Dell's Graphic Driver vs. Modified Nvidia Driver for 445M

Yea I want to try the Mass Effects. Do the Mass Effects and Black Ops have demos? Starcraft II sounds cool too. I don't prefer shooting games, but some are cool. I just didn't like that one you told me about, although you did even say it was bad

 

Rooster I think I still have some 7 day passes for SC2 at home, if I do I'll PM you a code

 

I just tested Modern Warfare 1 on the machine and it rean smooth with everything at max. Yum! I'm going to go through this game again just for the graphics.

DoW 2 Chaos Rising ran well on it as well.

 

black ops isn't a GPU stresser itself as graphic engine, but it's very very NOT optimized...it uses the MW2 engine basically but it's slower.

anyone has tested mafia2? it has a bad rep for resource's consume

 

Mass Effect 2 has a demo on Steam and it runs real smooth. If anyone ever decides to get GTAIV it is awesome on this machine. I never played SC2 but all of the latest and past FPS games run smoothly on this beast.

 

Boy, I haven't played Grand Theft Auto since the original. I have to see how much cooler IV is.

 

That would AW SOME!!!!!!!!
thank you sir!
I have been dying to try that game. the CivV demo just whetted my appetite for strategy games.
Forerunner for best driver (Nvidia 266.44)
266.zip

Rooster

 

Please sir... some more?

I've been wanting to test out this game before deciding whether to buy it or not.

 

I think it came with a few so Redlance and Rooster have dibs, I'll post more if I have any more.

 

Give the Mass Effect 2 demo a try, just for the graphics and story alone. Both ME and ME2 were my favorite games for the last 3 years. I am not much of a multi-player type, and the game is tailored to the single player mentality. it really is worth a try, and the ME2 I have on this laptop (not thru steam) and it looks glorious. I learned to play both on the 360 so the controls on the laptop are a little wonky to me, but I am going to remedy that with a aftermarket controller that represents the 360 controller.

My nephews are the ones who play GTA since the first one, and the graphics are indeed nice, I just didn't care for the story line. But I will be the first to admit I am choosey when it comes to games. I really only like Sci-Fi/Fantasy driven games, like Halo series( all of them, even Halo wars) but I only have those on the 360.
anyhoo...
Rooster

 

man, i have no idea how many times a simple system restore has saved my own and friends' pcs lol. its good practice to create them in my opinion, like you said, better be safe than sorry

and i guess every card is slightly different, i havent done anything special to mine, apart from the overclock, and that was my first ever OC. afterburner was so easy to use!

 

Fraps will do that for you FRAPS show fps, record video game movies, screen capture software
should install without any problems..

Rooster

 

just seen some vids on youtube of SC2, it looks sweet
ordered black ops from amazon 10 days ago, still hasnt arrived

 

cool, thanks for this. i was gonna look around something like this when black ops arrived. dont have any pc games from the past 3-4 years lol, but with this beast, its back to pc gaming

 

Yea, I love the single player Final Fantasies. I just with other games would come out with the same format.

 

Did some more overclocking today. Got it stable at Core Clk 760 Shader Clk 1520 Memory Clk 912 and that gave me 12766 3dmarks.
__________________

XPS 17 - i7 840QM, 4Gb RAM, 500Gb HDD, 3Gb GT 445M

 

ehi mate, don't forget to join our elitè club on steam
Steam Community :: Group :: NotebookReview XPS Owners Club

 

Yes FRAPS is good, or if you use Afterburner, you can set up the On Screen Display to show FPS along with GPU and VRAM data and a clock.

 

oh yeah! i will do this tomorrow
thanks!

 

the very first 3DMark6 test I did before doing anything with the drivers or overclocking(dell's 259.51) was 11117 and the highest I've gotten is with the 263.09 modded Nvidia and Afterburner and it's only 11369 but that modded driver ran alot warmer than I liked so I am stumped

I know every card is different but my scores compaired to all of the other scores is way below the average score.
hmmm....
something I have to continue to ponder about.
Rooster
*******************EDIT***************
Forerunner for best driver(Nvidia 266.44)
http://www.mediafire.com/?8969umn1i62alt4

 

I'll try now too.

EDIT: Worsened my score and fans were running way too high to my liking. Back to my original settings for me.

 

Nice I can't get GPU over 750. Even 752 crashes eventually. Do drivers affect how high you can overclock, or is it all by the hardware?

 

i tried to use afterburner feature of counting fps, but the result is strange, only 11 fps it say, but the game was very smooth, fluid..boh..

i set the game in mega ultra quality mode, i started with a huge army of drunk english people who couldn't use cannons , after a fight with some mamelucs, they win but few surived....god save the queen!

