Nvidia Driver 257.15 / 257.21 on AW... Discuss Here

Hey folks, here is the new driver... Benchmark and report!

NVIDIA DRIVERS 257.21 WHQL

257.15 ---> http://cn.download.nvidia.com/Window...ional_beta.exe

Thanks,

StevenX

NOTE! Under physx it not longer shows an "off or on". Now a pulldown with 3 options.. .auto, cpu, gpu

 

Updated Link:

NVIDIA DRIVERS 257.15 BETA

Since this will only apply to M15x, M17xR1 owners, lets keep just 1 thread going. Any new threads for this driver will be merged with this one.

Post your testing results here...

Thanks.

Note to M11x owners, this driver may not support Hybrid.

EDIT:

- Install completed without issue on 17xR1
- DPC Latency fix included with this one
- FN+F7 switching working

 

M11X Benchmarks.. even though this driver is not specifically created to support the m11x or hardware switching I've already installed it and started testing.

Benchmarks:
HAWX dx9 - (Settings high/everything enabled/2xaa) 51fps @ 1366x768
COH Tales of Valor - (Settings Ultra/everything enabled) 32.7fps @ 1366x768
Battlefield Bad Company 2 (settings all low, dx9 and dx10) Performance was horrible. dropped into low teens.

Also... an issue.. When I installed drivers, I always am logged in as admin and run as admin.. however with this driver set my settings never stay properly in the nvidia control panel. Anyone else?

Conclusion.. switching back to 197.57

Thanks, StevenX

 

I know I'm a ruh-tard, but what exactly is benchmarking and what's the point.. I just see it alit on this forum and I read to learn but I realy don't understand and I'd love to, if anyone can help me out?

 

Support for Hybrid switching Steven? If so, I'll change the title. BTW, thanks for starting the thread, + rep.

 

Batboy - I have not tried switching yet... Let me reconfig bios and see what happens.. thanks!

 

For me fn+f7 doesnt work. I can change only from the icon in the taskbar.

 

Tried 3dmark06 with the new driver on my m15x, it couldnt stand my OC clocks.. Gonna lower them and try again later today...!

 

oo this fixed all dps latency!? gee thats great for R1 owners, just glad my r2 replacement is now in producation ;p

 

M11x gpu switching does not function with this driver. FYI.. Steven Owens

 

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windo...ok_winvista_win7_64bit_international_beta.exe 64bit
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windo...ok_winvista_win7_32bit_international_beta.exe 32bit

257.15 BETA drivers

RELEASE HIGHLIGHTS :

This is the first driver release from the Release 256 family of drivers (versions 256.xx to 259.xx). Learn more about Release 256 drivers here .

This driver supports the following NVIDIA notebook GPUs (please refer to the Products Supported tab for exceptions):

ION notebook GPUs.
GeForce 8M, 9M, 100M, 200M, and 300M-series notebook GPUs.
Quadro NVS-series notebook GPUs (only those that support DirectX 10 or higher).
Quadro FX-series notebook GPUs (only those that support DirectX 10 or higher).

New in Version 257.15

Adds support for NVIDIA Optimus notebooks.
Adds support for Blu-ray 3D with NVIDIA 3D Vision technology. Learn more about the hardware and software requirements here .
Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0222.
Adds support for CUDA Toolkit 3.1 which includes significant performance increases for double precision math operations. See CUDA Zone for more details.
Adds support for a new ‘Quality’ mode for NVIDIA’s Ambient Occlusion control panel feature.
Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel setup page for SLI and PhysX for ultimate control over multi-gpu configurations.
Includes numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.
Users without US English operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.

 

With Splinter Cell Conviction @ 1920x1080, All settings to highest except no AF & 2x MSAA with vSync on, I get around 2-3 frames more than I was getting, and it becomes very smooth. I didn't do a proper benchmark of it before, but it was around 28fps, now it's around 32fps.

 

fn+f7 is working fine for me. Wow... it's been a while since it last did

 

maybe u did not try harder
enjoy the screen shot ...watch for the switchable icon below

 

Lksing - greetings once again. Did you have to do anything special? Granted I have about everything disabled. I manually re-enabled all the alienware stuff. Rebooted on integrated graphics. Then hit the fn-f6 and it didn't work for me. If others like this driver i hope it works for them. Personally I got ok benchmarks for some apps, but battlefield bc2 was much worse for some reason. I dont know. With exception of driver everything else is the same. Realtek driver, etc...

