6860 FX guys - What driver version do you use?

Just curious. I am not asking about the best one just because it gives you a few frames on a single specific game.

I just want to know the GPU driver you are more comfortable using as of the moment. This is for the Gateway P-6860 guys again. Thanks.

 

you mean GPU driver? i'm using 174.74 at this moment

 

Yes yes. Sorry heh. Edited.

 

175.63 but for the most part...the drivers are all the same...it's mainly the inf file that defines how your system will run. and what ever tweaks you do there after.

175/174/169 might have had a change between them. you would have to check with nvidia on that, but as far as all the 175's it's the same thing just different inf files. (speculation of course)

 

175.80 moded inf

 

Forever the holy grail of GPUs....I found several consistancy issues with anything but the Gateway drivers. I ran 175.XX and 174.XX drivers for a bit...but once upgrading to the T9300 I found some problems.

I play Crysis, WIC, Supreme C, and others...found the 167.46 most stable....

Maybe I talking out my behind...others out there? And I haven't tied the 175.80 yet though the Crymod forums say there are some issues with it running properly.

 

told ya'll about them inf files....











now quit asking me about frames.....lol

j/k

ask away!

 

John...killing me on those screen shots...I am partial to 3dGuru.com....over others....is laptopvideo2go better????

I still had those issues with black "negatives" on my comp on Crysis....

Cheers

 

don't understand about the black negatives, please explain. thanks!

i hope that's killing you in a good way..

you just need to find the right inf file. seriously! no joking. i have tried just about every single driver there is for the 8800m gts card. i have went through them with file compare to see what changes are made to each one. and the problem im finding is...it's very hard to have the best of both worlds. meaning... you can game to ultimate highs while plugged in, but unplugged...you might as well have an x3100. (some inf's) others... kill the battery because they leave everything set to high, with filters optimized for performance. now depending on what your running, not all those performance settings are being very helpful...they are actually causing more harm than good. (performance wise) so when you goto over clock your system..your taking already enhanced performance settings and stacking on top of them...your settings. now im no expert here, but i have seen my system do quite a bit of funny things when it's not set right...so i revert everything back to stock and start over... basically trial and error..... then there is the inf file that is perfect for your system. you game on ac power and lite surfing while on battery....this will net you at least 2.5 hours if you run in power saver mode also.....

 

how about short tutorial on our inf's switches ?

jhonksss inf guide to the dumb & lazy overclocker (well i would allow others to read it - promise )

 

lol. so far the best one i have seen that seems to work fine is the nvac.inf file out of the 175.63 & 175.75 driver set.

you would add your card in there and be good to go. would have to ask flynazz which was the other good inf to use...he used one of the ones out of an original_inf.zip file that comes with the drivers now.


i did post a bunch of stuff about these inf's but no one seems to believe...lol

 

I am using ver 175.80 on all my lappy's, no problems so far, no benchmarking, just great gaming . I leave that too Johnkss, cause he likes to party.

 

that's the original right fly?

 

Yes, the one out of the zip inside the main

 

thanks flynnaz.

now im trying the new 177.36

 

cool, let me know how it shakes out.

 

they need work..... went back to my 175.63

 

Johnksss, how come you are not using 175.80?

 

I installed the 175.80 using the extracted folder and saving the modded INF to it. But after a reboot the old driver version is still listed.

I also tried manually installing the driver through the "have disk" method, but it told me the latest driver was already installed, yet the version on the driver files and dxdiag says the stock 167.46 from gateway.

Any ideas?

 

remove it
reboot into safe mode
use driver sweeper
reboot normally - install using the have disk method
reboot

u should be good

 

175.63 was a more stripped down version while the 175.80 had more tweaks than i needed for testing... it kept crashing at lower level over clocks. but it ran very smooth for games. once i finish testing, then i will prbably just settle with the 175.80.

 

Thanks for the help on this.

I went through all the steps and now when I'm installing with the have disk method, it detects the right video card, and tries to install the driver, then comes back with "The driver selected for this device does not support Windows Vista". I've tried both the 175.80 and 177.26 drivers with the modded INF, and they're both Vista x64 drivers. Vista reports it's a "64-bit Operating System" so I'm unsure what's going on.

