NVIDIA Releases GeForce 306.23 WHQL Drivers

NVIDIA DRIVERS 306.23 WHQL

 

Curious whether this will still overvolt the 580m... Gonna be away from my r3 for a while, so I guess will have to wait to find it out for myself...

 

I'm still using my M17xr1, with dual 280m's. Won't I need modded inf's to run this? If so, I hope somebody can post some. Katalin is usually pretty great about that.

 

The 280M is listed under the supported products section on the site so you could give it a try. If not, I'm sure a modded .inf will pop up sooner or later.
I'm hoping this will solve the occasional TDR errors that I'm getting.

 

Just installed, hasn't blown up yet. The 3D Vision setup seemed a little more detailed than I remembered (I chose clean install option). Will run some games tonight and do a run-through of 3DMark11 when I have a chance.

 

Seems to be running a little hot, fixed problems in BF3 but now it's crashing pretty often.

 

3DMark11 score didn't really change for me. Everything seems good to me so far.

 

Hybrid SLI works on this drivers?

 

No. Hybrid is not supported.

A quick question. If I were to cut/paste the id info for my 280m card, that's currently in the inf's that are running, and pasted that into the inf info for these new drivers, would they then work on my M17x???

 

Well if Hybrid SLI isn't supported anywome I'm stuck then with the 285.62 drivers :/

 

Can you elaborate, please?

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

If there are already 280m entries in the inf and you replace every single one with your id then it should work. That's the same thing I do to get my 680M to work.

If you look at the link in my sig, you will see, not sure if you will be modding the nvcv.inf like I did though.

 

My Guild Wars 2 runs for 8+ hours on the 296.10 drivers.

These drivers didn't really offer any performance boosts, but I did encounter some temp throttling just now. I do believe these drivers overvolt the 580m.

Sigh... back to 296.10 I guess.

 

I would be modding the nvdm and the nvwi files. I'm still using the 295.73 inf's. These are the 2 .inf's (modded) that I got with the 295.73's. Wouldn't work without them. Thanks for your info!

 

Had a blue screen on Mass Effect 3 last night that looked to be video driver related. I never ran it on the older drivers though so could be a different issue.

 

Rolling back to 296.10, tired of crashing and this driver running hot. Guess it's back to yellow roads on BF3 for me.

 

Is there any information on how to mod the (inf) file to work on my m17x. I have the 2009 version with the 260m sli.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPsyyHKMewY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

This worked for me though I do no have Sli I am unsure if Sli will work since somebody in this thread mentioned its not supported?

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

Hey guys! I followed the above video posted by tacos and have gone ahead and modified the NVIDIA files so you can install on the M17x R1 with 280Ms or 260Ms.

I know previously that there was talk about the abandonment of Hybrid support and I can confirm this after installing this new driver. You must disable the 9400M in the bios in order to get SLi from your 280Ms or 260Ms.

To install this new driver:

1. Download the driver from nvidia.com
2. Run the installer and let it fail
3. Navigate to C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\306.23\Win8_WinVista_Win7_64\International\Display.Driver
4. Copy and paste the files that I have attached into this folder. Be sure to choose copy and replace.
5. Navigate to C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\306.23\Win8_WinVista_Win7_64\International
6. Run setup.exe

Viola! There shouldn't be any errors and the install should go smoothly. Hope this works for all you R1 users out there.

EDIT: Modified NVIDIA Files for both R1 260M users and 280M users.

 

I was able to install this driver on my m17x R1 with GTX 260M and 9400 graphic cards. Since this driver is no longer supports Hybrid mode it leads to some issues:
1. if I keep 9400 integrated card enabled then my GTX 260M doesn't get used at all - only 9400 is in use.
2. If i disable integrated card then both GTX 260M are in use. But they crush my laptop - i'm getting blue screen or freeze my lop top. in some instances loptop couldn't boot at all - BIOS check was failing and Caps and Num were flashing. I had to disconnect ffrom power and remove buttery for 15-20 min to get my laptop start again.

I was hunting for a good driver for a while but all of them i tried are not stable. Does anybody have better idea what driver i can use for this config.

The worst part is that some of my friends using $500-600 cheap loptops and they can do anything. I'm using one of the top brand laptop and it crushes since I got it. Very frustrated with it.

Any Help please...

 

tabakerka, have you tried disabling PCI Gen 2 in BIOS? These new NVIDIA drivers will give you all sorts of trouble if you do not have that disabled.

 

Yes - i disabled every option in the Bios for Graphic card. I'm not realy need Hybrid. I would be happy to have just dual cards working. But i have no luck even there. My loptop constantly freeze with this driver and integrated card disabled. If i enable it than 260 is not used. All load goes directly to 8400. Not sure what to do ...

 

That is very strange. I've actually had no problems running this driver on my 280Ms. Have you tried installing on top of a clean uninstall?

