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I'm not defending AMD in the least but an FYI for those wanting to download the latest AMD and nVidia drivers for their OEM laptops: laptopvideo2go.com.

Good luck with that if you have a laptop.

OEMs are notorious for lagging on updating drivers. The latest video drivers that Dell has for my Quadro-based laptop are 259.70, which was released in January 2011. It's only recently that NVIDIA has taken the matter into their own hands and started rigging their generic drivers to work with laptop parts, and even then they still have to warn on the driver download page about possible issues and required patches for specific laptops. There is also pretty much an entire website dedicated to hacking NVIDIA driver INFs for this purpose.

LaptopVideo2Go.com is a very active web site entirely devoted to making nVidia graphics devices work correctly. nVidia tried to avoid doing anything about defective chips in HP laptops.

When you download AMD's ATI drivers, the web site tries to sell violent video games. The new drivers often have serious bugs.

If there is a competition, which CEO will be voted the worst? nVidia does not seem honest, and AMD seems to be trying to drive itself out of business.

Yeah, they refused to install on my Sony laptop too. They have this weird system where laptop vendors are supposed to supply the drivers (sometimes they drive function keys and OSD I guess) and nV deliberately make theirs incompatible.

If you go here - http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ - you can get drivers that have had an inf file hacked. Turns out that's all you need and that the binaries are backward compatible with everything nVidia produced pretty much forever.

And yes, the site is confusing and it took me ages to actually find what I was after, but in the end I was running drivers two years newer than the last ones Sony bothered to put up.

Good luck finding an upgrade for that daughter board from anyone other than HP.

Here and here

All Macs have a DVI output port, that can be used as an S video/composite/15 pin D-sub VGS, HDMI port with the correct adapter (some have full size DVI ports, some have smaller ports, newer models have the mini port).

Only if you like having loads of adapters and cables hanging everywhere. DVI also doesn't carry audio like HDMI does, so you will need even more cables for your audio.

I bought an Acer Aspire 8930 laptop a couple months ago. 18.4" widescreen @ 1920x1080, 4GB DDR2 RAM, Geforce 9600GT 512MB GDDR3 MXM module, 320GB 7200RPM internal hard drive, DVD burner, 5.1 Dolby surround (5 speakers and subwoofer are integrated into the laptop and they sound fantastic), gigabit ethernet, WLAN, ExpressCard slot, 6 in 1 card reader, 3 USB ports, 1 eSATA/USB combo port, HDMI port, VGA port, integrated webcam, full size keyboard with an actual keypad, touch sensitive "cine dash" media controller and a fingerprint reader. Cost, $1149 USD. Obviously it's a little harder to carry around due to the size, but it is surprisingly thin, light and sturdy considering how large the screen is and how much the system has built in. The closest thing Apple has is the 17" Macbook Pro for $2799 and it lacks many of the features I have on my Aspire.

Just a quick note... some third-party distributors of nVidia chipsets make slight modifications such that the stock nVidia drivers don't work. For example, in my experience, nVidia's stock drivers don't recognize eVGA's GeForce cards; I have always had to download eVGA's special driver package.

Glancing back at your post shows me you're on a laptop. Dell and HP and friends don't give you stock nVidia drivers (or stock nVidia chipsets) for the nVidia graphics in their laptops. I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 with an nVidia GeForce Go 7300; it was customized by Dell (slightly), and as such the only stock installer that works is Dell's (ignoring any funny installer tricks).

In any case, I've been using newer drivers using a modified .ini file from LaptopVideo2Go, so nVidia's stock drivers actually work (and they work well). Dell's "latest" driver is ancient, while laptopvideo2go's .ini lets me use the latest stock nVidia driver.

I highly recommend checking out LaptopVideo2Go. You can install the desktop drivers on your laptop with a simple swap of an .inf file.

There are so many problems with Nvidia graphics drivers and software that there is a web site devoted specifically to solving the problems: LaptopVideo2Go.com.

As detailed in this thread, the GF8400 has serious performance problems under Vista Aero when running recent driver versions. I wonder if this is related? - i.e. Recent driver updates have down-clocked the GPU leading to bad performance. Dell have however recently acknowledge the problem and is working on a fix.

I doubt I would *need* to do so, but does this hack work on laptop nVidia cargs (their GeForce Go or Mobile series)?

I already use a desktop driver with a modded INF file from http://laptopvideo2go.com/ (nVidia's drivers for their older - 7600 in my case - laptop cards are crap, especially on Vista), so I'm not afraid of installing a desktop driver on a laptop, but might this driver make demands of the card that the mobile versions are incapable of?

FRAUD ALERT? First, for me this story crossed a line. It looks like stock manipulation. Was KDawson paid to post this story? Who at Slashdot or its parent company has recently sold AMD stock short, betting that the price will fall? Are any Intel employees involved?

I would like to see a statement added at the end of this Slashdot story that KDawson took no money for this story, and that no one at Slashdot or its parent company took money or will benefit from a drop in price of AMD stock. I'm not accusing anyone of anything; I am just concerned that this story is worded in a way that seems sleazy and possibly fraudulent to me.

Second, in response to the parent comment. ATI is the premier video CPU provider now. nVidia is so lame that there is an entire web site devoted to fixing nVidia driver issues: LaptopVideo2Go. I spent hours trying to get one of my laptops, which has an nVidia chip, to work correctly with an external monitor. It works well now, but I could never have done the work without the help of LaptopVideo2Go.

