Intel X3100 users rejoice! It's finally here! New Pre-Beta Drivers

i just get the newest drivers from intel.com so far the newest for XP is from 29 December 2007

 

new drivers come out bi-monthly, so the next new driver will be around March.

 

Actually the 15.8 Vista and 14.33 XP driver will be out within a week. It's released internally. It looks like they are getting the code ready for DX10 support, and I hear the driver after that will support DX10 and SM4.0. We'll see whether anything changes in those drivers, but so far, I have not seen any improvements since they released the hardware T&L/VS capable drivers back in August 2007.

 

Just checked out the 15.2.2 drivers from the download link. It didn't make sense Intel will release a XP driver that's named 15.xx, which is typical of Vista driver naming. Well, confirming my suspicion, the readme file says its for Vista.

 

Hey guys,

I'm thinking of getting a new laptop to replace one I just sold. I'm not ready for a desktop replacement (though I am due...)

I'm thinking of getting this laptop: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/ca/e...8301-78308301-78308301-81143269-81584812.html

It's an X3100 and I'll probably do some gaming on it until I'm ready for a desktop. I've read some of the threads but perhaps a quick summary of how games like COH really run on this video card would be great. I'm also thinking of StarCraft 2 when it ever comes out..and even that is hard to tell since it's in the future but knowing Blizzard, it should be okay...

Thoughts anyone?

 

Company of Heroes actually ran respectably until the megapatch was released. Now it's unplayable. If you want to game, get a dedicated card.

 

I just grabbed the new Vista 64bit drivers. I see no real difference, but I haven't tried any gaming in Vista, nor have I run any benchmarks so I have no quantitative point of reference. Until I get home I won't even be able to get a new WEI, because I forgot my AC adapter. I am thankful that the new drivers didn't fubar my computer though

Drivers available from the usual spot here. Just select your OS and you're good to go.

 

From the release notes it looks like this is just a bugfix release. I would be surprised if there were any improvements in 3D performance.

 

Yes, you appear to be right. It doesn't appear that any of the bugs fixed were affecting me anyways, so I doubt I'll personally see any difference. I just like being up to date

 

so wait..........i went on Intel's site & now they have new Drivers that got released on 2/15/2008?

 

My understanding on that is that was when they were finalized, but not released to the public until now, probably due to more testing.

 

Here is the Vista link for whoever is lazy



I guess nothing new? It only seems to be bug fixes, so I'm guessing nothing new to performance?

 

There seemed to be internal release notes and from there it contained what I thought was significant. Some of them were:

-Vertex Shader and SM3.0 fixes
-Something related to World in Conflict
-DX10 hardware query(I am supposing this is readying the drivers for DX10 support)
-Some OpenGL fixes

The reason I think the above ones are not shown on the public website is because in each individual driver releases there are multiple "Builds" of the driver. Build is like a version inside a version I guess. The latest release notes may not show everything, but just the fixes for the current Build compared to the last Build.

 

Wow .8 is out! How are they, any better?

 

Great news, my Civ IV issues are gone, no more constant driver restarting. Hopefully i havent spoken to early

Anyone know the performance gains?

 

How does WoW, Warcraft 3, Guild Wars and Half-Life 2(and other source games) run on X3100?

 

guild wars runs pretty bad on windows xp. lots of artifacts although this is less of a problem with the 14.33 drivers.

 

WoW crashes after 5-10 min with the 14.33 driver. I will advise users just to skip 14.33/15.8 and wait for what I call "bug fix" version. Those are the ones with 0.1 or 0.3 after it, like 14.33.1 and 15.8.1.

In fact, every "new feature" driver had significant bugs that the "bug fix" version fixed.

14.31=hardware T&L/software T&L not switching properly
14.32=Switches to default 800x600 resolution every reboot(default resolution bug)
14.33=WoW crashes!! If one of the most popular games crash, how many more serious problems really exist??

So like, do not wait for 15.9, wait for 15.9.1, etc. It usually comes around a month after "new feature" driver.

 

Also I notice that when viewing YouTube in full screen it would just shown a blank white or black screen instead of the videos. It might been just me but just to warn other users.

 

hey guys i try to install these new drivers but i get an error!!
the error tells me my drivers are not validated for my laptop!!

can anybody please please please help me?

 

This is a common problem with the X3100 and flash. If you right click the flash object (Youtube video for example), select settings and then uncheck the enable hardware acceleration box. I'm hoping that a new version of Flash will eliminate this problem, but I have no idea how often updates come out.

Mattycoose: There are two things to make sure of. First of all, you need to have the X3100 graphics chip. Second of all, make sure you downloaded the driver for your version of whatever OS you're running (Vista, XP, 32 or 64 bit)

 

i got a Sony Vgn-Nr11s

its got an x3100 in it

if you want you can check those settings but, well, i got a vista 32 bit... please help

thanks matty

 

Yeah, you definitely have an X3100. I've never dealt with a Sony, but maybe they've got some form of driver lock installed with the OS to limit you to drivers released through Sony? That's pure speculation on my part. Sorry I can't be of more help

 

Strange, I also uses a Sony but I'm not lock into any driver installation problem or something. have you try installing from the Intel site: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det... Vista* Home Premium, 32-bit version&lang=eng

Try it if not then you might wanna contact Sony.

