ThinkPad T61P (How To Make Your Quadro A GeForce Driver Side)

this website flicker?

http://www.livescore.co.uk/default.dll


I using default drivers and 60hz , 1680 * 1050

I only noticed those website with background like this flicker

normal website is okie

 

Hmmm, interesting. With the change I just made (60Hz refresh rate) I don't see a perceptible flicker on that site. I'm running at 1900x1200 (since you're at 1680x1050 you must not be on a T61p, eh?)

So, maybe the suggestion offered previously, regarding power savings settings, will help in your case?

 

hmm check using 60HZ and my lcd max resolution is 1680*1050

on default display ..

by the way regarding power savings settings , I amuse u using xp ?
for my case under vista don;t have this option

 

Ok, so I just tried out these drivers on my T61p and did a bit of benchmarking:

Code:

					Aquamark		HOC FarCry Benchmark 1		HOC FarCry Benchmark2		3dMark06

MS Drivers (via Windows update)		97,158											  4113				

Lenov0 Drivers (6.14.0011.5685)		109,413				43,58 FPS			35,53 FPS		  4113
(based on the 163 series)

Modified 169.28 (GeForce8600)		112,925				44,36 FPS			36,05 FPS		  4305

Aquamark with standard settings (only because this has been used previously in this thread)
FarCry Benchmark 1 with

Code:

1600×1200
Ultra quality option, Direct3D renderer
Level: Pier, demo: 1.tmd
Pixel shader: model 3.0
Antialising: 2×
Anisotropic filtering: From System×
HDR: disabled
Geometry Instancing: disabled
Normal-maps compression: disabled

FarCry Benchmark 2 with

Code:

Resolution: 1600×1200
Ultra quality option, Direct3D renderer
Level: Pier, demo: 1.tmd
Pixel shader: model 3.0
Antialising: 2×
Anisotropic filtering: From System×
HDR: disabled
Geometry Instancing: enabled
Normal-maps compression: enabled

3DMark06 with standard settings
Driver settings left how the installation routine set them.

The Flicker can be disabled via unchecking the "enhance battery life..." checkbox, however it is not necessary to disable Powermizer completely.

Drivers work well with the ThinkVantage Energy Manager, only the setting "set to lower refresh rate after x minutes" is gone. So whoever used this might encounter a slightly lower battery life.

In some older games (like The Settlers 5) the modified drivers allow selecting a higher graphics quality than the quadro drivers allowed.

HDR rendering in FarCry does not seem to work with any of the drivers (garbled picture).

Edit: Fn+F7 (The Presentation Manager) will not work with the 169.xx drivers! this only seems to work with the original Lenovo drivers. /Edit

All Benchmarks on a power-cable-connected T61p with QuadroFX 570M, Core 2 Duo T9300, 2GB RAM, Windows XP 32 Bit


As you can see the performance benefits are pretty negligible, however the better compatibility with some (older) games seems like a good advantage, especially since I did not find any drawbacks (no stuttering, no stability issues)

 

The Flicker can be disabled via unchecking the "enhance battery life..." checkbox, however it is not necessary to disable Powermizer completely.

under where this option?? next I not using battery never insert always on ac power supply

 

Sorry I was not clear enough!

In the nvidia Control panel -> Mobile -> Powermizer settings -> leave "activate Powermizer" enabled, but uncheck the option "enhance battery lifetime"

 

Does anyone experience a hotter running laptop when installing these new drivers? Or has anyone lost the ability to change screen brightness after installing these new modded drivers?

I'm currently running on 63.44 which I find to be most optimized/reliable. I don't lose control of brightness levels like some people I heard and it doesn't make the system run hotter, which was a symptom if when I installed newer modded drivers from laptopvideo2go.com.

BTW I did not completely uninstall stock driver. I just installed this driver over it, which seems to be a better method....maybe that is why I have not lost brightness control levels?

 

I did a full uninstall of the old lenovo drivers and did not loose the ability to change screen brightness nor did the laptop run hotter with the modded drivers.

 

which version u used?

I using default drivers come with t61p

I guess u use different drivers?

I cannot spotted the option you mention.l

 

It seems though my fans run faster when I installed drivers newer than 163.44...but of course that was a while back. I hvaen't tried any of the recent releases...

