169.01 Low Vista Rating

I noticed after upgrading the graphics card(8600m GT) drivers to 169.01 for Vista x64, my vista rating shot down from like a 5.2 for gaming graphics to a 4.2. Also under the normal usage/desktop graphics its now at a 3.0. 3dmark 06 scores however have gone up, dunno if that really matters. There now at 3124 with default settings. Last of all, I noticed a slight choppyness in the interface as if its running on lower framerates than it should when executing certain animations(such as opening/closing windows). I was just wondering if anyone else noticed these abnormalities?

 

First off, the Vista Rating system is meaningless, never use it. If your 3DMark 06 Scores went up that is a good sign its a stable driver. (Though as we all know, 3dMark 06 doesn't necessarily reflect actual gaming)

As far as the driver issues did you install the driver properly?

1. Uninstall Previous Driver
2. Boot Into Safe Mode
3. Run Driver Cleaner Pro
4. Run CCleaner
5. Reboot Into Normal Mode & Install New Drivers

If you didn't do it this way, I highly suggest you do.

 

I know in general the vista rating system is meaningless, but... such a significant drop has to mean something doesnt it? I mean its not just a few points were talking about here. As for the interface lag(which i assume is what u ment when u said "driver issues"), I did install properly (though I used Driver Sweeper instead of Driver Cleaner and didn't use CCleaner). I can reinstall the drivers though, see if that changings anything; though i doubt it will.

 

Thats because your card is running on 2D mode.

Try download RivaTuner, them you will see that you core, shader and mems frequencies are lowered.

 

So why is it running on 2D mode, and why would this new driver suddenly force it to run on 2D? If the fact that 2D mode is giving subpar interface performance, shouldnt it run on 3D mode with higher clocks?

 

You're not alone. Mine went down as well but only the graphics score. Like yours, it dropped to 3.0. My 3d gaming score is still fine though. Must be a driver bug.

 

Do you experience the interface choppiness too? Its clearly evident when opening a new application (such as internet explorer). It wont be a smooth transition if u know what i mean. Anyway good to know someone else has the same issue. I'm pretty confident that the interface lag and the desktop graphics score are related.

 

I personally know vistas test is not a real benchmark but more of a "look up the numbers" test. It looks at your hardware and when it figures out what it is, it assignes points based on a chart of how good that hardware is.

I found this out when I got my notebook. My desktop has a Opteron 148 overclocked to 2.8ghz. In every cpu application and benchmark it was tieing a 1.6ghz dual core for notebooks. It just so happened that 1.6ghz dual core = 2.8ghz single core in processing power. The big differrence tho is the dual core can only equal the same processing power in complete optimal situations when both cores are used to the max. Only a few games are optimised for dual core and same with applications. So most of the time the single core would be better. At the very least tho you would call them equal.

Know what vista says tho? Gives the 1.6ghz dual core a 5.x rating while my Opteron gets a 4.2.


And just yesterday I have a new expample with the video card. In my C90 my vista rating was a 4.2 because my video card was the lowest score. The 512mb 8600gt DDR2 got a 4.2 under 3d graphics and thus was my lowest score.

I traded it out for the 256mb 8600gt GDDR3 and it has a major driver issue right now where unless you use the stock drivers it cuts performance in half. Well I was using newer 163.75 drivers so my 3dmark score went from 4000 to 2000, all my games fps was cut in half. I could noticibly see a huge performance issue like other c90 users have had with the new card unless they use the stock drivers. Guess what vista says tho?

the score went from a 4.2 on the video card to a 5.6!!! even tho real life performance was nearly half.

Lesson learned I hope for anybody that actully uses this as a benchmark of sorts. Also you can even manually change your score if you want, easy directions online. (so if you ever have vista say you cant play a game you know you can, you can change it to get permission to play)

 

Your logic seems to make sence. But it really isn't the score that bothers me much. What annoys me is the interface lag, I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing that or knows a possible solution?

 

Yeah I know what you mean. I notice is sporadicly. Like right now I see no lag but sometimes I do. Doesn't bother me much since it doesn't happen much or I got used to it but right now definitely no lag.

 

Cant say I have. I actully just installed 169.01 to see if its compatible with the 8600gt 256mb on the c90. My vista score stayed the same (had to test that for this thread) and I am running 3dmark06 now to see if its going to give me the close to 4000 points the stock driver does or the 2000 points all the other drivers do. Its on the last test now.

update: 2500 points so yeah so far only the stock drivers work.

 

Ok, well I'm not sure why I'm getting it then. And its not sporadic for me, I have it ALL the time, ever since I installed the driver. Meanwhile, I'm gonna try to keep this thread going for any new information.

 

Make sure you do a good install process.


Uninstall old drivers --> reboot into safe mode --> install new drivers --> reboot again.

