Sony/Nvidia 98.12 Vista drivers give me 5.9 for Aero in WPI!! WTF?

So the most bizarre thing happened...I was perusing www.laptopvideo2go.com and I saw that someone posted Nvidia 98.12 drivers which seem to be from Sony. The .inf file was names nvsz.inf which usually means it's Sony's drivers for the SZ series (as well as others).

I figured I had some time to kill so I downloaded them and install went fine.

For kicks I re-ran the Windows Experience Index thinking my score would stay the same or go down with my luck.

Lo and behold my 3D Gaming score was still 3.2 but look at my Windows Aero performance score!!! WTF? It's always been around 3.6 or 3.7 before.

Either they tweaked the hell out of these drivers to mess up the test or did some major breakthrough. I have to admit even without the score, Aero is snappier with these drivers and 3D games run about the same as when using the 100.30 drivers which I was using earlier.

I've retested a few times and Aero keeps coming back as 5.9! No clue but at least a minimum it's something I can use to brag about

 

I'll have a look at that driver asap.

 

Ok, I tested that driver and found it not impressive at all. It may be better than the one released by Sony when Vista launched but it is still pretty slow in every aspect. For me the Vista index does not change, don't know what you've done there. I'd also think that it may be a measuring error. A driver does not turn a mediocre card into a monster.

Here are some more detailed benches of the 98.12 compred to the 101.41 I was (and am again) running. Red value is the 98.12, blue one is the 101.41. Benches were made with Passmark Performance Test. The 98.12 is slower in every test. Esp. in 3d-apps the 101.41 is up to 10% faster. The values (exept the marks) are measured fps.

Graphics 2D - Lines 53.58 53.98
Graphics 2D - Rectangles 34.37 37.50
Graphics 2D - Shapes 26.09 26.56
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text 110.88 113.16
Graphics 2D - GUI 119.62 121.05
Graphics 3D - Simple 156.70 167.18
Graphics 3D - Medium 33.25 35.17
Graphics 3D - Complex 20.78 22.92
2D Graphics Mark 231.12 237.32
3D Graphics Mark 67.44 72.10

 

so is it official? why isn't it on vaio update :/
And where can i update my 7400? (soz me noob)

 

What Nvidia Go card are you using? I tired the 101.41s but when I look in System Information it says Go7400 only...there's no "TurboCache" which is there for the 98.12, 97.46 and even 100.30 drivers. Without this TurboCache function supported everything runs pretty damm slow.

I think the modded inf on LV2G doesn't have the right entry for the Go7400 that Sony uses but don't know enough about it to fix it.

If I can find a modded inf that installs the 101.41s with TurboCache on then I can give them another try.

 

I use that very same 101.41 driver with the modded inf from Laptopvideo2go and it works wonderfully. No further modding needed. However I installed manually using the update driver routines and not the crappy NVidia installer.

Besides, Turbocache is not somthing enabled by a driver. That is hardware based and works no matter how the 7400 in the SZ may be labeled. Wether it displays "Turbochache" or not it pretty irrelevant. That feature cannot be turned on/off by a driver. And the 7400Go used in the SZ is the normal one that is wide spread in other notebooks too.

It seems to me, you SZ/Vista installation has some issues. You get a 5.7 with those 98.12 drivers and complain about bad performance in the 101.41 - that does not look right to me.

Here's a dxdiag snapshot of my setup:

 

I'm going to give 101.41 drivers another shot when I get home tonight. I'll redownload them and use the Update Driver/Have Disk method this time to see if that helps.

BTW. for what it's worth there's nothing that would stop a driver from using TurboCache - which is just a enhanced method for sharing video memory between the system and GPU. Without turbocache your system would still work fine because by default Windows handles shared memory but TurboCache speeds it up.

When you go into Nvidia Control Panel -> System Information. Take a screenshot of that.

Also you still haven't said what laptop you have?

 

Here you go:



Turbocache is a faster shared mem system, but that is not software based. How do you wanna switch something off that is hardware? You could turn off shared mem, but then you would only have 64MB on that cards. There are no two pipelines for shared mem here. The Turbocache relies on a very fast connection to system ram. There is no "normal slow" one. So either shared mem is on (that uses turbocache) or its completely off.

Besides, how you wanna know if its "turboed"? The 101.41 performs better in benchmarks as well as in games that are very texture hungry (Company of Hereoes). If that is achieved without turbo, why should I care?

My lappie is a pimped SZ2 model with T2500 and 2GB Ram running Vista Ultimate perfectly.

 

Ok thanks, I'll give them a shot when I get home.

 

I guess it's just my install or my laptop but 101.41 runs like utter crap...I just rolled back to 98.12 and I'll make do with this one. I ran CS:Source stress test with 101.41 and first time it stutterred like crazy and gave me 18fps, second time went up to 40fps. With 98.12 or 100.30 I get 44-45fps.

