I guess it's a good thing than when my 6800 died a few years ago XFX replaced it with an 8500. thankfully they've added a 3rd concurrent video out in Kepler; by the time they retire their 8xxx cards I probably won't need a spare low power card to run an additional monitor.
Here's what a driver team with their act together does:
" Thanks to Windows 8’s new stereoscopic 3D functionality, these drivers add windowed S3D support for a multitude of applications and games, including YouTube 3D, various Blu-Ray players, and all DX9 games. "
Love my job, since I've been bringing in $5600… I sit at home, music playing while I work in front of my new iMac that I got now that I'm making it online(Click on menu Home) http://goo.gl/ocjwE
WOO1!!!1111!1111 MY VIDEO CARD SUPPORTS ALL TWO GENERATION OLD DRIVER USING GAMES!!!!! NVIDIA AND DIRECTX 7, WE DO IT EVERYTIME. Are you also super loyal to energy drinks? I'm, thinking yes
All and all, a pretty good run for nVidia in terms of support. 8 years for a Geforce 6800. The last of the series came out in 2007 though. Even then 5 year support on the short end still isn't bad.
There was likely some pressure to keep support from oddball fields as the Geforce 6800 line was the first card to support two dual-link DVI ports. Several ultra high resolution displays were sold with the Quadro variants since they were the only cards that could drive such resolutions at the time.
One of nVidia's alternative motivations for keeping Geforce 7 series support was that it was the basis for the RSX chip used in the Playstation 3.
This likely means that their next Tegra chip will finally move to a unified shader architecture. One of the little known things about Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 is that it uses separate pixel and vertex shaders, often believed to be inherited from the Geforce 6/7 lineage. Dropping support on the for the Geforce 6/7 series may also mean an end to updates in the Tegra line. I can see this being an issue as Tegra 3 devices are still currently on the market. nVidia isn't dropping support for the Tegra line but it makes me wonder if future updates are going to be focused on maintaining compatibility with OS updates.
Good post, I hope they do move to a unified shader architecture, for there sake and the sake of competition. Tegra 2 and 3 were both slightly underwhelming compared to the competition.
I think both blew away the competition at the time... Heck, Tegra 3 is still one of the best SOCs out there, and it's been on the market a few years.
Regarding driver support, I doubt ARM socs are related much to them supporting these desktop parts, and I don't know that they do much in new drivers or whatever for ARM SOCs anyway.
"Dropping support for the Geforce 6/7 series may also mean an end to updates in the Tegra line."
I'm pretty sure that nvidia has a different driver team for Tegra, being it an ARM SoC and not compatible with x86 windows.
Even if it was the same team, still they won't drop support for it, considering that Tegra 3 is used in major android devices like Asus Transformer tablets, Acer Iconia tablets and Nexus 7.
It is also used in MS Surface and some other Windows RT devices like Asus Vivo Tab RT and Lenovo Yoga 11, and more will come for sure.
Dropping support for Tegra at this moment would be stupid.
It would be foolish to drop full support but we may not see anything beyond the requisite OS update support with the occasional bug fix thrown in. I wouldn't expect much in terms of driver optimizations in Tegra 2 and 3's future. Then again nVidia has had 8 years of experience developing for this lineage so there may not be anything left to really exploit either. It just seems odd that if nVidia still has a team working on just OS support on the Tegra side they'd still keep support on the PC side going, especially since Tegra 3 is used with Windows RT.
Doesn't seem odd to me at all...at best the products are somewhat related, but running on completely different OSes. We don't even know for sure that they are (super stripped down) versions of the same hardware.
I really don't see what one has to do with the other at all.
nVIDIA drivers are so stable they often crash and stop responding. Oh wait this has *never* happened to you eh?
Well I'm not plagued with the AMD driver issues you seem to claim are running wild and rampant. Maybe time to get a refill on that Schizo Prescription of yours eh?
In reality, driver problems are overblown on both sides. Everybody I've seen posting about driver issues have a small number of cards and systems that cause them to have a bias one way or the other (including some poor souls that have constant RMAs involving cards running in one system...and they can't take the hint). I have two Nvidia cards myself, a buddy of mine has two Nvidia cards, a different buddy has an AMD card, and between two cousins there are three more AMD cards. Nobody is having driver issues in this larger (yet still small) sample set. There have been some under-the-hood minor tweaks that weren't available on the AMD side (such as per-game multi-GPU settings, or per-game settings of any kind until recently), but stability isn't really an issue.