So I have reverted back to 197.57 with updated inf file.

Best Wishes,

StevenX

ps.. In my opinion, if you just boot up on switchable (intel4xseries), even without the fn-f6 working windows still loads a default windows driver that supports up to 1024x768. For surfing and stuff that is fine to me...

 

After having the laptop on for a couple of hours (after installing the gfx drivers) I get random system freezes (2 to be more exact). I had just yahoo messenger and utorrent 2.0.2 running at both the freezes. Once I had a complete system freeze with no hdd activity, couldnt move mouse, nothing was working. Second time I managed to move the mouse cursor for about 30 seconds before the screen went black - had hdd activity but nothing else was working (screen still black).

Both of the times I had to hard reboot.
Before the first system freeze, with about 40 minutes before, I played a bit BF BC2 but without any issues.

Anybody else seeing this with the new drivers?

 

@ lksing78: i want your wallpaper

i read optimus - is it just support for notebooks already with optimus or does this mean the m11x could get it soon?

and is 3d vision discover supported? i hated that they took it off - i tried it on my macbook and it was kinda fun to play with.

 

lksing78, does your switching work fully on your end?
Whiles the drivers install fine, switching from intel to nvidia doesnt work (though nvidia to intel does)?

 

some huge fps drops in Mass Effect, like previous "latency fix" drivers for me. Will have to test with Borderlands too since i experienced slowdowns with the previous drivers as well in this game...

somebody tested crysis yet?

 

So far no ill effects from installing the driver.

 

I further overclocked my card and noticed a drop in average fps by 2fps, making 24.80fps (everything on high, 1920x1080, no AA). I'm not particularly happy, to say the least, but I don't really play crysis, so I'm not too fussed.

 

Alright, I spoke too soon- NVIDIA's HD sound driver installed as the default, and won't allow me to change it back, so back to 197.57 I go.

 

It's "DPC", and he meant that the old fix is still in place. This is not the same as the stuttering due to insufficient power.

 

Is there any true benefit to this driver. has anyone tried to the RE5 Benchmark as we knew that it slowed FPS to 10 FPS on the fourth section.

 

For 17xR1 owners, be sure to leave your 3D Game Profiles set to Global or Adaptive. Do not change the Power Performance to 'Prefer Max Performance' as this will result in the long standing bug where one GPU will remain locked at 3DClock Rates and will not D/C.

Other than that, this driver is a keeper IMO. Thermals are on par with 186.82 and performance wise I have encountered no issues.

@cue, Area 4 of RE5 Benchmark was resolved some time ago by editing the CAPCOM RE5 config file to use SLI.

 

No sir, even after changing the selection to sli, the fallout on section 4 still occured(frames dropped from 15 to 30 frames per second), this also happened with multi threads set to 4 also. This only happened with the verde drivers and 186.82 was the only driver that this did not happen with, so can someone plz run the bench and post there score, thank you.

 

At this point I don't think NVidia considers this a bug because it's been a problem for so long.

 

Any other m11x guys install this driver yet? Benchmarks? Lsking, how did you get the switching to work? Thanks! StevenX

 

i installed it on my m15x with a gtx260m and my 3dmark 06 results increased in 408 points, 11518 to 11926, and temps are bit lower

 

No issues with Area 4 of the demo. While the first run was about 10FPS lower than 186.82, this driver is still performing better than the last two beta drivers. Considering it incorporates the DPC fix for the 17xR1 I am going to stick with it. I am including the code from my RE5 BM config file for you to compare Cue...

