nVidia's not so ''Unified'' Driver Support
Posted by: Newsfactory on: 11/18/2005 08:11 PM [ Print | 26 comment(s) ] · 4227 views
This news is six months old but for various reasons is still not widely known. nVidia dropped "Unified" driver support in Windows XP/2000 for certain GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), starting with driver v77.72. This is not the first time they have done this with their "Unified" driver architecture but it is significant in its disparity. The irony is the lack of "Unification".
nVidia Unified Driver Architecture
"The NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture (UDA) is the foundation for the company?s award-winning ForceWare drivers and delivers forward-and-backward compatibility across all implementations of NVIDIA desktop, workstation, mobile, platform, and multimedia processors. With a single driver, UDA delivers ongoing performance and feature improvements, reduced maintenance time, increased scalability, and a lower total cost of ownership.
ForceWare software supports the entire line of TNT2? processors, the GeForce? consumer line of GPUs, the NVIDIA nForce? platform processors, the NVIDIA Quadro® line of professional GPUs, as well as the full line of NVIDIA mobile processors."
This is clearly not the case as you will see below.
Popular Technology.net
nVidia Unified Driver Architecture
"The NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture (UDA) is the foundation for the company?s award-winning ForceWare drivers and delivers forward-and-backward compatibility across all implementations of NVIDIA desktop, workstation, mobile, platform, and multimedia processors. With a single driver, UDA delivers ongoing performance and feature improvements, reduced maintenance time, increased scalability, and a lower total cost of ownership.
ForceWare software supports the entire line of TNT2? processors, the GeForce? consumer line of GPUs, the NVIDIA nForce? platform processors, the NVIDIA Quadro® line of professional GPUs, as well as the full line of NVIDIA mobile processors."
This is clearly not the case as you will see below.
Popular Technology.net
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ricardomontoban Unregistered |
#63306 Posted on: 11/18/2005 08:40 PM
*Gasp* The horror of it all, dropping support for a chip that was introduced like mid 1999. I mean, exactly how long do we expect them to keep supporting a chip who's long past it's days of glory. If there's a particular bug with the drivers and the TNT2 series they haven't fixed by now, they aren't ever gonna fix it. |
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DooGie Junior Member Posts: 10 Joined: 2004-04-12 |
#63307 Posted on: 11/18/2005 09:24 PM
This isn't news and as far as I'm concerned it's totally correct for nVidia to do this. Why the hell should they bring out new drivers with total backward compatability, it would make no sense at all. |
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Mertsch Moderator Posts: 3014 Joined: 2002-08-22 |
#63308 Posted on: 11/18/2005 09:36 PM
I noticed that, too when my 6800 was on RMA but come on ... the only "problem" about that is that the driver selection is not correct ... they should add one more item for pre GF2 cards |
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Domingo Unregistered |
#63309 Posted on: 11/18/2005 09:37 PM
It wouldn't shock me if keeping the drivers completely unified might even hurt the driver performance on newer cards in order to make sure they're backward compatible. Either way, if you're still using one of those cards...why do you really even need new drivers? Gaming really isn't even possible with one anymore...so new incompatibilities shouldn't even matter. I think random bugs in Battlefield 2 are the least of your problems if you still have a TNT2 and the like. |
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WildFrisco Unregistered |
#63310 Posted on: 11/18/2005 10:58 PM
Actually they started dropping support for older video adapters since driver versions 71.89/71.90. It would be nice to have at least current 2d support/bug fixes for older but capable video adapters like the tnt 2, gf2, etc. It's better than using most onboard video adapters from the likes of Sis, Via, Intel, etc. |
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fanbanlo Unregistered |
#63311 Posted on: 11/18/2005 11:08 PM
ah.. no wonder my 6600 is not WHQL'ed in 81.29... but... 6600 already 'outdated'? damn... |
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owa Unregistered |
#63312 Posted on: 11/18/2005 11:51 PM
