For anyone using Windows Vista through the development process and after RTM its fair to say that video and audio drivers have been the worst aspect of daily use. Gradually as we have approached the "launch" of the OS things have progressed and for mainstream video cards and mass production audio chipsets things are looking a lot better. There have been a few areas that haven't been so good though and that's in the enthusiast graphics segment. For some time control panels from both ATI and Nvidia were not fully functional and games were bug ridden. Things were worse still if you owned Nvidias flagship product, the 8800 as there was no Vista driver to even get the desktop working smoothly. With the impending release of the OS both ATI and Nvidia have provided us with drivers they intend to publish this week. We've taken a look at the ATI set here: Lets see how Nvidias first 100 series driver is looking...

A quick look at Forceware 100:

If there is one thing we can say about Forceware 100 it’s that the driver feels familiar from the moment we started the install. The process to install is the same on Vista as it is on XP, including the branding/graphics used in the wizard. Once the setup is complete and a reboot takes place access to the driver control panel is through the Vista Control Panel (Windows Logo>Control Panel) or by right clicking the desktop and selecting the Control Panel option.

We noticed some real variations in load times for the panel however on the first opening after each reboot the average time is over 20 seconds which is really far too long. Once open the Control Panel is very similar to the XP version. There are some minor theme variances however the layout and navigation is the same and so those who move from XP will be immediately at home.

It would probably be fair to say that these same users will initially also be slightly frustrated because the software is still in need of some optimising and in many sections feels clunky and slow.

To illustrate the main features of the control panel (which on our PC includes the performance N-Tune options) here are some videos of the software in operation:

Important Driver Info from Nvidia:
Along with the driver we received some FAQ’s and release notes, the contents are pretty self explanatory however we’ll pull out some of the important information from these documents.

Release:
The driver we are testing today is not the final driver which will be released. That driver will become available on Jan 30th however is very similar to the one tested. The driver will support DX9, DX10 (8800 series only), OpenGL and limited DX9.0 SLI support. DX10 support will follow in a future driver, as will WHQL certification.

Card Support:
Forceware 100 series will support Geforce 6, 7 and 8 series cards.

What works and what doesn’t in the control panel?:
The core features of the NVIDIA Control Panel will be available in the drivers available on January 30, 2007.

These features include:
- 3D performance and quality settings
- Application profiles
- Multi-display settings
- Display change resolutions
- PureVideo post processing settings (but not video color controls)
- Display rotation
- Desktop color settings
- NVIDIA SLI settings

A future driver update will add support for more features, such as
- Flat panel scaling
- Video color controls
- NVIDIA SLI taskbar notifications

Are any XP control panel features missing?:
- Horizontal and Vertical desktop span multi-monitor modes (note: Dual View and Clone mode display options are still available)
- NVKeystone display correction
- Full screen video mirror
- Video zoom