Drivers for GeForce 8600M GT on XPS M1530 - Driver Links in Post #1

** Update to nVidia Laptop Driver Release ** Updated: December 27, 2008

Clicking here takes you to the nVidia Page

Latest Driver from Dell - Release Date: 10/23/2008

v176.44 ; 32bit Vista

http://support.us.dell.com/support/...eid=R200183&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=277429

v176.44 ; 64bit Vista

http://support.us.dell.com/support/...eid=R200184&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=277435


** Updated this post with driver links below **

A million threads out there, but I thought of having a kind of poll to know the best drivers as of today to be used on GeForce 8600m GT in Dell XPS M1530. Note that I am asking specifically to this video card and system. Also, given that we have had this huge issue with faulty nVidia cards and the subsequent release of a BIOS update for Dell Systems that make the fan run faster, there were many people with many different opinions / experiences and recently I found the topic veering towards the kind of driver used and the temperatures being seen. Hence I would like to know what people think in general.

PLEASE, take a few seconds just to vote on the drivers you are using right now or which you think is good enough. Also please post in one line if there was any *major* problem with any drivers you faced and not any minor issues or differences in benchmarks and stuff. (I am saying this because there are so many specific threads out there where we are discussing specific issues . Hence I would like this thread to be a common consensus / idea / hint for newbies or for people who are confused like me with the millions of drivers out there.

PS., I know each driver is specific for certain programs, certain games and each of them give rise to new issues probably, as said in the laptopvideo2go community forum. So this thread / topic / poll is for a common idea about the driver people are using right now (and particularly, people who have been using these drivers for quiet a while without updating to other versions.) This way I think we will have a good idea about the most common drivers running out there in the world with people voting for it

Thanks a lot for your time and please give a few seconds to vote. I am sure this is going to help a lot of people

Thank you very much once again.

Note: I have made this poll public, because I thought if anyone has any specific queries about a given driver, they could probably ask the people who voted for it to get more details / more precise answers. Thanks for your understanding.

UPDATE

I thought I will update this thread / first post with links to the drivers used widely for 8600M GT in XPS M1530. This is because there were people asking for links or which drivers.

I am going to link the drivers to both the DELL page as well the laptopvideo2go page.

* I am not giving any assurances that the drivers linked here are the best available. Some may work for some people, while they would show up new issues for others.

** I am not saying the original .inf files are better or the modded .inf's are better. The choice is the end user's. You decide for yourself what works best for you.

*** First I am going to link the most popular / widely used drivers along with the original Dell Driver version 156.63 that usually comes shipped with the laptop. I will get the other links slowly as and when is appropriate or if someone asks specifically for it.

**** ALL these links are for Vista 32-bit version. I will get the 64-bit links later if someone wants specifically. It takes some time for me to link those separately. Sorry for that. But its easy even from here. If you want a 64 bit version, just click on these links and just search with the driver name on top of the dell page or go back to the main thread in the laptopvideo2go where you will find the 64-bit version of the same. Sorry again, but I will get those links later. Bit pressed now

***** Please check post #80 in page 8 from Crash for a suggestion on WHQL drivers. Please remember to check if the drivers you are downloading / wanting to use have this certificate because I learnt you need this for Bluray / HD playback or at least 'better' playback. So keep an eye out on this and check it carefully before you chose

****** If there is any other driver version which anyone thinks is worth being linked here, and that which works pretty well for this particular system / graphics card, please let me know or just post the links and I will be more than happy to update it here Cheers.

