Holy Canoli, speaking of a large set of drivers

[Son Goku]

And here I thought 25 MB was a large set of drivers. In grabing the new ATI drivers for the Radeon's under Linux. Well, I'll let the thing speak for itself :D Mind you, the Windows drivers are like half this size...

[rohit]

OMFG.. wtf... 52mb. Thats RIDICULOUS.

[Treason]

OMFG.. wtf... 52mb. Thats RIDICULOUS.

Kind of shows the talent level and/or methodology divide between nVidia and ATi engineering teams. :)

[TierMann]

Does it have precompiled binaries for a few different kernels included?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Pfft...thats nothing. You want a huge way overbloated driver? Try HP's drivers for their networked printers. They are generally 500-700 megs in size. I was pretty pissed off when I had to download a set of them on my office computer on a crappy 256kbit DSL connection.

[Adjective]

Kind of shows the talent level and/or methodology divide between nVidia and ATi engineering teams. :)

No, it doesn't.

[Son Goku]

Holy crap, 700 MB drivers? That's worse then when I downloaded winXP from MSDN subscriber downloads. That was only about a 450-500 MB download.

Still, 52 MB drivers do seem a bit extreme, and comparing it to the Windows binaries I do wonder what's up ;) If they ever get to be as big as a winXP Service Pack (and this would probably go for just about any company); a user might have grounds to give the devs a piece of their mind :D

I pitty the dial up user who might have to download one of these drivers we're all talking about :eek:

[X1800XT]

If you can afford an expensive video card, but stay on dial-up, there is something wrong with your priorities.

Indeed, HP's driver AND software for the Color Laserjet 28x0 weigh in at 544 megabytes on the cd.. amazing.
HP also likes to bundle all their drivers for Broadcomm network controllers, the machine specific drivers come in at 25 meg, while those which support some more machines do something between 112 and 172 megabyte..

Amazing but then again, if you can afford a computer, you can afford a decent internet connection..

[saturnotaku]

Amazing but then again, if you can afford a computer, you can afford a decent internet connection..

If broadband is even available where you live...

[CaptNKILL]

If you can afford an expensive video card, but stay on dial-up, there is something wrong with your priorities.

Indeed, HP's driver AND software for the Color Laserjet 28x0 weigh in at 544 megabytes on the cd.. amazing.
HP also likes to bundle all their drivers for Broadcomm network controllers, the machine specific drivers come in at 25 meg, while those which support some more machines do something between 112 and 172 megabyte..

Amazing but then again, if you can afford a computer, you can afford a decent internet connection..
Not everyone has broadband service available in their area... in fact, most people that live outside of cities dont ;)

[slick]

Heh, I live fairly far off from a *large* city, and I still get 3mb DSL out here. My friend that lives out in the boonies (like seriously out there) even has a cable connection nowadays.

[rohit]

Amazing but then again, if you can afford a computer, you can afford a decent internet connection..
Theres a difference.
Broadband at your area/place/city/country mus be cheaper.

we here have to pay much higher than in US.
Certainly a person who affords a hi-end comp, can afford broadband, if the price is same at all places.

Most ppl end-up on dial up coz for them broadband is as expensive as their hi-end comp.

[Son Goku]

If you can afford an expensive video card, but stay on dial-up, there is something wrong with your priorities.

Indeed, HP's driver AND software for the Color Laserjet 28x0 weigh in at 544 megabytes on the cd.. amazing.
HP also likes to bundle all their drivers for Broadcomm network controllers, the machine specific drivers come in at 25 meg, while those which support some more machines do something between 112 and 172 megabyte..

Amazing but then again, if you can afford a computer, you can afford a decent internet connection..

There are 3 issues:

- Broadband isn't available in everyone's area as some have already pointed out. aDSL itself also has limits on how close one has to be to the CO, along with other such limits (aka fiber in the line and what not). The US isn't like Japan, where things are relatively close together...

- Even on broadband, a 533 MB download can still take time. Think of grabbing things from bit torrent for instance...

- Large drivers/software also represents more code for the machine to execute. When things become over-bloated, there can be performance/optomization considerations that come into play.

More optomized drivers can represent at once smaller downloads, and also better performance, as the CPU, GPU, or whatever isn't having to spend it's time executing longer routines (or worse yet, if there was some kind of long exponential algorithm) to get a job done...

[Dazz]

Pft i can download 90MB in under 3 miniutes thats only on a 4Mbit connection, never mind the option for 10Mbit :D