What driver should I use for an X3100 under Vista x64? Performance sucks.

I just flattened/re-installed my ThinkPad T61 and loaded Vista Ultimate x64. I'm coming a from previous Vista Ultimate 32-bit installation, and my notebook has Intel X3100 integrated graphics -- which ran just great and plenty smooth on my 32-bit Vista installation (I believe my WEI score was somewhere in the 3's for both gaming and desktop performance).

I installed the 64-bit Vista X3100 driver from Lenovo's T61 driver matrix page ( http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-67940), and I'm getting noticeably worse performance than I was under 32-bit Vista. There's really distracting choppiness when switching between windows using Flip3D and when restoring/minimizing windows. I had the Windows Experience Index update, and it's showing 2.8 under desktop graphics and gaming graphics. Given the specs of my notebook (see signature), that seems low.

Any idea what's going on here? Should I just go back to 32-bit Vista, or is there a better 64-bit Vista driver for the X3100 available somewhere?

I was all excited about seeing my full 4GB of RAM, too.

Thanks so much for the help, everyone.

EDIT: Vista has also frozen a couple of times and given me these "Driver has stopped responding and recovered" error messages after flashing the screen. Something's not right here!

 

Intel is working on new drivers for the x3100, but I haven't seen anything about ones for 64bit Vista. The drivers for 32bit XP are supposed to be quite good, and the ones for 32bit are decent, but behind the XP ones. I certainly hope that Intel gets on the ball and makes some good 64bit drivers, I hope to use 64bit Vista soon, especially if my printer has 64bit drivers, which I need to look into. You may want to keep an eye on this thread for updates to the drivers.

 

Thanks for the link, but I don't see a lot of discussion specifically about the x64 version of the Vista X3100 driver in that thread.

Is anyone here running Vista x64 and using an X3100? How is it working out for you?

 

That's just the point, there's no discussion about an x64 version because there isn't a well developed one. In the event that Intel does start working on one, there should be information appearing in that thread.

 

kalibar, I had exactly the same thing using Vista ultimate x64 on my x61s with X3100 graphics - the performance was generally OK but the screen would often go blank for a second, and come back with the little bubble saying it stopped responding and has recovered, or somesuch.

I downloaded the latest drivers from the Intel site (edit: here http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2800&lang=eng , try this "Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator Driver for Windows Vista* 64 (zip) (12119KB)"). First, remove existing drivers, then reboot. Then update drivers, pointing to the drivers from the Intel site. Don't run the installer from the Intel site (when I did it, the box started BSODing?!).

After that everything was stable.

 

For what it's worth, the page I linked you to follows the new driver development that unlocks the hardware shader capabilities. sleepo2 correctly linked you to the location to download the current drivers for the x3100 that do not support the hardware shaders but are stable.

Edit: My previous comments about not having a well developed x64 driver aren't strictly true, as sleepo2 has clearly shown The x64 drivers are still lagging behind the x86 ones.

 

Unistall the igfx driver you have installed and reboot. Then install the third driver down within that page and reboot again.

I had problems with the igfx driver on the T61 driver matrix page as well.

 

kalibar, don't believe all the crap about the x64 drivers being worse than the 32-bit version! I run Vista64 with the latest Intel drivers for X3100 and my WEI went from a 3.0 with 32-bit to 3.5 with 64-bit. Aero is buttery smooth! Older games run well too, eg. MOHAA, COD, Ghost Recon. As Intel tweaks the drivers performance will get even better.

As for the hangs, make sure you also have the latest Intel Matrix storage driver in place. Without it everything else will be unstable (discovered this during my fresh Vista64 install.)

 

I reinstalled Vista 64 business on my X61s and keep getting the "Display driver IGFX stopped responding..." - is this the same one you're getting? I'm gonna try the install file above...hope it works