nVidia 180.84 driver questions.

Hi I've got a few questions regarding this new release.

1. The driver released here http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_gtaiv_downloads.html, is it only for desktops? Where can i find the laptop version of it?

2. Would it increase performance of GTA 4? Or is it just fixes bugs that crash the game?

3. Should I upgrade to it?

Thanks.

 

1) at the moment it is desktop only, as soon as you download it it says that you have the wrong hardware.

2) it is said to increase the performance of GTA4 by 10 FPS. It does not fix bugs, whereas it is not a patch.

3) the answer is simple; since you have a laptop you can't upgrade right now.

but keep a look at laptopvideo2go, it should be on soon for notebooks!

 

Ah thanks.

Whoa 10fps, cant wait for the laptop driver to come out

 

You can, in fact, install to notebooks. Go to this link and install Mobility Modder:

http://www.driverheaven.net/nvmodtool.php

Once installed, download whatever driver you want and extract to folder. Run MM and it will ask you to point to the driver folder. Then click modify. Presto Change-o and your .inf is modified.

I don't have GTA4, but downloaded and installed 180.84 last night. Seems pretty rock solid to me. Cheers.

 

Thanx man, i just installed them and got an FPS increase of 5-8 FPS!

 

So what kind of frames are you getting on your 8600. Also what kind of detail settings?

 

tried this but it doesn't work... when i run mobility modder it says the folder has allready been modified, but when i run the setup.exe it doesnt work (system has not been modified ect).... I have a 8600M GT btw, anny suggestions on how to get this driver to work?

 

The original driver is a zip file. Did you extract it to a new folder first? I have never experienced this issue, so I really don't know.

 

Try this(worked for me). Add this line to the nv_disp.inf where the rest of the list of names are.

This is for 8600M GT.

%NVIDIA_G84.DEV_0407.1% = nv_G8x, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0407

For me the problem with 180.xx drivers including this one is they don't wake up from sleep on my laptop.

Anyway you might as well wait since the proper modded drivers have been uploaded at laptopvideo2go they just don't work yet.

 

The driver makes GTA considerably smoother than it was on 180.70 I would highly recommend upgrading to it.

 

tried that, but still get the same result, unfortunatly...
i'll keep checking laptopvideo2go then. thx for the advice anyways.

btw i also have the problem with the 180.xx drivers not waking up from sleep (with 180.70)

 

Wow! This is exactly what I was hoping and wishing for. I mean we can use officially released drivers from nvidia on our laptops when they release it.

I've downloaded it and gonna test it on the official 180.48 from nvidia's site, to see if it really works and if there's any difference between the drivers from nvidia's site and laptopvid2go.

Does anyone that tried this out or are familiar with it know what it changes and how does it differ from drivers modified from laptopvideo2go?

 

I don't know the detailed differences. Dox might explain without getting too techinical and giving up trade secrets. Dox's last few are certainly more convenient since he has implemented an installer, so you don't have to go through all the hogwash involved with installing/changing inf's and such. Plus his offer performance tweaks, where Pieter's only mod to mobile platform compatibility (I believe). Apparently, there are minor tweaks with the Mobility Modder app, but I don't have a clue what they are.

I generally use Dox's drivers, especially if I am trying to eek out needed performance games demanding high end performance...AoC was last I needed that for. As for the games I usually play, I don't require some of the performance tweaks that Dox builds into his driver offerings. So I figured I would give the 180.84 a shot, knowing it hadn't been mobility modded yet. I found that the two games I play regularly, DDO and Sacred 2 (they don't require max performance set-ups) looked amazingly better and seemed smoother with this nVidia GTA driver.

Now that Dox has modified the .84, I'm going to give it a shot as well. If I can get the looks AND performance...then hey, I'll be rockin. And there are a couple of games due out shortly after the new year that I may need that performance boost from. Of course, several new drivers will have come and gone between then and now.

 

Hovercraftdriver:

My 180.84 should be good for you.
Dont be put off because its a "test release", the tweaks have been fully updated on them since the last release.

As for mobility modder:

Its a nice idea, they've stolen alot (pratically 99%) of what we do and put them in the driver,
all the hardwork of compiling the tweaks and device ID was done our end, and all they've done is taken that and made an automated version to put that in the inf. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

However there is a small flaw. I havent checked this but, If they don't update it as much as our modded inf, potentially you can miss important inf enteries critical to gpu compatibility of the drivers, basically its a set tweak that they added for the current drivers at the time of its release, so it can be outdated, but should still work.

Side thing: XG and NBF Mobile force also use our inf as a base and they just add their tweaks into it, again all the hardwork is done our end and they copy and paste their own set of tweaks into it....

As for me, I manually do everything from adding gpu support, to fixing things that i find from nvidia, I dont use our modded inf as the base, I write everything from the grounds up - quality assurance.

Edit: I'm not bashing any of these guys, just making a passing comment
The more people in the community the better - freedom of choice and different way that we do things I suppose..

 

I just found myself using the mobility modder after the LV2Go inf failed to work for me on multiple 180 series drivers, it had the benefit of actually working at the time.