This is the normal way I do things, but if your having problems I highly suggjest that you add in an extra step and run drivercleanerpro or drivercleaner.net (the new version of it) to take out all of the residual files that can often cause problems like you just mentioned.

 

As someone said, i am sure this is because clock-scaling finally works with Vista (although, it is not perfect as far as I observed). So far, I have no complaint about 169.01. And I cannot wait for Rivatuner 2.06 so I can set separate clock for ROP/Shader!

 

Yeah the scaling works it droped temps by a good margin idle. may even give extra battery life and stuff too, but who knows how much.

 

Maybe you are experiencing this problem

from lv2go main page

"Just been trying to sort an issue with 169.01 and powermizer.

This driver with Powermizer enabled only sets the clocks to 3D low power settings in the case of the go7900GS this is 199/300Mhz.
Powermizer will not go into any other mode than this.

So no 2D low power mode or 3D performance mode sad.gif"



Disabling powermizer maybe or reading up on the fix on the lv2go site. Also anyone know how I can check if my setup stays in low 3d and never goes into other modes??

 

nmonitor will show your clocks.

From there run 3dmark or something you will see them go up just as the program starts.

Other than that you will see horrible game performance, and your 3dmark scores will be super low.

 

what modes are their for the 8600M GT

in rivatuner overclocking i only have 2d standard, low power 3d and performance 3d

shouldnt i have a low power 2d as well??

 

no, 2d takes low power already

 

So basicly what ur saying is theres a bug with the driver where its 2d or low3d clock scores are abnormally low causing interface lag? At leats thats what I'm gathering from this thread so far. If so how do I fix it (without switching drivers obviously).

 

no no

its just that some users, mainly those on vista x64 have a problem with these drivers where when powermizer is enabled the system always stays in low 3d mode, never goes up to performance 3d for games nor into low power 2d when doing nothing.


not a lot of people have this problem, way to check is to monitor your clocks using ntune (rivatuner does it too but the new version reports wrong numbers for some people). run a game side by side the clock meter, the clocks should change, if they dont you have this bug too

 

can 169.01 be used with 6 series graphic card? and if u dont play crysis?

 

Ok I found out the problem. Using ntune to monitor my clocks, everything was adjusting accordigly. The problem is when it goes to "2d" the lowest clock rating, it is at 168/100. As soon as this happens and I use the aero interface it doesnt update the clock spped before the window opens. So I'm guessing its not fast enough for the aero interface at those clock speeds (hence the lag). That also explains why its this driver specificly since the others didnt have the powermizer enabled.

 

I can't say I've noticed any interface lag and my in-game performance is great. Only thing I've noticed is the WEI score drop

 

same problem here with a Toshiba X205-SLi1, get a big whopping 3.0 down from 4.8.... graphics before were 5.9 and 5.3, but now 3.0 and 3.9.... yet 3dmark06 went up and games play great.... also tried overclocking 2d and 3d performance, didn't change the score here... on a side note of wierdness, my RAM score went from 4.8 to 5.0... wierd, ha

 

on a slightly offtopic question, does anyone know how to let rivatuner correct clock speeds on startup for vista x64

 

When you say use the aero interface you mean flip 3d? because aero is eather off or on. Its in effect all the time. However lots of people in the past have issues with flip 3d lagging for a multitude of reasons.

Ram, GPU Power, ect. If thats what your talking about there are several fixes you can find in the vista tweak threads that reduce the demand of flip 3d on your system but still keep its looks and function in tact.

For me the huge drop in temps would be worth it for abit of lag when starting flip 3d. Plus while I liked it at first I find that I never use it anymore. I am a standard alt+tab user or click the taskbar.

 

Not not flip 3d. I mean the quick .5-1second animation that occurs when u open a window from minimization or opening it and creating it if that makes sence. To see what i mean just go to the start menu and click on control panel. If you have aero enabled there should be this sorta translucent animation that happens as the window maximizes onto the screen. That's what is laggy.

P.S. I agree, flip 3d is cool; but i never notice myself using it either

 

The 169.04 drivers fixed this for me. Back to a 4.8 rating.

 

Downloading now, gonna see if it fixes that plus the interface lag

 

i seem to have interface lag on 169.04 as well. checking rivatuner for my clocks it seems it stays on its low powered state when minimising and maximising windows but jumps up when you toggle flip3d. first time when doing flip3d it lags but after the first it gets smooth as it shows my clocks go back to normal. anyone tried with the 169.09 drivers?

 

Sure Vista score it's not so important but i ensure that passing from a 5 to a 3.5 aero score (7600gs after my 7600gt broke) make vista mooore slow opening windows and during flip effect,so it has a little importance for the OS maybe not for gaming...

 

I used the 169.04 i found them to be alittle slower in TF2 so i switched back to 169.01 which work the best for me.
Good luck!