Nvidia Driver

[Nigel H-J]

For those who use Nvidia Drivers I downloaded the latest one the 175_16 Geforce....after installing I found that some games were very poor in performance with stutters no matter what settings I used on the advance setting panel so uninstalled it then downloaded the 94_24_forceware one (I have a GeForce 7800GS Card).

On re-starting the games found they were much improved performance wise with the older version.

Has any-one else seen a reduction in performance with the new version?

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

Regards
Nigel.

[petermcleland]

I'm not sure Nigel...I use the same card as you and I'm not pleased with this latest driver. I'm tempted to backpedal myself :-(

[Nigel H-J]

Hello Peter,

I was not at all happy with it hence my decision to go back to the older version, will be interesting to see if anyone else has noticed a difference as well.

Regards
Nigel.

[Seaking]

I've had this problem as well, I have a 7950GT that came with 91.47 drivers, over the last year I've tried all the latest drivers
as they come out, each time the newer ones gave me bad results. I'm still on the 91.47's and my FS9 is as smooth as silk with
no jaggies at all.

I'm just about to upgrade though to a 8800GT so it will be interesting so see what drivers work best with this new beast.

[ianhind]

General impression from various forums is that the newest drivers are intended primarily for the latest cards. And that the lastest versions do not always offer improvements for older cards.

So your finding that older drivers work better tends to confirm this - there may be an optimal version for a particular model. Now if we knew what that was, we could just stick to it.

Ian

[Nigel H-J]

Many thanks for Ian as I had always thought that the updates were suitable for the cards no matter what the age (with-in reason).

Have gone back to the older version and getting mid to upper frame-rates on FS9 so will now stick to what I have got.

Again, many thanks for the explanation.

Regards
Nigel.

[DaveB]

Hi Nigel..

This is a constant problem isn't it. Many software manufacturers will state that you need the 'latest' drivers for something to run and Nvidia encourage this with the unified driver (ATI too with the Catalyst releases). However, I'm sure that Ian has it bang on in that these new releases are really aimed at the very latest cards which is why I tend to stick with the driver that came with the card rather than try and update it each time a new driver comes out. It's the old 'if it aint broke.. don't fix it' scenario

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Garry Russell]

I've never has much sucess with updating drivers and end up going back to the supplied

At least it's as good as it's always been

Garry

[ianhind]

Some opinions on best drivers for 7xxx series here:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=46870&hl=

But it seems that the best driver is dependent on both the particular card and the game.

And I like the comment in post #7 "Stick to functionality, and not to up-to-daytality."

I've had to revert to older drivers with some of my older cards to get back the functionality that is left out of the newer drivers.

Ian

[Nigel H-J]

This is a constant problem isn't it. Many software manufacturers will state that you need the 'latest' drivers for something to run and Nvidia encourage this with the unified driver

Exactly Dave, | had always been led to believe that it is necessary to keep graphic card drivers' up to date to obtain best performance so why is it that these companies, who stand to gain no further revenue for the updates, not explain this in the first place? They may even strike lucky with the odd customer or two would then think, well, if the next update will give no more improvement on my present one.....I'll go get me a new card!! :doho:

They could make a few quid that way! :roll:

Very interesting reading Ian, many thanks.

Regards
Nigel.