They sometimes take a while to get their official drivers through WHQL but I'm not sure about beta drivers. Do they bother to do that for betas? I'm assuming 81.29s are betas since I can't find them listed anywhere. If you want WHQL approved drivers, try the 81.85s. I think they're WHQL'ed for both XP-32/XP-64. |
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wb22gprix Unregistered |
#63313 Posted on: 11/19/2005 12:22 AM
"populartechnology.net" more like "we have this blog that we rarely update so we can criticize companies for stupid things that aren't news.net" |
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Rosco Member Posts: 24 Joined: 2005-02-09 |
#63314 Posted on: 11/19/2005 12:37 AM
One other thing to note, most people running a video card that old are probably still using Win95/98, and most likely have not even considered installing a new driver except for the one that came on the cd with the card. Well, their might be a few CS players bitching about it though. |
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ChrisW Unregistered |
#63315 Posted on: 11/19/2005 02:55 AM
That Andrew, is a f*cking C.o.c.k. Every time they update their "News", bollox, they attack either Firefox, nVidia, or some other company that they think makes them "News". I would change your website to something like www.unpopulartwats.net Oh, and anybody still using a TNT card, throw the thing away. Even for 2D, it was shite, let alone 3D. |
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PitbulI Unregistered |
#63316 Posted on: 11/19/2005 03:32 AM
ATI Catalyst drivers only support RADEON cards. They don't support Rage 64 or Rage 128 cards. Why should nvidia care about TNT2 drivers? Let those people that can no longer play these new games anyways get a new AGP video card. Come on. Even a Geforce4 MX type card or a 5200 or 6200 costs less than 100, sometimes less than 50 bucks for some. That would be a smart idea. As for me, I got a AIW 9700 and I want to upgrade. Maybe a X1600 or hopefully a Geforce7xxx card will come out for the person that wants mainstream and not super performance. Or else I'll have to go to the old 6x00 series cards. |
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Cimlite Junior Member Posts: 6 Joined: 2005-11-12 |
#63317 Posted on: 11/19/2005 04:17 AM
"This news is six months old but for various reasons is still not widely known." Yeah... could it be that no one actually still runs a TNT2 card? I mean, even if your a basic computer user that has no ambitions towards graphics heavy applications or games... your probably way past a TNT2 card anyway. This is pointless whining, not news. |
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Mastertech Junior Member Posts: 2 Joined: 2005-04-13 |
#63318 Posted on: 11/19/2005 04:35 AM
It is not just the TNT cards but these are well: TNT2 TNT2 Pro TNT2 Ultra TNT2 Model 64 (M64) TNT2 Model 64 (M64) Pro Vanta Vanta LT GeForce 256 GeForce DDR GeForce2 GTS GeForce2 Pro GeForce2 Ti GeForce2 Ultra GeForce2 MX Integrated graphics Quadro Quadro2 Pro Quadro2 EX |
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PersianImmortal Unregistered |
#63321 Posted on: 11/19/2005 07:50 AM
It's called sensationalism, and it's the way some sites attract traffic. Which is a shame because for the most part Warp2search usually has excellent news coverage. The only issue I can see here is that Nvidia should have perhaps made it more clear that they are dropping support for these older cards, but in practical terms anyone using a TNT2, GeForce256 or GeForce2 class GPU to a run any recent games would get faster results drawing each frame by hand themselves. People who are using these cards will not require any driver updates to play older games, and if they are using the cards just to do simple things like browsing (i.e. 2D graphics) then again, they don't need a new Forceware driver. |
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Devilhood Unregistered |
#63322 Posted on: 11/19/2005 01:29 PM
This news is six months old but for various reasons is still not widely known. I wonder why? I know, let's all protest by throwing PC100 RAM sticks at the Nvidia HQ. |
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TSThomas Junior Member Posts: 2 Joined: 2003-05-10 |
#63323 Posted on: 11/19/2005 02:07 PM
Stay tuned for part 2 - Microsoft & Windows 95 - Why No More Updates? |
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Mastertech Junior Member Posts: 2 Joined: 2005-04-13 |
#63324 Posted on: 11/19/2005 02:44 PM
