Best driver for 8600m GT for m1530?

I went onto www.laptopvideo2go.com but the latest driver they had was 169.xx. I read threads that had driver versions of 174.xx. Where can I get those drivers? I've been reading about overclocking the m1530, but I don't really want to shorten the lifespan of my graphics card with overheating issues. I don't have a cooler of any sort so I don't want to risk that. I just want the best driver to run games like Gears of War with very high settings and smooth fps.

Is the 174.xx driver better than the 169.xx? Does higher version usually mean better? Any kind of input would be great.

 

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/

 

I'm not sure what to look for

 

There are forum posts and polls about every single driver.

 

hmm so apparently 169.xx works best for laptops. I have 169.09 installed and Gears of War works really well. I don't have any marks but I did get ~10 more fps after the new driver. 169.28 and 169.25 were also highly recommended. I'll try these later.

 

I *highly* recommend using 174.31 from the Dell website. It requires no modded inf or any tweaking and I've heard no complaints. To get 174.31, do NOT use your service tag to get to the drivers page... just select any of the current Inspiron line and download the drivers package for the 8400M GS. NVidia uses a unified driver architecture and Dell has already set this package up to work on their machines. I realize you've got an XPS and not an Inspiron, but it works like a champ (and I netted several hundred 3dMarks worth of improvement over the stock 1530 drivers by making this change with no changes to stability).

This will save you all the time of mining through the literally hundreds of polls and forums on Laptopvideo2go. Good luck!

 

The way to find the best is to try some of the more popular releases for example I run 174.93 which gave me a ridiculously HUGE performance gain, but try 174.93/174.74/174.31/169.09/169.04/169.28

those are the "Bigger" releases

 

174.93 works great. use it both on my desktop and laptop.

best driver in 174 series

 

Try out 174.74 and what the others have said, 174.93. I know 174.74 is pretty solid (does give me a issue when OC'ing in WoW). But I have yet to try the 174.93, going to tonight and will do some 3dmark tests.

 

I tend not to trust the 3DMark06 - when I received my system with 169.x drivers from Dell 3DMark06 score was 4359 as an average of 3 runs. I upgraded to 174.31 from Dell and it went up to 4684 as an average of 3 runs. Upgraded the OS to Vista SP1 and with 174.31 the score was 4003 as an average of 3 runs. Now I have the forceware 174.93 beta drivers from laptopvideo2go and am averaging in 3996. My overall video/gaming performance, however, increased.

 

Personally I'm using 169.12, I believe this is the latest version for x64 platform (correct me if I'm wrong though) as of yet.

My 3dMarks06 score got bumped by about 20 points (@~4360 now) when I moved from the x86 Vista with stock driver to Vista SP1 x64 with the new one.

 

QFA.

Sorting out all the hits & misses of incremental point release drivers from LV2G is an exercise in frustration and very counterproductive, imo.

 

Thanks man. That's a great tip. I installed these drivers and now i get 4705 3dmarks with no OC (vs. around 4300 pts. with the stock drivers). An ever so choice driver

 

Glad to hear it worked for you - you got a much better score than I did with a very similar rig, so now I'm a teensy bit jealous .

 

theres a thread in the gaming section praising the 174.74 for its overclockablility has anyone tried the 174.93 after using 174.74 and compared their oc'ing results? i'm interested getting my m1530 in under 2 weeks

 

Yeah, we got quite similar systems. On the first run of 3dmark06 I got 4697 pts though. Seems to vary from time to time... but 8 pts really are marginal... Btw how many points did you get?

 

I have an XPS m1530 with the Nvidia 8600 GT and downloaded both 174.93 and 174.31. When I unzipped either of them, go into the newly creaated uncompressed folder and double click on the Setup application file, it starts up the NVidia splash screen like it is going to install, then I get a message that there is no associtated hardware for this dirver.

Is there a trick to this? I first unistalled the stock driver, but when I restrarted windows reinstalled it.

Got the driver upgrades from laptopvideo2go

 

open up the original INF's folder/archive and extract nvdm.inf to the base directory (where setup.exe is) nvdm.inf contains the modded INFs for dell laptops

goodluck

 

I can do a search, but where would the original Dell NVidia INF be? in the System 32 or other windows folder, or in the Dell Drivers folders?

 

You could just as easily get the 174.31 driver from Dell's site via the M1330 updates. No need to fool around with INF's and such. Yes, the M1330 driver WILL work with the M1530!

 

Is it OK to overwrite the older driver? Or should I first remove the older and then install the new one?

 

Remove first is the best policy.

 

How to do it best?

 

Hey, go to device manager, and then click the 'display adapters' tab, then right click your video card and click 'Uninstall'. .

 

And use driver sweeper.

 

You know I found the 174.31 to be a little slower then 174.74 and a fair chunk slower then 175.70

 

I opened my new M1530 ran 3Dmark06 all default at: 4135

Than I installed SP1. 3Dmark06 at : 4399

Then installed Driver 174.31 from Dell site. 3dmark06: 4705

Ran it again since & got : 4708

Not had any problems & not tryed any other drivers as i feel no need to

 

So from what I'm reading, the vista SP1 has lower marks than no SP1..

 

Just curious. For some reason, Dell hasn't updated the Vostro drivers since last year. Will the M1330 driver work on the Vostro 1500 without a modified INF?

 

Think u got it backwards there. SP1 rose his score about 300 points or so.
teslas

 

You should be able to. The drivers are not based on the system but based on the GPU itself.

 

But I'm talking about this guy, his 3dmark is lower after he installed SP1..

 

Yeah, it depends. really. Dunno why, but most people that reformat have had abnormal screen flashes that occur during startup that were otherwise not there before reformat. it may have something to do with drivers, but the fact that there are still people who have this problem and there being threads about which drivers to install after reformatting and that still hasn't fixed the problem, I would not recommend reformatting.

SP1 I would install regardless. Despite possible lower 3D mark scores, which is what most people have, the benefits outweigh a slight decrease in number.