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/5325/empire20110105231136408.png

http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/8808/empire20110105230950327.png

very very nice landscape...just paused battle to admire enviroments..

/****/ EDIT
noob question about 3dmark06 v1.2 : when i try to install he say that he will install directx 9.0c...but it's normal? shall i continue?

 

Very nice indeed!
for the people with no patience such as myself...


and.....


Thank you splinterpc for the screen shots. they are "Orgasmic..."
Rooster

 

i'll post also some pics of crysis, the nemesys of any videocard...

the first was made in very high mode, the others in ultra mode, the best quality possible...it's patched to 1.2 so it's more optimized... what lucky!!

http://img600.imageshack.us/i/screenshot0002a.jpg/

http://img89.imageshack.us/i/screenshot0003kv.jpg

http://img10.imageshack.us/i/screenshot0005a.jpg

http://img709.imageshack.us/i/screenshot0000c.jpg

sincerly there isn't a huge difference, if you want i can post more pics...tomorrow, now i'll go sleepin....zzz

 

I just had to post them for the impatient such as myself

The first (Very High Mode)


And in Ultra Mode....compare!


Yes indeedy, we have a niiiiiiiice laptop. way to go splinterpc! I am out of rep today but tomarrow +1!
Rooster

 

Bah I'm hooked! I need to get $$$$$ for ME2!!!

 

If you can, get ME first, because you will get extra game play for ME2 with extended story lines and different story endings, it's f'n great. I got over 100 playing hrs into ME2 on 360 because of completion of ME. It's not necessary though, but for the complete whole story and additional expansion paks, it's worth the investment.
Search | GameStop


Rooster

****************EDIT**************
Forerunner for best driver(Nvidia 266.44)
266.zip

 

Does anyone else using the beta driver notice it idles high. Mine would only go down to like 49 after I closed Civ V and the fan was still running.

 

When I tested it, the temp was higher than the 266.44 on avg and the screen wasn't as responsive and sharp(only slightly noticeable, but it was there) and the score wasn't all that great either, so I reverted back to 266.44. But to be fair, I only tested it for a couple of hours with ME2 and I guess I got spoiled by the previous driver.
I think the over all census is that the beta driver isn't up to par.
Rooster

 

hmm thats interesting, perhaps your overclock didnt actually get saved? even though in afterburner its showing the OC'd settings? if such thing is possible anyway.
try re-installing afterburner and see the settings, but like i said before im really not experienced with overclocking or any of these programs, but its the only thing i can think of, since your results OC'd should be higher than those your getting and your initial result with the dell driver is pretty similar to those we've been getting before overclocking.
sorry i cant be much of help mate perhaps someone else has experienced the same results after overclock.

edit also: you should add that driver to the first page
2nd edit: it WAS on the fist page, sorry

 

After all, I went back to driver 266.44, as it ran my machine cooler.

I did a test on furmark just now:



about 40 points increase.

As for my 12k 3DMark results, I've been unable to get back to it. Right now stuck at 11k.

EDIT: I think those last settings are not good. I was getting flickers during the 3DMarks tests. I aborted before the dragon one completed.

EDIT 2: I went back to the setting in the first post and got these furmark results:



I dunno what to think now. I'll test 3DMark to see if there is any change.

EDIT 3: Ran 3DMark and got 11198 points.

 

Those are awesome temps for an OC'd card of any kind in furmark, try turning the MSAA up a bit and if you haven't done it run the Extreme Burning Mode and see what the temps do, just be warned if you run Extremem Burning don't walk away from your machine sit and monitor temps as it's really a bugger on the temps sometimes.

 

you still got an increase of roughly 64 points on the Furmark test with the Afterburner settings that we first suggested, so I would say that is an improvement.

I too used Dane's settings for Afterburner and it didn't agree as well as it did with the the settings of before( Core Clk 712 Shader Clk 1425 Memory Clk 912 ), but the results are interpretive and what is important is what you actually see(improvement in response, clarity, etc..) Plus, he is testing with a 425M and it's just going to be different for us 445M users.

I really wanted to break 12000, but for me, it's more of a pride thing and I shouldn't complain because either way the Nvidia 266.44 driver still out performs anything that I've tried and it really seems to agree with the Vid card( stable temps, increased scores and "snappier" response) so I might revisit the 12000 score at a later date when I really attempt to "optimize" everything.
But thank you for posting your results because the more we have to quantify, the clearer the results will be for everyone who uses our card.

