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Where are my NVIDIA Drivers for Vista?

GeForce 8800 series video card owners are up in arms as NVIDIA has left them out to dry in terms of WHQL certified Vista drivers. GeForce 8 series SLI owners have been completely shut out of Vista DX10 gaming support. What to expect now?

I must say that Vista driver support for the GeForce 8800 series video cards has been a hot topic in our Video Card forums for quite some time. We here at HardOCP have extolled the virtues of GeForce 8800 ownership since the day of its introduction. Our readers that represent a huge portion of the 8800 owners are now asking, “Where the hell are my signed Vista drivers?”

The fact of the matter is that the GeForce 8800 series is currently the best video card you can purchase for 3D gaming…if your income exceeds the GDP of some of the new Eastern European countries. That is a bit of an exaggeration, but you can easily spend US$365 on a “cheap” brand of a 8800 GTS to in excess of US$900 for an overclocked 8800 GTX with warrantied and preinstalled water cooling. Introduce into that mix that many of our readers are cutting-edge sort of guys that have invested in SLI system configurations. That considered, you can see where it is very easy to have spent $800 to $1600 on an 8800 series video card configuration.

Let’s also consider how NVIDIA has marketed their 8800 series GPU. Checking NVIDIA’s PR page, we find more than a few mentions of “DX10” or “Windows Vista.” One, two, three, four, five. In all fairness, these are not all in reference to the GeForce 8800 specifically, but a lot of the press releases make a big deal about Windows Vista and DX10 support. Currently NVIDIA proclaim on their GeForce 8 Series page that:

NVIDIA® GeForce® 8 series graphics processing units (GPUs) redefine the PC gaming experience. With a revolutionary unified architecture and full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 10 games, GeForce 8 series GPUs deliver unprecedented performance, extraordinarily detailed environments, and film quality game effects.

Even in our evaluation of the BFGTech 8800 GTS and GTX, we lead with, “The day has finally arrived, the first DirectX 10, Shader Model 4.0 graphics hardware is here and NVIDIA is the first out of the gate.”

Undoubtedly a huge draw to the GeForce 8800 series GPU is that it is DX10 capable graphics hardware. Many hardware enthusiasts that live on the cutting edge of hardware and software invested in their 8800 series GPUs because they knew that not only were they going to get incredible DX9 performance immediately, but they were also building their systems to be compatible with DX10 in the new Windows Vista operating system.

For months, many of these card owners and critics have been very vocal about appropriate driver support for these 8800 cards in both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. In fact, many of these 8800 card owners have been running Windows Vista for some time now without any official driver support from NVIDIA, which understandably has these owners upset. We have tried to quell this concern with the standard of answer of, “Just wait ‘til Vista is officially launched and the retail Vista OS is in the marketplace,” as we fully expected NVIDIA to be completely prepared to provide support to its customers when Vista arrived.

Well, here we are; Vista has arrived. It’s time to see if NVIDIA is standing behind their most expensive consumer product in its history.

Late on Wednesday afternoon, Pacific Time, NVIDIA released ForceWare v100.59, both in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. This is a BETA driver that provides DX10 level support for 8800 single GPU configuration owners running Vista and single GPU DX9 support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs in Vista. For you SLI owners out there, the Beta support is not near as broad. Only 8800 SLI under DX9 is supported in Vista currently. Those of you that have spent a lot of money on SLI GeForce 7 series configurations are currently left out in the cold.

This article is having to somewhat be rewritten because as of a few hours ago, there was NO SLI SUPPORT for 8800s in Vista at all. That was obviously a huge deal that has somewhat been fixed with ForceWare v100.59. As for DX10 SLI Beta support, NVIDIA is still undecided or unwilling to share their target date.

G80 SLI support for DX10 is TBD.

For you GeForce 7 series SLI owners, you fate is still dangling as well in terms of Vista support.

G7x/NV4x SLI support for OpenGL and DirectX 9 is TBD.

We have to still look at this and wonder just why we don’t have WHQL certified drivers as we are seeing 8800 users in our forums with real driver issues inside Vista. We also have to wonder about the impact of those NVIDIA users that want to move into the Vista 64-bit realm of computing as it seems non-signed drivers are a no-go.

Additionally, Windows Vista x64 versions require that all drivers be digitally signed by the developer. If you've ever installed a driver in Windows XP, you'll likely be familiar with the unsigned driver dialog, which offers a "Continue Anyway" option when a setup application attempts to load an unsigned driver. In the x64 versions of Windows Vista, this will not be possible.

We have questions into NVIDIA now to clarify if these Beta ForceWare drivers will work with Vista 64-bit or not.

Vista is here and NVIDIA does not have a WHQL driver for their high-end GPUs. So when exactly should we expect to see a WHQL driver? According to what NVIDIA told us yesterday and verified today, 8800 owners could be waiting a good while for DX10 support for single 8800 GPU configurations.

NVIDIA is working very closely with Microsoft to finalize the WHQL certified DirectX 10 driver. Both companies are working together to ensure that the driver is certified and delivered to customers as soon as possible. The current estimate is near the end of Feb for G80 WHQL.

When digging a bit deeper and asking for dates as to when we should see 8800 SLI WHQL drivers for Vista, which I think should have been a minimum requirement for Vista’s launch, this is what NVIDIA had to say:

The driver we are working on for end of Feb for G80 WHQL will support DirectX 9 and OpenGL SLI.

So from what we are being told NVIDIA will not even hint to DX10 8800 SLI GPU support even being on a time horizon they are willing to estimate.

NVIDIA did close our email conversation with this statement.

NVIDIA has placed a top priority on supporting our customers. NVIDIA will continue to work diligently on optimizing its Windows Vista drivers to ensure maximum performance on 3D applications through continuous driver updates. Our reputation for world-class support speaks for itself.

I fully appreciate and respect NVIDIA’s driver program as it has revolutionized the industry, but make no mistake about it, NVIDIA is not living up to its own standards at this time. The above “end of February” timeline and “To Be Determined” answers are unacceptable at best.

The Bottom Line

Windows Vista was not sprung on an unsuspecting NVIDIA last weekend. NVIDIA has known for a great while that WHQL Vista driver support is expected of them. They also know damn well that their enthusiast customer base will not find their current feeble attempts acceptable and that their self-stated “world-class support” is worth very little right now in terms of Windows Vista. We saw a Beta DX9 SLI driver released today for Vista that equates to putting a Band-Aid on a compound fracture. NVIDIA does not want to have their feet held to the fire for the slap in the face given to its 8800 SLI owners so they are trying their best to deflect that negative attention. There are surely many 7800 and 7900 SLI owners out there that feel slighted by NVIDIA as well. NVIDIA has enjoyed a strong reputation in the past year, much of that tied directly to SLI. NVIDIA not being ready for DX10, Vista, and SLI is a low blow to enthusiasts and gamers that spend the big bucks, and they will remember that for a while.

Talking to NVIDIA about this today, they explain they are very well aware that the enthusiast community is not happy with the state of the Vista drivers and they told HardOCP that they are working hard to fix the issues.

I wish we had better news for you than the nebulous dates and “TBD” answers we have shared with you above, but it seems that at the moment, that’s as good as it is going to get. Rest assured, I certainly think that the hardware enthusiasts and gamers that pay for these extremely expensive GeForce series video cards deserve much better support. “World-class support” should be a minimum expectation, not just a marketing tag line.

Discuss

Check this thread for what is sure to be healthy dose of conversation on this subject.