915GM/GMS VISTA DRIVERS.

[arron_161]

WHERE ARE THEY??

I upgradied my RAM from 256MB to 1GB, just for "The Aero Experience" ... at a cost of 74.99 from Packard Bell.

I have a Packard Bell Easynote S4935, and running Vista fine, without problems.

THE ONE REALLY HUGE PROBLEM ... IS NO AERO SUPPORT ON 915/910 cards, THEREFORE NO FLIP 3D, LIVE PREVIEWS, DVD MAKER OR MOVIE MAKER SUPPORT.

As you can see i am LIVID!! at spending 220 plus 75 on RAM, checking whether my card is supported for Vista first ...

AND THEN ... not being able to use, the WHOLE Aero Experience, and DVD and Movie Maker.

I Contacted Microsoft, about this, and they has issued an official return request, so I could get a refund of Vista if I wanted. BUT THATS NOT THE POINT. I want Windows Vista. AND I WANT AERO TOO.

Especially with my Laptop being only 6 Months old. (NOT EVEN A YEAR!)

RELEASE THE XPDM or WDDM Drivers. Otherwise, you will lose out on alot of business, from THAUSAND of 915/910 Chipset users.

LINK TO PETITION - http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?intel915

I hope you can get this ISSUE solved. And Fast.

R-Fly

[vak]

Look at this forum, Arron. This forum is designed for built-in graphics developers, but a lot of people like you and me come here, because:

1. Intel support and support of their partners (like ASUS) can't help

2. Intel does not supply their partners well with drivers

3. Intel simply does a bad resource allocation for driver development.

Situation is bad. And there is no any official answer as well.

It would be very nice to know:

1. Who is the prosperous boss of driver developer department in Intel for integrated graphics and why this boss fails to communicate to higher bosses about the clear lack of resources and about the importance?

2. Who was that genius manager in Intel, who decided that the resources allocated for the driver developer department in Intel are enough at least for doing the driver support job at "somewhat acceptable level"?

It would be nice to know these names!

[arron_161]

HOW CAN INTEL SAY THAT THE CARD DOESN'T SUPPORT AERO BECAUSE OF "HARDWARE LIMITATIONS" ...

THE 950 CHIPSETS RUN IT FINE.

A COLLEUGE OF MINE RUN'S AERO ON 945G CHIPSET, WORKS SEEMLESSSLY WITH 1.5GIG OF RAM.

I HAVE 1025 of RAM, and 128MB of graphics (915G Express chipset ...)

EDIT: I am now seriously considering putting this issue into the public domain (the national press)

[proudtrucker]

Please do just that i would love to see a someone from intel explaining how they justify not supporting a chipset that is less than a year old to work with Vista Aero experience i would like to see how they explain to thousands upon thousands of customers that they just bought a computer that is already considered a thing of the past when it is just 4 months old. I personally own laptops with this chipset that are less than 6 months old and feel totally well you know ! DELL / HP/Microsoftand all of these big manufactures should also be in on this demand on behalf of their customers where are they in all this ? i would not only petition intel but them aswell to push intel into doing what is right. I wait to see what happens i noticed not much response from intel here but i promise this i will never ever buy a product that has one chip from intel again if they do not support this chipset in the next month.

[kokazer08]

Same problem here...

