174.12 released!

Xp 32-Bit

Vista 32-Bit

First impressions: Flickering issue in 173.90 is gone! Performance is good in this driver! I recommend it. I'll post more later, when I'm done testing

 

thanks, will try it out

 

I have't try these yet, but according to 173.80: There should be some nice additions to the Nvidia control panel, such as Max Frame to prerender now is a standard option, and the individual program 3D profile now can be selected to show only the ones install on the PC.

 

Trying this out right now, people on those forums are saying it improves performance greatly

 

yeah that what i saw too, im trying it out and will post back and see if it changes anything

edit: could play 1024x768 on high (crysis) at 20-30fps b4, now its about 25-44fps

I can also play it smoothly at 1280x800 on high(my smoothly is about 18-23fps)

 

Why go with these drivers and not the 167 or 169? All I know is that the 167 are laptop preffered and the 169 are desktop preferred.

174 are better, I suppose?

 

are you certain the 167 are laptop ??? what are the best 167 ? , a lot of people on here use 169 so im not sure about that ??


i was using 169.04 for a while, and currently 169.28

ive downloaded these 174 and will test them out


anyone got results for dell and 8600m gt with these ? any good improvements ?

 

Which driver did you use before? I'am using the 169.09 and tried a lot of others but keep going back to the 169.09..

 

it was the the 174 series, not sure which one, but this one is a big improvement...WIC at 1440x900 everything on highest setting, everything ticked on the bottom part, 2xAA and 2X AF is very smooth now, wasnt before.

 

I'm so damn confused with all these different series of drivers.... I know the 169 stuff is Nvidia beta drivers..but what the heck are these 174 ones?

 

proberly a new beta series designet to be optimized for the upcomming 9xxx series.

 

Thanks for the update! Just installed.

 

This driver has brightness issues. Below %30 is all the same.

 

what about digital vibrance? I can't live without it.

 

No problems so far.

 

Thx. + Rep. I don't care if i get a boost in performance if dv doesn't work.

 

right in the machine in my sig

i tested before and after a full clean instal of these drivers ,i gained 100 3d mark points, and my graphics and areo performance scores went up by 1 point each and my total windows score went up by a point

ive not tested them in a game yet but i had a little test on cod4 before uninstalling with fraps running,and im going to play the exact same part again and do the same to see what the difference in game performance is like

 

Get back to us Polsta!! I gotta see the difference in COD4 performance.

 

Good I was looking for a good driver for my new laptop as soon as i get it.

 

Just to confirm.
1. Download the new driver and modded inf and extract
2. Uninstall graphics drivers via device manager
3. Restart in SafeMode
4. Install new drivers
Or do they update themselves like the steps in LV2G because I keep getting bluescreen even though I am following the steps
Or can I run it from setup.exe in the folder once I've changed the inf?

 

It is like you mentioned. The restart steps will be asked after uninstalling the old drivers and after installing the new one.

 

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17552

X64 version it out, you need to manually edit your inf file for now though

 

Whey, I finally worked out how not to get a BSOD, third time lucky I s'pose. It hasn't changed my WEI score at all however when gaming, FPS seems to go up by about 3ish, which is a good improvement for someone with an IGP

 

I am still on 169.04, as that is the only driver that I have used, other than the stock dell one.

 

Anyone reported stability issues with this new 17xx series driver yet? The performance increases are tempting but I'm not ready to switch over from 169.28 yet.

 

Is it just me or does the downloaded driver not work for everyone? After I download the driver, it shows up as a zip file and I can't extract anything...

 

Click the download link two times. The first time it just downloaded a small 100KB file. The second time it was the proper 60MB driver.

 

I did download the 60MB driver...

 

This driver got me a nice boost in my PC Wizard benchmark from 3477.05(173.65) to 3566.60.

There was also no issue with playing videos since 173.16

Will try games later

 

doesn't overclock

 

do these work with the 8800M?..everything besides the 167.43 cuts my performance & scores in half.

 

right people heres my expirience from today ,check my machine in sig

ive spent the last few hours testing various games and things on my machine on 3 different drivers

previously i used 169.04 when i 1st got my machine in november

and since 169.28 was released ive been using them , i got 3880 3d mark before i uninstalled

so i downloaded the 174.12 today, and gave them a try , 1st impressions were a windows score increase by 1 point, and 100 3d mark points to 3964

all good, so i set about testing cod 4, and it wasnt good, it wasnt smooth when just moving the gun pointing around and it was choppy, and the game performance was not great at all , i tried rainbow 6 vegas, a game id been playing a lot over the last few weeks, and again it wasnt smooth and struggled, some of the textures were a bit funny also

so after reading someone said 167 were laptop aimed drivers, and the 169 were desktop aimed, so i thought id try them out as id never tried

so i lookd at the 167 series and comments and they were good ,and i downloaded 167.45 dell ones from laptop2go http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=16311

i got 3880 3d mark the same as 169.28

and in cod4 the performance was better than both the 169.28 and 174.12, it looked exactly the same in texture etc, but ran smoother and was great

i tried vegas out, and that was great too, even looked nicer and ran smoother

just thought id share that with you all, and recomend those who have a dell and 8600gt who have never tried, should try the 174.12 for themselves , then test the 167.45 after and see what you think !!

im going to give these 167.45 a lot more testing for a few days and see how they fare on other games and extended periods of play !

my view is the 174 as we know are beta drivers, they have got some parts right ie improving scores, but there needs to be some improvements in game so maybe another 174 release will soon follow

 

YES, finally, thats what was wrong, since upgrading my driver to this one my W40K Dark Crusade problem is gone, it runs very smoothly now and the text is nice and clear.
Thx n0elia, for bringing this driver to my attention. Here, have some rep

 

I haven't been able to do testing yet but I can say that my battery life as improved a lot (well, on a c90s, it would negligeable on another notebook lol).

