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

[FoolsGold]

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.

 

[Guest]

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 bollocks
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.
--

 

[joey]

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 (shit, 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.

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.

 

[joey]

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 bollocks
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.


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..

 

[Access]

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

 

[joey]

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

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 bastardizations, 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 bastardization 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.

 

[joey]

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.

 

[Access]

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

 

[Anssi Saari]

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
bastardizations, 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 bastardization 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 bastardizations" have to do with application
software? I really thought applications talk to an API usually.

 

[Dr. Pepper]

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.

 

[Conor]

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?

Security.

 

[RF]

Security.

According to MS's marketing guys, at least. In practice? I don't know.

RF.

 

[Stephan Rose]

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 bastardizations" have to do with application
software? I really thought applications talk to an API usually.

That is correct. Most applications do not give a crap about the Kernel nor
should they. The only apps that care about the kernel are apps such as
VMWare which need kernel level stuff for proper virtualization support.
Very few other apps though fall into this category.

Games for one thing definitely do NOT fall into this category.

It is a major misconception that an application "has" to be compiled to run
under linux. No. It does not. It may be common practice to do so on many
distributions with open souce applications, but that does not mean it has
to be done.

A game only needs to link against OpenGL and OpenAL for graphics and sound.
That will work with any kernel as long as OpenGL and OpenAL is present on
the target system. Not any different than requiring DirectX on a windows
system.

As an added plus, a game using the above libraries will also work under
windows perfectly fine!

If a game also needs networking support then there are also quite a few
cross platform libraries available that can be used with commercial
applications without any issues and allow the game to run under both
operating systems with no additional work for the developer.

I personally write cross platform OpenGL and GUI code that runs on both
Windows and Linux so I personally have experience under the subject. The
only person doing any compiling is me, the developer. Compile once for each
target platform...done! Yes, it is that simple.

Currently the only distribution I officially support is Ubuntu since that is
the one I personally use. I will add testing for some of the other major
distributions in the near future and then that will be it. If someone then
comes across with some bastardized version that only consists of 0.01% of
my user base and things dont work...tough luck. Not my problem as I do need
to draw a line somewhere.

And while we are on the subject of games...Game developers actually are not
embracing DX10 like the users are. Quite the contrary actually. The whole
DX10 and Vista mess actually poses quite a problem for anyone doing DirectX
Development.

Developers Currently have the choice of the following:

- Use DX9 which is supported across the board but no DX10 level features.
Annoys the people with DX10 hardware and Vista who cant get the eye candy
they want. But at least everyone can play the game.

- Use DX10 which is only supported on high-end cards and Vista. Annoys the
people with DX9 hardware or running XP who now cannot run the game at all!
Even if a person who runs XP has DX10 hardware they still cant run the game
because DX10 is vista only. On top of that, DX10 API is so different
fundamentally no existing engine code will work with it and require a
complete rewrite at least in the DirectX portion of things.

- Use OpenGL which can do both DX9 and DX10 level features. It runs on every
operating system. It supports every video card. It is compatible with any
existing OpenGL code in engines supporting OpengGL. Every user can run the
game and eye candy is determined by the users system capabilities. Everyone
pretty much wins.

I just had a talk the other day with a friend of mine who works for one of
the major game studios and I asked him about DX10. His answer? OpenGL.

I personally would not be surprised if we see some more titles released in
the future using OpenGL instead of DirectX.

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

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[joey]

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 bastardizations" have to do with application
software? I really thought applications talk to an API usually.

Most of them do, but the thing to understand is that under Linux, key
parts of the operating system such as the threading model can work
entirely different. Some versions of Linux support true threads, some
spawn an entirely new process for each thread. So regardless of
whether you're writing to an API or not, fundamental changes to the
kernel can affect the timing and thread synchronization of anything
but the most simple applications. I'm not saying this is true of
every application out there, but I've seen Linux / UNIX horror stores
in my multi-decade programming career that I don't even care to go
into at the moment.

 

[Stephan Rose]

Most of them do, but the thing to understand is that under Linux, key
parts of the operating system such as the threading model can work
entirely different. Some versions of Linux support true threads, some
spawn an entirely new process for each thread. So regardless of
whether you're writing to an API or not, fundamental changes to the
kernel can affect the timing and thread synchronization of anything
but the most simple applications. I'm not saying this is true of
every application out there, but I've seen Linux / UNIX horror stores
in my multi-decade programming career that I don't even care to go
into at the moment.

Wanna know my solution to that one?

I have my list of distributions I officially support. All others are at the
users own risks. If someone has some oddball distribution that does things
differently...their problem if it is not on my list of supported
distributions. End of story. Have to draw a line somewhere!

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

å›ã®ã“ã¨æ€ã„出ã™æ—¥ãªã‚“ã¦ãªã„ã®ã¯
å›ã®ã“ã¨å¿˜ã‚ŒãŸã¨ããŒãªã„ã‹ã‚‰

 

[joey]

According to MS's marketing guys, at least. In practice? I don't know.

RF.

No, Vista is definately more secure. The real controversy is that
some users do not like the security, or are not used to it yet, or
don't want to be "saved from themself". What it's really saving them
from is dangerous or carelessly written software, and a lot of people
have carelessly written software that they've grown fond of over time.

 

[joey]

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.

Such is the plight of the PC gamer my friend. If you want the flat
upgrade curve you have to stick with consoles. The PC is an evolving
platform that requires occasional upgrades, and quite frankly your
video card is outdated.

 

[Access]

No, Vista is definately more secure. The real controversy is that
some users do not like the security, or are not used to it yet, or
don't want to be "saved from themself". What it's really saving them
from is dangerous or carelessly written software, and a lot of people
have carelessly written software that they've grown fond of over time.

I recently read something that the security in Vista was decreasing the
performance of games. Solution : run the game with administrator rights.
Great security ...

 

[joey]

I recently read something that the security in Vista was decreasing the
performance of games. Solution : run the game with administrator rights.
Great security ...

Running the game with admin rights doesn't mean you have to log on as
an admin, it means running only that process as an admin. As long as
you do that and you trust Electronic Arts or whoever the game is from,
there's no loss of securty with that approach.

 

[Conor]

I recently read something that the security in Vista was decreasing the
performance of games. Solution : run the game with administrator rights.
Great security ...

And what you read was wrong. It doesn't decrease the performance of
games.