Why the unsupported ATI video

[Guest]

I have a fairly new laptop with plenty of power to run Vista (PenIV 3.06);
in fact, it runs quite well, and except for the lack of video card support, I
would consider upgrading. However, ATI does not support my video chip and
the drivers included with Vista (that I must load manually, since Vista does
not, for some reason, recognize my chip) are very slow. Checking video
performance with WinXP and Vista on the same dual booted computer with
PCPitstop gives the card less than half the performance in Vista that it gets
in WinXP with the ATI drivers. So...why isn't there better support for video
chips that aren't fully Vista compliant? (Shader 2.0, etc. I think mine is
Shader 1.5) This is going to keep lots of people from upgrading. And I
assume that one can't install WinXP video drivers in Vista.

I have VERY POOR performance from Media Player and Media Center when trying
to play mpg or avi files. They will play pretty well using a different
player, however, VLC media player, so I don't know if I can blame the video
drivers. I've bugged this issue since Beta1 and haven't noticed any change in
quality. Playing DVD's in Vista at this point is almost impossible because
of the poor quality.

Just wondering if MS is thinking this OS will only be placed on new
computers?

 

[RR Johnson Jr]

Microsoft simply can not write drivers for every single piece of hardware.
The OEMs and manufacturers will also need to contribute their fair share.
You should see a great deal of drivers become available once Vista launches
in 2007.


regards
Robert

 

[JW]

MS only writes generic drivers for basic hardware functions. It is up to
the manufacturers to write drivers that get the best performance out of
their specific problems they can then submit them to MS for "signature"
approval which means they will also be included with OS releases or
available via WinUpdate.
Jo, What specific ATI chip do you have and how much memory does it have?

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your response. I have the ATI Mobile 9000 IGP running with 128
Megs (shared) and I don't think ATI is planning to provide Vista drivers for
it. Their drivers seem to start with the 9500 series, or thereabouts. The
laptop is only two years old and has been upgraded with a 7200 hard drive, so
I'm not ready to buy a new one any time soon.