Dell nVidia Notebook Driver (NV) 257.38 - M15x/M17xR1... Discuss Here

There are different drivers for M17x with 260M and 280M. Are they similiar or not?
@reborn2003: Which one did you download and install?

 

Hi theres,

I downloaded and installed the GTX 260m one. All seems to be fine so far. Cheers.

 

It was far more convenient to have a specific thread about these drivers into the M15x sub-forum (and another into the M17x sub-forum). Mixed discussions tend to be overwhelmed by M17x (and M11x) owners who seem to be more numerous than M15x owners.

Moreover, doing the followup into this thread is pretty strange as the first 5 pages talk about the previous beta released and thus do not talk about the very last driver release.

I wish good luck to any new comers here, looking for video driver feedback, who owns a M15x.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...force-gtx-260m-65w-257-38-a01-discussion.html

 

I just got i black screen doing nothing.. so. this WHQL version 257.38 sucks just as beta 257.38, rolled back to 197 beta

 

Do not install this driver, it will freeze like all other nvidia verde drivers thus far

 

Non SLI is fine - SLI still suffers from feezes although (unlike the previous non WHQL) they do recover - but once they recover once - usually it's a downward spiral of freeze/recovery after.

Side note : Playing AION - although peak FPS is faster - texture loading (e.g. lag when players enter an area) is far more pronounced in SLI than single card. Can anyone test and see if they agree?

Cheers

>>---> Trelawney

 

when do you get those freezes? when running on integrated, discrete or both?

Because i've tried almost every beta driver and never encountered this issue... but i only use the 280ms when gaming.

 

Maybe we should try to get nvidia's attention again like with the DPC issue. After all, it seems to be the drivers (a 18x and early 19x worked OK).

fwiw, they opened a new bug submission webpage at Find Submissions

I added a new issue with nvidia for the random freezes with one of the memory dumps in my collection.

Also, what I'm wondering is what's Dell doing with the Nvidia drivers? True, the 257.21 had issues with Crysis, but these are solved in 258.96. And DPC fixes also seem to be included in the nvidia releases.

 

anyone else having issues switching between hybrid graphics modes with these drivers? when i click the icon in the notification area it only tells me im in boost performance mode but it doesnt give me a choice to use the save power mode. also FN+F7 isnt working. can anyone help?

 

Hi theres,

Yeh these new drivers and any of the new 25X.XX range no longer allow you to change between GPUs when clicking on the hybrid graphics (green boomerang looking) icon in the task bar.

What you need to do now is you can go into the power options and set for example balanced power profile to use the integrated 9400m GPU and then set the High performance profile to use the discrete High performance GTX 260m or GTX 280m SLi GPU's. Once the settings are set in the power profiles save and then you pretty much just have to change power profiles in order to switch between GPU's again. So instead of using the hybrid green boomerang icon to switch between GPUs you will now have to use different Power profiles to switch between your GPU's.

Also make sure you always have Hybrid SLi and integrated Graphics enabled in the BIOS if you want to be able to switch between GPU's within windows. If you have trouble enable them in the BIOS and then reinstall the new driver afterward and then check again in the BIOS to make sure that both are still enabled.

Cheers.

 

Thanks, reborn2003. The new A03 driver is better than P06 in many games including SC2 (and the temperature is also lower). My M17x is working flawlessly with this new baby.

 

no trouble switching for me...

 

so for those using the new A03 drivers , are they more stable than the previous beta? has anyone suffered lockups or bsod ?

 

The same to me. included the issues with the nvidia control panel

 

For the M17xR1, whenever a new display driver is installed, always be sure both Hybrid Graphics and Integrated Graphics are enabled in the BIOS.

For the power profiles, I typically have my system set to 'Balanced' and everything works without a hitch.

 

Running on an m15x with a GTX 260m, and Mafia 2 no longer loads up. Also, seems pretty unstable for me with other games. Im going back to nvidia's drivers

 

I switched to this driver and EVERYTHING (and I mean everything) lagged....flash videos and couldn't even scroll down really in Mozilla...

 

What is your config M17x ou M15x, sli or not ?

Have you check your "stealth mode" ?

 

M17x 260GTX in SLI... I checked stealth mode but sometimes like to run in stealth because my fans are so annoying.

 

ok , I've been using this new drivers and everything was doing fine until now , every time I enter in youtube it crashes and recovers , it happens everytime I try to watch a video the strange thing is that it was working fine this morning with no issues at all the only thing that has changed in my pc was that I bought a new mouse (I don't thing that it's related at all ) so it's pretty strange BTW using dedicated with hybrid and integrated off

EDIT : ok guys I just found a solution for my youtube crashing problem , I disabled " enable hardware acceleration" in flash player settings and now I can watch videos although I still think it's strange that this morning it was working without issues at all

 

So you didn't get any freezes or lockups? both gaming & web surfing?
How long have you been testing this new driver?
Thanks

 

The only weird thing happened to me was screen brightness. Sometimes it became 0% automatically.
Edit: Display driver crashed when viewing video on youtube using FireFox (IE8 was fine) and dedicated gpus with hybrid and integrated off. Viewing youtube video was fine on both FF and IE with hybrid off and integrated on.

Hardware acceleration enabled in all cases.

 

I've been using them for 6 days now and surprisingly they have been stable, I had one lockup while playing starcraft2 when I was testing physx assigned to gpu2 after that I assigned it to gpu1 and it has been stable , while browsing the only issue was the youtube driver crash that I mentioned in my last post btw I just run dedicated or sometimes integrated always with hybrid disabled

 

I've been getting a BSOD 0x00000101 about the watchdog timer with the dell 257 drivers & the nvidia 258 drivers. Been having to stick with the 197 release to avoid issues.

 

No BSOD here but I do get the black screen having to hard reboot once or twice a day on any 2x version drivers.

Hybrid enabled, Phys set to 1 or 2 GPU, doesn't matter.

P06 is the only stable driver so far I have found.

 

tried the 257 drivers on my M17xR1 this week, it lasted about 1 day before a BSOD occured and then a black screen followed by a hard reset on a different occasion. The driver is certainly a bit more stable than the last beta driver I tried which was black screening every 20-30mins. Now back to P06 which is the most stable (by far at present) driver for me.

 

I also get the blank screen frequently. This is true with any 2xx. driver. I also went back to the P06 197.16

 

I have notice a problem with the P06 driver is that when I play a video in itunes 10.0 it crashes itunes. It did this when I had it installed before the 2xx one, but there was no problem with itunes when I installed the 2xx driver - just the occasional black screen freeze/BSOD thing. That said I'm still keeping the P06 driver.

 

I don't really use itunes to watch videos unless I want to watch a film preview clip in the itunes store (in which case again it crashes).

 

Another new Beta driver out at Nvidia for us to try out.

NVIDIA DRIVERS 260.63 BETA

Cheers.

 

Ditto here, same problems as everybody else...anybody have any luck with the 260.63 beta drivers reborn posted? Going to give them a try, but have a feeling I'll be going back to the P06 197.16 drivers...

 

Discuss 260.63 here - thanks

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/517902-nvidia-geforce-260-63-verde-beta-discuss-here.html