Okie dokie, here goes... have fun

~~~~~~~~o000~~~(o)^(o)~~~000o~~~~~~~~

156.63 from DELL

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=6&fileid=227505

Note: You can also get this driver from the "Drivers and Downloads" section in Dell website by searching for the model or with your service tag.

174.31 From DELL

http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=dhs&c=us&l=en&cs=19&k=R180763&cat=sup&x=0&y=0

174.31 from laptopvideo2go

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17737

175.97 from DELL

http://support.us.dell.com/support/...eid=R194005&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=267722

175.97 from laptopvideo2go

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19274

174.74 from DELL

http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=us&l=en&cs=&k=R184832&cat=sup&x=0&y=0

http://support.us.dell.com/support/...eid=R184832&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=252600

174.74 from laptopvideo2go

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18049

174.74 from nVidia

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_174.74.html

177.35 from laptopvideo2go

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19109

177.66 from laptopvideo2go

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19571

175.19 from nVidia

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_175.19_whql.html

175.19 from laptopvideo2go

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19307

175.19 from DELL, but from a different driver page - This I found in 175.01 driver page, but in the "Additional information" section where they say, "Download latest Dell Performance Driver (limited Dell Testing. Vendor version 175.19)"

http://support.us.dell.com/support/...eid=R187265&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=256232

Direct download link >> ftp://ftp1.us.dell.com/video/NVIDIA_GEFORCE-8800-ULTRA_P03_R192012.EXE

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Hm, well I'm not sure what drivers are the best for 8600M GT, but right now I'm using stable v177.35 drivers.
But I'm willing to change if there are better ones.

Though my card is overclocked (500/1050/750) the temps are a little too high. :/

 

Whatever the Dell ones that come by default out of the box, I have and works perfectly. Assasins Creed at max settings looks gorgeous!

 

So can I assume you are with v156.63??

 

6 Votes till now Thanks a lot people... and come on guys, the others There are so many out here. Its beginning to look good, don't you think so? A few seconds, just a single click for your vote people.. Thanks in advance.

 

Not entirely sure which drivers they are, but under device manager under Driver Details it says:

Driver Version: 7.15.11.5669

 

Thank you for your reply.

Thats v156.69 then

 

Nice 8 votes and already pretty diverse choices out there. At the moment, 174.31 is the one in front. Interesting. And please keep dropping in to vote, people Thanks a lot.

 

Its pretty inaccurate at this point in time since there really hasn't been many votes... I have heard people talk about the latest drivers having reduced heat and slightly better performance, though for others, some of the drivers have been very problematic.

I just stick with the out of the box since I have been getting spectacular performance with it.

Have you done any gaming yourself fonduekid? How have your gaming experiences been?

 

Yeah well, you are right that its pretty inaccurate at the moment.. but the information is growing and I am aware of the facts you mentioned like some drivers reducing heat and some of them being problematic and so on.. Thats why I thought it would be nice to know the driver version most are using without any problems as such.

As for me, I have done wow, crysis and cod4.. I would say I am happy with it and no problems for me so far.. temperatures stay within limits, peaking around 75-77 before A09. But now after the update to A09 from A08, I haven't gamed much myself.. but I guess in any case, the fan kicks in at 65-66, so I am not sure about this. But as for other behavior with the graphics cards and this driver, no problems at all!

In fact I had 156.63 (out of the box) for quiet a while, and by chance I updated the driver to 174.31.. Did not see any major, life-changing difference between these two though.. 174.31 seemed a little better!!!

 

174.74 Here. Only drivers that fixes my stuttering from spell effects.

 

Ah really??? There was a guy who was asking about this. I wonder if it was here or in the laptopvideo2go community forum. Let me check and probably I will give him this tip. Thanks mate, for your time

Btw, the poll looks good. Thanks a lot people. Keep them coming Would be nice to build a big poll result / base here

 

An interesting fact from a friend who told me this personally: Thought it might be useful for whoever wants to know more, and probably there might be people here who know about it already, so please don't come up with "ah, old news" and similar... ;-) ;-P lol. I just want to share this here so that others who are not informed could benefit. Anyway, Here goes...

*****
Hey... First thing you need to know is about driver signing. As far as the driver is concerned, it’s signed by Nvidia. They are saying that the driver has been tested and found to be stable. Now as you know 174.74 is stable, and a pretty good driver (for games)