 

Sorry I was referring to the other flicker mentioned in http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3057640&postcount=60 ! Just now registered that you have a completely different problem. This I am afraid can not be fixed with the fix I posted. Sorry. I have encountered the website flicker you are talking abut with quite some LCD Displays. Some seem to have it some not. I am not sure if it is possible to fix this.
The option I was talking about can only be found in the modded 169.28 drivers which can be found at the beginning of this thread. The default drivers are for the NV Quadro xxxM, and are optimized to work with the ThinkVantage Software. But they normally do not have the flicker mentioned previously. Do not confuse the normal flicker on some websites (like: http://www.livescore.co.uk/default.dll) with the flicker we are talking about, which can be seen e.g. on the normal-blue colored desktop of the classic windows style but not on most-white webpages.
Only the second flicker (which is caused by the backlight running at a lower frequency than "normal" to save energy) can be removed with unchecking the previously mentioned option - which you will only find in the 169.xx drivers, since only these do cause the problem in the first place.

 

It might be, though I didn't get this feeling, and GPU temperatures did not rise above the level with the standard lenovo drivers. But then again, I might just be deaf...

 

I see so wonder u also encounter?the flicker I mention on this websites?

I just wanna know is it normal ...problem on viewing on T61P
Some thinpad users don;t noticed but of cos they are using different models

even some using another brands don;t noticed some yes

 

Yes, I see it as well, I guess it is normal for the T61p.

 

that weird the spec of the lcd on t61p is consider not bad

and with a not bad gfx


cannot believe viewing those websites with horizontal lines can encounter flickering ..whereas some even cheaper laptop don;t have this problems?

 

WARNING: Do not try to fiddle around with this (e.g. uninstalling/reinstalling the Presentation manager) as this will not fix the problem but mess up the Power manager! I have no clue why, but it does.

 

Well, I guess it has something to do with the high dpi value of these displays. If you would seperate the lines a bit, or zoom in, the flicker will go away. I encountered similar problems with my old Laptop (1280x800) on a site where the lines were even finer and closer together. So I guess it has something to do with an "interference" happening when horizontal lines with a distance somehow close to the pixel distances on the panel have to be displayed... (so that every or every other pixel "line" has to display a slightly different grey tone.

 

that is weird how come some fellow t61p users never noticed the flicker?

 

Maybe they have displays with a different resolution, plus, there are not that many websites out there with such a background...

 

You could check the following: Use GPU-Z to check if the GPU goes into throttling when not used (on desktop you should have a core clock of 169MHz and a memory clock of 100MHz)

 

In Rivatuner's Driver Level Overclocking the core is clocked at 169Mhz and memory is clocked at 100Mhz. However, in Rivatuner's Hardware monitoring:

Core clock \ ROP Domain = 182.25 Mhz
Core clock \ shader domain = 364.50 Mhz
Memory Clock = 99.90
Core Temp = 62C

Temp of GPU according to TPFanControl is 57C...so there's a small difference

Are these numbers normal for my 570M Quadro 256mb GDDR3 on my T61p ?

 

I would say so, yes. Especially if it is running a bit longer...
My values (GPU-Z) are: 169MHz, 100MHz and 50°C (strictly xp desktop), but it is sitting in a dockingstation, and I get the feeling that the cooler-fan runs more often when the laptop is docked (and no, I use the same profile settings for docked and undocked)
However, maybe check the temperatures after letting the Thinkpad cool down a bit. My Temperature shoots up to 65-70°C under full GPU load, but falls back to 60°C pretty fast - and stays there for a while, after about 3 minutes it reaches 55°C.
If you are running Vista with aero (glass), the GPU has more work to do on the Desktop, so that would explain a bit higher idle temperatures

 

I didn't think drivers would show such an increase in performance. I could barely play Crysis, with the new drivers it ran smoothly.

Also, first I used driver cleaner to clean my drivers, then I installed 170.74 drivers. They caused my screen to have a slight flicker and BSOD after Crysis started. I reinstalled and same thing happened. Then I reinstalled stock drivers, then just installed 170.70 drivers over them without using driver cleaner. The 170.70 drivers seemed to work better. Either that or I shouldn't have used driver cleaner.

 

Did you open the ".inf" code folder and remove all other devices not related to your notebook?

That could be the problem.