The great turnaround with OpenCL 4.3 support is great. But what about OpenCL 1.2 support?I guess nVidia wants to continue keeping their focus on CUDA as long as possible by withholding OpenCL 1.2 support as long as possible.
Go buy an amd card, that's probably all they are up to is opencl 1.2 - LOL It's probably what amd was screaming about with it's insane fan boys, and it's all they have, save a weak and partial 2.0, right ? LOL go amd man, you'll be happy with 1.2 and like Tweety makes Flowerpots for your game.
Another amd fanboy who, like other LOSERS "cannot understand". Post lobotomy, at least your skull tiny shrunken skull is smiling, as ignorance is, no doubt for amd fanboys, bliss.
Well my friend... I'm convinced now. You have clearly demonstrated to us all that you couldn't possibly be a Schizophrenic nut. I mean Schizophrenic nuts would never make this much sense:
"like other LOSERS "cannot understand". Post lobotomy, at least your skull tiny shrunken skull is smiling"
Yes yes... we all *totally* get what you mean by this.
I don't want to hear about beta drivers. Their latest full release driver doesn't work in a VERY big way. It makes Power Director (video editing program) completely unusable. I had to go back to 301.42 in order to get everything working again. I'm glad that's all I had to do but it sucks because of the performance/compatibility enhancements in newer drivers.
Hopefully next time they release a stable driver it will work with PowerDirector so I can upgrade. Then hopefully each subsequent upgrade words so I can upgrade more than once/year.
I still run two of them. They have served me well.
With this announcement, I'll have to start looking for something more modern.
I'd go for a 680 if the 64 bit FP performance wasn't so poor, which pushes me towards a 580. What I'd really like is a Quadro 4000 or two and hope the gaming performance is not entirely awful.
I have a secondary PC in the living room that has an Athlon 64 3700+ and an AGP slot. I used it for WoW - not so much to do instances with but to gather resources, do dailies and auction house stuff. It was fine for that purpose while I would watch TV. It had an ATI X800 XT in it, but when AMD pushed that into legacy status in early 2010 I had a problem. Shortly after that Blizzard did a big patch and it caused graphical corruption and locked the graphics on "low". With no updates I was stuck. I popped a 7800 GS AGP that had been gathering dust in it, installed the latest Geforce drivers and I was good to go again. Its still fine for the mundane purposes I use that machine for. I have a better hand-me-down PC to put in the living room now, so this old AGP rig will finally be given away to a relative. Thanks to Nvidia's extra-long support of the 7 series cards I was able to get all the use out of it that I intended. Thanks to AMD's less generous support they lost a customer. Don't really trust them now.
For your relative's sake, I hope you're planning to swap out the 7800 for a low power PCI card. For anything the 3700 is still suitable for the 7800 is a giant power pig.
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34 Comments
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DanNeely - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
I guess it's a good thing than when my 6800 died a few years ago XFX replaced it with an 8500. thankfully they've added a 3rd concurrent video out in Kepler; by the time they retire their 8xxx cards I probably won't need a spare low power card to run an additional monitor.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 26, 2012 - link
Here's what a driver team with their act together does:" Thanks to Windows 8’s new stereoscopic 3D functionality, these drivers add windowed S3D support for a multitude of applications and games, including YouTube 3D, various Blu-Ray players, and all DX9 games. "
LOL - ALL, THAT'S ALL, DX9 games.
nVidia, you freaking ROCK.
TheElMoIsEviL - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link
This... is... just... why... what... ?!Like... dude chill man.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
Talk your ghetto trash lingo to someone else loser.TheElMoIsEviL - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
Ghetto Trash?I was going for the Stoner and/or Surfer speak. Not sure how you got Ghetto from that.
BallBond - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
Love my job, since I've been bringing in $5600… I sit at home, music playing while I work in front of my new iMac that I got now that I'm making it online(Click on menu Home)http://goo.gl/ocjwE
lambchowder - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
"nVidia, you freaking ROCK."lmao youre such a fan boy. ever benchmark for 2 years youve flooded nvidia cards with emotional praise. i bet you post on reddit
lambchowder - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
WOO1!!!1111!1111 MY VIDEO CARD SUPPORTS ALL TWO GENERATION OLD DRIVER USING GAMES!!!!! NVIDIA AND DIRECTX 7, WE DO IT EVERYTIME. Are you also super loyal to energy drinks? I'm, thinking yesKevin G - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
All and all, a pretty good run for nVidia in terms of support. 8 years for a Geforce 6800. The last of the series came out in 2007 though. Even then 5 year support on the short end still isn't bad.There was likely some pressure to keep support from oddball fields as the Geforce 6800 line was the first card to support two dual-link DVI ports. Several ultra high resolution displays were sold with the Quadro variants since they were the only cards that could drive such resolutions at the time.
