Gearing Up For 64bit: Beta Graphics Driver Comparison

Final Words

So, all in all, things look to be on track for ATI, NVIDIA, and Microsoft. Having experienced the joy of WoW for 16bit applications on Windows NT back in the day, even this early beta version for 32bit apps seems like a miracle. Of course, just because something is better than a previous iteration doesn't make it good - Microsoft will need to have WoW ready to support the vast majority of applications and games on the market if the 64bit version of Windows XP is going to gain any real acceptance in the marketplace.

Along with Microsoft, the biggest issue for NVIDIA and ATI right now is software support. Both camps need to push a little harder to make sure that their driver isn't going to cause problems with 32bit games running under WoW. Of course, it is very hard to hit a moving target, and all things considered, everything looks alright. The only really big thing to point out is the lack of support for anything OpenGL under the current ATI driver. Obviously, such a large issue will be addressed and taken care of by ATI, but we would have liked to have seen something that we could test at this point.

We would also have liked to test R420 and NV40, but, again, it's all beta drivers and operating systems and really new hardware. Getting their 64bit drivers in working order is more important to ATI and NVIDIA than adding support for the latest bleeding edge product that they've released.

Software support has been a long time in coming to AMD's hardware, but we are very happy to see that everything is progressing nicely. Software support is lacking; there are some stability issues, and performance is just about to the level that we would expect. Here's to the hope that the completion of the development of 64bit software goes smoothly to all involved.