RTX 30xx Drivers on Windows 8.1?

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce Drivers Section' started by Arnox, Feb 1, 2021.

  1. Arnox

    Arnox Guest

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    This pack restores everything that was cut from 8.1 and fixes literally every issue 8.1 has, turning it into an enhanced 7 with better native driver support (and, anecdotally, better stability).

    But has full Vulkan support. In fact, the only reason 8.1 doesn't have DX12 is because Microsoft is being a strawberry and isolating it to Windows 10, hoping to force more people onto their new shitty OS, and thus, backing my argument even more of people being forced to use it instead of it being an OS people actually want to install, like XP or 7.

    Except it doesn't matter because drivers made for 7 work flawlessly in 8.1. Also, MILLIONS of people still use 8.1. All Nvidia would have to do is copypaste the driver code for 8.1, but they are so insanely lazy and/or incompetent that not only will they not allow the install by default, they hardcoded the drivers to instantly error out with a Code 43 even if you force-install them. And you know what, even IF they had to do a bit more work to get it working, are you really gonna sit here and tell me that Nvidia is so poor and strung out for money that they can't afford one or two devs to copypaste and fix up a few errors with the driver code to make it work for a major Windows OS iteration? What, are they outsourcing all their driver development to some Indian sweatshop who can't even make a Hello World program?

    Oh yes there freaking is. 7 and 8.1 all use up MUCH less resources while having the same damn functionality, pretty much. And that's WITHOUT any optimizing on 7 and 8.1's part, running them straight out of the box.

    Doesn't matter if it's been fine with you. Everyone else has had massive issues. And if that wasn't enough to convince you, here's a damn former Microsoft engineer explaining why Windows 10 updates are crap-tier compared to how they were in the past.

    I'm very happy for you, but some of us want full control of the computers we ourselves bought or built.

    Why? Also, Microsoft took it out and literally never replaced it with anything.

    That's your opinion and also irrelevant because regardless of whether you liked it or not, Microsoft clearly stripped them out and tried to sell it back to consumers.

    -

    On almost every metric that matters to consumers and enterprise, 10 is awful. I think the only reason people are saying otherwise is because they feel they don't have a choice and need to rationalize, saying "It's not that bad," when yes, it really is that bad, yes, it is unacceptable, and yes, we can and should expect much better from Microsoft. They've shown us many times in the past that they can make some absolute quality software that excels by leaps and bounds.
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2021
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  2. TimmyP

    TimmyP Guest

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    Get help.
     
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  3. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    how funny make account asking for help and argue with everyone
     
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  4. Arnox

    Arnox Guest

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    Why, because I can form logical arguments?

    No, just one person. Also, I thought forums were for, you know, discussion and debate.

    -

    EDIT: After thinking about this a bit, I get that I can be a bit abrasive, but I really don't see why we're trying to defend literal billion-dollar corporations who don't give a crap about any of us and could do a LOT better if they merely just put a bit more work in.

    If you don't have an issue with Nvidia or using 10, that's fine, and I mean that, but I don't think it's fair in any way to dismiss people's problems they've had and are having just because they may not necessarily apply to you.
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2021
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  5. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    holding on to OS that has been EoL , is gona lead to more problems, you either get with time or continues to lose driver support, nvidia isnt the only one slow dropping support for older versions of windows. they are also many thing but lazy it not one them, driver coding no where as simple as it was 20 years ago let alone back when 3dfx was still around.

    I of the opinion dropping driver support for everything but windows 10 newer card, will make thing alot easier drivers devs simplier instead of try to code for EoL OS still in there.

    Windows 10 has it issue there is no denying that though, it was royal pain to get gefore 7400go drivers to work on my laptop when I installed Win10 on but i expected that, I dont expect old gpu to forever be support and EoL OS to be supported either.

    Trying to keep compatiblite with old HW and OLD OS is what lead to issue in firstplace.
     
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  6. Arnox

    Arnox Guest

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    I think you misunderstand me. I'm not mad (per se) that Nvidia dropped support for 8.1. I'm mad that they dropped support even though it's been shown time and time and time again, even with Nvidia's own drivers, that drivers written for 7 will work just fine for 8.1 (see: 20xx series), but Nvidia not only refuses to officially support 8.1 (which, again, is fine) but has seemingly gone out of their way to block install of their Windows 7 30xx drivers onto 8.1 (not fine).

    8.1 is also not EoL as you say and is still receiving security updates and will until 2023. This isn't Windows 98. It is still definitely supported by Microsoft, even if it's not mainstream support, so if we're gonna talk about what's getting too old, 7 would qualify much more than 8.1. Now, yes, sooner or later, both 7 and 8.1 are simply just gonna get too old to use, period. I realize that and am fine with that, and I don't and never expected neither Nvidia nor Microsoft to support these OSes forever, but this definitely feels like Nvidia's cutting off 8.1 way before its time for literally no reason at all. So, in summary, it wouldn't take any real effort to make drivers for 8.1, 8.1's still supported by Microsoft, there is definitely a point to using 8.1 over 7, and 8.1 is still used by a decent portion of the PC population.

