nVidia Cuda driver 177.84 do not work on Z Series

Anyone here have successfully updated their Sony display driver (nVidia GeForce 9300M GS) to anything but the default ones?

The official nVidia CUDA (177.84) ones do not work as it does not contain the the part for the integrated intel driver like the sony one does, and installing them separately does not work.

 

That's disappointing. I was thinking of having a go with the Cuda plugins for Photoshop CS3.

Does the driver not work at all, or just break the ability to switch on the fly between the two?
If the latter, it makes no odds to me as I've downgraded to XP so need to reboot between switches anyway...

 

You get a yellow exclamation mark on the nvidia card in the device manager and basically nothing works, only ‘standard vga’ video card functionality, you cannot even set the proper resolution for your screen..

 

Yeah like raczkari said, you only get VGA functionality. It actually says the drivers for the 9300M GS is installed correctly but there is a problem starting it, and as for the intel chip it cannot load the drivers for it apparently. I tried to install the two drivers separately but no joy.

It sucks cause I was gonna run folding at home GPU edition on the 9300 via Cuda

 

So the only solution is to find the way how to make the same pack of drivers with Intel's one like Sony did...or in the worse case, write to Sony support and wait long for Sony to update, if ever.....

 

Has somebody tried the modified drivers from there?
http://laptopvideo2go.com/

 

Its not the official drivers that is the problem, but the fact that the Geforce Drivers provided by sony is modified to contain what is effectively 2 device drivers (Intel + nVidia) and for some reason(s) splitting the two up is not working, the link you provide is good for only the GeForce part. I might still try it though.

 

i have tried, it does not work either.

The interesting thing is that the latest intel video driver from the intel site will work provided you have the sony one installed for the nvidia card.

 

Thats interesting so that would imply that its the nvidia driver whiich is modified by sony.

When you say the intel ones are they newer/different to the default ones?

 

I just grabbed the latest drivers from intel.com, functionally is the same with the one sony originally provides with the Z, only the version number is higher in the drivers from intel. the contol panel applet is the same also.
So yes, I also think that Sony only modified the Nvidia driver and did not change the Intel one.

This is the driver I have used:
Intel download site

 

cool thanks.

 

Sony modified the graphics driver to include the functionality of the SPEED/STAMINA switch in Vista without a reboot. You can tell from reading the interviews with Z developers that thay are quite proud of it:

http://vaio-online.sony.com/prod_info/series1/z/interview_Z/index_05.html

Thus you have a single graphics driver for both video cards that turns on the appropriate "sub-driver" depending on the switch position. The situation under XP (and as some reported under Vista x64) is different, however. You cannot just flip the switch - you need to reboot. So the drivers for Intel and nVidia are seperate. I have not tried this, but I am guessing that in XP you can probably use more updated drivers (for either graphics card) than the default ones. In other words Cuda may actually work under XP on Z.

 

In many ways that mean unless sony release a newer driver, Z owners with vista will never be able to upgrade the display drivers. which is very bad.

Good article.

 

IT WORKS!

Sorry for shouting but I have just successfully installed nVidia CUDA display drivers (177.84) on my Z under Win XP (32 bit). works perfectly. no errors reported.

 

...hmm found it.

So... you can't upgrade the NVIDIA driver... crap.

C'MON SONY, RELEASE A 180.XX VERSION DRIVER FOR US PLEASE... PLEASE!!!!

 

With a modified .inf all CUDA drivers all the way up to the latest 180.60 install and work perfectly under XP.

However, 2 fundamental issues:

1. There is no performance gain compared to the Sony Drivers, so there is no point there.

2. CUDA (strangely) does not work Applications that support it state that the hardware is not compatible with CUDA or that the proper drivers are not installed. Now that is a mystery to me because the 9300GS fully supports CUDA! Is there some sort of a hardware mod Sony is doing on the Zs to prevent them to have CUDA functionality???

 

This sucks. Nvidia now officially supports notebooks with their chipsets. Sony is one of the few OEMs on the exception list. >_<

More info here if you're interested.