bought a laptop with intel's 915gm chipset... just 6 months old, furious to find that i cant run aero... the sales persom i bought from said it would... but one funny thing i discovered was that, after installing windows vista home premium, in the windows sidebar, theSLIDE SHOW GADGET, when dragged to the desktop, showed transparency effects,close to the windows aero UImicrosoft bragged about all this while, which, of course, i couldnt get my hands on... so, this is pissing me off... if a component of windows vistaCOULD SHOW TRANSPARENCY EFFECTS EVEN WITHOUT THE WDDM DRIVERS, why notINTEL put their butts down on their chairs and start working on one for this particular chipset... besides,if a component of windows vista CAN SHOW TRANSPARENCY EFFECTS WITHOUT A LAG IN PERFORMANCE AND GRAPHICS PROCESSING, why not the whole UI of windows vista? one more thing that pisses me off is that, microsoft helped intel with the certification of i915gm/gms/910gl as VISTA CAPABLE and it gave intel the opportunity to continue selling these chipsets to consumers who do not have the slightest idea that their machine cant run aero without specific drivers. instead of swelling their inventory with these chips, they made millions off of this certification... what are they trying to do? sell more 945gm chips and make more money? come on, MICROSOFT HELPED INTEL WITH THE VISTA APPROVAL, AND INTEL SHOULD THANK THE CONSUMERS FOR BUYING THEIR PRODUCTS BY RELEASING THE WDDM DRIVERS, AND FULL SUPPORT FOR WINVISTA. more than 2million chipsets were sold worldwide and i doubt that these people will buy from intel ever again...i know i wouldnt...

[gjvanzyl]

Have the same problem! Got my NEW HP 500 laptop yesterday which runs the same chipset, installed Vista Ultimate, but NO Aero! Wot the hell! My friends 2 year old laptop runs Aero, but new laptop doent!

How the hell do they want to make money, by not the supporting a 6 month old chipseton Vista? I can play Call of Duty 2 without a problem, but no! Vista will give it a "HARD" time...

Been a fan of Intel for 10 Years now, seems AMD is the way to go!

If you have a related story, please post!

[sendobx7]

Intel lost my bussines forever... Been a fan for quite a few years, but this is just over the top. In earlier builds of Vista 915 worked just fine, in the final build it doesn't. I'm sure this is just as much Microsoft's fault as it is Intel's so I'm boycotting them both from now on. I'm buying only AMD/Ati from now on and already switched to Ubuntu Linux as my OS of choice. This is just a slap in the face of the consumer.

[heavyrain2408]

Shame on Intel. My $ 400 Vista Ultimate can not run Aero with your chipset.
I bet it could be able to run aero but Intel simply does not want to spend time and money for 915 anymore

[lersince1991]

this is crazy, how many people need this driver?!!

and intel do nothing...

i need this driver too btw

[ngk]

I have 26 VAIO Notebook (Intel 915GM....) I'm buying only AMD from now on.

[Joshua_B_Intel]

Hey everyone - my name is Josh, and I work for Intel Software Network. I'm actually the guy in charge of these forums, as of a couple of weeks ago. I'm also a huge mobile device user (I have a couple of tablet PCs and UMPCs with the graphics chipset in question, running Vista).

I know that the community is upset about the lack of these drivers. Heck, I am a little, too. And I feel especially bad for people that bought computers very recently that find out after the fact that they can't run the high end eye candy in Vista.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and there was an Intel sponsored session about optimizing your games for Intel's G965 display chips. I was in the room with several folks from the graphics group, with my video camera, covering the conference for ISN.

I sat down after the session with the presenter (not sure if he wants me to share his name), and asked him about WDDM/Vista driver support for the 915 and 910 graphics chips. He was well aware that the community is ticked off. So I filmed a few minutes with him explaining why, exactly, these drivers don't exist. The video will be available soon.

Here's what it boils down to: The graphics chips in question were designed and built before the WDDM driver standard and no one had any idea what the requirements for Vista Aero was going to be. It's an old, low-end graphics solution, and there are specific hardware requirements for Aero that the 915 and 910 graphics chips just don't have.

We can't magically go back in time to add those hardware features to the chips, as much as we'd like to, to enable Vista Aero. The engineer I talked to in the video goes in to more detail, about what features exactly aren't present in the hardware. But that's the basic answer to the question.

I just wanted to post in here, to give you guys the info, and let you know that it's not like we're sitting on the drivers, or that it's a lack of resources that's holding them up. The fact is that it's an older, less powerful chip that just doesn't have what it takes to run Aero.

I'm really, really sorry if you were led to believe otherwise by salespeople or anyone else. It affects me, too, because even though I'm running Vista on my X41 Tablet PC and my Asus R2H UMPC, I don't have Aero Glass, and of course, like you, I want it. Heck, the R2H UMPC has only even been out for a few months, but sadly, there's nothing to be done.

