174.31 is out! (From Microsoft)

I`m installing it now , and I`ll run 3dmark 06 and test UT3 demo with them and compare with 174.16 as soon as the damn demo comes back.
Man I wish my friend with UT3 were around, so I guess I`ll have to stick to the demo...

 

Any Asus C90 GDDR3 guinea pigs out there.?

I'm too lazy to uninstall and re-install this one the be left disappointed.. Looking for improvements and OCability.

 

Sarge I've got some interesting results for us c90 owners. Need to do some more testing though. Our c90s cooling is alot better than I thought.

 

My 3DMARK went from 5673 to 5606 but Crysis is now running smoother
Will try UT3/COD later.

 

Definately best framerate yet for me, visual only though, no Figures, also GPU seems to run quite a bit cooler. Still have to perform the "Sleep" trick though to prevent judder.

(ASUS G1S, 8600M GT DDR3)

Just one question though; If they've been released by ASUS & whoever else, and the info. states that original .inf only supports ..... and my 8600M GT is listed, then why did I still need to use the modified .inf ? - I tried it without and got the usual message about not having any compatible hardware.

 

I have overclocked it from 450/700 to 520/900, these drivers ran fine on Drift City but DoD it ran like unsmooth wood (bad metaphor..), well i reinstalled 169.04 and it ran smoother at the same clock.
The game shows a range of 10-70 randomly on 174.31.
Game is constant 50-70 with 169.04.
Might be just what narsnail mentioned, newer drivers aren't too compatible with older cards, wish i got the 8600GT instead back in August last year.

 

tested cod4 and rainbow six vegas

both looked nice , but had serious serious slow downs and locking up when there were a few people around and some action going on

so very duff drivers for the machine in my sig

back we go again

 

Tested UT3 demo. Runs somewhat smoother at 5/5 details and 1280x800, although,not by much. 1-2 fps MAX.

My 3dmark score went from 5550 to 5483 though...

 

Installed and then played the Witcher last night without adjusting for stutter in the control panel. I didn't notice much of a difference in gameplay so I'll keep this one since it's digitally signed and newer than my last set.

Installation on this set is slightly more complicated, read the front page of LV2GO for instructions on what the original .inf zip file does.

 

same problems here with my 1720.., guess this is not a good driver for this laptop..

got a lot of slowdowns in call of duty 4...

 

Ok UPDATE:
these drivers are crap.
My 3dmark06 score went down, double checked my UT3demo scores to make sure, they actually went down, lost 3-4 fps in crysis all high, 1024x768 so reverting back to 174.16

 

So, end decision... Crappy drivers...

 

lol crappy cuz u lost 3 fps? haha u guys should all just chill, instead of chasing those .x fps

 

It almost sounds like there are infinite variations of the same graphics card..

 

BIG V, in Crysis 3 fps is A LOT. It`s a decrease from 22 to 19, which means 15% decrease in performance. I`d say that means a lot.
These drivers are crap, and comming from Microsoft,I`m utterly surprised they do so badly in games, especially newer ones.

Best drivers I used so far are the 174.16 ones.

 

you only get 22 fps at 10x7?

 

that makes sense how would u rate 174.16 as compared to 169.04 or .21? i have a 8600, and it's been a while since i've cared about updating the drivers.

 

Well let`s see.
@ dmacfour 1024x768 , crysis all high, average 22. Sounds awesome to me, dunno about you though

@ BIG_V Let's put it this way. I tried 169.04, .09, .12, .21, .28, then 171.16, then 174.16,then 174.31. They all gave me better results than the previous but the best one so far is 174.16 .
Check out my 3dmark06 score with 174.16
174.31 gave me 5483.

 

What did you get with 169.28?

