Nvidia Driver 258.96 on AW... Discuss Here

As mentioned in other threads (which are now being re-directed here), NV released another Verde driver today... This is out of beta and NV's WHQL driver has been posted:

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


-Adds support for GeForce GTX 480M notebook GPUs.
-Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0224.
-Upgrades HD Audio driver version 1.0.15.0 (for supported GPUs).
-Includes numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.

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

Additional Information:

-Supports the new GPU-accelerated features in Adobe Photoshop CS5 .
-Supports GPU-acceleration for smoother online HD videos with Adobe Flash 10.1
-Supports the new version of MotionDSP's video enhancement software, vReveal, which adds support for HD output. NVIDIA customers can download a free version of vReveal that supports up to SD output.
-Supports DirectCompute with Windows 7.
-Supports OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language).
-Supports OpenGL 3.3.
-Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and OpenGL.

The following are not supported in this release:

- Hybrid Power technology with Intel chipsets. (This may be why some 11xR2 owners are reporting issues with the NV INF) - 11xR2 owners please continue discussing in your dedicated thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...erde-notebook-driver-258-96-12-07-2010-a.html


• Release Notes (v258.96)
• New Control Panel User's Guide

Download info here:
NVIDIA DRIVERS 258.96

 

/sarcasm on Wow, thats huge... /sarcasm off

Nice to see they completely ignore their 'official' feedback posts. No mention of crashes, lockups being fixed etc...

 

This driver is awesome on the m11x R2. just letting people know.

 

Experienced 2 random freezes so far whilst on discrete graphics (with integrated everything's fine).

1. while browsing internet (going through PDF)
2. After a month without issues, the '193W power adaptor warning' striked back. After windows login and unplug/plug power cord, freeze.

I'm starting to wonder whether it's the drivers or something else. With the previous version (.69), I had 2 crash dumps, up till now no such luck with these drivers. Will be stubborn and continue to use them until I have crash dump again (sent previous ones to nvidia but don't know if something was done with them).

As for performance, game benchmarks squeeze a few more frames, so as far as games are concerned, it looks ok.

EDIT: experienced crashes also in game sessions (2 different games) after an hour of playing. Gave up on 258 and going back to dell latest beta 197

Anyone else having similar issues with (or without the drivers)?

 

I had 2 random (or at least they seem so) system freezes - the screen goes into some kind of flickering blue-ish screen and stays there untill a hard reset.

 

Yep having the exact same issues as you guys random freezing after playing about 1 hour in games

 

I had the blue screen thing too, the bottom half was flickering.. I'm glad to hear it's a video driver thing (was afraid it was the overclocked FSB!!)

 

Nvidia 258.96 drivers left beta today

64bit version:

NVIDIA DRIVERS 258.96 WHQL

32bit version:

NVIDIA DRIVERS 258.96 WHQL

 

No blue screens here. Infact these are the most stable drivers with the DPC fix that I've ran so far. Played Mass Effect 2 for several hours without incident. I did notice my fans running at a slightly higher speed then any of the 2xx.xx drivers thus far.

This diver lets you select where PhysX runs and the control panel corrupted out on me when I tried to upgrade drivers without uninstalling. Also, make sure PhysX isn't running on the CPU, it was selected by default for my system. PhysX is known to be un-optimized when not running on the GPU.

 

In just a few words: they suck... sooner or later you will have issues with it.. the only goo thing is the physx thing in CP.

 

You still having issues since the WHQL?

Is this WHQL a certificate for the beta drivers or a newer, certified driver (if so why the same revision number??)

 

I have downloaded the latest version that is not in bata with no issues what so ever however i know there are a few changes with the beta and release but not much.

 

The problem most people (including me) are seeing is totally random when using the dedicated GPU's only.

It could take hours or even weeks for the first black screen crash or freeze and it seems to happen on flash based sites and web browsing mostly

I would give it a week running on dedicated GPUs (M17x R1) to see if these issues are still there.

 

It's worthwhile to use it for a little while before reporting no issues whatsoever. unless you've spent the last hours testing everything of course

 

No, i am already tired , y tested the . 15 .21 258.96 beta, and all of them had issues to me.. maybe becauses the SLI (M15x user seems to be bug free) or maybe becauses flash. Anyway i am ok with lastest Dell beta drivers.

 

same here , all of them caused lockups while browsing any flash site (some of them lasted a week of stability but eventually caused a lockup) so I'll stick to dell's beta until someone confirms that the new ones are stable

 

Concerning the flash lockups, this can be a common issue (not saying it is in your case)-

Be sure you are installing flash properly - for multiple browser systems, you need to update each browser individually (example: IE uses a separate flash install from Firefox).

Other Version installer can be found here:
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/

Also, if you had/have the flash 10.1 beta installed, you need to perform a clean install of the beta and install the current version.
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/support/index.html

 

installed and working good so far,

 

Running as well, will report back on how it goes.

 

With these WHQL drivers I am seeing lockups in games (especially L2, playing window mode, several clients open - 2+ ).

 

Still no issues with New drivers been running now since launch

 

What model? M15x, M17x and are you running on dedicated GPUs if on M17x?

 

M17x, 280M GTX SLI + 9400 Enabled... no issues.