Now because the majority of laptop users don’t play games, Nvidia only release WHQL driver versions that are good for movie playback.

If you want to be able to play games, then I would change to an unsigned driver. 174.74 and recently 177.66 are the best for this. I'm using 177.66 for games.

For movie playback go to this link. It’s a WHQL driver from dell (175.97). Fantastic for movie playback (no screen tearing, which you may have noticed by using other drivers)

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=6&fileid=261031

Its actually for the inspiron 1720. But it uses the same GPU (8600GT) (also I think the M1330 come with this driver).
*****

 

*edited out*

 

Mine came with 174.31 (and probably so did many others), and that is probably why it's leading the poll.

 

175.75

only x64 driver from Dell that also works with BluRay (from Precision M4300 with Quadro FX 360M downloads)

 

I downloaded 175.97 like a month ago and my 3dmark06 score went up ~300 points over the stock drivers. GRID and Devil May Cry 4 looks very good without the weird jittery gameplay I used to have. You can find the 175.97 on the m1330 download and drivers page since it wasn't on the m1530. The driver is both for the 8400 and the 8600...I believe.

 

Anyone mind comparing v174.31 and v175.97 to see which is better?

 

I am running with 175.80. It was posted with the highest 3D benchmark and it has not crash my system yet.

 

I use the 175.63, i generaly go for what is newest on tweakforce...

 

Althouh the new 177.73 scored more 3DMark06 points than 177.66,
overall, 177.66 currently the best driver for me.

I found out that 177.66 is bit cooler because the Powermizer downclock the GPU earlier/faster than other drivers but during gaming no problem with downclock.

3DMark06 no oc 1280 x 800
174.31 4686
174.74 4684
175.19 4694
175.97 4755
177.41 4705
177.66 4813
177.73 4847

 

That is some pretty good results
I get 4246 @ 1280x800 with 174.74 and with 174.93 i get around 42xx.


I have the XPS 1530 aswell, how do you get those high scores ? - do you run XP ? (I'm on vista)

 

Nice scores.. Thank you very much for the post and comparisons

With 174.31 I got 4723 (system specs in my signature; this is not a tweaked / modded driver. Its from Dell with the original .inf)

 

Yes, you are right This driver is for both. And I know of so many who use this on their M1530 without any problems. Wonder when Dell will get this out for M1530. Hmm

http://search.euro.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=uk&l=en&cs=&k=R190091&cat=sup&x=0&y=0

 

*edit out*

 

I'm also on Vista (32-bit). Just make sure you use Driver Sweeper when installing different driver.
BTW, what is your CPU?

 

I upgraded to the 174.31 found on LaptopVideo2Go. Where is the official Dell one you mention? Only the 15x.xx is located at Dell's support site:

Dell M1530 Drivers
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...ystemID=XPS_M1530&os=WLH&osl=en&catid=&impid=

GFX Card Drivers
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=6&fileid=227505

 

I think I saw/got it from the Inspiron 1720 / M1330 drivers page but that which had the same video card (just like what happened with 175.97, and why one of the guys was cribbing so much about Dell being late to release these drivers for M1530)!!! Anyway, Let me check. And even in the laptopvideo2go forum driver thread, you can see that this was released by Dell too. As I said, let me check for which system did they release this. I kinda forgot.

** Edit: **

Ah ok, here goes - http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=dhs&c=us&l=en&cs=19&k=R180763&cat=sup&x=0&y=0

http://support.us.dell.com/support/...eid=R180763&formatcnt=1&libid=0&fileid=246509

 

I'm using the 175.97 driver for the M1330...it really improved performance. My bios is version A09, and average gpu temp went from 62 degrees to 51. I hesitated installing a m1330 driver for my 1530, but it worked great.

 

174.31 is good driver but when I want to create a custom resolution, NVIDIA Control Panel always crash.
This also happen after I fresh installed Vista (reformat).

fonduekid do have this problem?

 

Many say this, that it works great. I guess I will try this out some time soon (I don't remember exactly if this is the driver, but last time I tried one from the 175.xx series, I got an error saying hardware not supported!!! Guess it must have been something else.)

 

Nope, never. I have been messing around with this resolution thing many times over, but never has it crashed on me. In fact, the nVidia panel never crashed for any reason, and I even recently installed nTune (just for the heck of it, and for knowing what it does), but I did not have any crash.

Btw, Have you got SP1 on (just a thought, don't know if its directly related to the control panel crash)?

 

mine is SP1. other drivers have no problem with NVIDIA CP
but it's ok because i'm using 177.66 now.

 

I don't know of the others. May be someone using v175.97 (which seems to be used equally as 174.31) could drop in a word if they had some similar issues. Lets see..

