AlexGUru

Nvidia mobility drivers made readily available…

Posted by AlexGUru

Nvidia has bitch smacked ATI once again.

Mobility drivers have always been notoriously behind the updating curve as far as new releases are made. Usually, mobile drivers are only released by the manufacturer in conjunction with the two main discrete graphics providers (in this case, Nvidia and ATI).

Nvidia finally puts the power back in the end users hands, by putting the drivers directly up on their site for download and bypassing the annoying WHQL certification phase which can take upwards of 3-4 weeks.  Oftentimes, these updates end up being released around the same time a new patch is released, so the driver ends up being obselete.

This is one of the reasons that communities such as laptopvideo2go exist.  The ability to mod desktop drivers to work with your notebooks mobile GPU has been one of the best ways for enthusiasts to stay current with their drivers and enjoy much of the same performance enhancements that desktop users enjoy.

Nvidia is pushing the envelope yet again in the customer support arena, and this sort of attention to detail is what keeps them in the forefront of the discrete graphics market.  Unless ATI steps it up a bit by releasing better drivers, as well as doing the same for mobile customers, I do not see them gaining on Nvidia’s market share.