Dell/AW Beta Driver 196.86 (DPC Driver) - Game Performance Related Discussion

The driver can be found here:
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&fileid=384412

Please note the Inportant Information notes on the driver download page -

Please post game related questions, NV CP 3D Profile questions in this thread.

The DPC Latency thread should be free of these posts. Posts concerning install of this driver can and should be posted in the DPC Latency thread however specific game related performance issues need to go here.

Typically, driver specifc threads belong in the Side Topics sub forum, however since this is an AW/Dell issued driver and given the reason for its release I am leaving this thread in the Main AW forum.

Some of you may notice with this driver one GPU is not downclocking after exiting a game. Here is what I have found -

Since NV changed the control panel to include the 'Power Management Mode' selection in 3D profiles, there has been a bug where one GPU will not downclock after exiting a 3D application/game. I remember first seeing this in the 195.55 release last November. NV did not fix this bug in 195.62, 195.81 or the 196.86 driver - basically every driver released under the Verde Project.

After looking into this further today, the workaround is to leave the Power Management Mode in Global settings/3D custom Profile set to "Adaptive". Do not set it to 'Prefer Maximum Performance'. If you do, you will see one GPU locked at 3D clocks even after terminating the app. This will persist until system reboot. As far as I can tell, there is no change in game performance from Adaptive to Prefer Maximum Performance settings.

(Thanks to Kade Storm for helping to confirm on his two systems)

Finally, since the 195.xx series, NV has been hit and miss with game performance. If you would like to share feedback with NV on their recent driver releases, you can do so here:

https://surveys.nvidia.com/index.jsp?pi=ad1c492c9d7488731f70e8d4356ba631

 

Sauce,

Verify you have a valid profile in the 3D Profiles area of the NV CP for the RE5 Benchmark. See attached screenshot. If you do not, click the ADD button and then navigate to the RE5 benchmark .exe (DX10 version).

Also, be sure to check the config file for the RE5 benchmark:

C:\Users\YOURNAMEHERE\Documents\CAPCOM\RESIDENT EVIL 5 Benchmark Version

There is a config.cfg file. Open it in Notepad and verify the following entry:

[GRAPHICS]
SLI=ON

[CPU]
JobThread=2 (or set to 4 if you have a Quad Core CPU)

 

Yeah profile was selected before & had got the information about config a while back from your blog.I am not convinced this driver is performing as it should be poor performance in every game i tried so far.

 

The 3D profile in your screenshot shows the Performance level set to Adaptive. You sure you changed it already?

 

Yeah was changed.Done some more quick tests with driver in games i am really familiar with & every game i tried so far performance is poor & getting slowdowns for like a few seconds.Which i have never seen ever on this system before.Also installed latest PhysX & sli update 4v still poor performance.Plus EVGA sli enhancement for New Alien v Predator that is also running poor.mm

 

One option to consider - now that NV has identified the issue and will be incorporating the fix into all future releases, you can either go back to your previous driver and deal with the occasional audio interrupt or stay with this one until NV releases the next mobile driver.

With NV drivers we all know performance can be a shot in the dark from one version to the next.

FWIW, I have not noticed any performance drop in L4D2 or TF2 with this release. So far, performance is on par with 186.82 (at least it is on my system).

 

Yeah i will revert back to 195.62 tomorrow as the performance has dropped a fair bit.Would be nice to see some others results to compare my findings. The Latency is better but in reality its not perfect mine is fluctuating all over the place from 100us to 1000us on idle, my desktop is never more than 30us .

 

Sad to hear, I was told about this and was told to have high hopes since this was a actual collaboration between Nvidia and Dell

I will call and let him know tommorrow

 

Moo what your average dpc readings idle on R2 ? & are they quite stable readings?

 

the R-2 never had a jump on DPC latency. I never saw a bar that was past the first line or even yellow.

Even ejecting the CD caused a spike but it stayed green

 

ok thanks for info .Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.

 

I bet the driver is way better! Come on folks!

 

And 186.82 set is the best performing set right?

There are supposed to be some big gains in this driver. Anyone test Crysis Warhead, ME2, BFBC2 or MW2?

 

the driver is really good it worked for me in WOW and I heard one spike but that was after I turned off my add ons no in game stuttering at all. also performance in RE5 benchmark slows down to 26fps in 4th part of the variable benchmark which is what I saw from 195. I think maybe its just bad compatability code because after the fourth part of the bench that frame rate stays the same(30/26fps) and I havent ran through the whole game so I dont know if it is part of the gold portion of the game as opposed to just the variable benchmark.

 

This is so frustrating. I'm trying to download this on the dell website but when I click to download, it constantly downloads the dell download manager. I load the manager and it keep saying that there is nothing to download even though I saved it in the list.

