Question about newest nvidia drivers?

Hello,

i´ve got a little question for you guys, if anyone can and wants to answer feel free

lately i has had some problems installing the newest nvidia drivers on my M17x-R1. After a while i found out, that you have to modify the .inf's in the drivers if you want them to install at all. so i wondered why is it we have to modify the inf's and what exactly do we modify?

Another questions is, why don't the newest drivers work? I read some where that nvidia dropped support for "Hybrid SLI", but is that actually true??

hope you guys can answer my questions, as i am just here to learn..

-nicolaibaun

 

Instead of messing the nvwm.inf file, you can grab the inf from laptopvideo2go.com and insert it into the appropriate folder. nVidia does not support OEM vendors, only retail products. This is why the drivers work with desktop video cards as they can be purchased via retail channels. The same applies to AMD, their stock drivers only support retail products.

 

oh okay, so all M17x user, no matter what generation needs modded INF's?

 

Yes, we recommend to use only Dell drivers due to compatibility and drivers certification. Here is a link to the latest video driver available for that platform. Even though it says 280m it is backwards compatible with the 260m.

 

nice to hear from a Dell rep.. and thanks for the link, but i just feel like i miss out on a big perfomance gain from the newer drivers, and that's a shame with a machine that still has so much potential after all these years. It isn't easy to "testdrive" windows 8 with those old drivers for an example. Are there any plans on updated windows 8 drivers for the M17x-r1 once win8 comes out?

 

Thanks! I'm here to help. We actually have no ETA for drivers but actually even though they seem to be outdated they are tweaked to give more performance than the regular nVidia drivers.
As for the Windows 8 question our engineering department still needs to work on that as well but since the Preview has been just released it will take some time for that.

 

I'm still on the "NVIDIA_NOTEBOOK-BETA-DRIVER-_P08_R318652.exe (242MB)" which came out for BF3, the one on the Dell site

 

Yeah we have that one available for the R3, it's really good and works fine with all latest games.

 

The contradicting factor is that there are no tweaks to these drivers. They were tested by Dell at the time of the release and given out to the users. Trust me, I had supervisors tell me the same thing when I use to work in Dell ACS. There are advantages to using newer drivers, and Dell doesn't want to invest R&D time into testing each driver release that comes out.

I'm sure that these reps are bound by call center policies, so don't expect them to support drivers other than what is provided by Dell.

 

No offense to the Dell rep here, but Dell's drivers are downright embarrasing in terms of performance. Using the stock drivers on my M17x, I was barely able to run Skyrim on "high" settings... the minute I updated to nvidia's release, I was able to play Skyrim at 60 FPS on Ultra.

I will *never* use Dell drivers if I can avoid it. They are really that bad.

 

Very true. The only problem is that Nvidia control just what M chips their 'verde' drivers support. All the latest 6xx series are not there either. Nivida just say they won't include the latest chips as it's down to the manufacture to provide it. Nvidia will release drivers at 'some point in the future'.

This is where laptopvideo2go comes in supplying the inf to support other cards. . They claim that all you are doing is enabling the install with extra features exposed but not changed from the default settings - but the inf is quite a beast so I can't confirm this

Just remember that if you need to call Dell support they will want the Dell release installed before proceeding with any testing

 

+ ∞

Dell drivers are horribly outdated on nearly every device in a system.

 

I think you are being a bit harsh. If a driver that fixes a problem is available then Dell pretty quickly get them on the site. If only to cut down calls. On the other hand if it some minor enhancement they rather have a 'known' quantity when supporting it.

Since we have a dell rep contributing ...

@Luis. Here is a chance to put clear blue water between Dell and the competition.

Despite what I said earlier, the video driver in a gaming laptop is paramount to it performing at it's best with the latest games. You (Dell) give AW good support and on-site service but fall down big style with the video drivers. My R3 'approved' driver was nearly a year old Put in whatever disclaimers about having to roll back to the approved version before calling support, but make an effort!