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Tag: nvidia

Macbook Pro – NVIDIA projects at 640×480

Mini DisplayPort Cable AdaptorIt appears that I have suffered the curse of Nvidia again, this time on my brand new work unibody Macbook Pro 13in. Under Windows Vista and 7 the Nvidia Geforce 9400M graphics card can only send a 640×480 resolution signal to projectors through the official Apple Mini DisplayPort to VGA adaptor.

It appears that I am not the only one, there is a large thread that is continuing on the Apple Discussions forum. There are a bunch of other people reporting the same issue, but Nvidia doesn’t have a solution yet. In fact, they have flat out said there are a huge list of unsupported (and will NEVER be supported) features. The following are from page 16 of the 190.62 Nvidia drivers release notes:

The following are features and functionality that were available in driver releases
supporting Windows XP, but are not–and will not be–available in driver releases for
Windows 7:
• High resolution scaling desktop (HRSD)
• MultiView Display Mode (for NVIDIA Quadro NVS graphics cards)
• NVKeystone
• Unified back buffer (UBB) controls
• OpenGL Video Overlays – This is an operating system limitation.
• Overclocking – GPU overclocking is no longer supported in the default GPU driver control panel. This feature is available in the NVIDIA System Tools software, which you can download from NVIDIA.com.
• GPU Temperature Monitoring – Temperature monitoring is no longer supported in the default GPU driver control panel. This feature is available in the NVIDIA System Tools software, which you can download from NVIDIA.com.
• AGP Settings Adjustment
• Video Zoom
• Pan & Scan ‐ the process of panning across the desktop in order to display a desktop on a monitor with lower resolution
• Per‐display Desktop Color Setting Adjustments – For Clone mode, the desktop color setting adjustments through the NVIDIA Control Panel can only be made across all displays in a system, and not on a per display basis.
• Per‐display Video Color Setting Adjustments – For Dualview mode, the video color setting adjustments through the NVIDIA Control Panel can only be made across all displays in a system, and not on a per display basis.
• Edge Blending
• Run display optimization wizard
• Run multiple display wizard
• Run television setup wizard
• nView Horizontal and Vertical Span Modes – Due to architectural changes in the new Windows Vista Window Display Driver Model (WDDM), span mode cannot be supported in NVIDIA graphics drivers. NVIDIA recommends using the built‐in Windows Vista multi‐display modes.
• Display/Connection Wizard (such as was provided with Windows Media Center Edition)
• DVD/MPEG Extensions (such as was provided with Windows Media Center Edition)
• Audio Extensions (such as was provided with Windows Media Center Edition)
• NVIDIA nView Desktop Manager – The nView Desktop Manager will not be included in drivers for GeForce products.

nforce3 + ATI Graphics + Vista = Device Failed!

 

The relentless pace of technology is exciting, but sometimes this fast paced environment leaves its past behind a little prematurely. I was on the receiving end of one such problem this week.

I purchased a new ATI graphics card, the x1950Pro AGP version to work with my existing nforce3 motherboard. It is running an Athlon X2 processor and has 2GB of RAM, so it isn’t an outdated machine by any stretch. I plugged in the new card expecting everything to go smoothly, however it kept failing with a code 43 “Device failed to start” error. Vista recognised the card correctly, however it just would not leave the graphical ‘safe mode’. I initially suspected the card was faulty, however after a bit of googling I managed to find others with the exact same problem.

In fact not only did I find others, I found an acknowledgement from Nvidia themselves of the problem. It was snuck in at the end of one of their website FAQ’s and reads:

There is a known issue with ATI AGP cards with NVIDIA nForce3 and Vista. This is currently being looked into and will likely be resolved with an MCP driver update.

In fact this problem has been known about and acknowledged since the start of this year, and reported on the 7th of February. Still nothing has been done, there is no MCP update and I am still left sitting out in the cold. Nvidia has been infamously slack with their Vista drivers in general, now they are blocking ATI cards too (Nvidia cards work fine)? I think that is a little too convenient and completely unethical to be honest.

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