 

ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/video/NVIDIA_N...03_R261769.exe try this, thats how I got the driver.

 

Thanks but I keep getting some 500 error. Man, nothing is working for me today.

 

if you do get it work and you have RE5 please run the bench and tell us what you get, I got massive slow down on the 4th part of the bench. Oh and I have tried the settings that you suggested Bat.

 

I am quite please with this driver and its game performance. Although I have not tested it on a wide range of games, its doing just fine for me.

 

Dont get me wrong that improvement in WOW, is astonishing(no stutter and itunes running) and I also ran a bench for SF4(higher score) and it ran great also. but I have not had a chance to play RE5(ingame), Borderlands, Dragon Age, ME2 and FO3. but for the most part web surfing with itunes with hybrid on no stutter...zero. If you have RE5 Bat can you please run the bench in particular Section 4 of the bench.

 

No worries Cue. Like I mentioned before - everyone has to decide for themselves. The main reason for this driver is to resolve the DPC Latency. That being done, with future releases, hopefully NV will crank out an award winner. IMO, with the start of the 195.xx series, the drivers have been lacking.

I am not able to run RE5 at the moment. I will run it tomorrow and post the results here for you.

I will also look at the SLI Profiles NV included with this version and see if there is any magic which can be worked.

 

Battlefield Bad Company 2 runs great with this driver, i got no stuttering.

 

I played borderlands at lunch, and it had a little frame rate loss at the beginning of the game. But I gave it a little more time this was on adaptive by the way and it improved, I dont know if, of course the GPU's were UPC'ing and it just need time to warm up but it did improve itself, I'll try maximum performance with the same scenario and see if it frames are there in the beginning of the game from a fresh start with maximum performance on.

 

So i installed the sli update 3 and got better fps on borderlands?

 

Works perfectly in Counter-Strike: Source

so happy

 

i played 2-3h today and got some slow downs. dpc checker runs in background and show a few heavy red spikes, when i got slow downs.

I change only powermize from adaptiv to max power in the game profil(bad company 2). Hybrid SLI ist on but without 9400 it is the same situation.

 

I really don't understand the logic to this... Why is it you feel the latency checker shouldn't show any latency when you are taxing the system with a game? Seriously, it does not just look at the display driver - its reading ALL DPC latency which can be generated by a great many things.

How was BC2 before the beta driver install? Slow downs happen also? If not, what driver were you running before the beta?

Yep - seeing the same thing in RE5 Benchmark. With the 186.82 driver I hit an average of 85.5 FPS with no GPU OC. With 196.86 seeing the same slowdown you are reporting Cue, which results in an average of 74.1 FPS. Since I dont play RE5, I'm cool with it.

This is simply an NV driver issue - They have had nothing but game compatibility/performance issues since 195.55. It seems with each recent driver version it is hit or miss when it comes to performance. I would love to have NV add the DPC fix to the 186.82 driver but we all know that isn't going to happen.

I'm looking it over but don't hold your breath. I am guessing its embedded deep within the driver and not something we can easily MOD.

 

sorry i dont unterstand "I really don't understand the logic to this.." i am from german and my english ist bad.

latency checker show only smal green spikes, when the book is idle. If i start bc2, it runs great but after a 3-10min cycles i get slow downs(fps drop to ~10fps for a few seconds)and then i tab to windows out of the game und look at latency checker. It show me a lot of red and a few yellow spikes.
I used dells own driver befor and got slow downs too. When i played a rts or wow i dont get slow downs, only by fps.

 

What I meant is that I do not understand why there is a belief the DPC checker should show no signs of activity when the system is running a game. I actually expect it to. Then again, that is just me I guess.

So here is the million dollar question...

Given that we know NVIDIA will be incorporating the DPC fix into future driver releases, do you want to wait for it and have nice stable MP3 playback with poor game performance in some games or do you want to take game performance over the DPC issue?

There are several drivers out there which are compatible with the M17x that have very good performance in-game. Since they are pre-DPC fix, you'll still have the audio playback issue. Its your choice.

186.82 which is linked in my signature line is a decent performing all around driver. As you can see from my post above, it performed quite well in the RE5 benchmark.

In the end, its what you want... DPC over gaming or gaming over DPC. I'm sure NVIDIA will be releasing another mobile driver soon as they are still dealing with the non-Dell/AW customers over the DPC issue.

 

my problem isnt the performance of my book. bc2 runs great but the slow downs are terrible. if i play online i will die every time i get a slow down...

i have not any sound problems when i play. Dont you think that the dpc problem is the resons of my slow downs? Every time i switch to dpc checker, when i got a slow down. it show me heavy spikes for the last few seconds but it goes back to normal small green spikes and the game runs great till the next slow down

 

So BB would u go back to 186.82 or stay with 196.86 right now? i do so notice some slow down in several games i played which is Crysis and GTA 4 but working great with Dirt 2 and BC 2.

