G80 kills unified driver marchitecture

The G80 isn't like the rest of Nvidia's products. It needs a special driver, as DirectX 10 hardware is a bit different from the DirectX 9 or earlier.

If you go to nvidia.com download page you will learn that the Geforce 8800 series needs a special driver. In fact, Nvidia has three different variations pf driver: one for Windows XP or Media Center edition, the second one is for Windows Server 2003 X64 Edition and the last one supports Windows XP Professional 64 bit edition. MO< It seems that Nvidia silently moved from a Unified driver marchitecture to a completely disunified one.

All drivers are named 97.44 and you can get them now.

Unfortunately, the Geforce 8800 still doesn't have a Vista driver - not even the basic one - and this has caused a few upset faces amongst folks running the Vista Business Edition.

No doubt the Vista driver will come in a different package to teh other three consigning the Unified driver marchitectural idea to the wastebasket of history.

Both the Forceware 10 driver, with a few new tricks inside, and the Vista driver have been delayed for a while and we don't think we are going to see them anytime soon. Nvidia has a beta but it doesn't want to share it, even with its closest partners. µ