Windows Software Compatibility and Hardware Troubleshooting by Mike Halsey & Andrew Bettany

Author:Mike Halsey & Andrew Bettany
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Apress, Berkeley, CA

Due to the complex and advanced nature of graphics cards, it is essential that device drivers are sourced only directly from the OEM and that they are carefully installed in accordance with the OEM instructions.

The PDF instructions for the EVGA GeForce GTX Titan X card (shown in Figure 3-13) that accompanies the latest drivers is a whopping 54 pages in length.

Gaming graphics card drivers are updated quite frequently so that the cards remain compatible with the latest new games as they are released. Games designers and developers are in a constant competition with each other to attract gamers, hoping that they will favor their game, which keeps pushing the boundaries of realism on screen.

For more modest display adaptors and graphics cards, it is still essential that the correct driver version is installed so that the display is optimally rendered. Whenever I build or service a PC, I always make a note on the rear case of the exact model of the graphics card, so that if I need to reinstall the driver, I am able to exactly match the card model to the list of graphic card device drivers on the OEM web site without needing to remove the case cover and inspect the card or locate the original packaging or instructions.

The two largest producers of PC video graphics cards are NVIDIA and ATI. Through a process of yoking together multiple video adapters to provide higher graphics performance, gamers were able to purchase two lower-valued cards that would outperform a single higher-priced adaptor. (NVIDIA named their yoking technology Scalable Link Interface (SLI), whereas ATI’s is called CrossFireX).

Since Windows Vista, all video cards drivers must support the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) architecture. Windows Vista supported WDDM version 1.0 and required at least Direct3D 9–capable video cards. Each subsequent version of Windows supports additional WDDM features, with Windows 10 expected to support WDDM 2.0, which allows more offloading from the CPU to the GPU.

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