Nvidia Fails WHQL Tests But Catalyst Certified

KingFishKingFish
edited September 2004 in Science & Tech
The rumormill is abuzz about the latest video card drivers and their ability to be WHQL certified.
The Catalyst 4.9 driver is out and ATI still has WHQL, meaning that its driver is fine from Microsoft WHQL test point of view. When we talked with Microsoft we learned that there is a set of tests that you can run in order to see if your driver is WHQL material or not. In other words, you test in house, see whether you can pass the tests and then later submit your driver for certification and get the stamp in less then 24 hours after submitting. Microsoft can confirm this said us before that all of their nine drivers introduced in 2004 are WHQL and all of their drivers will remain WHQL certified. Nvidia facts are not so bright, they had four partially WHQL while their latest publicly available 61.77 is not WHQL at all. Our snitch sent us complete report on WHQL test finished at Nvidiai Geforce 5950 card with 61.77. they are failing each and part of WHQL test. They are failing in all fourteen tests including, D3Dlines, Multisampling, Non power 2 conditional RenderTarget, Pixel Shader Precision, Pixel Shader Ver. 1.1, Pixel Shader Ver. 1.2, Pixel Shader Ver. 1.3, Pixel Shader Ver. 1.4, Pixel Shader Ver. 2.0, Point Sprites, Texture address, Texture stage, Update surface and YUV Bit test. We are not sure what is going on with 6X00 cards and how are they performing but learning from the fact that Nvidia still doesn’t have WHQL drivers on its web page speaks for itself.
Source: The Inquirer

Comments

  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited September 2004
    Soo... does this mean the features don't work at all, or what?
  • MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited September 2004
    TheSmJ wrote:
    Soo... does this mean the features don't work at all, or what?

    No it generally means that they are doing things that are not to specification. This can be bad since it sometimes leads to instability. Some would say it is cheating.

    On the opposite end. It could be considered innovation since certification is simply saying you conform to an established standard. Could mean the OS needs to progress.

    M$ tests drivers to prove that they conform to a standard which is established by M$, so it is really only important if you are concerned with rock solid OS stability and conforming to the established norm :)
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