Does WHQL actually mean anything? | The Coffeehouse

intelman

ATI's latest driver set is causing blue screens in Vista. While it isn't 100% of the people it is a good chunk, more than a handful.

What gets me is that the driver is WHQL. What does it mean when a driver is WHQL certified? One would think that the driver is held up to high quality standards. Certainly a WHQL driver shouldn't cause bluescreens.

Some info at driverheaven, an ATI tech there is investigating the issue, and confirmed it.

http://www.driverheaven.net/windows-radeon-display-drivers/133161-who-has-probs-bsods-vista-7-3-a.html

and some more info

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=393&pgno=0

ScanIAm
On a scale of 1 to 10, people are stupid.

MrJay wrote:
Based on Vista experiences with both the ATI and Nvidia drivers, it seems that WHQL is largely meaningless. If they don't guarantee that drivers are free of major and obvious defects, what exactly is the point?

It certifies that the video drivers won't reformat your HDD.

Honestly, I'm confused. Did the underlying driver-coding method change at the last minute on Vista? nVidia STILL doesn't have solid drivers and now, apparently, ATI is in the same boat.

Either Vista drivers are too hard to code, or nVidia/ATI coders are idiots. Either way, this is no longer in the realm of "unexpected problems". MSFT, AMD(who owns ATI), and nVidia need to get their sh*t together and figure this stuff out.

Vista depends on decent video drivers to look even remotely appealing.

ZippyV
Fired Up

My computer can't go to sleep without waking up again. I think everybody has this issue with Nvidia drivers even if they are signed.

littleguru
<3 Seattle

ZippyV wrote:
My computer can't go to sleep without waking up again. I think everybody has this issue with Nvidia drivers even if they are signed.

Mine is unable to go to sleep at all... First it was able to, but woke up like 1 minute afterwards - now I'm completely unable. Clicking the sleep button, just does nothing!

What annoys me the most is that each time after starting Windows -after having seen the desktop for 10 seconds or so - the whole thing becomes slow (for 2 seconds or so) and the whole screen becomes black and after a second everything is back to normal (after seeing the desktop and then reappearing the wallpaper).

This happens just onces after each boot!

I really don't understand it too. What's all up with this driver model and drivers? Where is the problem? Anybody from Microsoft, involved in that part of Windows, here?

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

ScanIAm wrote:
Either Vista drivers are too hard to code, or nVidia/ATI coders are idiots. Either way, this is no longer in the realm of "unexpected problems". MSFT, AMD(who owns ATI), and nVidia need to get their sh*t together and figure this stuff out.

The problem's with ATI/nVidia. Intel and Matrox have both been producing solid drivers for years.

I reckon "Unified Drivers" have something to do with them, I really don't see the point in them, it makes it harder to find the right driver for your hard (since "latest != best", try using 77.77 on a GeForce 4, or 10x.x on a GeForce 6 for example.

intelman

Sleep just started working for me. But now when I come out of sleep, my processor is clocked down pretty far, so I don't use it Sad

.

Stebet
Buuuurrrritoooo!

ScanIAm wrote:
Honestly, I'm confused. Did the underlying driver-coding method change at the last minute on Vista? nVidia STILL doesn't have solid drivers and now, apparently, ATI is in the same boat.

Either Vista drivers are too hard to code, or nVidia/ATI coders are idiots. Either way, this is no longer in the realm of "unexpected problems". MSFT, AMD(who owns ATI), and nVidia need to get their sh*t together and figure this stuff out.

Vista depends on decent video drivers to look even remotely appealing.

Or you could see the obvious and realize that both companies are stretched thin for their resources. Not only did they have to make Vista drivers for their current lineup of cards as well as maintaining their XP and to some degree Linux drivers but they also had to develop XP and Vista drivers for a completely new hardware architecture (their DirectX 10 cards). I can imagine that very little codebase could actually have been shared between the Vertex/Pixel shader based cards and then Unified Shader hardware.

Proficient driver developers don't grow on trees.

Creative however were not in the same boat of having a completely new hardware architecture to develop drivers for so i'll flame them withouth feeling the slightest bit bad about it. Especially since the new audio architecture was ready at least since Vista Beta 2 (propably earlier).

Stebet
Buuuurrrritoooo!

MrJay wrote:

Stebet wrote: but they also had to develop XP and Vista drivers for a completely new hardware architecture (their DirectX 10 cards).

Why would ATI/Nvidia need to develop DirectX 10 drivers for anything but Vista? Remember, boneheaded Microsoft made DX10 a Vista only technology.

Frankly if I were ATI/Nvidia I wouldn't even bother releasing DX9 compatible drivers for those cards. It seems like a waste of time and silicon.

I never said DirectX 10 drivers for XP. I Said XP drivers for their DirectX 10 cards, huge difference. Their DirectX 10 cards have to run DirectX 9 as well. Not to mention the DirectX 10 equivalent OpenGL extensions on both XP and Vista.

And thank god you aren't ATI/Nvidia because you'd have lost a huge part of the PC gaming market to consoles with something as silly as making the DirectX 10 cards Vista only.

JKelley
Is it sad that my badge picture is one of the best ones I have of myself?

MrJay wrote:

Stebet wrote: And thank god you aren't ATI/Nvidia because you'd have lost a huge part of the PC gaming market to consoles with something as silly as making the DirectX 10 cards Vista only.

And what is the gain of doing this? How many games are still using OpenGL nowadays? DirectX 10 cards without Direct X 10 seems a bit worthless to me. I hope at the very least they will offer some sort of performance boost over existing DX9 cards when it comes to DX9 software.

I have a machine set to dual boot XP and Vista, if I had a DX 10 card in it I would still expect that the XP portion would still run fine. I would imagine that faster clocks and more memory will improve DX9 performance just like it always has.