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Any delay in getting a scheduled product out to market is a potentially big problem for the manufacturer, not only in terms of missed revenues but also with respect to perceived lack of execution of the product development team. Regardless of what the issues are, whether it is an issue with the silicon or whether there are some other glitches that show up as low yields or even if it concerns merely the managing of the back-end, that is potential thermal runaway – in the end it is irrelevant. What remains is the delay and another delay and after the third one, the product is officially branded as vaporware.

The best countermeasure in this scenario is the release of products that capture the masses and offer them value that could even sway the most conservative non-upgrader to consider taking the plunge into a world of – in this case – better graphics for a lower price than ever.

In this particular scenario, ATI – despite the recurrent flopping of the R600 release – has quite a few irons in the fire, particularly a driver infrastructure that warrants Crossfire functionality not only across different platforms but also across all current Microsoft Operating systems – including Vista. On the other side of the fence is nVidia with their driver infrastructure that locks out SLI from any platform other than the nForce – and despite repeated rumors to the contrary, no universally functional SLI drivers have been posted, nor have Vista drivers been released for SLI that work on cards other than the GeForce 8800 series. Needless to say that these drivers will have to come out sooner rather than later but for the moment, ATI has the momentum – at least in the non-super-high-end sector.

Vista Support or Lack Thereof

One thing that is generally known in the context of Vista is that every component has to be specifically recognized by the drivers in order to allow installation – but the extent of the ramifications are less understood. That is, a new series of hardware, even if it is merely an offshoot of the existing lineup but has a different ID string will not be recognized correctly until the drivers have been updated appropriately. Moreover, using a not-recognized hardware version will in most cases block the installation of drivers for upgraded hardware as well.

All in all, life with Vista is not as rosy as Microsoft is trying to paint it. A case in point is the RADEON 1950GT (in this case from Sapphire). The 1900 series cards are recognized properly by the ATI Vista drivers (7.1 and up), the same goes for the 1950 cards in general but the 1950 GT is not supported by the drivers (up to 7.2). It is possible to manually force the 7.2 drivers by selecting the graphics adapter with the yellow explanation mark in the device manager, and in that case, the drivers actually work but it is not possible to install Catalyst Control Center in that particular scenario – consequently, Crossfire cannot be enabled.

It is necessary to understand that there will be future driver versions that will recognize the 1950 GT as soon as ATI’s driver team gets their act together or Microsoft qualifies the new drivers – whichever comes first - but for the time being, Crossfire mode on the 1950 GT can only be run under Windows XP and its brethrens. For the time being, we therefore use Windows XP and make a bona fide assumption that ATI will solve the issues in the near future.

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