 

the thing is tho fella...your card and machine !!! so what might be right for you and your card/machine/games you play , will differ from others, some particular drivers are released by certain manufacturers and will work better with them machines/cards in mind, although they will also work on others the performance might not be so good

so theres no difinative better driver for everyone and every machine and all games.


also dont take too much notice of the 3d mark score, thats not whats important or what makes the best driver...its in game performance of the games you play, ive tried many different drivers on my machine,and all the 3d mark scores are in the same bracket range, none draticly increase or decrease my 3d mark score, and ,.....run 3d mark, then run it again 10 mins later, youl geta higher or lower score of anything up to 30/40 points i have noticed !!

ive had various performances in games with the different drivers that have all game a roughly the same 3d mark score , its GAMES PERFORMANCE what matters with drivers , not the score

 

i love them

 

Turn shadows down to medium, seriously. With everything high except shad's to med, I get 20-26 Frames avg. at 1280x800

 

Do these display directX 10 on XP?

 

I swear to god, I am going to kill vista. No matter what 174.XX driver i try, i get this insane message:
"The driver selected for this device does not support Windows Vista"
Now, I am obviously using vista drivers, I am using the right INFs... but no matter what I do, I can't get these POS drivers to install...

 

hehe i'm changing to XP for the sake of the 8 FPS i loose in every game

 

Good Luck! Honestly though, after comparison I found no realistic difference between XP and Vista in terms of gaming performance. There's only 2 possible scenarios: you either have high FPS (older games), FPS > 60, or you have low FPS(new games), FPS<30. When the fps count is at High FPS, the gain in FPS is not noticeable by human eyes, while it is at low FPS, the gain is so minimal it doesn't matter. e.g. 22 to 25.Personally, anything to me that is below 20% difference should be considered insignificant.

 

Man, where do you people come up with that BS? XP IS AT LEAST 10-15% better for gaming that VISTA, PERIOD. I don`t care the least bit how you vista fanboys enjoy your resources going down the drain and the performance hindered just because some 1 year old OS is pure crap. They had 6 years to come up with a better OS than XP and this is all they could come up with? a resource hog? give me a break. XP RULES.
@ Polsta, I`ve tried different games, dude, and I never base a reasoning solely on 3dmark. I have not mentioned testing also Quake4,Heroes 5 and Painkiller , but they also gave me poorer performance than 174.16.

Now for the other question, 169.28 gave me 5389.
As I SAID, the best driver FOR ME so far was 174.16.

And please stop telling me to lower my shaders and shadows to medium when I can play ALL HIGH, 1024x768 at over 19 FPS . Come on,seriousely,I even posted a video to prove it.
And furthermore,anybody with a similar system should be getting the same results. Mainly 7950gtx and core 2 duo 2.2

Man,I really wish Nvidia and Microsoft would put their act together and release A REALLY GOOD driver for a change...

 

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1390

I don't agree with pai but don't agree with vsta and xp comment ele. Near those percentages (maybe) around low digits, but there are games where vista runs faster. ALso most of the time its like a 7-8% difference.

 

No where in my original statement did I try to convince you to switch to Vista, I was simply stating my observations, and my opinions. I like Vista is an opinion, while Vista needs to be further polished is a FACT. The following statement in my original post is an OPINION: personally considered anything less than 20% is insignificant. No where in my original post deserve your comeback directed at my statements. Fanboy or not, you are the one that acted more like a fanboy. To be honest, your post is full of opinions as well, XP rules? That's an opinion, I don't agree with your opinions but I personally won't disagree and make a fuss about them, because I know the meaning of respect.

 

Rather than bickering, does ANYONE have any idea on why this happens? The nVidia installers just stop after while, saying that no changes have been made. I would REALLY like to fix this (and no, I don't want to resintall vista......)

 

Man, if you`d dual boot like some other people, you`d know exactly what I`m talking about. I am pissed when people knowingly defend vista even though it is a disaster compared to xp,in all likeliness. Sure, it`s prettier,sure,it`s safer, futureproof and all, but what does that has to do with gaming performance?squat.

And The Forerunner ,as good as that site may be, I`m basically doing the figures myself based on average fps in games in vista and Xp. And yes, it`s more like 10-15% than 7-8% in newer games .
I`ll give you my exact figures :
-Crysis all high vista 1024x768 about 15 average. Xp - over 19 fps at all times.
-Unreal 3 : vista 1280x800 3/3 , average 40 . Xp - average 50.
-Heroes V : vista 1920x1200,full AA and full AA, often drops to 10 fps. Xp never drops below 20.
-Painkiller max settings WUXGA, Vista average 70 , xp average 90.
-Timeshift vista 1280x800, all high, 2xaa, 2xaf average 30, xp average 40.
Now I know very well that drivers can make a whole lot of difference, which is why my OS were both tweaked for gaming, updated on a regular basis and disable major resource hogs. The figures are based on averages run on 169.28 for both vista and xp, then 171.12 then 174.16.(both for Vista and xp)

I would love to see vista outperform an ancient system like XP, but IT DOES NOT. And DX10 at this point is not worth the loss in performance. On the bleeding edge you need every little fps you can get.
Oh, and I never OC my card.

