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    Windows 7 WDDM 1.1 Drivers or Intel Drivers?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Aequus, Jun 9, 2009.

  1. Aequus

    Aequus Notebook Enthusiast

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    So I switched to Windows 7 recently and I've been thinking should I leave the WDDM 1.1 drivers or switch to Intel drivers?
    Is there any difference in performance, stability?
    If anyone tried changing them please response.
     
    Aequus, Jun 9, 2009
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  2. petermichaelw

    petermichaelw Notebook Consultant

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    Came across this recently.
     
    petermichaelw, Jun 9, 2009
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  3. Aequus

    Aequus Notebook Enthusiast

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    So WDDM 1.1 is better as I understood.
    Could someone who's experienced in this stuff explain me a bit more about it?
    Give a few reasons why I should and shouldn't keep WDDM 1.1 if I'm using a weak Intel integrated graphics accelerator X3100.
     
    Aequus, Jun 10, 2009
    #3
  4. BinkNR

    BinkNR Knock off all that evil

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    I thought the URL provided by petermichaelw was quite clear—you will get better performance from WDDM 1.1 drivers. This is one of many major improvements Windows 7 has over Vista. However, as Windows 7 has not been officially released yet, many of these drivers are also prerelease—so some still have issues.
     
    BinkNR, Jun 10, 2009
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  5. DataCabbitKSW

    DataCabbitKSW Newbie

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    Aequus,
    Much like Bink had said, WDDM1.1 is better. Especially on an older chipset. If you can find a WDDM 1.1 driver made specifically for Windows 7 for your chipset, you will want to use it. It will use less memory and resources than a WDDM 1.0 driver would. The link that was given was pretty good at explaining the visible benefits and some of the reasons why you would want to use the WDDM 1.1 drivers under Windows 7. There are a few more technical reasons that it didn't go into that if you wanted you could go through on the whitepapers over on the Microsoft Technet site ( http://tinyurl.com/832nco ), but safe to say for your needs, WDDM 1.1 is better. As intel makes more updated and more stable drivers for WDDM 1.1 and they get certified, you can just get them through the Windows Update. If you want to go the route of downloading Windows 7 specific drivers from Intel, you can do that too in order to use beta (non-certified) drivers that may improve performance or power usage. Still, just sticking with what is built-in and what you can get through Windows Update is generally a good bet for the graphics driver.
     
    DataCabbitKSW, Jun 15, 2009
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