I'm confused-why was I able to install reference drivers on a mobile 8600GT?

I thought you had to use modded inf files? Why was I able to install regular reference drivers on to a notebook with a Geforce 8600GT (Macbook Pro running Windows XP).

For the heck of it, I downloaded the newest drivers from Nvidia.com. I ran the installer which extracted the files, launched setup, and immediately quit with the "no supported hardware" error.

Then I just went into device manager, clicked on update drivers on my 8600GT, and pointed to the extracted folder. I choose 8600GT as the GPU (though I'm not sure-would that even matter?). It gave me a warning that it wasn't made for my hardware, I clicked through, and a minute later I'm rebooting.

Everything seemed to be running just fine. The drivers not only updated, but IT STILL KNOWS IT'S A LAPTOP! Like Nvidia's control panel still shows that it's a laptop display, still has powermizer settings, etc.

It seems to be running the GPU at the correct clocks (I wasn't sure if somehow the drivers would overclock it since they're supposedly for a desktop part). I installed ntune, launched the performance monitor, and when looping the GPU test, the clocks went up to 466MHz (which is about right-Apple's apparently set the GPU on this model to 475Mhz).

I launched up the Bioshock demo, Command & Conquer 3 demo, and Farcry. All with mostly maxed out settings, all work just fine...

...which means I really did get the regular reference drivers installed WITHOUT using a modded inf file!?!

Does this always work? WHY is it working-nobody seems to talk about it. Is there some down side? Like I wonder what happens if you run this on a system with an 8700GT-does it still work, still run at the correct clocks and identify the card as an 8700?

And maybe the biggest question of all...will this technique work for SLI rigs like the 1730 and Alienware's dual 7950GTX-both of which use Intel chipsets, which are normally blocked. I'm guessing that WON'T work, that you'd still need support from Nvidia to do SLI on Intel (ie I’m assuming the normal reference drivers won’t support this).

But for single GPUs-is there some advantage to using modded inf files? Why don't we hear about this?

Another thought-I wonder if this would work had I not already had drivers installed. I wonder if I had uninstalled them first, or installed generic VGA drivers, if this "update" would still have gone smoothly?

 

The drivers are the same, nvidia just isn't authorized to distrubte them. So you need the modified .inf for the .exe to detect it.

Since the driver is the same, windows makes no difference.

Clocks are bios-related, not drivers AFAIK. OC depends on the driver used though

 

Okay, so I don't need to worry about clocks-that's good to hear.

So...why do we need the modded inf files at all, if it's so easy to just install the regular reference drivers without modification? I was shocked by how effortless it was. Is this a new thing, or why isn't anyone talking about it? (Is it something Nvidia could somehow block in the future?)

Any idea if this would work for SLI systems on Intel chipsets? I'm guessing it won't, but at least if this always works, it makes any Nvidia based notebook perfectly safe for games-just install the regular reference drivers! I am seriously excited to find out about this.

 

i don't think it's all that simple. even tho, i tend to believe that the modded inf file doesn't really add any new features(i think that every modded inf is the same for every new driver version). It, however, does add compatibility of the mobile version of 8600(8700, etc), a long with some other changes for mobile versions., yet u can not use the setup.exe, i believe(i've never used it).

 

This worked though. No modded anything, just the regular drivers. Is it possible it wouldn't always work, or wouldn't work on all Nvidia hardware?

I didn't even seem to lose notebook features.

I do wonder if you have to choose a desktop GPU similar to your notebook GPU, or if that even matters. (Obviously I picked an 8600GT for my 8600GT.) I'm thinking it might be possible that it wouldn't work if you picked, for example, a 7600GT for an 8600GT-maybe you have to pick something in the same family at least?

 

The mobile drivers can be customized by the OEM to suit any special hotkeys or functions they might deem necessary. The reference driver excludes these but includes most of the generic laptop features. The laptopvideo2go drivers include drivers which have been released by others OEM's as well as the reference ones from nvidia. Having the modded inf makes installation easier and it is as easy if not easiier than installing from the device manager.

 

I was actually able to use all my laptop specific features with the regular reference drivers, which is pretty cool. The drivers saw it as a laptop display, I still had "power mizer" mobile settings, and my software brightness controls still worked (triggered from the keyboard).

I tried doing it that way because I couldn't actually find the modded inf files on laptopvideo2go last night. I got a 404 error, plus they listed older drivers, not the newest.

 

Miner is talking not about generic "laptop" features, like powermizer, but actual OEM features specific to your laptop model.

As for your original question, there's no downside to installing Forceware drivers from nVidia rather than from LaptopVideo2Go, it just can be harder sometimes, and won't always work without some tinkering.

 

Okay, well thanks! This makes me MUCH more comfortable with switching over to a laptop for gaming