I.E. Uninstall all NVIDIA drivers, reboot into Safe Mode, run CCleaner and clean all registry problems, reboot, and then try to install the new drivers

 

yes i did. I was having video drivers issues since i opened a package. couple months ago Dell replaced both 260 cards. But still my laptop is unstable due to video cards issues and i have no idea what else i can do. Hope somebody will recomend me most suitable driver for it.

 

I was able to get it installed! Thank you. I would really like to get SLI back up and running, but I cant enable the 260m's without enableing the 9400. Is this possible?

 

It would be nice some day to know why the R1 make the Nvidia drivers to crash..

 

I was surprised to see this as the last time I went to install nVidia drivers, I was referred back to Dell's site. Downloaded the first day, been running with no problems.

 

Just got a TDR running 306.23 WHQL
Guess it's not a driver issue...

 

CCaldwell - Hey man, THANKS!!!!! I was messing around with the inf's, trying to get this new driver to work but, to no avail. Didn't even know/think to look on YouTube for a vid on how to do it. Thank you for going the extra step and actually following the info, and especially for posting a zip file for us. Just tried it out and, you're right: it'll work. Now, to uninstall my 295.73's, reboot into safe mode, clean out with driver sweeper, then reboot and install the 306.23's, that you've made possilbe. Wasn't even going to bother downloading Borderlands 2 without having an sli profile but, again....thanks!!! Now I can.

 

Haha, you're very welcome man! Glad I could help.

 

In addition to TDR's not being resolved, I've noticed a weird stutter/image freeze with streaming online videos where the video would freeze for 1 or 2 seconds. Only happens once in a while.

 

Thanks man - you roxor. Without files like these and guys like you to make 'em for me, my m15x would be living in the dark ages.

FYI - this works for m15x with 260m.


Thanks;

JP

(Wow, I need to update my sig - I've long since retired my 7700.)

 

I'm doing something wrong. I installed 306.23 and it failed as expected. Then I copied and replaced CCaldwell's modded files but I'm still getting a "No compatible hardware found" error when I rerun setup. I do notice that when I install 306.23 there is no nvdm.inf to start with. So CCaldwell's is not really replacing anything. Any thoughts? I disabled the 9400 in the and also disabled PCI Gen2. I uninstalled and removed the old driver and ran Driver Sweeper.

 

Oh also, M17x R1 with dual GTX 280m's.

 

Do we have to use the DELL only drivers or can we use the Nvidia drivers as well for our mobile GPU's?

 

One Skunk Todd, you should definitely have nvdm.inf to start with. Make sure you're downloading this driver NVIDIA DRIVERS 306.23WHQL and go through my steps that I posted. I personally have the M17x R1 with 280Ms and those steps should work for you too.

Just in case, start fresh and go ahead and delete the C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\306.23 folder, re-download from the link I just posted, and go through the steps again. Also, just for now, go ahead and leave everything enabled in your bios (PCI Gen2, 9400) for the installation.

 

Thanks, I was definitely getting a different driver somehow. Working on installing now.

 

That worked perfectly, all set up now. I realized I had somehow gotten the desktop version instead of the notebook. Your download saved me a lot of aggravation, thanks again.

 

No problem! Glad I could help.

 

They've been working great since I've downloaded them. No glitches, or freezes, after countless hours of Borderlands 2. Glad to see that there's an sli profile for Dishonored, in these drivers. That's my next purchase! Thanks again. Hopefully, there's a vid for the next set of drivers Nvidia releases.

 

Forgive my ignorance, what's a TDR?

 

TDR stands for Timeout Detection and Recovery and is a feature of Windows that was introduced with Windows Vista. The gist of it is that should a driver (in this case the nVidia Display driver) fails or times out for some reason (could be something with the driver itself or something completely unrelated), instead of going to a BSOD and/or doing a complete reboot of the system, Windows attempts to recover the driver without a restart. If, after several attempts, Windows cannot recover the display driver it will result in a BSOD with a bugcheck code of 0x116_VIDEO_TDR_ERROR. This is not a true BSOD in that the stop error wasn't triggered through the normal means (fatal error) but rather was triggered through the TDR Windows feature. You can play with the registry entries to make Windows delay/attempt recovery longer but if the driver isn't recoverable it will only be delaying the BSOD.

You can read more information here: TDR Error Messaging

There was an official statement from nVidia regarding this issue on the nVidia forums but that forum is currently down pending security improvements. It was a good read and described the issue in good detail. Unfortunately it can't be accessed until the forum is back up and running.

 

Thanks for the info, +rep. I really like that feature of Windows as it usually seems to catch most GPU overclocking issues without a full BSOD. Cheers

 

Anyone else have trouble running Borderlands 2 in SLI with 2x 280m? The driver says it supports sli but only one card is being stressed for me. I have SLI enabled and everything.

 

no hybrid dang that sucks, i wanted to be able to use all three cards at once