When I set my 174.34 drivers up I followed the instructions in this thread and my notebook has had no problems during graphic intensive games. Going on 5 weeks now.

 

Stupid questions time: did you use the provided 174.16 inf for the 174.34 drivers or did you make a modified inf yourself?

Secondly: Did you change anything else but the driver? I am a bit amazed of your 3DMark result - I run (more or less - I "only" got 2GB of ram) the same hardware you're using, but with the 169.28 drivers, and get 4300something points max.

 

Here's a question (slightly unrelated)...I still have the default list of CAD application settings on Control Panel, shouldn't it have changed to more DX games and app settings?

 

Don't know the answer to your question, but I do have a solution for you:

Search for nvwapps.xml and for nvapps.xml (those should both be under "System32" - but that goes for XP, don't know how it wil lbe under your Vista). Now copy the profiles from nvapps.xml to nvwapps.xml (be sure to not mess up the tags), re-open your nvidia control panel and voilá!

 

Quite true..another way is to just swap the filenames in the extracted driver folder prior to installation:
Rename nvapps.xml to nvwapps.xml
Rename original nvwapps.xml to nvapps.xml

 

to Hackes. Can you do the same driver for NVS 140m?

 

One more thing I just thougth about: do you have the nvidia driver helper service enabled? It is more or less useless on desktop systems, but provides throtteling of the GPU on most modern laptops, including the T61p. Normally if you disable it, the GPU won't throttle up when a 3D aplication is run, but maybe there are constillations where the GPU won't throttle down when only 2D is used...?

 

To Hackez i have bsods(memory parity error) , freez and other in some games. I have nvs 140 gard. And 1 dimm memory. Maybe this drivers for 140m can help me? I try this drivers, but they dont help

 

I'm not that good with XML...where should I insert the settings and what shouldn't I delete?

 

A: I downloaded the 174.34 driver from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com I followed instructions in this thread and from the info over at laptopvideo2go, in order to install properly. I didn't code the .inf file. Inside of the folder there is specific code related to driver and a few different notebooks. You have to delete the code that doesn't relate to your notebook.

Not hard to do but I can see how people could make a mistake doing this and have a bad driver install.

A: I tuned it. Not going into this. Got my knowledge online.

 

If you don't want to mess with xml just follow my instructions in my last post. That will mean reinstalling the driver. If it's the same driver you're reinstalling you won't need to uninstall it first. Just extract the driver file, then rename the 2 xml files in the installation folder (see last post), then run the installer. After that's done you should see the dx game profiles in nividia control panel.

 

Well after a lengthy period of inactivity due to college exams I'm back.

Do you guys have a suggestion for the next modded driver? Whats the latest stable driver to come out with even performance across the board?

-----

Catching up on old questions in order:

Micr0: I'll make a new guide for those who wish to apply this tweak to their INF's themselves rather than relying on me as soon as I get the free time. (No promises when this will be!)

Skeete: This can be rectified the way morphy suggested.

"Quite true..another way is to just swap the filenames in the extracted driver folder prior to installation:
Rename nvapps.xml to nvwapps.xml
Rename original nvwapps.xml to nvapps.xml"

Magic: Unfortunately no I cannot due to time constraints, but once I get time to make the guide on how to do this tweak yourself then you'll be able to. In addition, this tweak only activates if your running a Quadro 570 so thats why your not seeing any difference.

 

ok, so you did mess with the in. that is all I wanted to know. I was just interested if anyone ever tried using the old infs for a new driver.

Uh, yea, pretty impressive. So in other words: You have no idea what you actually did, because you used a flashy tool with lots of colorful pictures.

Edit: Oh, and please, spare me the "oh yes I do know what I am doing". Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe (most probably actually) your value is a fraud; maybe you overclocked your GPU in which case I don't even want to know - I just fried enough semiconductors in my life to know it's no good in the long run.

What I actually wanted to know was if this performance gain was (somehow) related to installing the 174.34 driver (believe me, I have seen strange things). That does not seem to be the case. Thanks for the kind and enlightening answer.

