Clubic.com had the chance to sit down with Dwight Diercks, VP of Software Development at Nvidia and talk about the many issues regarding the current state of Vista drivers. Please do note that the original interview was conducted in French and the following is a translation of the interview thanks to a member at VR-Zone:

Clubic.com: What were the challenges during the development of the very first ForceWare for Windows Vista?

Dwight Diercks: Windows Vista requires a very new model of graphic drivers, which is already is a beautiful challenge. All the layer of the drivers passes indeed from space core to the user mode what made the things even more complex. The new model of drivers changes moreover the mode of management of basic posting and removes old portions of code present in the drivers since the time of NT 4.0! The video high-definition (Blu-ray and HD-DVD) also has a very new architecture for material acceleration and technology NVIDIA SLI for DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 still adds to the complexity of work required and the volume of necessary code so that the graphics chip works efficiently.

We have tens of million users of our XP drivers and we maintain two broad bases of drivers what results in an additional complexity on the level of the software development. Believe me, it one is crowned challenge!

Clubic.com: Since how long do you work on the development of drivers for Windows Vista and which were the principal objectives?

D.D.: We have actively invested ourselves in the development of drivers for Windows Vista for two years and half. We spent the 350 years equivalent man machine on the Vista drivers. Our priority? Stability for GeForce 6, 7, 8 and the chipsets nForce 4, 5 and 6.

Clubic.com: How much people make the team of development of the drivers?

D.D.: It is difficult to quantify exactly how much engineers left fascinating in the process. We have more than 1000 people here who write, test or work with the software publishers on compatibility or which writes our drivers.

Clubic.com: Which were the requirements to develop the first drivers DirectX 10 for GeForce 8? Which were the most important problems during the development?

D.D.: NVIDIA is the first company to subject a material to certification WHQL DirectX 10 of Microsoft. To obtain a certification WHQL for an API news is often a challenge bus progressively them tests you will discover problems where your drivers are in question whereas for others it is the test which it is necessary to change. We explored new territories with DirectX 10 and that takes time to deliver an optimal stability. But once it is done, that will apply to all our next chips DirectX 10.

Clubic.com: Considering the new architecture of GeForce 8, how long that will take so that the drivers exploit it as well as possible?

D.D.: NVIDIA works narrowly with Microsoft to finalize a drivers DirectX 10 certified WHQL from here the end February. The architecture of GeForce 8800 offers a beautiful margin of progression for the performances and a certain number of our engineers exclusively work to resolve his full potential in the weeks and the months to come.

Clubic.com: Which is the impact of the architecture of shaders unified on the cycle of development of the drivers?

D.D.: Unified architecture makes several things for us. Its most important impact is that it has an action leverage at the same time on our basis of code for this product but also for the family of products which GeForce 8800 will bring. In premium unified architecture makes that you do not have to separately optimize any more the pixels shaders and the vertexes shaders what should improve the experiment of the players.

Clubic.com: Do the drivers DirectX 10 of GeForce 8 currently exceed the specifications of Microsoft for DirectX 10? In are light, there already small pieces of DirectX 10.1?

D.D.: There are naturally functions of the 8800 which do not form part of DirectX 10. DirectX 10.1 is always under development, therefore we cannot make any comment for the moment.

Clubic.com: Outside, it seems that you had serious problems to publish the first drivers GeForce 8 Vista pennies. Why? There did it have problems to implement functions like anisotropic filtering or antialiasing?

D.D.: The graphics chips are probably among the most programmable peripherals in the world, and the level of complexity to program them grows each year. The family GeForce 8 adds new requirements of drivers for DirectX 10 in addition to the need to support DirectX 9. As mentioned above, the assumption of responsibility of PureVideo or SLI still adds to complexity.

We have a whole team which examines all the problems encountered under Windows Vista. We regard each problem as criticisms and there are not only one cause or only one corrective measure which all will correct. For example we have a problem with the classification of our drivers for Vista because it is listed like a version 1.00. A significant number of plays check the number of drivers and do not launch out quite simply when they see this number of version. In certain plays we have problems which depend partly on the charts sounds. And of course we have our batch of bugs to correct in our drivers. We work hard to eliminate them one by one.

Clubic.com: For the moment the SLI is not supported by the drivers GeForce 7 while the SLI functions only in mode DirectX 9 with GeForce 8. Are there particular difficulties to implement the SLI under Vista?

D.D.: The SLI is only part of the equation. Under Windows XP we needed to create two principal components of drivers: for returned DirectX and the other for OpenGL. With Vista we have to develop six different drivers: for the charts DirectX 9 only, for systems SLI DirectX 9, for the charts DirectX 10 only, for the SLI in DirectX 10, for returned OpenGL with only one chart, and finally for returned OpenGL in SLI.

Our Vista drivers counts 20 million lines of code! It is as much as for Windows NT4… The extent of the project is broad but we like to take up the great challenges! We will provide a complete support of the SLI for GeForce 7 in March and a support of the SLI in DirectX 10 as of April.

Clubic.com: The users GeForce 8 complain about many problems of stability with the first Vista drivers. How much bugs is open in your data base? When will you publish the next drivers one?

D.D.: The first Vista drivers used by some were nonofficial drivers. The drivers ForceWare 100.59 were published on January 31 and they are stable for the majority of the users. It is necessary to keep in mind which it has been the first time for ten years that we have a very new operating system and a new architecture, both simultaneously. The entirety of the software interface enters the operating system and the drivers had to be modified. Despite everything, we will publish in the end of the month a drivers GeForce 8800 certified WHQL.

Clubic.com: Your direct competitor, ATI/AMD, propose since to years already a new drivers each month. Why don't adopt not such a calendar?

D.D.: We will propose a new version of our ForceWare drivers for Vista at least every month. And if we find problems significant, that they are bugs or problems of compatibility with plays, we will even more frequently propose new versions. As mentioned above, we will have a drivers supporting the SLI and PureVideo HD for GeForce 7 in March and April we will have a drivers supporting the SLI DirectX 10 and PureVideo HD for GeForce 8.

Clubic.com: Several functions of your drivers as NVKeystone miss of ForceWare for Vista. There is it a chance that these functions remake their appearance one day?

D.D.: All the functions which we propose under XP are not necessarily any more useful under Vista. Windows Vista has new native functions indeed and we only seek to supplement the functions of the system according to the needs for our users and our customers OEM (manufacturers of PC). For the moment our objective is to rather improve quality of our drivers than to add functions. NVKeystone is for the moment sacrificed.

Clubic.com: Last year you launched the graphic interface Sedona for your drivers. Will you update it so that it is closer to Vista?

D.D.: The user interface of our drivers indeed will be updated, to not only approach the Vista experiment but also to answer at the requests of the players as regards accessibility with certain functions.

Clubic.com: Propose in the future a drivers unified for GeForce 6/7/8 or continue to propose different versions?

D.D.: We continue to support the unified architecture of drivers UDA for all our future graphics processors. The products which are mature and do not need more new functions are removed our current ForceWare branches. For example the products GeForce 6/7/8 are supported by ForceWare 100 whereas GeForce FX are it by version 95.

Clubic.com: Why the last ForceWare drivers for Windows Vista do not support GeForce FX?

D.D.: Last certified WHQL drivers supporting GeForce FX under Windows Vista are ForceWare 96.85, they are downloadable here on our site in version x86 and there in version x64.

News Source: Clubic via VR-Zone via

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