Considering that a realtek sound driver weights around 40 mb these days nothing surprises me. Thinking that a driver is something loaded with the system and always "on" and running you'd think that more optimization is required. But hey in a 12 GB Vista install it fits :)

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They have two different code paths for the cards before the 8000 breed and one for the newer cards. In some places they have several code paths depending on the host CPU. Sometimes they use differing optimizations based on the benchmark/game that uses the driver. They support DirectX, OpenGL and CUDA. They bring just-in-time compilers for the shader languages cg (Nvidia) and HDSL (Microsoft). They bring Vendor-specific patches for Laptops. They brng PhysiX. Common, in former times a whole OS was simpler...

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The dissection was great, but what I don't understand is why the actual driver is so big. Assuming there are no graphics in there, 18mb is an awful lot of code. What all is it doing that makes the code so big?

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When it comes to the total size of the driver package, you have to figure that both AMD and NVIDIA are including drivers for not just YOUR video card, but also for all devices in the family.

The ATI driver package includes drivers for the Radeon 9500-9800 family, the X300-X800, the X1300-X1800, and all cards going forward from there. Each of these product families need their own drivers, even though the interface to those drivers may be the same(Catalyst Control Center).

In addition to this, AMD also includes the chipset and AVIVO drivers in their driver packages, which adds to how large each release is.

The idea behind these huge driver releases is that most consumers have no idea what sort of video card or GPU they have in their system, so AMD and NVIDIA make just one big package that has all the drivers included. Since there are SLI and Crossfire optimizations in the drivers as well, all of that extra stuff gets included in the same drivers.

Finally, while the drivers themselves are important, the connection between the control application and the drivers also requires a bit of code. So, AMD just putting support for Catalyst Control Center into their drivers will increase the size. Being able to adjust the performance v. quality slider, or force AA in the drivers rather than making the application turn it on or off is a part of this. If all of that extra functionality were cut out, drivers would probably be a lot smaller than they are today.


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I was just pondering this a few days ago. Thanks, neat breakdown Ryan.

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Individual game/program "optimizations" to beat the Orb and the competition? :) I kid, I kid.....kind of.

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Its making your video card run?

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Why include PhysX in their standard driver package? It has support for what, five games in the last 3 years? Also the PDSetup.exe for AutoCAD isn't needed either. Both of those drivers should be downloaded separately as far as I'm concerned.

Also if you want to use a CUDA application you have to download a special driver package from Nvidia "usually beta drivers". My point being soon they will add a useless CUDA driver to that 100MB download too.

I've really only owned Nvidia cards in my life but I'm really starting to hate Nvidia with a passion. Everything they do lately seems to rub me the wrong way. From their card and chipset renaming spree and deceptive marketing to UMAP and the whole "Nvidia invented the GPU" egomaniac type behavior.

I hope someone knocks them down a couple of notches, or better yet the GPU really does move to the CPU so they will go the way of 3DFX. I know that's not good for competition and for us consumers but that's the way they've got me feeling lately.

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You don't think Nvidia's been knocked down to their knees already?

Show me someone that owns Nvidia stock, and I'll show you an idiot. With Intel about to enter the GPU fray, their life is going to get a lot more difficult, and soon. More than that Intel despises them, for their obnoxious advertising and is going after them pretty aggressively now. They were much better off staying under their radar.

The reality is, with the processors getting more and more built into them (memory interface, for example, and soon the GPU), what can be added outside of it becomes less, and that's where Nvidia survives. Since ATI makes a very competitive, if not generally better, GPU right now, it's even worse for them.

Once Intel enters the scene, it's going to be ugly. They are an EXTREMELY formidable company when they make up their minds to compete in a market, not only because their design resources dwarf what is available to their competitors, but also because their manufacturing technology is much better than anything Nvidia or AMD can even approach. Couple that with their software prowess (greatly underestimated), and their greater ability to support their products, and induce other companies to use them with cash incentives, and you're whistling past the graveyard when they have you in their cross-hairs.