Third, Intel is suffering from very bad management. For example, see the comment I posted to an earlier Slashdot story, responding to someone saying, "Intel's behavior regarding the OLPC is reprehensible."

Fourth, AMD seems to be the more technologically dedicated company. Intel has a history of dumb mistakes. For example, see this December 2000 article about the Pentium 4, which calls Intel "Chipzilla": Pentium 4 Linux problem all Chipzilla's fault, apparently. Quote: "Intel... failed ... through dumbness rather than malice."

I seem to remember that the entire Pentium 4 architecture was abandoned in favor of the Pentium 4 Mobile architecture, which is what Intel is shipping now.

Both AMD and Intel make VERY sophisticated processors. It's amazing that a product that is so tiny it is affected by quantum physics is cheap enough for everyone to own. When one is temporarily ahead, it is simply silly to say that the other is dying.

Stock prices are often affected by hysteria. This is especially true of prices of technical stocks, which are often owned by people who don't really understand the technology of the company they partly own.

The people may give you free help with your nVidia laptop video drivers: LaptopVideo2Go

Worked for me. I found a driver for an old Toshiba laptop that runs my 24 inch monitor at 90 degree (vertical) rotation.

I actually rather like Vista, suprisingly. Yes, even the UAC (it prevents my kids from installing random crap they found online while I'm at work).

However, there is one "feature" of Vista that would have been a deal-breaker for me, had I known about it ahead of time. I *still* haven't seen anyone talking about it publicly. So I'm here to warn you all that if you upgrade to Vista, you will loose multi-monitor span. As a gamer who loves the extra peripheral vision provided by using two monitors, I will *not* go back to one.

For those unfamiliar with multi-monitor setups, I don't want you to get me wrong: Vista supports multiple monitors just fine. However, most games don't. I think there are internal DirectX problems with making objects that have parts on two different display devices at once. "Span" mode is where your video driver internally combines the monitors itself, and presents the OS with what looks like one large monitor. This shows up in nearly every game as one extra wide resolution.

Apparently, allowing users to install device drivers which present the OS with a "virtual" display device like this could potentially allow a digial way around Vista's DRM, so its not allowed. In plain english, you can't play games multi-monitor because of Vista's retarded DRM!

The only way I found around this is with one of these nifty Matrox devices. They are kinda expensive though. The full digital model will run you about $300. The semi-digital two head model is more like $200. So if you are a multi-monitor gamer, plan on adding about $300 to the cost of any planned upgrade that includes Vista.

Hi -- I've been an avid Slashdot troll for a number of years now, but lately I've wanting to branch out. You see, with Slashdot, there is no new ground to be covered. Every troll thinkable has been done at least a hundred times. But there are a ton of virgin websites that would be just a sheer delight to troll. Here, a GNAA posting gets modded to oblivion in a heartbeat. But what would happen if a similar "group" would be created on a website like laptopvideo2go.com ? There is a lot of potential on websites like that... with a small, dedicated group of righteous and uppity users. So I bring my question to the community: What fresh, new websites are ripe for trolling, slashdot style? I await the communty's response!

nVidia does not provide laptop graphics drivers, they let the OEMs do this. HP and all the other OEMs generally only put Vista drivers on their site now if it sells with Vista installed. You can Google around. I've done about 5 XP "upgrades," and I got EVERY driver on each one so far. Sometimes you even have to force XP to use drivers when it says the driver is not recommended (mainly because the driver inf does not have the hardware ID in it).

To help you out, this website. http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/
They modify the inf files with new hardware IDs every time nVidia makes a new driver set for desktop models. It will most likely work, none so far have failed for me.

For the people that got the "upgrades," they said it was totally worth it. Perhaps they needed a clean install of an OS in the first place, since OEMs still add all that crap to Vista (unbelievable isn't it?). But even so, they prefer XP anyway.

Video hardware may be quite advanced, but video software, in my experience, is amazingly primitive. My experience is that nVidia video driver and video adapter control software is extremely sloppy. For example see: Problem: Wrong display on boot with new driver. The link is to the Google cache version.

A good source for help with nVidia video adapters is Laptop Video 2 Go. The site is down now, and will be back soon, it says.

Free help for problems with dual monitors with nVidia video adapters on laptops: LaptopVideo2Go.com. Help for other nVidia driver problems, too.

Hunted around and managed to get drivers for most things, but the nvidia driver refuses to work...

Don't blame HP for that one. Blame nVidia's insistence that OEMs support mobile chipsets with their own "official" drivers (which the likes of HP/Compaq and Dell never keep up to date, of course). The thing is, mobile chipsets are generally no different from their desktop counterparts when it comes to drivers. For nVidia drivers, check out LaptopVideo2Go.com. For ATi, try DH Mod tool. In either case, the "problem" is that the inf for the drivers don't contain the right information to detect mobile chipsets, even though the drivers will work just fine on them. The "fix" is to hack the inf so that the installers will allow you to apply the drivers to your mobile card.

Problem solved.

For the video driver problem, goto http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/ to download modified INFs that will correctly install later drivers for laptops. For the Toshiba problem, don't buy Toshiba. :)

My next laptop's probably going to be an IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T43 (or whatever's the latest in the T-series).