Rooster
P.S. man, I really need some caffine, I am starting to sound like my statistics professor from college....

 

I really need to find some more time so I can play with the 445 and its clocks. It looks like there is potential in this GPU!

 

Thanks again for the gift. I was up til after 4 am(eastern US) cause I couldn't wait to see what it was like. the opening cut scene was as far as I got, but omG!, it was way cool..(I sound like my nephew )...lol
I am going to invest some quality time with it today after a gallon or two of caffeine...

The "blurry eyed"
Rooster

 

naw.. you don't want to do this, it's tedious and boring .....

seriously, with Dane's help, this Vid card is no light weight like I thought it might be. Compared to what you can get for Desktops,It is truly astounding how far the laptop industry has come in the last year. Amazing.

Rooster

 

I was planning to get started too, but for now I will leave it. There are already too many sources of time-consumption as it is

Yeah, been there before, and it is sooo boring

I actually don't use the desktop for gaming anymore. I don't keep it up to date as all my previous laptops were more than capable! And they allow me to game on the couch instead of at the (home)office.

 

No problem Rooster. Just so you guys know the clocks on my card are a completely different animal so don't use my clocks, you can use the same drivers but you guys have additional sp's on your card than I do so it's going to take to clocks differently. Another thing is I don't know if you guys have repasted your cards but I have Fujipoly pads and TX-4 paste in my rig not that Dell crap lol. I've been able to stably hit higher than those clocks but again it's a different animal.

Another thing you guys may want to try that got me my M15x bench record is try increasing by different incriments each time.For the M15x the magic number was 5mhz Core 15mhz Ram increases and I soon went over 1,000mhz core and bam! There's typically a magic ratio and number for each card and it takes some time to find but once you do your card will scream.

 

hi guys, i downloaded furmark v1.8.2. i run the stability test and ticked on the log GPU temp. run it for 20 minutes and the max temp was 66C while the average FPS were 40. is this the right test? :S its my first time using this program and i had no idea what to do lol.
or is it the benchmarking test? also what screen size size do i chose? i had 1440x900 in the stability test i did
thanks

 

Right now my desktop is the best paper weight I have, and the biggest
Rooster

 

Great info! I am compiling a "noob" instruction guide for guys like me and I will definitly add it to the "smart things to do" list.

I usually use the Kombuster (repackaged furmark test) and run the benchmark test in "full screen" mode, but Dane is the man to ask about what you should do and what type of test to run, so hopefully Dane will spill some info if we don't pester him too much...
Dane?
Rooster

 

LOL, don't know if I'm the man on any of this stuff, just an amateur who's had some experience lol. Kombuster is basically Furmark but for some reason Furmark tends to push the GPU a bit more at the same settings so if you're stress testing I've always used Furmark.

Furmark v 1.8.2 is a good one to use. The settings I've always used to truely push a GPU and to ensure that it will never go any higher in temps than a game can push it are these:

-Either 1280x1024 or Native Res
-MSAA at 4-8x
-XTreme Burning Mode checked
-Post FX enabled
-Stability test for 15mins to an hour

As I mentioned before DO NOT walk away during this test, I've seen cards go over 100 degrees if not cooled properly in the matter of a few mins. I ran this on my card and never went over high 70's so you should be good but monitor and shut down if you break mid 80's.

Dane

 

Yea, I'm gonna play some Civ V tonight until it gets to the usual 63 for a few mins, then I'll close out and see if it sticks around 50C again. If so, I'm going for the 266.44 modded also and doing the same. I didn't notice the higher idle temp with 266.44 but I didn't really use it much before switching to the betas.

 

ok boys, it's my time with furmark!

this is done with standard clock, driver version 266.44




this is the final version i choose, with clk 710, shader 1420, memory 911 (lol )



to compare with redlance result with same rez (mine is also a little larger)

i've done this




so i ask you, i don't understand much of those datas: how good is an improvment of around 380 points?

 

My only question splinter is why are you using Furmark as a benchmark? Furmark is designed primarily for stability testing and isn't quite as acurate as a synthetic benchmark as others like 3dmark.

 

when i try to install 3dmark he asks me if i want to install directx 9.0c, i say no; it abort install and i can't use it...it's normal?

 

You have to install DirectX 9 to use 3DMark06. 3DMark11 uses DX11, but I don't understand those funky scores.

 

You have to install it because it's a modified version of DX9 that is required to run their bench, is there a reason you don't want to install it?

 

i used 3dmark06 on my old pc and it bugged (i don't know how)the max res of screen, limiting it to 800 x 600.. i had to reinstall directx and .i don't want to repeat that thing