by Anton Shilov
07/29/2005 | 10:39 PM
The world’s two leading designers of graphics processors released their beta and alpha drivers for yet-to-be-officially-released Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 1. The new drivers are mostly aimed at developers of software, but not end-users.
Microsoft Windows Vista (previously code-named Longhorn) will make extensive use of 3D graphics in its graphics user interface (3D) and will also employ a new-class of interaction between hardware, software, drivers and operating system called Longhorn Driver Display Model (LDDM). That said, for graphics companies ATI Technologies and NVIDIA Corp. it is crucial to start testing drivers for Windows Vista with developers of various applications as early as possible.
Included with Microsoft’s Windows Vista beta 1 release are ATI’s Catalyst drivers for its desktop and mobile DirectX 9.0 class discrete graphics processors as well as support for the 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows Vista. Additionally, ATI also is making available today on its web-site a further Catalyst LDDM driver which includes all of the functionality mentioned above plus support for integrated graphics processors in Windows Vista.
“ATI is providing broad graphics driver support to Microsoft and the MSDN community for all ATI DirectX 9 hardware in Microsoft Windows Vista beta 1,” said Ben Bar-Haim, Vice President of Software Engineering, ATI Technologies. “ATI is proud to point out we have more Windows Vista in-the-box driver support than any other independent hardware vendor”.
NVIDIA Corp. did not make any statements in regards LDDM drivers, but some web-sites claimed that the company has released its ForceWare 75.03 LDDM beta 1 that support Windows Vista. The drivers are designed for NVIDIA RIVA TNT, GeForce, GeForce 2, GeForce 3, GeForce 4, GeForce FX and some Quadro-series graphics cards. The current ForceWare alpha driver, has no performance optimizations included and has received limited stability testing, is a preview release that will enable developers to test the basic features and capabilities of the new operating system, according to FileForum web-site, which hosts the driver suite.