I'm currently at 1h29-91% I used to get 1h25-100%

 

well once again this driver doesnt work well with the 8800m gtx, 3dmark06 with the 167.43 scores went from 9200 > 5099 with the 174.12. I guess they arent going to have anything work well this card for a while.

 

This driver is a bit faster when loading games and gives me an additional (though not really acurrate) 1 FPS in Halo 2

Also This driver can run the games that i cannot really play with an overclocked Shader.

Quite a good driver

 

Best Driver so far! Very stable and so far I've only tried Crysis. Frames became higher and felt much smoother, from 169.09

 

Interesting results, Polsta! I think I'll give the 167.45 driver a try.
+rep for your work.

 

I have noticed the exact same thing. I installed 167.57 for xp 32 bit and cod is much smoother, my 3dmark score went up, and games run extremelly smooth.

 

What alot of you guys miss sometimes is the fact that cod is smoother because your fps has dropped. I know quite a few people who this happened to. You might be looming in a fps range where a boost will make you jump over 60 fps and cause tearing. Or you could be in the range that going indoors gives you enough of a boost to cause tearing. Thus your performance has actually improved but the tearing might be confused for stuttering and poor performance.

use fraps and use a very demanding game, that makes your a game crawl. Crysis is a good benchmark for this. Or actually just watch your fps on any game and see if your jumping above 60. I'm not saying this is the case for all. BUt I noticed this with cod4 and have led others to the same conclusion.

 

thanks man ,,let us know how you get on !!

 

If I didn't read this, I might have just uninstalled 174.12

 

Yup. Then you'll have to use v-sync but some of the newer drivers give a nice enough boost that its ok using v-sync and you do get a boost for all your games. I'm using 173.65 and find them to be good and will give 174.12 a shot.

I personally fell for this before too when my cod4 began stuttering but I realized that it was actually tearing, which wasn't as obvious as in some other games. then I used fraps and indeed my fps went up and I just needed to use v-sync. Especially running between indoors and outdoors constantly will cause alot of tearing which can appear to be stuttering since going indoors gives a big boost in fps which will most likely jump you over 60 fps.

 

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

Using 169.32 drivers: 68 FPS
Using 174.12 drivers: 70 FPS

These are the only drivers I have ever used that actually resulted in an increase in the Lost Coast benchmark.

As The Forerunner mentioned, be careful with vSync options, they can make the game feel very different if they are turned on or off.

 

i used fraps for all testing !!! and played the same level - the safehouse level where you start outside at the garage, and then get insice bits aswell as heavy fighting and people all over

i have just been playing vegas more, and theres a definate improvement with these 167 drivers over the 169

im not 100% on this but colors look a tiny better and a tad more vibrant in game

i had acouple of games on pes 2008 ,and there was also a tiny improvment in the look of the game and the replays seemed a tough smoother as did close ups, the colors looked superb

i had a go on crysis for about 10 mins and that seemed great too, il have a go for a while tomorrow

i tried test drive unlimited also and thats a game ive had issues with, and there also seemed a definate improvment in that, and on any drivers that for me has been one of the main games ive had issues with

dont forget,a new beta driver doesnt mean better in every way,as they are testing things out to improve and new ones come out all the time, like mentioned the 174 improved scores in 3d mark and windows graphics score,but there were issues in game, i can only comment on my own expirience and what ive tested on,ive played the same parts of the same games and ive definatly found the 167 to look and run nicer on what ive tested today

edit.... also i always have vsync forced on, and lod on clamp !

 

Well yeah. V-sync is tricky tho because just enabling v-sync might give you a slight to huge drop in performance instead of simply limiting it to 60 fps (which is usually not the case). so its a balancing act but its usually worth it since unless your overclocking hardcore like me and most games are running at max settings and res.

Polsta, yeah I'm not claiming your wrong. Just saying its the case for some people. i know newer drivers doesn't always mean better performance.

 

well im no expert on these matters !

il report back when ive played more and some longer sessions, dont forget different drivers will work diffrently on different machines with different games played !

in cod4 on my machine the fps never reaches a maximum and stays there anyway and is always say between 25-50 range or so, the only game it stays flat out on 60 is pes 2008 , and vsync fixes the 60hz bug line or whatever it is,when you get the wobble line every now n then

im not an expert on nvid settings, as i ahd ati for the last few years and only nad this machine and nvid since november, so have you got any advice on vsync with cod4 and crysis etc ? and how do you limit fps ?

 

I just played a bit of lotro. Ingame FPS didn't seem to change but it's now stutterless (I'm playing at 12-25FPS BTW). Before, when I left ther game, my comp took about 5 minutes before being usable but now it's almost instant.

Great drivers It even boosted my battery life of 10 minutes

 

has anyone try these with a 64mb ddr3 nvidia geforce 8400m gs ?

I'm running 169.04 and the ONLY game I play is COD4....wondering if there would be ANY performance inprovement

 

Schweet drivers -- both CoD 4 and Gears of War textures appear a tad more crisp and polished.