I'm not saying Larrabee is going to be the greatest thing since Cheddar Cheese, but that's the whole point. It doesn't have to be. They are so much better with the things that surround it, that the design gets a lot of help. On top of this, even if it's not, the fact that Intel has entered the market very aggressively, and is taking it much more seriously means that whether this product is good or not, they will keep working on it, and they'll almost certainly get it right.

On top of this, Nvidia's reputation has taken a beating with their faulty/defective products lately.

Because AMD already makes CPUs, they can match Intel with regards to synergy between the two (for example, moving them on die), but Nvidia is out in the cold. I wouldn't use their stock to wrap fish with. But, I've always hated the company for the same reasons you do, and only once bought a card based on their technology (and was irritated by it, and will never buy another again).


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Intel entered the graphics arena a long time ago but have yet to do anything significant. Basically, Intel graphics run a couple of generations behind what NVidia and ATI put out, even comparing apples to apples on the integrated GPU front.

Can Intel catch up? Possibly, but its not a given. Let's face it, developing a top-notch GPU is difficult. I for one welcome their efforts because having a third major player has got to make for even fiercer competition. However, I think it'll be a while before they get out of the basement and between now and then business plans can change.

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I would go so far as to doubt that Intel's presence in the GPU market will even increase competition in the mainstream. Larrabee is an entirely different beast than cards on the market right now, and will undoubtedly cater to a niche market. Personally the only chunk of the graphics pie I can see Intel even having a chance at is high-end workstations, where their name alone will turn the heads of large corporations regardless of performance, and X86 technology might just be seriously adopted.

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Thanks for your response, now I understand why people still own Nvidia stock, but I'll tell you why I disagree with it.

Intel never entered the high performance graphics market, even after they ate up Real3D and came out with the i740. The point of these GPUs was to help make the platform better, and to leave the high end stuff to Nvidia, 3DFX, ATI, etc... Clearly, they saw the need to at least offer chipsets with 3D accelerators, and have dominated the market ever since. Clearly, the market they targetted they were very successful in, and for that reason I wouldn't use their history as an indictment against their success, but an example of it.

Now their target is a different market, and a market they had left alone. It's not a second attempt at this market, after a failure, it's a first. And, maybe it will miss the mark. Maybe it will not meet expectations. Maybe it will be late and by the time it comes out, be obsolete when compared to its competitors. Even in these cases, it won't be the last word on it. They'll come out with another one, and another, and they do have a lot of smart people there, that do learn. With all their advantages, particularly with manufacturing, it's so difficult to imagine them never being able to compete with a weak company like Nvidia, that doesn't even make a processor. A single die GPU/Processor has some nice advantages, not the least of which is communication between the two is much faster, and splitting instructions should be a lot more efficient. It's just not something Nvidia has the option to do, but both AMD and Intel clearly feel there's a lot of good in it.

As far as the Larrabee being a niche product, since when does Intel target niches? I don't think they'd spend so much time and money developing it for a niche market. Of course, not everything goes as planned, so it's possible, but it's clearly not what they're targeting, and should it fall into this role, that certainly doesn't mean the successor will. It's not like the Itanium, where you have to rewrite a program, or operating system to run on it to give it support. If the product is good, and Intel gets the drivers right, it's going to sell well. They've got everything covered extraordinarily well.

Bet against Intel at your own peril. They do make mistakes, but, invariably, they recover from them. If you think it's a good idea to assume they'll always screw up, you should apply to AMD for a job. But, can they afford to hire anymore? Hmmm, I wonder why not? It's not JUST the economy.

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This is the age old question of which came first the chicken or the egg? Or the question about using different fuels for vehicles, how do we get stations to carry the new fuel type when little to no cars use the fuel and how do we get people to buy the cars when they can't get fuel for it in most locations?


NVIDIA is spreading the code out through their platform automatically so that developers can start using it on a mass scale. Otherwise it would be hard to get developers to code for it and it would flop. In other words, they are building the infrastructure that will enable the success of their system/platform.

