NVIDIA Windows Vista Driver News
April 17, 2007

Dear NVIDIA Customer,

On behalf of NVIDIA, the Vista Quality Assurance team would like to thank our user community for participating in the bug report system. The information you provided is valuable and will help us improve the quality and performance of our drivers.

There is a new Windows Vista Beta driver release available to download from NVIDIA, v158.18. This is a new driver which will support GeForce 6, 7 and 8 series graphics boards; it does not support GeForce Go mobile GPUs. Please continue to check with your notebook manufacturer for a new driver for GeForce Go GPUs. GeForce FX users should continue to use the v96.85 driver.

Before installing the new Windows Vista drivers, please make sure to review the installation steps for the v158.18 driver. These instructions will be found after clicking on the 'Download Driver' link on the next page.

Download Windows Vista 32-bit driver

Download Windows Vista 64-bit driver

Here is a summary of new features and bug fixes this new driver addresses:

New Features

Adds support for GeForce 8600 GTS, GeForce 8600 GT, and GeForce 8500 GT, GeForce 8400 GS, and GeForce 8300 GS GPUs.
Increased performance in 3D applications.
PureVideo™ HD support.
Add support for forcing Vertical Sync in DirectX applications.
Updated NVIDIA Control Panel with improved user interface (Please see the Release Notes for more details).
Numerous game and application compatibility fixes (see below for some of the top issues).

Key Bug Fixes

Fixed numerous "Display driver has stopped responding" error messages.
"This is not Vista" error message appears when installing Windows Vista 32–bit drivers on a Windows Vista 64–bit operating system. The error message did not indicate which operating system (32–bit or 64–bit) is installed. NVIDIA has fixed the installer error message to better tell the end user which version of Windows Vista drivers and operating system are running.

Warhammer 40k Dawn of War (all versions) has driver error message and does not run.

The gamma and brightness controls in the NVIDIA Control Panel Adjust Desktop Color Settings page do not function or affect the desktop appearance consistently.

GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS, Windows Vista Ultimate Edition: Text in the Ultimate Game:Hold'em flashes at the start of the game.
GeForce 8800 GTX: Elder Scrolls: Oblivion-NVIDIA Control Panel antialiasing does not work when HDR is enabled.
GeForce 8800 GTX: Half Life 2-fog is broken or misapplied. This fix requires the user to update their Valve Source–based games to the latest versions of the game engines.
GeForce 8800 GTX: Splinter Cell Double Agent-there is corruption in the game.
GeForce 8800 SLI: The system does not resume from S3 mode when SLI mode is enabled.
GeForce 8600/GeForce 7900 GTX SLI: "Display driver has stopped responding" error message appears when changing the resolution, or when resuming from Standby\Hibernate.
GeForce 8800 GTX: The Windows Experience Index tool crashes when trying to refresh the system score in Windows Vista 64-bit.

Please view the driver Release Notes for a list of all of the fixed issues in this driver release.

Windows Vista Limitations
In previous drivers, Vertical Sync (vsync) was listed as a Windows Vista limitations. However, NVIDIA has worked around this issue in our drivers.
Please view the driver Release Notes for a list of all Windows Vista limitations.

Application Limitations
NVIDIA has found application limitations and is continuing to document in our driver Release Notes. Please view the driver Release Notes for a list of all application limitations.

NVIDIA Vista Graphics Driver Issues
Please view the driver Release Notes for a list of all of known issues in this driver release.

NVIDIA Features No Longer Supported
Please view the driver Release Notes for a list of all features no longer supported.