Code:

[GAME]
MouseBaseSpeed=2.000000
[GRAPHICS]
SLI=ON
Stereo=OFF
HDR=LOW
MSAA=2X
TextureFilter=ANISOTROPIC16X
TextureDetail=HIGH
MotionBlur=OFF
NormalMapping=ON
NormalUpdate=ON
Specular=ON
Lighting=HIGH
FilterQuality=HIGH
WaterQuality=HIGH
EffectQuality=HIGH
EffectVolume=HIGH
ShadowQuality=HIGH
LOD=HIGH
Joint=HIGH
Adhesion=HIGH
[DISPLAY]
Resolution=1920x1200
RefreshRate=60Hz
FullScreen=ON
VSYNC=OFF
AdjustAspect=OFF
FrameRate=VARIABLE
[SOUNDS]
SeVoiceNum=128
ReverbQuality=LOW
CategoryEQ=ON
[CPU]
JobThread=3
RenderingThread=ON
[JOYPAD]
A=2
B=1
X=3
Y=0
LEFT=15
RIGHT=13
UP=12
DOWN=14
START=9
BACK=8
LT=4
LB=6
RT=5
RB=7
LSTICK_PUSH=10
LSTICK_VERT=Y
LSTICK_HORZ=X
RSTICK_PUSH=11
RSTICK_VERT=Z
RSTICK_HORZ=RZ

 

Sweet bench bat thats awesome I could never get sect 4 too bench right but I guess this driver is the bee knees lol hats off to nvidia can anyone play some mw2 I had quite the bit of micro stutter with this game.

 

I had/have the same issue here. Although I must admit, I disregarded bat's advice to uninstall previous beta drivers manually first. Previous installers auto uninstalled the previous versions, this one doesn't. Uninstalled drivers and installed again according to bat's recommendation, I still had 1 system freeze (though it was only once). And there's no trace of what went wrong in event manager.

Performance seems to be quite similar as previous version. But I have bad performance again in Need For Speed Shift (frame skip, other car move back and forth across frames). I had this with previous 186 drivers too. Don't know what's causing this yet.

Could it be that some 'stuff' is remaining from the previous beta? If so, best to uninstall this one, cclean, reinstall previous beta and uninstall/cclean/install new one again? Or do I need the 'driversweeper' to be sure (never liked these, had some bad experience with older PC too).

[EDIT]
Short test in Crysis. Bad performance (ocassional FPS drops), like somebody else mentioned on the nvidia forums also 'flickering trees' in the background. I think I will revert to the dell 196 beta drivers.

Back to 196 drivers - redone Crysis test - 257 drivers apparently are better (196 makes it unplayable at same settings). NFS Shift again OK though. Apparently I didn't retest Crysis once I was on 196.

[EDIT 2]
Reinstalled according to procedure below and retested NFS Shift and Crysis. Apparently some 'leftovers' from old installation caused bad performance. What still remains
- Crysis: flickering trees in the distance
- Nvidia Control panel: save option doesn't seem to work most of the times. SLI config doesnt show option to select CPU/GPU, when it does, save seems not to work via apply button, but switching to other option in the list, produces a popup and then save is OK, strange (once set, don't touch it)

Used following procedure
- uninstall 257, reboot in safe mode, ccleaner registry
- reboot, installed previous 196 + accompanying previous physx again, reboot
- uninstall 196 + physx, reboot in safe mode, guru3D driver sweeper, ccleaner, reboot
- install 257 (i installed from subdir 'Display', didn't use the main setup

 

Yes, I have exactly the same problem, after moving from the old driver to this one. I encountered loads of freezes. For the first one, my screen suddenly turns black and won't respond to anything. For the second time, the screen is still light on but mouse, keyboard are all frozen.

BatBoy can you please confirm your case?

 

been using mine for hours since then and not one system freeze. fingers crossed lol

 

i had the screen flash on and off in the 3rd gpu test in 3Dmark 06 but was never at the same point. also doesn't oc like the 197.45 drivers i was able to get a 700/1150/1700 easily and pass without crashing. these drivers crashed at 695 slightly disappoint but did gain a high 06 score over 13.4k

currently on 197.31 drivers with the dpc fix on dells site for the M17xR1 fixed my audio issues I was having. Also these drivers did the same to fix my audio issues but stuck with the 197.31 drivers as they are not causing random screen flashes.

 

The problem still persists in WoW even with the new NVidia 257.15 beta driver. The left hand picture below is when I'm in-raid with the in-game graphic settings cranked to maximum, which is exactly as it is when i am sitting idle on the desktop. The right hand picture is when I'm flying over terrain with all in-game graphic settings turned down to nil, I get a stream of small spikes causing the screen to scroll. Not a big deal, just wondering if this seems normal with the hardware listed in my signature. I know WoW is not too graphic intensive compared to others, so i figured there shouldn't be much of an issue. Which other games for testing would you guys recommend? Thanks guys!

