Why are video drivers so hard to get right?

formortals@thesophist.com — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:12:00 GMT

I (finally) wrapped up a 6 or 7 month long struggle with my video card. See, some time ago, some update or another did something... odd... with my video card (an NVidia 7600 GS, for the record, the best passively cooled, dual DVI output card I could find when I put this PC together). It started doing this "thing" where major portions of the screen would be transparent to the layer beneath. Oddly enough, it only occured when a game was running full screen. Let me tell you, it was quite odd going through Half Life 2 (I know, I am WAY behind the times) being able to see through walls if I get right next to them. In many situations, there would be some odd "snow" in areas too. To make it even more strange, the games would work fine the first time they were run after a reboot, or if I started the game in a window and then told it to run full screen. Needless to say, it really sucked.

(continu

Justin James' Critical Thinking

Why are video drivers so hard to get right?