HP Helps You Select the Right Graphics Driver
By Rick Hohmann, Hewlett-Packard Company
Imagine that you are an experienced CAD designer in a small department, where multiple applications are required to meet your contractual obligations. It has been a while since your software was installed, and new, incoming projects are dictating version upgrades to three of your main applications. Also, since you and your coworkers have been working so hard lately, you lobby management requesting that they replace your old graphics adapters with higher-powered cards, more capable of handling the anticipated model complexity increases; your management agrees to the upgrade. We're just imagining, so anything is possible, right?
Now you need to figure out which graphics driver supports the new graphics card and the new application versions. The absolute-latest driver is not always the right choice. You want to have a driver that the software vendors and your computer vendor have thoroughly tested.
As an experiment, I went searching for the information I needed to choose a driver version for three MCAD applications (including NX and I-DEAS). I launched a new browser window, navigated to support.ugs.com and began clicking, taking notes, backing up, and resuming down different paths. After looking at several lengthy tables of certification data with no clear driver choice, I remembered that the graphics vendors publish ISVs' driver support information. I skipped the other MCAD vendor's site, and cruised over to the ATI and NVIDIA sites to compare experiences. Each site required about the same number of clicks before I got to the application certified driver listings, but it still required further navigating and note taking to make a selection. One of the sites even sent me back to UGS's support site to get that part of the answer!
Driver selection is a complex combinatorial problem that can be approached in different ways. I'm not writing this to critique the approaches taken by these web sites, but rather to inform you that Hewlett-Packard has a better way to select a graphics driver; it's called the HP Performance Tuning Framework (PTF). This utility comes preloaded on all HP personal workstations running the Windows XP operating system (look in the "HP Cool Tools" folder of your Start menu). If it is missing from your system, it can be downloaded free of charge to your HP workstation from www.hp.com/go/framework.
The Graphics Driver tabbed page in PTF presents graphics driver certification data for your exact hardware configuration. All HP-tested graphics drivers that support your card are listed, along with the applications that have tested and certified them. They are sorted in decreasing order of the number of certifications. With only three mouse clicks (two to launch PTF, and one to select the Graphics Driver page), you can quickly scan the applications supporting each driver to make your choice. PTF also includes notes from HP's graphics lab when there is additional information to be shared about the drivers.
Selecting which driver to use is only part of the problem; now you need to install it. PTF makes that easy too. Along with the certified application list for each driver on the Graphics Driver page, there is a button which will begin the download and installation of your chosen driver.
Assistance with graphics drivers is just one of the features of HP's Performance Tuning Framework, and future articles will discuss other ways PTF can help efficiently administer your workstations. With Hewlett-Packard simplifying your workstation configuration and maintenance, you can spend your new-found free time using your imagination for more important things.