Btw, how is 177.66? No problems? Did you get it from laptopvideo2go and with the modded inf or whatever? Thanks.

 

yep, i got it from laptopvideo2go.
from my opinion, 177.66 is better than 175.97. after you download and extract the driver, search the original.zip folder.
extract it and use the nvdm.inf
this for Dell OEM inf.

unfortunately 177.66 dont have WHQL, so it cannot play blu-ray disc.

 

Thanks. So you did *not* use the modded inf?

Btw, are you sure about the WHQL thing? http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19571 says MS WHQL certificate is there!!!

Anyways, I don't have a blu-ray drive but would still like to clarify. Thanks.

 

From my experience, for OEM drivers, if you use the OEM inf rather than modded inf, it will boost bit extra performance.

Last time for when I used 174.74 (also OEM), using Dell inf gave extra 150 points for 3DMark06.

WHQL is really confusing thing but when you replace the inf with different inf it will lose the WHQL.
I think 177.66 WHQL is for only for Acer (nvac.inf) but not for others.

One more thing, 177 series driver have PureVideo function at NVIDIA Control Panel.
You can use Edge Enhancement and Noise Reduction for video playback. Watching DVD will give some effect with it.

 

Thanks for your post.

So, can I assume you mean the Dell inf (the one you used) does not have WHQL? And what if one uses the modded inf? Is it just losing those 150 points or any other major issues?

 

I used to have a modded one from laptop2govideo website and my score from stock drivers went up to a little over 100 and had 0 problems except that it ran a bit more hot than the stock. Then I was searching around and found the 175.97 drivers on the dell website, so I did a clean install of everything and it runs a lot cooler, never going above 79c when playing GRID and DMC4 for hours. The highest temp I've gotten was 83c when running PCMark05 and 3dmark06. I don't know about the WHQL thing, but from my experiences, using the modded infs runs a bit hotter than ones on the dell website.

 

Thats very true, I guess. The fact that 175.97 is reported to run a lot more cooler and the fact that modded infs run hotter than the ones from Dell. Hmmm.... Guess I wanna try this. Thanks for your post. Nice information.

Edit: By the way, does the DDR2 or DDR3 make any difference in chosing the drivers?! :-( I don't know much about these things. Please let me know. Thanks

 

174.74, Scores 6000-6050 or so, but thats the resolution it drops to for the 1400x900 screens

 

He gets high scores because he is running at 1280x800 because his computer doesn't support the default 1280x1024. If you have the 1680x1050, or 1920x1200 screen then 3DMark06 will run at 1280x1024 on the default test.

 

Yes, 177.66 Dell inf don’t have WHQL. I think if you use modded inf also should be no problem.

Modded inf function is basically to add more support for more GPUs range, so that you can force install the driver for your GPU.

But I believe OEM inf have extra codes for their respective GPUs. Different GPUs have different characteristics (Powermizer setting etc).
Beyond this out of my knowledge

I installed 177.66 using Dell inf so I don’t know whether it have same effect as 174.74. I’m lazy to do comparison

 

He only got 4200 on the lowered resolution, I score over 6k. But im always overclocking :-D

 

Good question. I'm not sure, so I'm gonna go with not as much. If it does make a difference, it should be minimal since it's virtually the same technology just that DDR3 runs at a higher memory speed.
Look here:
http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2989&p=2

 

Thank you very much for your reply and the link.. was very useful. I was just wondering about this since last time I tried one of the 175.xx drivers, it failed with some error message.

Anyways Thanks.

 

just upgraded from 174.31 --> 177.73, all good =)

GPU temp seem to b at constant 65 C now.. so a tad hotter then 174.31, old drive fluctuate around 56 C

 

Thanks for your post. Interesting.

Any specific reason why you wanted to upgrade? As in did you hear about something special with this driver or did you come across something? Thanks in advance

 

I just wanted to make sure, Fonduekid, the drivers link you linked to is for the M1330, which has the 8400GS. Are you sure that is the right one?

It would be great if someone can explain to me why the drivers for the 8400GS would be compatible with the 8600GT.

 

Forte, you are right. They are linked in the M1330 drivers page. But if you check the other link, the search result link, there you will find that this driver is for 8400M GS and GT and 8600M GT.. .

*Edited out - Please see the next post by crash. Sorry for any inconvenience*

http://search.euro.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=uk&l=en&cs=&k=R190091&cat=sup&x=0&y=0

http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=us&l=en&cs=&k=R180763&cat=sup&x=0&y=0

In fact there are many wondering why dell still doesnt have this driver update for M1530 but just for M1330!!! And a guy was almost killing the dell bloggers in direct2dell just for this lag in M1530 driver updates.

As for your second part, one possible answer is with this codename thing. As for technical details, I don't know. Have to wait for an expert to enlighten us I guess.