Not had a chance to actually take the Dox drivers for a spin yet though, the last time I dabbled with custom drivers was the Omega releases back in the day and I never actually saw any difference.

 

And please know I am not bashing your work or drivers. This all started because the op wanted to be able to use the .84's before you guys had modded them. I use your drivers so much that I had actually forgotten about the Mobility Modder, until the unmodded one's showed up on LV2GO. And the .84 do make certain games look amazing, but I lost some FPS in both my games. So that is why I am going to hope for the best of both worlds when I download your new one.

And I have no doubt your new ones will work fine; just haven't gotten around to making the switch to check them out yet. I have been using your drivers for quite a while now...since 174.74 at least, maybe earlier, so I know the quality. A lot of folks (not all) on here just seem to have caught on in the last month or so.

 

yeah, I/we dont "advertise" ourselves, just go on word of mouth mainly.

 

come on dox make 180.84 a vistax64 driver. I am need of a new driver for my overclocking needs.

 

Ya, us 64 bitter is being left hung-out dry. Please Dox, mod the 64-bit version so I can make my GTA lV worth purchasing.

 

i also concur about the 64 ver

 

I installed 180.84 earlier from LaptopVideo2Go. I have the Vista 64-bit drivers. My FPS went up by about 15 FPS so I increased the detail levels a little. The game is much smoother and less jaggy when panning the camera about. In general, things are much more peppy. Just be sure to watch that file rename error on those drivers. That caught me off guard the first time I installed and got no error message yet no driver.

Statistics
Average FPS: 30.26
Duration: 37.16 sec
CPU Usage: 97%
System memory usage: 56%
Video memory usage: 100%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1920 x 1080 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: Medium
Render Quality: High
View Distance: 20
Detail Distance: 20

Hardware
Microsoft® Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit)
Service Pack 1
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS (512 MB)
Video Driver version: 180.84
Audio Adapter: NVIDIA HDMI Output (NVIDIA HDMI Audio)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8400 @ 2.26GHz

 

15fps Thats a biggest increase I've seen yet for a driver. How did you get pass the error message when installing this driver from Lv2go?

 

I installed this driver yesterday. Downloaded the 64 bit Vista WHQL driver from Nzone and replaced the nv_disp.inf file with the one available at LV2GO.com. My games have become more smoother than ever before. Great driver I must admit.

 

Make sure you do the nvpvenc to nvpvenc.ax file rename as indicated here: http://laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22134 . That caused me some issues at first because I didn't rename it, didn't get an error at first, and then the error was an obscure generic "file not found" error that didn't help. Those directions solved the problem. The driver packages posted on LV2G apparently haven't been updated to make this correction yet.

Also, what may have further contributed to the 15 FPS increase was giving the game the /high priority parameter after the command line.

 

I'm back now, but with a horror story about 180.84. After I had first installed these drivers they ran great and GTA IV was running very smooth and quick. It was a joy to play the game at 1920x1080p on my HDTV without any trouble at all.

I came back a few hours after typing my above praises of 180.84 to find that GTA IV would no longer take up the full 1920x1080p space of the HDTV. Somehow turning my computer off or something triggered the external display settings to go completely bonkers. I personally made no changes. I have repeatedly tried to force the drivers to stop reporting 1920x1080 when something that looks like 1440x900 is actually coming out leaving black frame around the picture. The only way I could get the black frame to go away was to set the drivers in 1080p 24Hz or drop to 720p at any refresh rate. In both instances, the picture took up the whole screen again as normal. All attempt to resize the screen bigger or larger failed as the drivers would report any resolution I put in but still show something with a black frame around it that looked like 1440x900 on the HDTV.

This completely baffled me. All attempts to force the resolution or get Nvidia control panel to save the settings I gave it were completely ignored. I cannot remember the last time a computer frustrated me this badly. I did some research and this seems like yet another Vista + Nvidia problem. The 176.15 drivers would also fail to scale lower resolutions up to take up the full screen whenever it felt like it, but if I specifically set 1920x1080 it wouldn't have a problem. The issue is definitely with Nvidia and Vista. They HDTV is working as intended and actually gets recognized by name by Nvidia control panel.

Very disappointing. You'd think they would have fixed these kinds of problems by now. There's absolutely no excuse for something to work and then magically stop working for no apparent reason. I'm not playing GTA IV with 3 inch black bars surrounding the picture on all sides!

 

These drivers dont even install on mine. Give a your system has not been modified, Please restart error.
Tried installing in both safe mode and normal mode

PS: what the best driver to use for Fallout 3?

 

as Pranalien said, downloaded the 180.84 driver from nzone and replaced the nv_disp.inf file with the one available at LV2GO.com.

I did that and all ok!

 

I wonder if GTA4 crashes and deletes this driver?

I'm getting EXTREMELY tired of installing video drivers MULTIPLE times a day.

Edit: Installed the drivers for XP. I renamed the .ax file to be .ax instead of having no extension - I guess this was cuasing problems for others.

On the in game benchmark, I got a 25% increase; 20fps to 25fps. I also noticed some differences with less slowdowns, so that's good.

Hopefully I can have some time later on to work on a cooling mod or two I had planned and maybe o/c the graphics card a bit more.