View attachment 50576

 

have you done a fresh install?

and have you tried the 197.31(BETA) drivers on the M17xR1 driver page

 

Have had no freezes or weird glitches...

 

I had a freeze up after about 3 hrs of Civ IV with 257.15.
Had a question posted here, but Alienware support answered it for me.

 

Coincidentally, I was playing civ4 last night for 5-6 hours without issue.

 

"Adds support for Blu-ray 3D with NVIDIA 3D Vision technology. "

Does this mean the M17x can now be used for 3D games/movies on an external 3D monitor? Anyone tried it?

 

I was running 197.31 drivers from the Dell Drivers page prior to running the NVidia beta release. I uninstalled 197.31, booted to safe mode, ran CCleaner, rebooted and installed the new NVidia beta driver. The DPC checker for the new NVidia drivers looks almost identical to the 197.31, but the new NVidia drivers produce less latency overall. I am happy with its current performance, that one situation with WoW and flying over terrain with a lot of trees/plants producing spikes is the only concern i have left.

 

I am getting a black screen with the new drivers with SLI enabled. Mouse cursor is visible and moving, computer seems to be responsive, just no visuals?

Anyone???!

 

Mr Pras, I was on later for several hours without issue. I'm thinking now it was something in IE8 I had running in the backround which caused the problem.
BTW, Thanks for the link on speeding up W7. Seems to have helped

 

Uninstalled/reinstalled/cleaned and performance issues seem to be gone (pending freeze check). Apparently 'wrong' installation procedure causes strange behaviour. Procedure I used, see my previous post

 

Having issues with random system freezing on the desktop with this driver on a fresh Windows 7 install.

When playing games I'll sometimes get a black screen with the sound still playing and cant do anything except power off and restart.

I think I've narrowed the problem down to it being powermizer. I have been running EVGA Precision tool in the background and noticed it would randomly freeze when the GPU clocks change from 2d to 3d.

The black screen whilst running a game happens randomly during the game load screens when the GPU clocks downclock for a second until the game starts, again totally random and doesn't happen often.

So I've disabled it and am now running at full GPU clocks and haven't had a lock-up or black screen since.

Anyone else seeing these lockups or black screens?

 

I can say that it would not surprise me. The GPU throttling is what was causing the audio blips and some of the DPC problems on the M17x before they issued a BIOS fix and drivers to fix it.

 

Mickbt26,

The black screens and freeze ups appear to me to be related to the throttling based on power usage. I was getting the black screens/lockups since moving onto the DPC fixed drivers which seem to cause the GPUs to draw more power then the older versions. When the CPU/Chipset throttling occurs the performance hit is so bad that sometimes Windows will decide the video driver has crashed because it doesn't respond fast enough, it tries to recover and fails with the black screen.

After reading the the tread on power usage that I've un-overclocked and the problem has gotten better. You can also adjust the settings on windows to keep it from over-reacting to these slow downs but I've lost the link to the registry settings in my many re-installs.

The thread on the throttling stutters is summarized here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/410440-m17x-stutter-86.html#post6250069 Just for me the FPS drops would sometimes result in a crash.

 

I had freeze ups on the desktop whilst idle so that is not power related.

Im using throttlestop to stop the throttling and also it has not black screened whilst powermizer has been disabled.

 

Since installing the Beta 257.15 from Nvidia my games run a bit smoother. I only play on max settings for all games and I experience no freezing or stutter/flashes. I thought my cpu and gpu were bottlenecking now I am unsure if it was gpu related. Metro 2033 plays like a dream on max settings Aion and crysis as well. Will Nvidia release tuned version of 257.15? Cuz the option to manually toggle the SLI and PhysX is too cool! Question: When toggling the PhysX in nv control panel is it wise to dedicate my cpu to PhysX or stick with 280M?
Regards.

M17X r1: Black on Black
OS: Win7x64-A03
LCD: 1920x1200p CCFL
CPU: QX9300 @ 2.53ghz
GPU: Dual GTX 280M in SLI/Beta 257.15
RAM: 4GB @ 1333Mhz
HDD: Seagate 320, 160x2 @ 7200rpm Raid-0
DD: Hitachi Blu-Ray Combo
Anything else would be un-civilized