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

leave as is better the gpu do physx

 

Anyone else noticed this? After switching to integrated graphics using Fn-F7 (which doesn't require a restart anymore ), the left and right fans seem to be 'restarted' every 10 seconds or so as I hear them 'crank' up (with the known not too comforting M17x fan crackle) .

Although game performance is OK now after reinstall, I still experienced 2 freezes, one with black screen, one with flickering grey screen during almost idle (browsing the web).

 

Ahhh, someone else with the black screen and freeze issue. Im glad i wasn't the only one. I've remedied mine by disabling powermizer and it has been great since.

 

In case anyone reports back to Nvidia.. here is something i have officially noticed with this driver set. My gpu is 335m gt. I uninstalled old driver, booted into safe mode, cleaned registry and installed the 257.15. In the nvidia 3d setup, under manual settings, the changes I make do not stay. They revert back. The driver was installed as an admin, but they do not stay. I believe this is the root cause of the game performance issues I was having.

Best Wishes,

StevenX

 

games seem to run a bit smoother but I just had a system freeze while browsing through internet ,let's see if it was an isolated freeze if not I'll revert to dell's beta drivers

 

I'm not seeing the fan behavior you describe. Not sure what is causing that one.

 

my card fan makes strange noises, cracking sounds, and twice It have been frozen, with a white screen flashes, is this because the new drivers?

 

could be also if you didn't remove all nvidia software/drivers before installing these drivers it might have conflicting issues as last time i didn't completely remove all the nvidia software i was getting glitches. Now its great and no problems only in the third gpu bench in 06. games play fine and can watch video no problem too.

So all i can say is completely remove drivers and performance software for ocing before hand and use cc cleaner before you install the 257.15 drivers.

 

It is strange that some have freeze issue (including me) while some don't.
I did perform a clean install (removing old 197 driver, CClearn, Driver Sweeper in Safe mode).....

 

did you remove physx as well and any of the nst software too because i had those flashes and then completely removed anything nvidia on my system in the programs and features by uninstalling the stuff first(performance, system moniter, system update) and then physx and then the drivers and reboot run cc cleaner and install new drivers

 

I didn't have Physx installed with old driver (197 driver doesn't include physx) and I did everything properly.
Perhaps it only happens with M17x machines ....

 

Its weird, Mine appears to be completely fine now with Powermizer enabled. Haven't had a single issue in 2 days of it being enabled.

 

Woah! dodgy fan speeds at random times and a grey screen flicker that forced a hard reboot to report here too (all I was doing was browsing forums as well)

Kinda glad to hear it's the driver and not my display on its way out. Think I will be going back to 197.31 for a while...


Edit: My dodgy fan speeds were with Hybrid and Integrated graphics switched OFF.


I admit I just installed these straight over the last drivers, but in the past this worked best for me.

 

never do that with these they apparently don't like over writing the previous driver on your machine which i found out with only physx and nst still on it so i would uninstall all nvidia software before drivers and it should install fine.

 

I believe the freezes issue only happens with M17x and Windows 7. Look like NVidia is screwing up again. Would it be fixed for WHQL release? Maybe not.....

 

reverting back to 197.44, too many stuttering ingame its driving me insane after a week

 

Your spot on with that!
Ive had to revert back to 197.16 due to the little stutter issues ( not related to the cmod issue) and what seems to be slow texture loading in certain games.

All is back to being ok for now

 

anybody tried these 257.29 yet?

Keep your eyes peeled for 257.29 driver soon - LaptopVideo2Go Forums

 

I didn't try 257.29. The 257.15 driver is indeed a very good improvement over DPC latency , but for me it is extremely unstable , with random system/video fails and freezes , and screen flickering during logon. Going back to dell 186.64 official drivers , even if they have huge DPC latency , they are imo the most stable drivers.

edit : Changed my mind. 197.16 are the most stable drivers , not 186.64.

 

Ok, i am back to the 197 drivers. The 257 drivers were great speacially becauses you can disable SLI and then set one card to be a dedicated physx card, but these drivers were unstable as hell.. black screen, fickering.. i think is all related to flash or IE8, becauses never had a problem during gaming, only during web browsing... but i liked the drivers becauses the physx stuff

 

Absolutely agreed with you , tyranus7.

257.15 -> unstable
197.31 -> poor performance in games
186.64 -> very high DPC

197.16 -> low DPC , good game performance , stable

Right now 197.16 are the best choice... It's indeed most probably a flash problem , and a not a problem with IE. I got the same problems with Firefox.

 

I'm using the 197.31 drivers as my audio issues are so crazy on other drivers, 197.16 .45 etc. except 257.15 but has unstable performance.

the best performance i ever got came from the 197.45 drivers and even better bench scores with the 257.15 drivers was able to hit 13.4k in 3DMark06

 

Just noticed NVIDIA released 257.21 WHQL (without release notes). Let's hope this solves the random freeze issues...

 

OOO downloading now will bench soon also wil test if it causes the slows downs in borderlands and other games with lots of textures.

 

I've tested these they fix the in game bugs i was having but they are not as smooth for me as the 197.31 drivers imho these drivers still need tweaking(a lot left to do). I benched 06 at stock and got 11600 best one yet but i had left physx on lol. and ran vantage oc and got 6735 score so not my highest and will keep my 197.31 drivers.

 

is someone getting random freezes with 257.21 ? I got plenty with the beta and had to revert back to dell's beta so I'm hesitating to intall this new ones

 

i wouldn't bother till the next beta possibly i mean test it because i have an M15X so don't knock it till you try it.

 

No freezes for me and I was having a bucket full every 30 mins.

 

No freezes here so far.

Performance is better for me in a multitude of games and everything seems so much smoother to run.

