brought support for more RAM and even bigger hdds. What does Vista bring
that anyone really cares about?


1. For gamers, DX10. The biggest issue here is that Vista moved the
graphic driver model out of kernel mode space and into user space.
This means much better stability and overall performance when the
drivers are properly written by video card vendors. Even if the
drivers are badly written, it means they cannot crash the core
operating system components like they used to.

True, when Direct X 10 ships. I believe that is schedule for September

I think you're confused. The Direct X 10 API and infrastructure
shipped with Vista. Now, your schedule mght be correct regard GAMES
THAT USE DX10, and drivers from various vendors that use it. But


2. It solves a major problem: software development companies that have
been continually releasing software that requires admin rights on the
end user PC will find it very difficult to operate in the world of
Vista. This was the core issue at stake that led to most of the
securty problems that gave Windows a reputation as less secure than
Linux et al. For a while, MS placed an emphasis on allowing backward
compatibility and not breaking applications even if they are badly
written. Those days are over. Software companies that release
software that doesn't follow best practices are going to find their
**** doesn't work right under Vista. The unfortunate side effect of
that for Microsoft is that of course idiot users are going to blame
the OS first, which means for the next couple of years we are going to
have to listen to people bitch about how Vista broke their software,
when the truth is its the software and hardware vendors that have been
ignoring the writing on the wall that has been there for 10 years. And
sadly, MS gave the whiners a way to disable the security protection,
so that if they really wanted to they could open themselves up to a
world of viruses.



The biggest break of the rules is Microsoft themselves. Almost every
version of Word for Windows rewrote system DLLs and required a reboot to
work. Some versions of Office would also break installed software due
to the system changes.

You are confusing system DLLs with parts of the kernel -- they are not
necessarily the same thing. And besides, as long as any OS "system
DLLs", kernel code or otherwise, are updated by the vendor of the
system, I have no problem with incremental updates to them, because at
least the OS vendor has motiviation and obligation to fix any future
applications that they provide that might get broken by future patches
to the kernel.

The problem comes when third party vendors overwrite system DLLs
(kernel code or otherwise). They have nothing motivating them to
thoroughly test the effects of their system DLL changes with every
other application out there. And even if they did, its unlikely they
would have the budget to do so. There is no excuse for any third
party vendor to be patching the OS itself. This kind of practice
occurs in the Linux world and is one reason gaming is dead on Linux -
there are a gazillion different versions / distros of the OS out
there, and because of all the kernel *******izations, unless your app
is written in Java which is dog-slow (and not suitable for high
performance game development), you pretty much have to recompile your
application for every stinking *******ization of the OS out there.

I remember the days when a new version of DOS would come out and Lotus
1-2-3 would stop working. The saying in those days was "DOS ain't done
till Lotus won't run."

Yes, but Microsoft has always made it very easy for other vendors to
work closely with them in the evolution of their OS, such that Lotus
never really had any excuse for not being right on top of upcoming
breaking changes to the new version of DOS.

I know, this conversation is headed towards discussion of Microsoft as
the evil monopoly, and why we should usurp the power out from under
the 800lb gorilla and put the power of OS ownership into the hands of
the people, yada yada yada. And I would personally like to see more
competition for Microsoft out there, but the reality of the "OS owned
by the community" results in the Linux problem I mentioned above.
Dethroning OS ownership from Microsoft has been tried before and has
never succeeded, because overall they've done not too bad a job in
their overall strategy to keep their OS and applicatons on everyones
desktop.

Nobody here reading this now is playing most of their favorite games
on Linux, OS/2, Mac, etc. We are on Windows for a reason.

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 23:09:10 -0400, No One
wrote:

FoolsGold wrote:

joey wrote:

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 19:51:48 -0400, No One
wrote:

joey wrote:

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 11:35:41 +0100, Conor
wrote:


In article , joey says...

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:39:55 GMT, "babaloo"
wrote:


It is not the drivers that suck. It is Vista that sucks.

Spoken by a true technology expert (yawn).

It's not Vista that interacts with the video card. The code between
the graphics system of the of an operating system and the driver is
all the same. The driver lies between the OS and the video card, and
the driver is where people are having problems. Drivers are written
by video card vendors, not Microsoft.


