A bit of history: last December, someone pretended to be an official NVIDIA spokesperson and posted in a NVIDIA forum ( http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=21137 ) saying that "there will not be 3D Stereo support from Nvidia for Microsoft Windows Vista anymore. 3D Stereo Drivers for the Geforce 8800series under Microsoft Windows XP (not 64bit) will be out in eight months." The person was banned, and it "provoked(?)" an official NVIDIA statement "Our engineering team expects to offer 3D stereo drivers for GeForce 8800 by spring 2007." But NVIDIA didn't say anything about Vista drivers.
Now it is spring, and we do have beta 8800 drivers. Looking at the user feedback so far, it just may take another 3 months for it to reach "release quality", making the "8 months from December" not too far off.
So, I am anxious to hear about any official words that NVIDIA is at least working on Vista drivers. I am not really doubting it (if NVIDIA drops it and ATI is not picking it up then 3D will be "dead", and I can't believe we will come to that), but I am anxious, and am wondering why can't NVIDIA just tell us "we are working on it" even if they don't know when we may see even a beta driver ...
I am building a new system (buying a new video card and new OS license), and this affects my purchase decision. If "no Vista driver ever" then I'll buy 7900 and XP and use that until XP dies ... If "Vista driver for new products only (8000 series only)" then I'll get an 8600/8800. Etc.
P.S. I am trying to find out info; I am not trying to start another rumor!!
any official word that Vista drivers will be coming?
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ssiu
- Binocular Vision CONFIRMED!
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- Joined: Tue May 15, 2007 8:11 am
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gisabun
- 3D Angel Eyes (Moderator)
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Re: any official word that Vista drivers will be coming?
I'm sure they are working on drivers but who knows when they'll be ready.ssiu wrote:So, I am anxious to hear about any official words that NVIDIA is at least working on Vista drivers. I am not really doubting it (if NVIDIA drops it and ATI is not picking it up then 3D will be "dead", and I can't believe we will come to that), but I am anxious, and am wondering why can't NVIDIA just tell us "we are working on it" even if they don't know when we may see even a beta driver ...
Seems that NVIDIA has slowed a bit in releases. ATI has their Vista drivers out [being part of AMD wouldn't of made a difference].
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Nil Einne
- One Eyed Hopeful
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- Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 12:58 pm
From what I've heard, Vista has been a mucher bigger pain for the driver teams of most major vendors then expected. This has resulted, for example in Nvidia (temporarily AFAIK) dropping their unified approach to drivers and also in very infrequent official updates for XP and slower Vista updates too. (Actually most Nvidia driver releases actually work on all cards, from 6 series upwards, you just have to modify the inf to get it to work. However clearly if Nvidia are not officialy supporting these cards, they are not doing much testing etc for these cards.) Given that things are still in such a poor state, I personally would expect it to be at least 6 months minimum before we see anything stereo on Vista or for that matter major stereo updates for XP. Sadly stereo still isn't that big a priority for them so I wouldn't expect it to be sorted when the more 'core' stuff is still not going that well.
Ironically ATI seems to have been doing better on the driver front recently that Nvidia IMHO. Then again, this doesn't really surprise me since Nvidia was rather slow on Vista support in the beta days.
As for whether ATI are going to support stereo, well personally I'm not as hopefully as many people here seem to be. It would be rather good since it'll mean I don't have to drop ATI out of my consideration for a new card. But people have been lobbying ATI for ages. Even vendors of 3D products have been and I believe at least one has offered to contribute as much as they can if ATI offers the help they need. But ATI haven't seen that interested. And stereo 3D as much as we don't want it to be, is still a niche market. While Nvidia has supported stereo 3D for a long while, remember that the only reason they supported it originally is because they inherited it (from Elsa or something). So much of the ground work was already done for them. Ironically of course, the growth in LCDs has probably hurt 3D since shutter glasses don't tend to work with LCDs. It's possible that developments like IZ3D monitors (3D LCD monitors) will help. Who knows? But the biggest growth for stereo 3D in the short to medium term IMHO is likely to be in the professional market. And this market doesn't really need the sort of driver support that Nvidia offers. Professional cards support quad buffering stereo which professional applications utilise.
Indeed in some ways the development of the IZ3D drivers just help demonstrate the point. They know all to well they can't rely on the hardware developers (ATI obviously but Nvidia to some extent to) to reliably support stereo 3D so they need their own drivers. So while the drivers are good in some ways, it also means that stereo support may move somewhat away from the card support to stereo display hardware support. And obviously they're not likely to bother with shutter glasses support & anaglpyh. In fact, the need for the stereo hardware people to provide the necessary driver support may mean fewer competitors for this area.
In conclusion, it's possible ATI will support stereo 3D but IMHO, people shouldn't get their hopes up. As for whether Nvidia will support stereo 3D with Vista well this will depend a lot on how much work they have to do to get it to work IMHO. If it's too hard, they might just can it.
Ironically ATI seems to have been doing better on the driver front recently that Nvidia IMHO. Then again, this doesn't really surprise me since Nvidia was rather slow on Vista support in the beta days.
As for whether ATI are going to support stereo, well personally I'm not as hopefully as many people here seem to be. It would be rather good since it'll mean I don't have to drop ATI out of my consideration for a new card. But people have been lobbying ATI for ages. Even vendors of 3D products have been and I believe at least one has offered to contribute as much as they can if ATI offers the help they need. But ATI haven't seen that interested. And stereo 3D as much as we don't want it to be, is still a niche market. While Nvidia has supported stereo 3D for a long while, remember that the only reason they supported it originally is because they inherited it (from Elsa or something). So much of the ground work was already done for them. Ironically of course, the growth in LCDs has probably hurt 3D since shutter glasses don't tend to work with LCDs. It's possible that developments like IZ3D monitors (3D LCD monitors) will help. Who knows? But the biggest growth for stereo 3D in the short to medium term IMHO is likely to be in the professional market. And this market doesn't really need the sort of driver support that Nvidia offers. Professional cards support quad buffering stereo which professional applications utilise.
Indeed in some ways the development of the IZ3D drivers just help demonstrate the point. They know all to well they can't rely on the hardware developers (ATI obviously but Nvidia to some extent to) to reliably support stereo 3D so they need their own drivers. So while the drivers are good in some ways, it also means that stereo support may move somewhat away from the card support to stereo display hardware support. And obviously they're not likely to bother with shutter glasses support & anaglpyh. In fact, the need for the stereo hardware people to provide the necessary driver support may mean fewer competitors for this area.
In conclusion, it's possible ATI will support stereo 3D but IMHO, people shouldn't get their hopes up. As for whether Nvidia will support stereo 3D with Vista well this will depend a lot on how much work they have to do to get it to work IMHO. If it's too hard, they might just can it.