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One of the nice things about ATI (for those with slower connections), is that they offer drivers in individual packages (driver only, CCC only etc), as well as through a full bundle. While it may not seem like anything special to most people, it is nice when on a slower connection, as it means you can save a little time on downloading an update.

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Its also a trouble saver for me. Ever since I stopped using the CCC package, I've had far fewer problems and itches with their product. Recently I thought, what the hell, give it a try.

And Yesterday my trusty 3870 died. Ok, I'm not blaming CCC directly for that. I dont even know what exactly went wrong. The thing wasnt overclocked. But the fan behaved weird with CCC installed so I dumped it again and then it died (only garbage on screen at boot). ;)

But other than that, CCC while doing fine what it does, always gave me a minor headache. The system boots slower, the desktop isnt ready right after logon etc. Its just a tad bit too unoptimized or bloated - and I can live without that and the CCC functionality.

So, I'm grateful for the separate packages, indeed.

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I was just wondering the same thing a few days ago about my HP AIO drivers. Granted it has fax, scanner, memory card reader, and printer functionality, but it was getting installed off the Vista specific driver disc (also had 2000/XP, and Mac discs which I also used) and needed 600MB (!!!) on the hard drive (and that was the required driver package, not extra software)! Hell of an optimization effort there...of course the last motherboard I got uses a DVD for everything it has.

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They could do better just by changing their compression. I downloaded the x64 182.06 and extracted it. Then I simply compressed it using 7-zip latest stable.

7-zip lzma compression, "Maximum" compression level:
93.7MB
Nvidia with crappy installshield:
100MB

And that is just compressing already poorly compressed files! Their driver contains .cab files, And the PhysX installer is a .msi.

I never understood why people continue to use outdated compression. Especially a big company where bandwidth = $$$

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Because 7zip is not as widely known as your Winzip programs. Heck, I'm still using WinRAR since it's conception. Yea, I can use 7zip but it isn't that important to me to save a few Kilo, Mega of size for the longer processing duration (often times).

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It's not about the .7z files, it's about the compression algorithm.
Installshield could implement that compression algorithm for their package installer.
Besides, 7zip can produce auto-extracting exe files: no need for 7zip on the destination computer.

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Not to extend this semi-pointless discussion but that same thing can be said of other compression programs. Why a company doesn't "choose" the best algorithm, parts, PCs, or what have you could be due to many things. If people aren't aware of the program that started the algorithm they are STILL not going to know nor care. My co-worker here, a very intelligent design engineer among other things, don't even know about RAR. So how can he easily choose or say he like to use the 7zip algorithm for his files? Basically, he can't without more research.

Now you take Winzip and older compression programs out there and he's already aware of them and he'll use them because it's convenient and easy to get going with. That's all there is to my point. History has shown us various types of good compression algorithms in the past with had little use because they were just not popular. Look at the pirated software world, still using RAR compression for their releases.

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First, 6% is not overly impressive.

Second, the lzma algorithm is weighted towards higher compression ratios at the expense of compression time. What zip (the algorithm not the tool) can do in 1 or 2 seconds often takes lzma 20 or 30. It's the trade off. There are much better compressors than even lzma, but they can takes hours to do what zip does in minutes.

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The problem is the 7-zip LZMA compression on maximum probably requires about 300MB of continous memory to decompress, which is a lot compared to cab's 100KB-1MB requirement.

Some computers still have nVidia cards and only 512MB of memory and the installer would just crash on those computers as the OS would not be able to allocate so much memory.

For 7MB of download less, it's not worth getting thousands of support requests about this.

Also, keep in mind cabs are standardized and the installer used by nVidia, Installshield ,uses them.

Installshield is a service inside Windows which is pretty large, lots of MB.

The setup file that you download only has a small 200-500 KB small executable which decompresses the large 100MB exe file into several CAB files and scripts and then a script is passed to the Installshield service on the user's computer and then the whole 100 MB setup is processed by the service on the user's computer.