 

StarScream, did you do a clean install of Vista on your laptop? My speculation is that Sony has worked some of their magic to lock down the drivers on the OS install it comes with. Again, this is pure speculation. I have absolutely no proof of this, so no one should go away thinking that what I'm saying is right.

 

No i never did a clean install of Vista cuz my notebook was already pre-installed with Vista. Perhaps Mattycoose was downloading from the wrong page or something...

 

Wrong thread my friend. :]

 

do i need to uninstall my version 7 drivers first??

 

nope usually you don't need to.

 

Shockingly, Sins of the Solar Empire runs VERY well, IF you play around with the settings. I set most of my structures and units quality to medium and planetary and object settings low and lowered most of the special effects and WOW! The FPS was from 20-40ish during normal movement, in combat FPS drops to no lower than 5-13. I'm quite surprise by the customizable settings of SOTSE that allows even the X3100 to run fine.

 

Did anyone test Gears Of War on the X3100? & does it run at all or even go into the game?

 

Did it just for kicks a while ago, averaged 5-15 FPS, and rarely hitting the 20s depending on the situation at lowest settings at 640x480

 

Eww... any screen shots for haha?

 

hmm that kinda sucks but its UT3 Engine so it had to of been tweakable right?

 

Anyone got the 14.32.3 Drivers? cuz Call Of Duty 4 & other games keep crashing alot.

 

How about LOTR Online will it work?

 

Huh? sorry i dont play games like that......... You no where to get those drivers like i said in my post above?

 

I wonder what's more troubling. The crappy performance with Intel's latest IGP or part of that has to do with drivers and there hasn't been much progress. Intel is still struggling to get compatibility right, which is what should be focused on way before optimizing for performance.

(Yes, I still believe in the driver part, but not 100%. When one game, like HL2 itself performs well, but the games based on the same engine like Portal doesn't, it tells me that its a driver problem. I don't believe you'll ever gain more performance in older games like Civ4 with better drivers though, because there's also this thing called weak hardware)

 

i got em sent u a pm Unreal

 

for what its worth, portal and TF2 run on a HEAVILY modified version of the engine that HL2 uses...

it was NOT just a minor update to the source engine.

 

This has been discussed before, in this thread, a new version of flash is not needed.
a new driver with proper support for the hardware accelerated mode it tries to use is.

 

Thanks for the clarification. I remember that discussion; I was a part of it.

 

For what its worth, its not different enough to cause 2.5x+ performance difference between the two.

HL2: 30-50 fps
Portal: 10-20 fps

On Portal, lowering the resolution and detail settings has surprisingly low impact. From what I read on this forum, my desktop X3000 and the notebook X3100 performs about the same in Portal. There is a bottleneck in something else.

I think Intel's drivers have been always bad, but we didn't know it was this bad because GMA950 didn't have T&L/VS in hardware to enable. I know the ATI X1150 IGP doesn't have hardware T&L/VS, yet have compatibility that's much better than the GMA950. I suppose its possible that the drivers can be good enough that it allows it to have good compatibility(plus, ATI also has game developer support, that's gotta be worth something).

Some games we'll probably not notice much increase with good drivers. But I am sure there are quite a lot that can benefit. The bad performance is because of something like 40% driver, 60% hardware .

 

Expected Release Date:

15.8.x driver-Very Soon, IF they do not skip for 15.9 driver
15.9 driver-Late April to Early May

15.9 driver features
-AVC, VC1, MPEG2 hardware acceleration support
-Something called Non-linear Anamorphic Scaling support(I don't know if GM965 support this) and better image quality
-New power saving technology*(again, I don't know if this is GM45 exclusive or it'll come for GM965/GL960)
*Enhanced DPST 4.0, Seamless Display Refresh Rate Switching Technology and Smart 2D Display Technology 2.0
-Looking like a DX10 driver, at least its a minimum driver requirement for G45 and GM45 IGPs.

G35/GM965's DX10 support in hardware seems to be sort of an half-arsed approach, and though it doesn't seem as primitive as GMA 950 did in regards to DX9, it really is a bare-minimum approach to DX10 compatibility. True DX10 support will only come with G45/GM45.

(It looks like GM965 has Display Refresh Rate Switching Technology in hardware, but not enabled yet by drivers. Might be able to get a slightly better battery life with 15.9 if nothing else)

 

It's almost like you WORK at Intel or something, IntelUser. That, or I just suck at looking up information.

 

If i understand correctly, the 15.xx = vista drivers...any plan for updates of the 14.xx versiions in XP? Thanks!

 

You are right, those are Vista versions of the drivers. I don't know about the release for the XP equivalent. I assume it'll be similar in timeframe as it has been so far.

This is what Intel says about driver naming:

http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-020667.htm

The example given was 7.14.10.1332

1st number
7=Vista
6=WinXP/2K

2nd number
15=DX10.x
14=DX9.x

4th number
1332=Build Number

 

Cool. I'll look foward to it

 

Any expectation on any performance increase or improvement to the current gaming problems?

 

I don't think I want to comment on that anymore(even if I do know, which I don't really ), for the fear of spreading possible inaccurate information and over-inflating people's expectations. That's aside from a forum moderator using his thread-banning gauntlet for this one, lol.