Graphics drivers developed for Vista, Microsoft's next generation operating system, will be far more stable than their Windows XP-based counterparts, and not crash the operating system anymore, an executive of graphics chip developer ATI told Tom's Hardware Guide.

Ben Bar-Haim, vice president of ATI's software division, told us consumers will be able to identify graphics cards supporting Vista by way of a "Vista ready" logo, which will likely appear in multiple flavors indicating different feature levels. The release of Microsoft's new operating system may still be at least one year out, but hardware manufacturers, including ATI, are already gearing up for yet another certification and logo round: "Vista ready" will be the catch-phrase promoting hardware products as a safe investment.

ATI's new Xpress 200 integrated graphics processor (IGP) has already claimed dibs on the phrase. Its specifications appear to meet Microsoft's current minimum graphics requirements, which include support for DirectX 9 and at least 64 Mb of graphics memory. "Vista ready", however, does not necessarily mean that users will be able to run all 3D effects. According to Ben Bar-Haim, vice president in ATI's software division, there is a good chance that there will be at two "Vista ready" logos - one covering "basic" requirements and the other one "full" feature capability. Bar-Haim said that "two logos is the concept right now," but the final marketing would still depend on "further OEM input."

This news coincides with revelations made last week at Microsoft's Professional Developers' Conference in Los Angeles. There, Microsoft engineers revealed that a new version of the company's DirectX rendering library, called DirectX 10, will be engineered to support Vista exclusively, and not XP or older Windows editions. Meanwhile, DirectX 9 will continue to be fully supported, as a lower-grade version of the rendering library that will support both XP and Vista. Graphics cards that carry the Windows logo currently have embedded support for the Direct3D library that is a primary component of DirectX.

Full story...


Source : TomsHardware