8800m driver woes only in XP 32 bit

I ran my own tests recently with drivers and my 8800m:

I installed Vista 64 bit over my Vista 32 bit and installed 177.98 drivers and updated them to 178.13 without *any* problems in games whatsoever.

Earlier before I had Vista 64 bit, I also maintained XP 32 bit in which the only driver where I could get full clocks to work was 165.32 from AW's website. 175.80 beta drivers on AW's site kept my clocks at 275 during gaming as well as 177.98. I gave XP 64 bit a spin yesterday and 178.13 installed and all games worked perfectly (and OSD if you follow findvikas' guide ) at full clocks!

I figured that my downclocking problems would be resolved as I went to 32 bit XP (no hibernate in 64 bit XP =/ ) but 178.13 also resulted in downclocking and yet again I am forced to go to the ancient 165.32 drivers (before Crysis was released ) which run at full clocks (500/1250) . Why is it that I can install any of the newer drivers in Vista 64 bit and XP 64 bit but XP 32 bit is giving me these headaches? This includes the new 179 alienware drivers.

-bhattsan

 

The reason is... Vista is latest so has most of the driver support. Windows XP 64 bit actually not Windows XP but it is "Windows 2003 x64 Bit"... ok it is not a server product but has the kernel code of windows 2003 + driver support of server 2003. That's why there is no support of hibernation... of course no one wants to put a server in hibernation

WinXP was release quite late and getting out of main stream support very soon if not already. You better not be running XP x64 bit as it has very limited 64bit hardware & driver support and not worth it

 

Im not...Im running 32 bit and can't get any of the latest drivers to install without the 8800 running at 275/300 plugged in, during games

 

Anyone on this issue? its rally buggig me that I can't install any driver in XP =/

 

I'm having the same issue and will look into it. Doesn't bother me since it really doesn't affect my game play experience.

 

I also have the same issue. All newer drivers including the beta drivers on AW site still downclock under winXP 32. I also have an 8800m GTX.

 

Have you tried downloading 179.13 and setting it to use the 9800gt clocks (which are slightly higher)?

 

The XP version of 179.13 recognizes it as 8800 GTX. When I installed it, I really didn't have the option to using the 9800 GT settings.

 

Thats because you have to do it via the device manager. Slect 8800gtx click update browse computer for software, select from disk, select "let me pick from....", click find disk then find where you extracted the drivers and inf file. Select that and then choose the 9800gt.

Pretty mcuh sums it up

 

I did. Followed the instructions and apparently didn't work that way for me on XP.

 

:S Hmm, can't help you then. Sorry

 

Nevermind. I tinkered around with it today. Uninstalled my current drivers (uninstalled it, ccleaner'd, driversweeper'd), redownloaded it, reinstalled it. I paid attention to the instructions more thoroughly and managed to get it right this time. Guess I messed up somehow the last time I did it. XD

Anyway, I noticed a huge difference from having my graphics card "switch" to the 9800M GT. My 3DMark score went up almost 600 points right after I installed these drivers.

 

Are you referring to the alienware 179.13 drivers?! If so, then I will definitely try them out.

 

Yeah, but you see, I've been getting fairly low scores while having Windows XP. The drivers just made a large difference when I installed it.

 

I am trying to get this winxp 32 8800GTX issue looked into. Please go here and post your findings.

http://support.alienware.com/Forum_Pages/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=571227

 

Will do.

10char.

 

I just posted on there. Hopefully this works.

 

Thanks guys! If anyone else is experiencing the same issues I urge you to also put in your two cents on the alienware support board. Thanks again.