 

which version vista you have? where did you download the 175.80 from ?



i got 175.80 from 3dguru and the modded inf from the forums in laptop2go

 

It's Vista SP1 64 bit. Something must have been wrong with the drivers from laptopvideo2go. The guru 3d ones worked fine. Thanks for the help.

 

I am using the 175.63 drivers for Vista 64 bit from laptopvideo2go. This is the only driver I have used other than the Gateway drivers. I saw a slight drop in 3DMark, but a significant real world performance increase and my machine has been rock solid stable for me playing Crysis, Age of Conan, The Witcher, and The Orange Box.

 

because your particular inf was more for quality than performance. a minor tweak here or there and you will see it will raise your score.

 

I got the exact same thing. I followed some instructions from johnksss I read somewhere, and it talked about copying or moving the "nv_disp.inf you downloaded" to the "c:\175.63\..." folder, but the file on the link referenced to download the 'modded inf' was nvac.inf, not nv_disp.inf. It said the same thing so I just said screw it, the PC works. I'll upgrade drivers later when I have a need to.

Others were following his directions, and it worked for them so I'm sure they're right. I just figure they're incomplete and assume I know something I don't (ie: do I have to edit the INF at all?) Dunno.

 

either file is fine to use. nvac is usually desktop cards and nv_disp for mobile cards. the nvac files are usually still in the original oem inf format( so adding your card to these usually gives better performance), while the nv_disp have been altered. and is up for grabs as to your performance. (speculation of course)

 

All I did was download the 175.80 modded INF from laptopvideo2go.com, along with the Vista x64 175.80 driver package from guru3d.com. The guru3d one was hard to find without just doing a google search of "site:guru3d.com vista 64 175.80".

Link straight to guru3d:
http://downloads.guru3d.com/ForceWare-175.80-Vista-(64-bit)-download-1939.html

Link straight to modded INF:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/infs/175series/17580_vista64/nv_disp.inf

Save the nv_disp.inf to the folder Guru3d.com/Setup/ that the driver package extracts. Then just execute setup.exe and everything worked for me. I did follow some previous instructions in this thread to run the cleaning program in safe mode to uninstall the old drivers, but that's rarely a requirement.

 

how does it play on battery?

 

I haven't had a chance to play away from a plug. I mainly got the laptop as a jack-of-all-trades so I can mostly do work virtualization/programming stuff, cruise the net while unplugged, and play away from home if I wanna.

I did notice that Vista used to estimate my battery remaining as like 3 hours under a full charge soon as it was unplugged. Now it's like 2 hours and 20 minutes. Of course the estimate doesn't really have much to do with gaming or actual use, just found it odd.

 

your power options while on battery. screen brightness/cpu voltage and speed/gpu voltage and speed. depends on what setting it's on. i have made it to 2.6 hours on battery, but that was with everything on real low. lol

really all you have to do is unplug it while doing anything having to do with running the gpu at normal speed. want to see if your gpu takes a major hit and wont up clock till you plug it back in. this was what plagued allot of inf's of late.

 

That does actually remind me. I tested 3d mark after I got the drivers installed while the laptop was unplugged, and then saw the score drop from like 8600ish to 6600ish. Ran it again plugged in, and got 8700.

So yea, it's probably doing downclock thing.

 

that's why people didn't like the specified inf file for that version of the 175.80.

got an easy fix for you if your not scared to make one change in the registry.

1: click start
2: click run
3: type regedit
4: hit enter
5: click edit
6: click find
7: type in perflevelsrc
8: hit find now
9: double click perflevel key and change it from 3333 to 3322
10: click ok then reboot.

http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p319/SomeFormOFhuman/powermizerdisable.png

 

There were multiple perflevelsrc's, but I just followed the path in your screenshot and then searched for the first one. Thanks for the help, I'll test it later.

 

no problem... the one in 0000 or 0001 should change them all