14 DAY TRIAL // Nvidia graphic cards and Windows Vista simply do not mix. Nvidia has been constantly hammering away at its graphics drivers for Vista, but it only managed to increase the volume of problems instead of providing resolves. One of the issues that plagued Vista following the general consumer launch in January is the lack of drivers designed to make hardware products from the environment built around the Windows platform to integrate seamlessly with the operating system. This scenario affects by no means only obscure hardware manufactures but also household names in the industry. And Nvidia is an illustrative example in this context.
In early July, Nvidia delivered for download ForceWare Graphics Drivers version 162.22 for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista. The release notes were just an enumeration of reasons why users should stay away from the Nvidia and Vista combination, containing no less than 10 pages worth of unresolved issues between the operating system and the new drivers produced by the graphic's company. Well, at the beginning of August, Nvidia delivered ForceWare Graphics Drivers 163.11 targeting x86 and x64 Vista.
"NVIDIA is committed to supporting Microsoft Windows Vista on current and previous GPU generations. It's important to us that you have an excellent experience through the Vista transition, and driver development is the highest priority in our company. We are working diligently to make sure we achieve and maintain the level of driver quality and reliability that NVIDIA is known for," reads an announcement posted on the Nvidia's official website.
And in order to understand the evolution Nvidia made from version 162 to 163 of ForceWare Graphics Drivers for Vista, you have to know that the August release now covers 15 pages of confirmed issues. Of course you can access them yourselves via the ForceWare Graphics Drivers Release 163 Notes.
This is not to say that Nvidia is not hard at work increasing the number of Vista and ForceWare Graphics Drivers issues, I mean producing an enhanced version of its drivers, and building on the results of version 163.11. The graphics giant just released NVIDIA ForceWare 163.44 BETA, revealing that "this driver supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and OpenGL for GeForce 6, 7, and 8 series GPUs. Improved compatibility for Bioshock. Added HD video post-processing for H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 HD content on GeForce 8500 series products. Numerous game and application compatibility fixes. Please read the release notes for more information on product support, feature limitations, driver fixes and known compatibility issues."
NVIDIA ForceWare 163.44 BETA (Windows Vista x86) NVIDIA ForceWare 163.44 BETA (Windows Vista x64)