 

Service pack 1 will sort this out I hope

 

Hi guys! ( first of all sorry for my english i am from Spain) , i have the 174.16 drivers with my G1S and Vista 64 , anyone could recommend me one better??...i did some 3dmark06 test with differents drivers and i can't see big diference between them.
This is my best 3dmark06 :

 

That score is very nice. And 174.16 are the drivers I use, and the best for me so far. So stick with them!

 

dont worry about your 3d mark score and dont worry about changing drivers,unles you have problems wit the games you play...if all your games are fine,then play and enjoy and dont worry !!

 

I just tried the 174.31 yesterday (came from the 171.16) and so far so good. There seems to be some extra settings in the control panel that I wasn't able to access before.

Tested BF2 and CS:S and both came out with better results. I think the frame rate increase maybe 3-5% but I was able to 'hit' someone now. Before I couldn't hit anything, I think because it was laggy or it could just be bad luck. I really don't know.

But they seem to be good at the moment.

I'm just hoping that my HDMI replacement cord that I'm getting today doesn't turn out to be faulty again. :/

 

Thx! ..so I think I put my G1S with the best stable performance (yes I know in XP it ill be better) but for the future i prefer 4gb ram , 64 bits & directx10.

 

I understand, I totally agree Vista still needs to be polish by Microsoft, and it is unacceptable that a new OS have performance issues. As I matter of fact, I am dual booting at the moment, and have compared personally. However, you have to give Vista credit where it deserves them. I am leaning towards Vista due to Superfetch and the overall interface of Vista being on par with XP if not faster but looks much prettier. There are some other neat stuffs I like in Vista more than XP, thus I have chosen Vista over XP.

I guess what separates our views on the subject so much is that I am a light gamer and the difference in FPS doesn't affects me as much as let's say it does to others who likes to have better performance out of their machine, I fully agree that they have the rights to demand a better performance, afterall they have paid for the OS and it is Microsoft's responsibility to put it together before Vista hits the shelf but they didn't. What I am trying to say is "At this point, I considered anything less than 20% insignificant, and I like Vista and I am sticking with it."

P.S. I looked back at my post, I figured when I say "Good Luck", it has sounded as if I was being sarcastic, I wasn't. It was suppose to mean what it means "Good Luck", nothing more.

 

So, the 174.16 drivers are even better than the 174.20?

I benched UT3 and Oblivion on 169.28 vs. 174.20,
174.20 gave me a gain of around aproximately 8~10 frames...
Settings on UT3 = 5 on both (avg. framerates before 30~45, now: 35~50)
Settings on Oblivoin = 1280x800 HDR, Ultra High. (avg. framerates before: indoors~63, outdoors(grassy areas): 15, now: indoors~65, outdoors(Grassy): 19)

note: i'm not overclocking. and by grassy areas, you know which ones im talking about if you played the game, where the game MANDATORILY skips XD, most of the time, outdoors on standard light-grassed areas i get around 35-45 fps.

 

i have a quick question, this will make gaming a tiny bit better.. but will it give a little performance boost when modeling opengl? will be using it for a 1600m quadro.

 

No harm done I remember when I bought my laptop back in august 2007 I chose Vista for the same reasons you exposed it to be better than XP. But yes, I like to game new games,and although I`m not an avid gamer, when I do play, I need the best possible performance. Most of the times I even ditch quality over performance if the game has a good storyline and catching line.
But the fact is, I`m still waiting for a good driver to be released. Every one so far either did not allow OCing for me(in XP) or had some issues with other games(ie 174.16 won`t let me run Timeshift which sucks, cause I love this game and have not yet completed the SP campaign...)