One of nVidia's alternative motivations for keeping Geforce 7 series support was that it was the basis for the RSX chip used in the Playstation 3.
This likely means that their next Tegra chip will finally move to a unified shader architecture. One of the little known things about Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 is that it uses separate pixel and vertex shaders, often believed to be inherited from the Geforce 6/7 lineage. Dropping support on the for the Geforce 6/7 series may also mean an end to updates in the Tegra line. I can see this being an issue as Tegra 3 devices are still currently on the market. nVidia isn't dropping support for the Tegra line but it makes me wonder if future updates are going to be focused on maintaining compatibility with OS updates.
DJTryHard - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Good post, I hope they do move to a unified shader architecture, for there sake and the sake of competition. Tegra 2 and 3 were both slightly underwhelming compared to the competition.Wolfpup - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
I think both blew away the competition at the time... Heck, Tegra 3 is still one of the best SOCs out there, and it's been on the market a few years.Regarding driver support, I doubt ARM socs are related much to them supporting these desktop parts, and I don't know that they do much in new drivers or whatever for ARM SOCs anyway.
wlee15 - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
The first product with a Tegra 3 was the Transformer Prime tablet that was released last November.lmcd - Saturday, October 27, 2012 - link
Umm, not really. Tegra 2 graphics didn't even beat the PVR SGX 540 on Hummingbird, released prior. Nor the VideoCore IV on Broadcom's SoC line.eddman - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
"Dropping support for the Geforce 6/7 series may also mean an end to updates in the Tegra line."I'm pretty sure that nvidia has a different driver team for Tegra, being it an ARM SoC and not compatible with x86 windows.
Even if it was the same team, still they won't drop support for it, considering that Tegra 3 is used in major android devices like Asus Transformer tablets, Acer Iconia tablets and Nexus 7.
It is also used in MS Surface and some other Windows RT devices like Asus Vivo Tab RT and Lenovo Yoga 11, and more will come for sure.
Dropping support for Tegra at this moment would be stupid.
Kevin G - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
It would be foolish to drop full support but we may not see anything beyond the requisite OS update support with the occasional bug fix thrown in. I wouldn't expect much in terms of driver optimizations in Tegra 2 and 3's future. Then again nVidia has had 8 years of experience developing for this lineage so there may not be anything left to really exploit either. It just seems odd that if nVidia still has a team working on just OS support on the Tegra side they'd still keep support on the PC side going, especially since Tegra 3 is used with Windows RT.Wolfpup - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Doesn't seem odd to me at all...at best the products are somewhat related, but running on completely different OSes. We don't even know for sure that they are (super stripped down) versions of the same hardware.I really don't see what one has to do with the other at all.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 26, 2012 - link
Yes, what we really mean here is: ONE HELLUVA GOOD JOB NVIDIA ! WAY TO GO, SUPPORTING THOSE CARDS FOR SO FREAKING LONG !See, that's the truth, and compared to amd , nVidia takes the freaking driver crown, AGAIN.
Good job nVidia, the haters are once again ashamed to be freak amd fan boys.
TheElMoIsEviL - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link
Umm yeah..http://tinyurl.com/992pxxw
http://tinyurl.com/8sdr4ch
http://tinyurl.com/8ozrdpq
http://tinyurl.com/8f3nh83
nVIDIA drivers are so stable they often crash and stop responding. Oh wait this has *never* happened to you eh?
Well I'm not plagued with the AMD driver issues you seem to claim are running wild and rampant. Maybe time to get a refill on that Schizo Prescription of yours eh?
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
LOL - another dumb dumb amd fanboyTheElMoIsEviL - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
My friend... reality for you.1. I said nothing about favoring AMD
2. You clearly stated you favor nVIDIA
=
My status as a "fanboy" has not been established. However your status as a "fanboy" clearly has been established.
Simple Logical Exercise.
