Interview met nVidia over Detonator XP drivers

Bij Computer Games Online is een interview geplant met nVidia over de nieuwe Detonator XP drivers. Deze drivers zijn verleden maandag gereleased door nVidia en bevatten verschillende tweaks die voor een flinke performance boost zorgen. In het interview kunnen we onder andere lezen welke belangrijke verbeteringen doorgevoerd zijn, waarom de drivers niet eerder gereleased waren en in hoeverre de drivers invloed hebben op de introductie datums van nieuwe producten. Een voorproefje:

Q: Conspiracy theorists claim that the performance improvements in the Detonator XP drivers have been available for some time and were not rolled into previous drivers so that they could be released at a later date to "magically" give GeForce3 performance a big boost right when serious competition arrives. It certainly does seem like quite a coincidence that NVIDIA would release drivers to improve performance so drastically close to when the ATI Radeon 8500 debuts. How do you respond to these claims?

A: If you look at our history, you will see that we always have a driver release that boosts performance about every six months. This is the same time frame we have released drivers in the past. The reason for the second release is pretty simple. In the initial driver release the software team focuses on stability and compatibility. Performance is secondary to getting a reliable product to market. When that goal is achieved, we focus on performance tuning.

The thing to remember is that NVIDIA is always working on new drivers. I'll give you an "exclusive" and let you know that we are currently working on two different future releases of drivers that are beyond Detonator XP. Our goal is to have a major release about every four to six months, depending on the season. We have been targeting a release for September all the way back to last January.