 

Truthfully, I have not made up my mind yet. For me, the DPC audio interrupt was not a major issue as I was running Vista + when listening to MP3s I did not have visualizations active. So, the clockrates were sticking at 2D. I am considering a switchover to W7 now since I have been playing with it a bit more on another system, if I do I will stick with the 196.86.

I don't know. I guess if you are unhappy with game performance then switch back to another driver and live with DPC until NV decides to crank out the next release.

For now, I'll stick with 196.86 - its working fine with the games I am currently playing.

 

Dont you get slow downs in battlefield bc2?

 

As someone who has played the crap out of RE5 on all drivers from 182.46-196.xx series. One thing I can say. . . 195 & 196 series drivers are messed up with the benchmark. The last area doesn't implement SLi performance properly. It is unfair to expect this driver--a BETA aove all things--to do well in that benchmark.

Give the matter some time and a similar DPC-state solution will be applied to an even faster driver without half the issues that exist in the 195 series.

 

i didnt notice any slow down. the perfomance pretty similar with the 186.82 when i was playing BC 2. i maxed everything on high but remain AA to 8x..

 

very nice to see nvidia trying to fix the situation. Now they need to come out with a better motheboard driver and we will be set.

 

Roger that, thanks for posting the pic. All I wanted to prove and document on this forum is that it is a known issue with 195 series and we will only know if its contributed to the actuall game play when I reach that point in the game.

 

Hmmm, well I'm afraid the driver hasn't rectified all of my issues.

Yes, the audio interference has now ceased, however, I'm still getting intermittent frame rate "sags" in several games, notably Crysis and Oblivion (with a bunch of texture packs). Once again, the only way these can be cured is by using throttlestop.

However, in addition to the stuttering, I'm now getting random lock ups lasting around 2-4 seconds each (not present in 186.82), so far this issue has been limited to Crysis (and it even happens on the manu screens) though there are a number of other games I've yet to test, and unlike the stuttering, this problem can't be eliminated using Throttlestop.

Was using Vista x64, tried a completely clean install of Windows 7, same result.

Has anybody else with a similar spec to me tried Crysis yet?

My SSDs are in RAID but I unchecked the "storage driver" when installing the chipset drivers.

 

i hv almost same spec with u, except im using HDD. i had a similar issue u mentioned above. it never happen in 186.82 also...

 

I got stuttering in crysis and bad company 2 too.... no sound problems but my frames drop down to ~10fps for a few seconds.

 

Has anyone tested these with Dirt 2? A new patch was released that enables SLI - I don't think that was out when I tested it on my 280m cards.

This is the one game that the 280m SLI setup badly trails the 4870 in my experience.

 

some forumite friend of mine with 260m in sli said it went from 30/40fps to 60 fps with these

 

Hello fellow M17X users,
Unfortunately, the new beta driver does have performance issues on various games.

Games Tested
Resident Evil 5 (occasionally fails to load in between levels - all driver issue)
Modern Warfare 2 (micro stutter city)
AVP (micro stutter surfaces)

I'm sure there are many others which I have yet to test. Currently, the best performing and most current driver is 195.62 (directly from the Nvidia site). Also, to the best of my knowledge, I have yet to see a video driver perform smoothly in an SLI/Crossfire system. Issues such as micro stutter as well as slight pausing is always evident.

Thanks,
Gabe

 

where is it? i didn't notice any patch for nvidia users..

 

Right before it starts Windows my screen will just show some distorted colors green, red and blue. Very awkward.
(I formated C: and reinstalled Windows.. still the same)

 

Known issue. This will happen upon install and reboot. After that, this should not happen again.

Source: Quote from ADDITIONAL INFORMATION on Driver Release Page

 

Steam autoupdated, but I read about it at the codemasters forum. Came out March 1.

 

Some of the Nvidia users are reporting very large (70%) gains in Dirt 2 using the newer drivers. They might contain that SLi update you speak of, Lewdvig.

 

i assume this would be the right thread to report bugs with the Alienware 196.86 drivers...

when I play a movie to an external monitor (thru DVI port), and I set it to fullscreen, the movie is badly off-center vertically, it's way down to the bottom of the screen. this did not happen with older drivers. I would post a screenshot but is it even possible to take a screenshot of an external display?

does anyone else have this problem?

 

I think the new drivers might help with Dirt 2 - I never got the patch but it still performs well for me. Except for randomly slowing to 5-10 fps for about 5 seconds before returning to normal... Other than that, though (it occurs maybe every 5 minutes or so) it runs at a steady 60+ fps at 1200p with all settings maxed and 4xAA