Please, continue to discuss this here in the ISN forums, or contact me directly (joshua.bancroft@intel.com). I'll be posting the video explanation, soon, and if you have any follow up questions, I'll try my best to get them answered.

[Joshua_B_Intel]

Oops. That last post had my outdated sig. I fixed it, and this one should have my correct cell number.

Am I crazy for sharing that? Maybe. But I want you to know that I'm available and accessible. I know I'm just getting started here, but that's how I do things, so I hope it works out, and I don't end up having to change my number or something. ;-)

In other words, please be nice! :-)

[bolted975]

MADjabancro:

I know that the community is upset about the lack of these drivers. Heck, I am a little, too. And I feel especially bad for people that bought computers very recently that find out after the fact that they can't run the high end eye candy in Vista.
- I know that for me personaly I could put up without any "eye candy" however not supporting aero also means that my new laptop can't even run the DVD maker! I really wasn't expecting this when I bought it just under a year ago!

I just wanted to post in here, to give you guys the info, and let you know that it's not like we're sitting on the drivers, or that it's a lack of resources that's holding them up. The fact is that it's an older, less powerful chip that just doesn't have what it takes to run Aero.
- Id also like to point out that the chip did have what it takes to run aero a few moths ago in the earlier pre release versions. If it was displaying all the same aero effects back thensurely the problems with aero aren't harware related? I think this is what has led alot of users to believe that its more of a case of Intel choosing not to support the 915 rather then it not being capable. Would appreciate if you could clear this up???

Please, continue to discuss this here in the ISN forums, or contact me directly (joshua.bancroft@intel.com). I'll be posting the video explanation, soon, and if you have any follow up questions, I'll try my best to get them answered.

[Aaron_B_Intel]

Josh is a braver man than I, to post his cell phone number here. Hopefully rabid posters don't take advantage of his generosity.

As far as 915 working on pre-release Vista... Microsoft's certification bodies are the ultimate arbiters of what is and is not allowed to be certified WDDM. It's entirely possible that even though the 915 worked perfectly acceptably on Aero the hardware specs of the chip did not meet Microsoft's final set of criteria, and they were, therefore,rejected in the final version. MS's criteria may indeed be overly restrictive for what users actually want/need, but the bottom line is that users don't get to decide what is acceptable to call a WDDM driver.

If Intel had wanted to screw people over and make people buy the latest and greatest 965, they wouldn't have released WDDM drivers for the 945 either.

[okatomy]

i still think the reason for GMA900 lacking aero is that it's lackingREAL DX9 support. nothing more is required from microsoft.

or why can the 2003 nvidia fx 5200 run aero just fine? in 2003 noone could think of aero.

GMA950 was just modified to support at least aero. it isn't a real DX9 card either.

[bolted975]

Totally agree, we were sold a card which was said to support DX9 however it doesn't do this fully. According to the upgrade advisor this card meets all requirements except for a having a WDDM driver. If this is true why don't we have a driver? and if a driver can't be made due to it notsupporting DX 9 properly why was it sold as being able to??

[okatomy]

because money rules the world

[ngk]

?????????????????????????????????????????????????

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/915gm/index.htm

Ready for Microsoft Windows Vista*

Mobile Intel 915GM Express Chipset family platforms using 512 MB of system memory or greater meet all current requirements for the Microsoft Windows Vista* Capable PC program.

[Anonymous5]

