Vista WHQL graphics drivers appearing

Author: Brett Thomas
Published: 20th February 2007

Finally, some support - NVIDIA's most recent drivers (100.65) are 8800 WHQL certified. ATI will be, too.

It's a Vista WHQL day in the graphics card world, apparently. Two quick newsbytes:

AMD has announced that it will have the drivers for its upcoming R600 graphics card WHQL certified before the chip even hard-launches at CeBIT. This means that the card will be ready for system builders and gamers alike to start using on the day of the launch, a pretty notable achievement. This is another feather in the cap of AMD, which has already had pretty robust support for ATI's entire graphics line and technologies since Vista's launch on January 31st.

NVIDIA is also joining the WHQL party, releasing its new 100.65 driver today. This is the first driver to take the 8800 series out of the 'beta' stage, and is a welcome move for system builders. Companies who participate in several of Microsoft's marketing programs cannot ship products that aren't WHQL certified in order to make sure that users get a decent Vista experience, so the 8800 has been off-limits.

The WHQL driver is good news, but there is no new word on the 6 and 7 series SLI debacle aside from "the next beta." Hopefully we will see that appear in the next week or so, which would be in line with the current beta releases (once every fortnight, give or take).

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