Urizane - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
In reality, driver problems are overblown on both sides. Everybody I've seen posting about driver issues have a small number of cards and systems that cause them to have a bias one way or the other (including some poor souls that have constant RMAs involving cards running in one system...and they can't take the hint). I have two Nvidia cards myself, a buddy of mine has two Nvidia cards, a different buddy has an AMD card, and between two cousins there are three more AMD cards. Nobody is having driver issues in this larger (yet still small) sample set. There have been some under-the-hood minor tweaks that weren't available on the AMD side (such as per-game multi-GPU settings, or per-game settings of any kind until recently), but stability isn't really an issue.Senti - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
This 310 looks nice compared to the totally buggy 30x series. For example EDID override works again.On the other hand, some ugly bugs are still there, like bluescreen on OpenGL fullscreen with custom resolutions.
ltcommanderdata - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
The great turnaround with OpenCL 4.3 support is great. But what about OpenCL 1.2 support?I guess nVidia wants to continue keeping their focus on CUDA as long as possible by withholding OpenCL 1.2 support as long as possible.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 26, 2012 - link
Go buy an amd card, that's probably all they are up to is opencl 1.2 - LOL It's probably what amd was screaming about with it's insane fan boys, and it's all they have, save a weak and partial 2.0, right ? LOLgo amd man, you'll be happy with 1.2 and like Tweety makes Flowerpots for your game.
TheElMoIsEviL - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link
Dude... do you realize that you're not making any sense?"go amd man, you'll be happy with 1.2 and like Tweety makes Flowerpots for your game. "
Now WTF do you mean by "Tweety makes Flowerpots"? What is that? Like what are you trying to say?
Seriously this but job has been posting here for a long time and most of his posts make no sense whatsoever???
TheElMoIsEviL - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link
nut*CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
Another amd fanboy who, like other LOSERS "cannot understand".Post lobotomy, at least your skull tiny shrunken skull is smiling, as ignorance is, no doubt for amd fanboys, bliss.
TheElMoIsEviL - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
Well my friend... I'm convinced now. You have clearly demonstrated to us all that you couldn't possibly be a Schizophrenic nut. I mean Schizophrenic nuts would never make this much sense:"like other LOSERS "cannot understand".
Post lobotomy, at least your skull tiny shrunken skull is smiling"
Yes yes... we all *totally* get what you mean by this.
:p
Hrel - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
I don't want to hear about beta drivers. Their latest full release driver doesn't work in a VERY big way. It makes Power Director (video editing program) completely unusable. I had to go back to 301.42 in order to get everything working again. I'm glad that's all I had to do but it sucks because of the performance/compatibility enhancements in newer drivers.Hopefully next time they release a stable driver it will work with PowerDirector so I can upgrade. Then hopefully each subsequent upgrade words so I can upgrade more than once/year.
Rookierookie - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
" If NVIDIA’s DX9 GPU support is anything to go by..."I'm still not convinced that Nvidia ever released a DX9 GPU.
Akrovah - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
The you clearly weren't paying attention. The Geforce 6 was an awesoem line of cards. Loved my 6600GT.peternelson - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
I still run two of them. They have served me well.With this announcement, I'll have to start looking for something more modern.
I'd go for a 680 if the 64 bit FP performance wasn't so poor, which pushes me towards a 580. What I'd really like is a Quadro 4000 or two and hope the gaming performance is not entirely awful.
Leyawiin - Saturday, October 27, 2012 - link
I have a secondary PC in the living room that has an Athlon 64 3700+ and an AGP slot. I used it for WoW - not so much to do instances with but to gather resources, do dailies and auction house stuff. It was fine for that purpose while I would watch TV. It had an ATI X800 XT in it, but when AMD pushed that into legacy status in early 2010 I had a problem. Shortly after that Blizzard did a big patch and it caused graphical corruption and locked the graphics on "low". With no updates I was stuck. I popped a 7800 GS AGP that had been gathering dust in it, installed the latest Geforce drivers and I was good to go again. Its still fine for the mundane purposes I use that machine for. I have a better hand-me-down PC to put in the living room now, so this old AGP rig will finally be given away to a relative. Thanks to Nvidia's extra-long support of the 7 series cards I was able to get all the use out of it that I intended. Thanks to AMD's less generous support they lost a customer. Don't really trust them now.DanNeely - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link
For your relative's sake, I hope you're planning to swap out the 7800 for a low power PCI card. For anything the 3700 is still suitable for the 7800 is a giant power pig.