Spoken like True Elitists. You can always tell those who own one computer and those who support many. Millions of users still have these cards in their computers. It is good information regardless. They drop support for those cards but continue to Support the GF2 MX line? Interesting. |
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Ihmemies Unregistered |
#63325 Posted on: 11/19/2005 03:44 PM
I don't care. It's good that they drop support for old stuff. They have to do it sooner or later.. and better sooner. Just look at Microsoft what problems backward compatibility causes.. at least they finally got rid of 16bit code with Windows XP. |
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Devilhood Unregistered |
#63326 Posted on: 11/19/2005 05:12 PM
exactly. it's a waste of time and resources to support essentially obsolete technology. |
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TSThomas Junior Member Posts: 2 Joined: 2003-05-10 |
#63327 Posted on: 11/19/2005 07:32 PM
Not sure if that remark includes me but anyway. As acknowledged; this applies (Or rather, doesn't) to multiple graphics cards & for over half a year. If this was such a "big" issue you'd have heard of it by now. But there's been nothing. Why? Because it's a non-issue. & just say they were to release a new driver supporting all those again, what difference would it actually make? As regards games they don't have the hardware features to run them correctly or the performance/video memory to run them playably either. Like I said, it's a non-issue. New Drivers will do nothing to bypass the hardware deficiencies of those graphics cards now. If you want to stick with old hardware you can't expect support forever. |
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Mastertech Junior Member Posts: 2 Joined: 2005-04-13 |
#63329 Posted on: 11/19/2005 11:45 PM
Maybe I'm the only one who read the whole article? Anyway he is saying that nVidia clearly says their drivers support all these cards, they have been doing it and then without warning they just drop support? The point is that nVidia should notify you of this and possibly stop calling the drivers Unified if they are not. I understand why they are doing this, it still does not make it fair to the owners of these cards. Nor the fact that they continue to support GF2MX but not the GF2 Ti a faster card. I know this is hard to believe but their are millions of people who would care. |
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wb22gprix Unregistered |
#63330 Posted on: 11/20/2005 01:48 AM
The GeForce2 MX series was released after the Ti series, first of all. Also, they make it pretty clear on their site which products are supported and which are not. If you can't read, then that would be a problem, but if you can't read then you probably don't know what unified means anyways. Since we're making broad generalizations that we can't possibly back up, I'll say that those "millions of people" using older cards don't typically care about drivers and are probably using Detonator 20 drivers on their 1999 Gateway POS. |
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Mastertech Junior Member Posts: 2 Joined: 2005-04-13 |
#63331 Posted on: 11/20/2005 03:27 AM
The Geforce 2 TI cards came out in 2001 after the GF3s and the GF2 MXs which came out in 2000. Anyone here work for an OEM? Didn't think so. |
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ricardomontoban Unregistered |
#63332 Posted on: 11/20/2005 03:04 PM
"You can always tell those who own one computer and those who support many. Millions of users still have these cards in their computers. It is good information regardless." Congratulations for those supposed "millions" of users - exactly why does it matter that the drivers no longer support these cards? Take a look at the revision history, when was the last time a TNT/TNT2 bug was fixed? For all intensive purposes, owners of these cards wouldn't have needed to update for the past several years anyhow. It's not like a TNT/TNT2 card can take advantage of pixel shaders, etc. - the only reason users of these dust-collecting cards would need to upgrade is to qualm their fears of users who have no clue about their hardware, caring only that they've got the newest drivers which bring them absolute squat. |
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Mastertech Junior Member Posts: 2 Joined: 2005-04-13 |
#63333 Posted on: 11/21/2005 02:58 AM
Seriously am I the only one here who doesn't skim read articles? I'm talking about the GeForce, GeForce 2 and especially the GeForce 2 Ti series. |
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