Mass effect 2 now works with 4xAA and SLI perfectly, Whereas before it would bog down in certain areas,
I couldnt run Crysis smoothly at all high dx9 with 197.31 before, Now it does even with 2xAA.

So far so good...

 

I got a weird green screen while playing pes2010.. but i was playing Batman Arkham Asylum for about 1 hour, and no problem...

So i don't know.. maybe the 257.21 is incompatible with the GTX 280M

 

257.21 - Alienware M17x GTX280m in SLi - A04 bios

Got random "blackouts" and Freezes, both in browsing and in Photoshop CS5.

 

Damn, so I'm guessing it's not fixed then.
Strange that I have not had any yet with this driver but had loads on the BETA.

 

I had no issues with the beta or this .21 final. Happy to report!!

 

Performance ingame seems way less stutterish.

I haven't tested these with Borderlands and Mass Effect for fps drops though.

But so far, so good.

 

when i was at tentanus warren when spidernauts pop out i would drop to 10 fps for a split second on .15 drivers and the .21 drivers fixed that but benching wasn't great and feel that these drivers still need some work.

 

I'm enjoying the Ambient Occlusion options There are some good new options too for multiGPU etc.. Not that it affects me!

 

No blackouts or freezes yet, though I havent tried the drivers with hybrid enabled, just with either discrete or integrated.

 

Fail driver. Got system freeze 2 minutes after rebooted using 257.21 driver. Maybe it has a problem with 280m GTX... I actually got some trouble with the wireless connections after removing driver. (I don't know if it's related to it or not) A system restore fixed problems.

 

it apparently installed a new version of hd audio as well from when i glanced over the release notes

 

257.21 thoughts

- Control panel SLI config GUI bugs are solved
- No freezes (yet. To be tested further)
- Performance in games just fine
- I still have the weird (right + left) fan behaviour when switching to integrated 9400 using FN-F7 (which still works without reboot btw)

I only installed the display drivers (used setup from subdir). Do we have anything good coming from the HDAudio or System Tools that seem to be installed when using the 'main' setup?

 

What is the behavior your getting?

 

Well, I installed these last night... tried to play WoW; crashed twice (hard freeze). Gave up on that, tried just browsing; crashed twice again (hard freeze).

At first I thought I might have a heat issue (everything looked hot in SpeedFan), so I took apart my m17x R1 and cleaned all the fans/heatsinks off (Cyberputty and Compressed Air). Everything back together, watched a 20m SD video I have on the HD. Everything looked fine, started browsing the web after... hard freeze.

Now sitting here in "VGA Adapter" land because P5 won't install now. Tried safe mode, Drive Sweeper, etc. Looks like I might have to pull the drive, backup what I can, and do a wipe. Should be fun since my DVD drive doesn't recognize the Win7 disc Dell sent me....

 

i was watching a trailer on the inter net and just got a red screen and needed a forced restart.. what should i do? is it the graphics card or the driver?

 

it was caused by the drivers it happened to me before with the 257.15 I reverted to dell's beta because of that , it seems this new ones have the same bugs that the beta had

 

Okay, finally got the Dell beta drivers back in. Had to install P03 first, then P05. Kind of sucks because when the drivers did work I saw a performance increase in some activities.

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I threw these on the Asus G51VX; I haven't heard screaming yet but my wife also tends to pick up her netbook rather than turn on the Asus. I'll have to run tests myself to see if the issue is present there, as well.

BTW - If you have problems with these drivers, be sure to use the nVidia Drive Feedback Form to let them know what happened. Try to be a little descriptive of the problem (not "HAY! U luzers braked my 1337 puter! u suck! kbyethx.") Same goes for the nVidia Forums 257.21 Release Thread, where nVidia is asking for specific information on bad driver experiences.

 

When switched to integrated, the fans of the 260's seem to start up every 10 seconds or so (producing the distintc fan startup crackle of the M17x). Had this with the 257.15. Apparently I am an isolated case. Solution: always run on the 260's

 

I see.

What I have noticed when running on integrated is that the gpu fans will constantly move slightly and stop, then move and stop again and again. there's no fan noise or crackle though (looking at gpu fans under the machine when it's on and hybrid is enabled and running on integrated)

Anyone else see this?

 

Ever since the 197.16 and recently the 257.21 drivers came out, my gaming experience became something between bad and awful. I dunno what those drivers updated from the previous 195.62 version, but back then everything worked flawlessly.

I suspect my games are running under my integrated graphics card when I install the 197 and 257 drivers, because the fps is simply ridiculous. That might be happening because the recent drivers brought some GPU choice controls (which gpu will be running when I'm gaming). Its just a guess.

I made every single tweak I could but still can't figure out how to solve this. When I roll back to the 195 drivers, things become smooth again. Please help!


I have an Alienware M15X, core i7-720QM, GTX260M, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB 7200RPM hd, Windows 7 64bit just recently formatted.

 

@LeWZ
I have had a similar problem since updating to BIOS A04. When i boot up the laptop with the AC Adapter plugged in, I get an error message saying that the power supply cannot be determined, and that it is less than the 240V that was shipped with the system. It then disables the 260M and switches to the integrated GPU. The options are F1 to continue, or F2 to enter BIOS setup. Here's the tricky part, on the main screen for the BIOS setup, at the bottom it shows you the voltage of the power supply that is plugged in. Mine shows 193V, if i unplug it, and plug it back in, it shows 240V. I then have to manually turn the 260M back to enabled, or upon entering windows, all of my games are choppy because they are running on the integrated GPU. So next time you start up, hit F2, go to advanced>graphic settings and make sure your GPU is not disabled. Hope that helps!

 

Your machine has no integrated GFX mate..

Are you sure you are not running in stealth mode?