Vista is the worst product every issued by Microsoft, an
unbelievable fiasco.

People said the same thing about XP at first.

Ruling out graphics card drivers because we're not talking 3D
gaming....

I've just installed XP and apps etc on a XP1500 system with 512MB RAM.

It boots, opens apps and runs faster than my X2 4800, 2GB system
with Vista on.

I was fkin disgusted.


I was specifically addressing the post by bubaloo or whatever, but to
address the problem you're describing, that same phenomenon has
occurred with every MS OS release since the early days of DOS.
Win 95 didnt have the responsiveness that Win 3.1 had. Win 98 didn't
load apps as fast as 95, and so on and so forth through XP.

NT 3.5 and 4 loaded things faster than Win 95 or 98, especially if
you threw more RAM at it. XP is slower than 2000. Vista slower still.


And DOS runs faster than any of them on single threaded apps, maybe we
all should downgrade.


DOS does not have the functionality that we require though, hence we use
newer operating systems. Convincing people to upgrade from XP to Vista
is tricky if the experience is slower without a SUFFICIENT gain in
functionality.


I would go for a separation of the OS from the GUI (more like Linux and
OS/2). Give me a version of Windows that is command line and doesnt'
have all the GUI crap. Let me run my own GUI. At least back in Windows
3.1 and NT 3.5 you could replace the Program Manager. I ran the Norton
Desktop on NT until version 4. I prefer it over anything Microsoft has
ever written.

Then why are you using XP right now? Think about it.

snip

Yes, but Microsoft has always made it very easy for other vendors to
work closely with them in the evolution of their OS, such that Lotus
never really had any excuse for not being right on top of upcoming
breaking changes to the new version of DOS.

I know, this conversation is headed towards discussion of Microsoft as
the evil monopoly, and why we should usurp the power out from under
the 800lb gorilla and put the power of OS ownership into the hands of
the people, yada yada yada. And I would personally like to see more
competition for Microsoft out there, but the reality of the "OS owned
by the community" results in the Linux problem I mentioned above.
Dethroning OS ownership from Microsoft has been tried before and has
never succeeded, because overall they've done not too bad a job in
their overall strategy to keep their OS and applicatons on everyones
desktop.

Nobody here reading this now is playing most of their favorite games
on Linux, OS/2, Mac, etc. We are on Windows for a reason.



True. For PC games, Windows is still the best platform. And, with the
current development of DirectX-10 games which promise next-gen realism and
graphics, this will stay like this for the next couple of years. Game
consoles offer a (cheaper) alternative but some games (MMORPG, RTS,
adventures, ...) simply work better on PC's.

Matthias

joey writes:

This kind of practice occurs in the Linux world and is one reason
gaming is dead on Linux - there are a gazillion different versions /
distros of the OS out there, and because of all the kernel
*******izations, unless your app is written in Java which is
dog-slow (and not suitable for high performance game development),
you pretty much have to recompile your application for every
stinking *******ization of the OS out there.

This seems very odd to me. I'm not sure if you meant games when you
wrote "app". However, I run commercial software on Linux on a daily
basis. I even maintain a couple of Linux boxes that run commercial
software, for electronics design. Now sure, vendors usually have a
(short) list of Linuxes they support, but that in no way means that
the software wouldn't work on other distributions. I also don't get
what these "kernel *******izations" have to do with application
software? I really thought applications talk to an API usually.

"AirRaid" wrote in message
ups.com...


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).

*snip*

I'll never buy an Nvidia card again. I bought a GeForce 6800 GT AGP card 2
years ago. For the first year the driver support was good, but for the last
year is has absolutely stunk. Nvidia has abandoned support of the GeForce 6
series (at least on Windows XP) for the last 6 months while they devote all
their resources to the 8 series cards and Vista. My system (3.4 GHz Socket
478 Prescott Pentium 4, Abit IS7 Motherboard, the 6800 GT, and 2 Gigs of
Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR) would still be plenty capable of running current
games like WoW, Lord of the Rings Online, FEAR, Battlefield 2142, etc.,
except that games (particularly WoW and LotRO) keep crashing every 20
minutes due to the crap 6-month old drivers.