 

Insert the game infos (each is enclosed in PROFILE /PROFILE) after these lines

Code:

FILE
	INFO Number="3542887084"/
	PROFILESET

Sometimes this looks like this:

Code:

FILE
	INFO Number="0"/
	PROFILESET

Make sure to keep the PROFILE Label="Base Profile" - It is probably best if you insert your profiles from nvapps.xml after the /PROFILE which closes the PROFILE Label="Base Profile" section. After you have successfully inserted the profiles, make sure the the following lines are at the end of the file:

Code:

			
	/PROFILESET
/FILE

Thats all. nothing serious I gues... Good luck!

 

....slight problem..There is no PROFILE Label="Base Profile", It just starts at PROFILE Label="3d App - Default Global Settings"...I'll try putting it after that.

EDIT- Didn't work, now it only lists the DCC/CAD applications....

Should I PM it to someone?

EDIT: After I deleted all old NVIDIA Forceware data manually and cleaned the drivers and registry, this worked..Thanks, it's really helpful in games now.

 

I guess you won't need this anymore, but if you still got it somewhere maybe you could pm me the version that did not work. Maybe you messed up the XML - this can happen pretty fast because it is such a vast mass of data. (at least to me it has happened quite a lot of times, although I should know better)

 

A quick question for Hackez the next time you have a moment.

Just a bit curious on what things you changed in the .inf for this. I'm guessing just something in "Localizable Strings"? Or did you figure out a way to actually soft change the PCI-ID reported to the driver? Wondering if this is similar to what I've been doing already...thanks!

 

I have posted many times about how well the 174.31 driver works. It has improved overall game quality and helped improve 3DMark06 score with XP Pro 32 bit.

 

Sorry, I am only aware of your Aquamark result (please correct me if I am wrong). In your T61 game screenshot thread you most of the time use relative scores like "runs smoothly". I have not been able to find a post with a 3DMark result where it would've been possible to know what the difference between any other nvidia driver and the 174.32 driver is. I mean in 3D mark points.
Thus justifying my question how this driver performs in the 3DMark06 (with no other tuning that is). See, I don't want to fight here. I was just interested if you would be able to tell me what difference in 3DMarks it would make when changing the driver from 169.28 to 174.32, since you have run both drivers and obviously benchmarked them.

 

I was having issues with the lastest Quadro FX 570M driver from Lenovo and the game Assassin's Creed*. The driver would intermittently go into an infinite loop (as reported by a BSOD) after the game loads. I gave another try at the laptopvideo2go driver, this time 174.93 and I'm happy to report that I've never had the same problem since the installation.

Also figured out a way to fix the auto-dim/auto-revert-to-max issue on Nvidia control panel: the SmartDimmer feature was actually turned on with all sliders to max brightness even though the selection bullet on the setup page indicated that the feature was turned off. Checked "disable" bullet once more and hit apply, and now it is indeed disabled and won't prevent power management from auto dimming the screen on battery. Also a good point about leaving PowerMizer on but only disabling the "extend battery charge by using less power for the display" option. The option by itself seemed to provide an extra few minutes' battery life which is negligible for any real life use of the laptop (as opposed to a "drain test" for example).

* Edit: I'm using DX9 on WinXP.

 

It's hard to determine but for the most part it's about a 300 point increase on 3DMark06 without upgrading/tuning anything else on the T61p.

 

Thank you!

 

when i unzip both the driver and inf folder, and transfer the "nv_disp" file from the modified inf folder to the driver folder, i do not get the option to "replace" as stated should happen. The file im guessing it's supposed to replace is titled "nv4_disp" no? What do i do? am i supposed to add a "4" to the file name?

thanks

 

anyone? it did not work lol...

how is this done?

 

What driver are you trying to install on which OS?
The drivers should almost always (and do so if you take the ones from the first page) contain a file called "nv4_disp.inf". So when copying the nv4_dsip.inf file from the modded inf folder (only the file, not the folder! - for the sake of eliminating a problem source first extract and then copy, do not extract directly into the driver directory) to the driver folder (this folder does not contain any subfolders - if it does you have done something wrong (e.g. extracted the inf folder into the driver folder)) you should get an "file already exists - overwrite?" message.
Check and re-check the folders and files. In the end you need to have the inf (nv4_disp.inf) from the modded inf folder in the driver folder. Maybe enable "display file extensions of known files" - this might ease the troubleshooting a bit.

 

edit: thanks for the help, i was able to get it working.

 

Has anyone had a problem outputting to an external screen after installing these drivers?