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Not just memory usage: using "maximum" compression would also mean FAR more CPU time used to decompress the file.

Personally, whenever I compress files, I do fairly light compression, so that any easily-compressed file gets compressed, and it saves huge amounts of CPU time on the customer's end.

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"Also keep in mind that this doesn’t include NVIDIA’s optional System Tools software needed for GPU overclocking, GPU monitoring, etc. That’s another 82MB compressed."

Riiight, I guess I will continue to add a coolbits and sedonadisable registry key and continue using the "Classic Control Panel" complete with hardware monitoring and overclocking options.

I was very pissed when the new control panel came out and the tagline was always "enabling greater control with more options in an easy to use manner". I thought it was Bullshit. But I also thought they would fix it in due course, well 4 years later I am still waiting.

Greater Control - BS - I have yet to see as many options on any new control panel.

More Options - BS - Features are consistently missing, such as LCD digital control.

Easy to Use - BS - Please help me understand how it is easier to use, maybe because it has less functionality? After all, simple things are by definition simpler.

Bad nVidia, there was a time when your control panel and drivers were the envy of ATi, just because they are retarded enough to require .NET framework 2.0 for their "flash and awe" control panel doesn't mean you need to drop your quality control on functional drivers.

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I hate the new control panel. I'd much rather use the older one but in Vista you have no choice. It's awful, clunky and ugly as hell. I hate the "Windows" look and it was an especially rude awaking when I first saw it.

Anyways back on topic, System Tools With ESA, CUDA, PhysX and nTune all suck and are nothing but gimmicks. Pointless software.

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nVidia dropped the single driver model a long time ago. Saying it includes drivers for other cards are lies. You MUST click the model on your card on their website to get the driver.

I agree with nubie. The old tab UI was bad, but the new window is WAY WAY worse.

I agree with Jaguar36, that's a LOT of code. Hes not saying they wrote a lot of code and that's why its huge, hes saying there's a ton of garbage and unoptimized crap in there.

Regarding compression, using install shield is a mistake to begin with. They could easily pack that stuff in a NSIS installer and save 4MB right there.

And even if they really are storing code for all the different hardware in one file, it's still ridiculous. That means 10 copies of the same thing in memory. Great.

There are no excuses. The only two reasons these drivers are huge are the developers are amateur/inexperienced/uneducated/stupid and lazy.

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"Saying it includes drivers for other cards are lies."

Go to nvidia.com --> drivers, then select the the lowest gpu, then do it for the highest one... notice how they all link to the same damn file.

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I bought an HP laser printer. Its "device driver" weighed in at 650 Mb (an entire CD). Of course it wasn't really just a device driver. It was like 10 Mb of device driver and 640 Mb of shovel-ware. But even the "minimal" install took like 320 Mb and over 30 minutes to install. Unbelievable. I remember "Hello World" on the original Mac 128 taking like 4800 bytes (including the stdio runtime). Heck, the entire original Mac, floppy drives and all would fit inside the Core 2's secondary cache. Fastest MacWrite on the planet!

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I think it's about time. Since all the innovating competition is gone ATI and Nvidia are just playing catch up games with each other. Little innovation really. Even though I'm happy with my dual 285s I don't like where this is going: more, bigger and hotter GPUs. Maybe Intel will enter with a big bang and raise the bar and force both ATI and Nvidia to start innovate again. More competition is good for us. I think it's hard to talk about competition when we have just two companies locked in a ring with each other.

Z.

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Have you ever used the DiNovo Keyboard / Mouse combination from Logitech? The drivers are a massive 107Mb! For a mouse and keyboard that can be detected by windows.

Incidently they are s*** drivers. They cause an unreponsive and laggy mouse.

Thank god we're not using 56k dial up!

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Creative Labs had the dubious honour of gigantic SoundBlaster drivers back in 2000. I remember they refused to host the full Audigy driver suite on their website because it was so large - they only offered patch files which you had to apply to an existing install derived from your driver CD.

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