    Years down the line, I will switch away from 8.1, but it still has a lot of life left in it yet. And I'm not just using it because I like old stuff. If 10 worked as well as 8.1 at least, I'd happily use it, but Microsoft has made sure that that's not the case. lol
     
    Last edited: Feb 11, 2021
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  7. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    windows 7 supports 12on7 (with raytracing)
     
  8. Arnox

    Arnox Guest

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  9. greenhillmaniac

    greenhillmaniac New Member

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    If Nvidia explicitly removed 8.1 support from the drivers, it would be understandable that they would not work. For example, around mid 2016 AMD removed the codepath for WDDM 1.2 (Windows 8.0), meaning that installing AMD's Windows 7 drivers on that OS will BSOD. On the other hand, Nvidia already officially supports the Ampere architecture on NT 6.3 on their Quadro offerings. It really doesn't make much sense for them to block their consumer offerings from a technical perspective. Adding salt to the wound Windows 7, a 12 year old OS, is still officially supported. All that's being discussed here is that this artificial limitation be removed, either officially or unofficially. It's all about choice.
    Even Windows Vista got official drivers until 2016. :eek:
     
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  10. Arnox

    Arnox Guest

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    Pretty much. We're just seeing rampant cost-cutting from Nvidia to the point where they're stubbornly cutting off 8.1 simply because they can't be arsed to hire a dev to shift some code around (assuming it even needs that.)
     
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  11. sapo_joe

    sapo_joe Master Guru

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    So you bought a very expensive RTX card and are using a Windows version that doesn't support Ray Tracing in the first place.

    Tell me more...
     
  12. Arnox

    Arnox Guest

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    1. I've seen head-to-head (and up to date as well) comparisons of games with ray-tracing on and off, and honestly, it's hard to notice, and even, I would say, impossible during intense gameplay. Further, there's still a significant performance penalty when it's on. Basically, it's this generation's anti-aliasing. It's graphically expensive right now but will improve in the future. But that's the thing. We're not in that future yet, and even further, the only game I saw where ray-tracing actually makes a huge difference is Minecraft. (Although admittedly, it's REALLY damn sweet in that game.)

    2. Vulkan now supports basic ray-tracing in games and will improve its implementation in the future, so yes, Windows 7 and 8.1 both actually do support it.

    3. The RTX 30xx series has a lot more power to offer over the older series' besides just ray-tracing prowess.

    Unless you're not talking about the 30xx series and are instead talking about my Quadro, in which case, I have a lot of separate reasons for both buying that and still using 8.1.
     
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  13. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    Vista was cut off because it wasn't getting new TLS or kernel Sha2 support.
     
  14. tayyar

    tayyar Member

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    People here have post purchase justification for something they haven't paid for.

    I wonder if they have Vietnam flashbacks for a war they didn't fight in too.
     
  15. Chrysalis

    Chrysalis Master Guru

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    I upgraded to Win 10 purely to use my 3080, someone told me on the nvidia forums the lack of windows 8 drivers is only officially and the win7 drivers work, but they didnt work (got the unsupported card message in installer), so I am now on win10, which is fine I am glad i made the move now.

    But what I dont like is the approach from many companies to favour win 7 over win 8.1, the former is EOL yet it still has nvidia maintaining drivers and has DX12, Win 8.1 has neither.

    Its as if all the big tech companies had a meeting and decided between them that windows 8 doesnt exist even though it does. Kind of like how it had original intel drivers, amd drivers etc. then they all got pulled from the net in synchronisation.

    If you dont care for DX12 features 8.1 is a good choice.

    It has notable improvements in DX11 over windows 7 (unless the DX12 backport gave it the newer DX11 as well), it has security enhancements over win7, will run newer hardware better, and of course is still supported by microsoft.

    Windows 7 is EOL plain and simple.

    Since moving to windows 10 the amount of traffic to Microsoft compared to 8.1 is night and day difference, it doesnt really bother me from a privacy standpoint, only from a performance standpoint, but I think the data collection is on a different level.

    My original reason for avoiding Windows 10 was more along the lines I thought the Win10 RTM was far from ready, and I dont support rapid development forced update models. I have now ended upon build 1809 LTSC which is a compromise, and the current state of windows 10 is much better than when it was launched although it for sure still feels like a beta OS. (coming across fair amount of bugs).

    Also I can understand why people want to use 1607 and win 8.1. On my laptop which doesnt have high end CPU, win 10 1809 is visibly slower than win 8.1, I believe this is down to the new security mitigation's which they all cannot be turned off.

    I believe there is an agreement between Microsoft and Major hardware vendors to kill of win 8.1, so users are pushed to win 10, win 7 with how popular it was has managed to keep some support for that reason, but its morally wrong whilst refusing to support older win 10 builds and 8.1
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2021
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  16. densou

    densou Member Guru

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    I'm in....cos on a spare HDD of mine, I stick with 8.1 just for ...playin' gamez. (whilst main setup ssd+hdd comes with win10....'til 1803 was okayish though....atm I use so-so 1903 build....20H* are utterly crap)

    so I can truly acknowledge 8.1 when it comes up to brute gaming performance AND NOT CARING at all about dx12 and other meh stuff like rtx/dlss [note: green light to vulkan though]
     

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