 

M15x, I7 820QM, Nvidia gtx260M, 8GB Ram. Still no issues did delete original drivers like you should do .... installed adobe flash after......... no problems found still.

 

Ran OK last night, only played some CO though. Watched a few flash movies, no crashes yet.

Update: Still going well, not flash crashes, no game issues.

 

In my case I had couple of issues when using After Effects and OpenGL... especially when managing 3D models in edition mode.

 

i've noticed some funny things going on with the eyes in mass effect 2, and sam and max series games... after installing this driver. other than that it seems ok.

 

Hi again!

I have one question before installing this driver. Is this release much better, for my config, that 196.86???

I'm wondering if my 3D software (maya, zbrush, blender, aftereffect) will work fine and if some games like battlefieldbadcompany2 or Blur will gain some fps.

Thank you
RAM

 

I installed the 258.96 driver using nvidia's installer off their site, did not uninstall my previous driver or run driver sweeper.

Its been running fine for two days, I've had it running pretty much the entire day today, played several games on it in the morning, then forgot to switch back to integrated and opened firefox and browsed youtube and other sites that contained flash content...and it didn't crash.

so pretty good so far

 

hmmm I've some problem during SLI mode. After I saw the welcoming screen , the screen then turns black and never returned. But during 9400 operation mode, it went smoothly.
I'm now trying to return to 257.21 and sees what will happen .

 

for those who had the intermittent start and stop of dedicated gpu fans while using integrated in hybrid , is it still present in this driver?

 

Not that I have a stable machine by any stretch of the imagination, so take this with a grain of salt.

After installing these drivers things went smoothly for a few hours. Then, randomly, the screen would go black and freeze, then come up and say the video driver failed and needs to be restarted. During this I got a blue screen of death saying the graphics driver failed .....

So again my computer has all kinds of issues, but I never saw anything like this until I installed these new drviers.

 

Yes, fan start/stop is still there (258.96 WHQL). On the other hand, freezing issues seem to be resolved (tested for 3 days, a few hours). I returned after last beta to latest dell 19x release and had frame drops in crysis. With this one, all is well.

EDIT: freezing is still there although less frequent than in previous versions. Waiting for an occasion where it will generate a minidump to post it to nvidia

 

If anyone has a system overclocked, it'd be best if you turned that off before reporting good/bad/neutral on the driver functioning. It's well known that different drivers on all parts respond more or less favorably to overclocking.

Just fyi

 

Running fine now for 5 days. No lockups, no gaming issues. Always running on discretes with SLi (have 9400 disabled) and no issues at all with SLi active.

 

Has anyone tried these drivers while playing World of Warcraft? It apparently froze every 10-20 minutes when my brother was playing it on my computer.

 

driver crashed while playing Alien Swarm after 30 minutes while the latest Dell beta driver for the M17x didn't for the 5 hours I played with them...

 

Had no issue playing Alien Swarm on these drivers.

Update: Just had my 1st black-screen crash/lock-up with these drivers while watching an WMV movie.

 

I played Alien Swarm again last night and it didn't crash after more than hour. But I have applied the latest evga sli patch, so maybe it's thanks to that.

 

There is an update to alienswarm that fixes the issues with the GTX260m cards.

Alien Swarm Update Released
Product Update - Valve
Updates to Alien Swarm have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Alien Swarm
Fixed crash to desktop on certain graphics cards
Fixed matchmaking sending you to the wrong mission
Fixed not being able to earn the “Ammo Technician” achievement
Fixed not being able to open particle systems in the editor

fix came out 22june 2010

 

has anyone tried with 9800m GT...its really frustrating that we cant update other than the factory drivers :S

 

Im not 100% sure about this area mate sorry however i have inc a link to the latest drivers

32bit link here
64bit link here

 

I've continued to use 186.81 because they support sound via the displayport, a function I use quite often. I have yet to find a set of drivers that can also push sound to an hdtv. Does anyone know if these drivers accomplish this?

 

I have always updated with the latest drivers and had sound transfered to my HDTV all i have to do is set default sound to display port

 

I think this should be next on the list for engineers to look at! This is crazy... cant use updated video drivers directly from nvidia pfft!

 

I've been using the 258.96 drivers as well. Getting better framerates with L4D2 when 4x MSAA and 2x AF. I don't think the new drivers are getting the GPU temperatures correctly because what CPUID HW monitor reports as 87 C, feels alot hotter. But the fan speed doesn't go to that max by the sound of it.

In OCCT, i get 70 FPS for 2 minutes, then it drops to 55 for 3 mins and then 45-53 FPS for the rest of the test. Any ideas

 

Anyone noticed that embedded video causes crashes? (youtube)
the display goes black for about 15secs, then it restores, with the youtube video just displaying a green. then It will loop this behavior twice then BSOD.
should I revert or wait for next?

 

I just leave it but its up to you i seem to get a freeze about once a day and i can live with that tell the next driver comes out

 

you can also give this a try if you haven't already...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...river-nv-257-38-m15x-m17xr1-discuss-here.html

 

This driver is rock solid on my machine... I'd never use a driver distributed by Dell, much rather get it right from the manufacturer unless there's no other choice.