A little heads up on driver upgrade.

Ok, so I'm sure I'm not the first person to have mentioned this, but it's a big enough difference for me that I wanted to share with everyone that's still on the fence about it.

Real quick background, I've been using 169.09 for the longest time, way back since my 7800gtx on my old DELL laptop till a few days ago on my Gateway FX. Performance has been pretty good.

Recently, the physx drivers came out so I figured I'll check it out, and installed it along with the 177.79 drivers. And the good part starts here. Below was my stock 6831fx scores with no overclock, in fact, my cpu is underclocked, so no performance boost from the norm.

169.09-
3dmark05 score 7200-7400
half life 2 lost coast benchmark average (with everything maxed including aa and af) 70-72fps

177.79-
3dmark05 score 9600-9800
half life 2 lost coast benchmark (same settings as earlier) 90-92fps

I didn't get solid numbers on Crysis, but the game also felt smoother than before with the same graphic settings. I notice a lot of people are still using 169.09 so I figure maybe this post will help people get better performance. Your mileage may vary but I'd assume you'd get SOME performance increase if not drastically.

And once again, the scores I posted above are real. If you don't believe me, that's perfectly fine. But what have you to lose in installing new drivers anyways?

 

I installed this on my 6860fx and now the graphics card shows up as NVIDIA GeForce 8100/nForce 720a instead of being the 8800gts. Any thoughts on this or should I try a little bit lower forceware version?

And I also get a random flicker every couple of minutes. The whole screen flashes black. I don't know if this driver is right for this model right now unless I just did something wrong.

 

Do you mean 3dmark06 or 3dmark05?

 

Yups, I wrote 3dmark05 score. And I got my driver from laptopvideo2go (check the forums, they're over there instead) and don't forget the modded inf file!

 

DxJustin uninstall all your nvidia software
boot to safe mode and use 3dguru driver sweeper.
boot normally and reinstall your favorite nvidia package.

 

Well, I just finished trying that several times but it just doesn't seem to want to work. I'm just going to go over the thread for 'the best video driver for the 6860fx'.

 

My mistake I forgot to replace the nv_disp.inf file with the modded one. I knew I was forgetting something. I did it a couple of weeks ago and I just reformatted (added a drive and did RAID 0) so now I'm getting everything back to normal.

 

Yup, don't forget that modded inf, it's a commonly missed step.

 

Yeah, tricky little bugger. I had done it several times before right and then just this one time I forgot and it just wouldn't work right. Got in now though.

 

For some reason my 6831-FX does not let me enable the PhysX option on the screen.What am I doing wrong?I have downloaded all the latest drivers.
How do I know/check what drivers I am currently using?and does this work with Vista 32 or do I need Vista 64?
Some one needs to post a simple do it yourself guide.
I am a newbie so any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

for physx you need 177.79 driver and the latest Nvidia_PhysX_8_07_18_driver
you download a utility called gpuz on the main screen it shows the driver used.
or in the nvidia control panel under sys info.

vista 32 is good

 

psst...i've got 177.66 with physx enabled...

 

rrright i had it on the 177.42 as well

 

So far tho, the whole physx thing seems to be functionally questionable, but the demos sure are fun!

 

where do you come up with these crazy avatars? first it was church signs, now movie theater signs...lol

 

well if you look at this review you might consider physx as the best thing nvidia ever done :

http://www.elite*******s.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=599&Itemid=29

lol cant type b4stards here

 

maybe if the link werent **** out we could

 

here fixed
http://tiny.cc/W37wC

 

Haha! Booya!

And yes, the reviewer seems to be quite in love with said physx.

I just hope they start releasing more physx enabled games that people want to play.

 

LOL. I just get an idea in my head and search the web for the appropriate avatar. Gotta keep it fresh.

 

Honestly, physx is very much like a gimmick like everybody else is saying. I tried Warmonger, the game runs rather badly, and yes the walls explode into little bits, but it isn't THAT impressive looking.

Then you have UT3, kind of the same problem, the physx levels run noticably worse than regular levels and the extra effects aren't THAT great. One level contains constant hail falling, another contains barrels that explode which crumble a small wall nearby. And the last one is a tornado.

I'm not sure, but hopefully when games are more optimized for physx, performance should go up. But since a lot of games are console ports, I doubt that'll happen since the consoles don't have an aegia chip in it.

Note: Lol, this driver thread turned into a physx thread.....wait, I'm not helping any.

Edit: And btw, physx enabled *does* run better as opposed to not having physx enabled. Just in case any physx lovers want to nitpick to start a flame war.

 

I have been trying to get the new drivers 177.79 and when i am trying to install it says hardware not recognized.WTF!
I currently have the 174.31 drivers running pretty smoothly, but it's really pissing me off trying to install the new drivers.
Any ideas whats going on?

 

There are a couple of gotchas when installing the new drivers. You cant just run the installation exe. Did you follow the driver update guide word for word?

 

IKAS V, just a quick run through
1) Download the driver exe
2) Extract the contents to some folder anywhere (desktop works)
3) Download modded inf and save it into the folder you just extracted the stuff to
4) Make sure you overwrite, say yes! You want to overwrite.
5) NOW you can run the setup.exe in the folder.