It seems the 128MB requirement is only for Aero, whereas the basic Home version only requires 32MB of video RAM. Thanks that's some good info! I did a lot of searching around and as you suggested, much of it is a toss up. I say this because I know it to be the case with bridged ATi cards.ĮDIT: XDDM is bolded because the blasted forum software believes ? is an emoticon, even with punctuation breaking it up.
To the Quadro FX at hand - I'm not sure if you can just run GeForce FX drivers on them, because I'm not sure if they need some hotfix/whatever due to the bridge. DirectX 10 is not required *at all* for Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, or 10. GeForce FX 5200 PCI will fully run Aero just fine, at least under 32-bit Vista, and that's probably the slowest DirectX 9 card ever made. Aero requires any DirectX 9 card with at least 128MB of memory. DirectX 9.0c (SM3.0) is only required by some games.
Its not an Nvidia driver problem, it's the hardwares' ability to support DirectX. My point was that 7 May not like your old card since iirc 9.0c is the base minimum in Win7, anyway and 10 if you want Aero. I would either go with a Radeon 9 (or above) or GeForce 6/7 if you need to run Vista (or above) - I've had fine luck with a GeForce 7900 under 7圆4, and afaik the 6 series can use most (if not all) of the same driver releases. I've never tried the 圆4 drivers, but I would not expect good things - nVidia basically abandoned everything pre-Vista once Vista was released, and 64-bit (from what I remember) had it even worse. The driver is officially a beta, and there's limited functionality available. GeForce FX under Vista, IME, is kind of half-baked though. Driver Date: : Release Notes: Driver Version: 9.6.8.5: PC Matic Notes: Version History. AFAIK the only DX9 card that won't work in Vista and up are the 3DLabs Wildcat REALiZM series, simply because 3DLabs went out of business before Vista was released (admittedly I've not had a mind to confirm this though). NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 - Driver Download Vendor: Product: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Hardware Class: DISPLAY.
Windows Vista and up officially require DirectX 9 graphics with 128MB VRAM (can be shared, like Intel IGPs) and a WDDM driver to support Aero, however if you don't care about Aero, there are many