Dead Men Walking

dMw Chit Chat => The Beer Bar => Technology Section => Topic started by: lionheart on November 10, 2011, 11:37:14 AM

Title: New Nvidia drivers
Post by: lionheart on November 10, 2011, 11:37:14 AM
Nvidia have released some BETA drivers that apparently increases performance and fixes issues with BF3, and other games. Also has a new version of Physx apparently.

Not tried them yet am downloading now.

Get them HERE (http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-285.79-beta-driver.html).

Don' forget these are BETAS.
Title: New Nvidia drivers
Post by: Carr0t on November 11, 2011, 04:43:03 PM
On this topic, does anyone here run a dual monitor nVidia setup where the 2 monitors are diferent sizes?

I was looking at reviews of GTX 570s and tomshardware was saying (back in December 2010) that there was a known bug with nVidia drivers that had been around for ages where if you ran 2 monitors it never properly entered idle mode, so if you were running 45 degrees and 190W when idle with 1 monitor just showing the Windows desktop you might see a jump to 55 degrees and 255W just by adding a second monitor, instead of the minor increase you'd expect. nVidia had just released new drivers at the time that fixed the problem if both monitors were running at the same resolution, you only saw a power increase of 5W or so, but their tests showed that you still got the massive power drain jump if the monitors ran at different resolutions.

Given that I run a 24" widescreen at 1920x1200 as my primary desktop, and a 19" 4:3 at 1280x1024 for my secondary showing IM clients and such, I will hit this issue if it's still present and I get an nVidia card. Given that my machine is on pretty much all the time i'm home that could add up to a significant extra cost if it's still a bug.
Title: New Nvidia drivers
Post by: kregoron on November 16, 2011, 09:26:44 AM
The missus is running a 24" 1920*1200 and a 24" 1920*1080 monitor, when the second is enabled the power doesnt just that much, i know its limited difference in resolution and monitors are same size, but if the bug still persisted, the jump should be high then the 5-8watts im seeing.. Tho its a older generation card..
Title: New Nvidia drivers
Post by: Carr0t on November 16, 2011, 01:19:59 PM
Cool, ta Kreg. Here's hoping it's not just the horizontal res that affects it ;)
Title: New Nvidia drivers
Post by: kregoron on November 16, 2011, 01:33:57 PM
Id find it very odd that it would be only vertictal res that affected is ;)
Title: New Nvidia drivers
Post by: albert on November 18, 2011, 11:51:40 AM
On the topic of nVidia drivers... I just installed a MSI GTX 580 TwinFrozrII card and I'm wondering what the best driver option is, MSI OEM or Generic nVidia?

I noticed a lot of Frozr cards at the LAN so what have you guys done and how is your OC if you indeed OC?
Title: New Nvidia drivers
Post by: Carr0t on November 18, 2011, 01:09:09 PM
Generic, every time. Never install vendor specific graphics drivers unless the generic ones aren't supported (often the case with most mobile chipsets).
Title: New Nvidia drivers
Post by: Tutonic on November 18, 2011, 01:19:27 PM
Quote from: Carr0t;337793Generic, every time. Never install vendor specific graphics drivers unless the generic ones aren't supported (often the case with most mobile chipsets).

The only exemption to this rule I've ever come across was with Dell systems using Quadro cards.

For some reason Dell had meddled with the firmware on the card, so a generic Nvidia driver wouldn't work properly (BSOD'd the system). Just something to watch out for.
Title: New Nvidia drivers
Post by: albert on November 18, 2011, 05:33:30 PM
So MSI wise, Generic nVidia with Afterburner/ Kombustor for OC?
Title: New Nvidia drivers
Post by: Carr0t on November 21, 2011, 02:29:33 PM
Quote from: Tutonic;337794The only exemption to this rule I've ever come across was with Dell systems using Quadro cards.

For some reason Dell had meddled with the firmware on the card, so a generic Nvidia driver wouldn't work properly (BSOD'd the system). Just something to watch out for.

Good point, didn't think of that. My old work Dell laptop has a Quadro and the generic drivers won't install, saying they can't find a supported card. But I always thought that was because it was a mobile Quadro chip. It never occurred to me that they might mess with desktop cards as well.