Guess whatever works for you...doesn't work for me.

 

i tried 101.41 i get 45.18fps for CS:Source Stress test...my aero score still stuck at 3.6 tho

 

Howcome my "approx total memory" on my 7400 is only 333mb while urs is 553mb?

 

Different SZ model? Different Bios? There are numerous reason I could think of.

 

What model is yours? I would assume that sony puts the same 7400 on all SZ models. And i have the latest bios from sony.

 

All Vaio SZs use the same Geforce 7400, it has 64 or 128 megs of dedicated ram and then also takes some from the system ram, so it will at times take more or less from the system ram..

 

Chain...it has to do with the drivers you use. the 95 series ones (97.46, 98.12, etc) will give you 320MB of shared RAM. the 100 series drivers (100.65, 101.41,etc) will give you ~550MB of shared RAM.

 

i see, thanks

btw mobilehavoc, the 98.12 you got from laptopvideo2go shouldn't be from sony. sony released 98.13 on their esupport site which is what i have installed.

 

Looks like Sony posted 98.13 drivers...maybe there was a bug with 98.12. I'm downloading and installing now.

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-download.pl?mdl=VGNSZ330PB&upd_id=2630&os_id=29

 

That link offers version 7.15.10.9813. I have version 7.15.10.9754 on my Vista Business preinstalled SZ460. I wonder why that installer won't run on my system and simply says that it isn't for my model. The list of applicable models listed on the download site doesn't include any of the SZ4** models.

 

You should be able to decompress that exe using winrar. Then use the have disk method.

 

Winrar doesn't work on the Sony driver EXEs...you have to use the model.txt hack to get it to install.

 

BTW...these drivers seem to add SmartDimmer in Power Management under Display. Added 2 settings one for the amount of time before dimming and the second is the level to dim to.

I tried briefly but it didn't seem to work for me...may need to play around with it. On my system the two items for SmartDimmer have .DLL files and a negative number in the text - like it wasn't installed correctly.

And on an added note these drivers seem faster...I get 48fps on CS:Source where I used to get 44fps with previous drivers. I get 52fps in XP so we're getting there!

 

It doesn't look like this driver is designed for SZ4. I managed to install it by hacking model.txt, but it actually brought down the Vista Experience Index on my SZ450. So I rolled back to the 9754 which is the lastest for SZ4.

 

I found the Xtreme-G modified version of the 101.41 a very good performer. The raw benches of Passmark show them a little slower than the stock 101.41s but the optimizations in that modified driver pay big dividend in games. The games I tried ran better and very stable. Whatever they have done to the 101.41s at TeaksRus, it works. These ones are very smooth with great real life performance. And that is what matters most. Try them...

http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=833&Itemid=41/

They actually raised the 3d index in the Vista performance index too!

 

I tried 101.41s for a while and they're definitely great in 3D games but Aero performance is so-so especially when using the Switcher app. I'm currently sticking with 100.30 because I get the best Aero performance and 3D game performance is better than 95 series and slightly behind 101.41s.

 

Have you tested the 100.95s? They should be even better because the 101.41 is basically an alpha version with SLI support. That is of no use for our notebooks. The 100.95s are considered beta without SLI support. They are as fast as the 101.41s but have fewer issues. That is the downside of the 101.41s for me atm, they crash GTR2 for example with a reference to nvd3dum.dll etc. I'm going to test the 100.95s now.

 

Cool, let me how the 100.95 work for you and then maybe I'll give them a shot too.

 

Just installed the 100.95 drivers using the Have Disk method and they seem to be as good as the 100.30 drivers. FPS seems to be the same but they seem smoother than the 100.30.

Recommend people trying the 100.95 to see how you like them.

 

I just tried em too with the modded inf from laptopvideo2go. Installation went smooth and they seem to perform well. I get about the same performance as with the 101.41s (maybe very marginal slower, like 0.2%) but I've yet to see a problem. GTR2 does no longer crash (like it does with 101.41s) and Aeros runs very well too. And even brightness control works. ATM this driver set is the best because it delivers performance close to the maximum possible atm (which comes with the 101.41s) but they are also very stable (opposed to 101.41 again) and relatively bug free (as far as you can say that from NVidia drivers for Vista). Give em a try...

 

That driver only for SZ1xx, SZ2xx, SZ3xx series. (upgrade from XP to Vista)

 

Sometimes I wonder if you guys ever think about thar hardware you own. The SZ1, SZ2, SZ3 and SZ4 ARE IDENTICAL when it come to the Nvidia GPU. The SZ4 is very able to run that driver, you just have to use that model trick.

But why in the world don't you look bejond Sony for driver support??? The drivers Sony offers are neither very up to date nor very fast/feature rich. That applies to the Wifi driver, the ones for GPUs and the one for the touchpad too.

 

100.95s make my backlight fail. really bizarre