Following a driver update

Aug 1, 2007 14:11 GMT  ·  By

You think that there is nothing stopping you from integrating an Nvidia graphics card into your system running Windows Vista? Then you might want to reconsider your position. The fact of the matter is that Nvidia published a 10-pages long list of issues impacting its ForceWare Graphics Drivers Release 162 designed to run on both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista operating system. You can access a .PDF version of the ForceWare Graphics Drivers Release 162 Notes and go through the integration problems listed on pages 11 through 21. It is not the best ad for Nvidia's support for Windows Vista, that much is clear.

In the release notes, Nvidia offered highlights of the newly introduced aspects in the driver update and the changes from the past version of the firmware. Then the graphics card maker went onward to underscore all the problems that affect driver release 162 in combination with Windows Vista. Nvidia and Vista mix, don't get me wrong, just not quite. In fact, if it were up to Vista it probably wouldn't touch Nvidia's fresh firmware with a ten foot pole. Just because of the exhaustive enumeration of issues.

Both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Vista are affected, and in addition, there are limitations inherent to the operating system, claims Nvidia. In total, 10 pages of problems that do little to recommend Nvidia's products for Vista. But on the other hand, for all the users that are already running Vista on a system with a Nvidia graphics card, the company also introduced new features to the firmware. Increased Total Graphics Memory under Windows Vista for GeForce 7 and 8 series GPUs, Improved DirectX 10 SLI support, added "Resize the HDTV desktop" underscan compensation page to the NVIDIA Control Panel are the new features delivered with the driver update.