up to date 8600m gt windows xp drivers

i would just like to note that in the past i had highly recommended sticking with the boot camp 1.3 drivers for the 8600m gt under windows xp. i had tried upgrading to the latest drivers before and they rendered my computer inoperable. so that sucked. i couldn't even keep the desktop stable long enough to fix it, and it just wasnt worth it. i probably could have booted into safe mode or something. whatever.

reformat.

anyway, some/most/all of you know that nvidia itself doesn't support the mobile gpu line with updated drivers. its not that they hate us, or that they simply don't care about us. its just a laptop thing. they don't want some random updated driver to fry something specific in some laptop and get sued over it. thats a non-issue in desktops, but if it were, they would have the same policy (manufacturer is responsible for keeping drivers up to date)

but nvidia has left it simple to very cleanly mod their drivers to add support for mobile cards. laptopvideo2go.com is where we go to take advantage of this.

anyway, that whole debacle with complete system freezing immediately after launching xp led me to believe that the standard 8600m gt drivers (the kind you find on laptopvideo2go) weren't compatible with apple hardware for some reason. i might have actually said that on the forum, but more likely i only implied it because i didn't know for sure. either way, my recommendation at the time was to stick with the boot camp drivers because they provided similar performance to the other 8600m gt's available.

now i would like to officially change my recommendation: use the modded laptopvideo2go forceware drivers. i just installed the 162.18 drivers on my macbook pro, and as far as i can tell, everything is working perfectly. im going to give you a subjective performance comparison and say that these drivers are better than the boot camp ones. (boot camp drivers are pretty old at this point, but they are still fine if you don't want to upgrade)

also - 162.18 is not the newest driver on laptopvideo2go, but it is the newest driver (even for the beta drivers) listed on the nvidia website.

Also- make SURE you uninstall the current driver before installing the new one. that sort of thing should be new to all you mac folk

control panel - add/remove programs - uninstall "nvidia drivers" (or something similar). that should be enough to take care of the drivers and registry entries. then you can install the new drivers.

edit: the 165.01 will freeze your system on boot. you will have to boot into safe mode to get rid of the driver. DONT INSTALL 165.01 forceware.

i am running the 162.18 right now, and its working very well.

 

Hmmm..... I'll have to try that sometime. Thanks!

 

I am currently using the 158.51 from laptopvideo2go. They work great. Nice performance boost too. I got the 2.2ghz Macbook pro with 128MB GF8600M GT.

with the bootcamp drivers i got:

3dMark06 @ 1280x1024 -- 3152
3dMark06 @ 1280x800 -- 3644

with the 158 drivers i got:

3dMark06 @ 1280x1024 -- 3338
3dMark06 @ 1280x800 -- 3866

all benchmarks in WinXP no overclocking.

I might update the drivers to the 162 version later today and test again.

 

Looks like I have to retest everything again... lol

 

Those 3dMark06 looks good. You should definitely try the latest drivers and see how it performs against the previous two you tested.

 

Not so. Just follow the instructions on laptopvideo2go for: XP or Vista. This way you'll Update the drivers without an uninstall and maybe make things easier on yourself later. Also, create a System Restore Point before updating.

If you do have problems with an updated driver you may run into problems when trying to boot into Safe Mode - I did. My keyboard/trackpad did not work! Although my external Logitech mouse did work, I still was unable to type my login password.

What I did was hold F8 during start-up to get into the Boot Options and select Directory Service Restore Mode. You can try to use the System Restore point you created earlier, but if that doesn't work you simply need to Uninstall the Nvidia Drivers from the Control Panel.

 

yeah i also had to bust out the external mouse. the keyboard mostly worked - well enough to just get rid of the bad driver and get out of safemode.

 

those are some nice increases with no OCing, just drivers... looking good!

 

There are a few problems with the drivers. Sleep mode doesnt work at all... but since WinXP is just a gameing OS I dont mind. Just boot Windows and game and then boot OSX again. No need for any driver featuers.

I just tried the 162.18 drivers. Not sure if sleep mode works now. Ran 3dmark06 and the score is a little lower but with in 50 points so pretty much no differance.

 

I just ran 3DMark06 with ForceWare 162.18 Drivers and got 3899 @ 1400x900 (XP Pro and Boot Camp 1.3).

Previously with 101.34 Drivers I got 3672 @ 1400x900, but that was in Vista Ultimate x86.

Sleep Mode (aka Standby) does work!

 

The latest drivers do not work with Rivatuner... tried rebuilding and reinstalling it and it won't overclock. Currently trying to track down other software.

 

You can try ATItool. It works for me.

 

Still no luck for me. Tried Reinstalling the driver and still nothing. Going to try re-installing windows next...

 

Reinstalled windows, no luck. Wave are you using XP? Because I went step by step using the install method listed on laptopvideo2go and still nothing.

 

Yes I am using XP. What doesnt work? the drivers or you just cant overclock?

 

The Drivers work fine (even fixes the problems that some games wouldn't play) but whenever I go to overclock them, it won't let me change the settings. IN ATItool the bar will change but it won't save the settings or take effect and in Riva you set the new settings but it reverts back to the original ones (stock).

 

Yeah I just checked around the forum and people are reporting similar things for their laptops. I guess the 162 drivers cant overclock.

for those who care: Nvidia lunched new drivers. They are special drivers for vista, direktx10 and the 8X00 series card. They are said to improve alot of things under vista. Here is the link:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=13871

I dont use vista so cant test it sorry.

 

ill be getting vista pretty soon. good to know that they are hard at work on drivers.

 

Some really usefully information in this thread. Thanks guys and girls. I will definitely keep up to date with your testing and save me the hard work

 

I guess I'll go bite the bullet and install them. If I disappear for a week, it's because I got annoyed at Vista and bashed the screen of my MBP in