Intel is really upsetting a lot of people in the market and they are losing face with Intel quick. I'm not talking hundreds or thousands, but there are millions of people out there affected by Intel's refusal to release WDDM drivers for the 900 series graphics chips. I find it hard to believe these chipsets are not capable of support WDDM. I have extensive background working with high end technologies and chips setswith companies like Raytheon and HP and I just dont see the hardware limitations there that Intel talks about that correctfirmware upgradescouldn't correct and make compatible. I am currently the Asst Director of Information Technology with a company supporting over 9200+ users based all over the country. Our IT commitment is to refield computers after 2 years of service. We have been very loyal with IBM/Intel for many yearsand we have hundreds of thousands of dollars in laptop purchases invested. We have started integratingWindows Vista onto our networks, but because of the refusal of correct drivers for Vista for Intel 900 chip sets, we are moving to new vendors that supports AMD technologies. We are quite disgusted by Intel's action or inaction for that matter regarding this issue. I dont know how many other companies, on top of the individual users, there are out there making the same decisions, even today, but the decisions made today will carry through tomorrow and people dont forget easilly. I can only imagine that many other companies will soon make atransition like we did. Any search on the net will yield people complaining about this subject in great detail with no responses from Intel, further promoting the look and feel of bad customer service practices in the eyes of it's potential buyers.

[brigstock]

I loaded Vista on my Dell just recently without checking compatibility, my bad really, but I just expected a Laptop that is a little over a year old to be totally compliant. I'm disappointed to find my Laptop can't run Vista with all features due to a poorly designed GFX chipset.

How absolutely ridiculous, made even worse by the statement on the Intel website that the 915GM drivers are compliant

"Mobile Intel 915GM Express Chipset family platforms using 512 MB of system memory or greater meet all current requirements for the Microsoft Windows Vista* Capable PC program."

Clearly it doesn't.

Isn't there some sort of consumer law being broken here?

[Joshua_B_Intel]

OK, guys, here's the deal.

There's "Vista Ready" and "Vista Premium Capable". Microsoft decides which is which:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/capable.mspx

The 915 graphics chip is "Vista Ready". It runs Vista just fine. It is NOT "Vista Premium Ready". From the above Microsoft site:

Some Windows Vista Capable PCs have been designated Premium Ready. These PCs will provide an even better Windows Vista experience, including the Windows Aero user experience. Features available in specific premium editions of Windows Vista, such as the ability to watch and record live TV, may require additional hardware.

Confusing? Yes. Deceptive? Well, some people think so, and have brought a lawsuit against Microsoft for this exact issue:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/04/04/microsoft-accused-of-deceptive-marketing-bait-and-switch-tactics-over-vista

In fact, since that lawsuit, Microsoft has gone back and made a change to that paragraph I quoted. Read about what it used to say:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/04/09/microsoft-redefines-vista-capable

So.

To everyone who bought a laptop with Intel 915 graphics, because it was labelled "Vista Ready", you were NOT deceived. It IS "Vista Ready". It runs Vista just fine.

But.

If you somehow thought that "Vista Ready" meant that you could run the cool 3D tab flipper, and the fancy "Aero Glass" high end 3D interface, you were wrong.

I'm sorry you didn't understand what you were getting when you bought a system with an old, low end, legacy graphics chip. I'm sorry the Microsoft marketing material and logo labels confused you. I really am. I wish none of us had to deal with this.

Is Intel ever going to release a "beta"/unofficial driver for 915 graphics?

I'm not the "official" person to answer this, but I'd say "no".

Why?

Because it's an old, low end, "legacy" part. There aren't any people at Intel dedicated to writing new drivers for this part. Intel laid off 10% of its workforce last year - 10,000 people. Ten thousand. The rest of us that are left are trying to get all the work done. Obviously, we can't do the same amount of work. Some things have to get dropped. Decisions have to be made about what projects are going to happen, and which ones are going to get cut. Like I said, I'm not the "official" person to say, but my guess is that there just aren't people sitting around, collecting a paycheck, that could be thrown at writing an unofficial "beta" driver. Wouldn't it cool i f it happened? Of course. Would Intel like to do it if we had the resources? Certainly! But we live in the same reality that you do, and we have to make our budget balance just like you do. We can't always do everything that we'd like to do.

I hope this serves as a "final word" on this discussion. If you have more questions, please do continue to discuss it here, email me, whatever. But I'm hiding anything or holding anything back - I've laid it all out on the line, here, and I hope it helps you guys understand.

And if I could buy everyone a drink to make you feel better, or a brand new "Vista Premium Ready" computer to run the Vista eye-candy, I would. But there's that whole "reality" thing...