Newest Nvidia drivers:

[Tempered81]

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=255137

Includes modded inf and works on all nvidia cards to date.

 

[ArchAngel777]

I test with 174.16 drivers. Although I don't have the numbers to the benchmarks that I ran. I can tell you this.

The 'compression' technology they have doesn't affect memory bandwidth. My tests that I ran were with high levels of AA/AF with Transparency Super Sampling. There was less than a 1% performance improvement in the three titles that I tested.

So whatever this compression technology is, it doesn't seem to have any affect on memory bandwidth, unfortunately.

I will be very surprised if the 9800GTX does any better than than the 8800GTS 512 when high levels of AA/AF are used, unless nVidia pulls out some more magic.

 

[Piuc2020]

Legitreviews recently had a review which finally pitted the 9600GT and the 8800GT on the 174 driver... the performance improvement on Crysis DX10 was significant and it really showed that the 8800GT is simply a superior card than the 9600GT and that there is no magical improvements on the latter.

 

[djnsmith7]

I'm going to give these drivers a shot later this afternoon. Hopefully they'll resolve my BSOD problem.

 

[MarcVenice]

They are for ALL nvidia cards ? Including the 8800gts 320mb ? I downloaded new drivers last night from nvidia's website, but they were from december 2007 ? 169.14 or something ?

 

[djnsmith7]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
They are for ALL nvidia cards ? Including the 8800gts 320mb ? I downloaded new drivers last night from nvidia's website, but they were from december 2007 ? 169.14 or something ?

I think those are the same drivers I have & I've already seen a dozen BSOD's in a few days' time. I'm done with those drivers.

 

[neothe0ne]

I found that 174.12 works for my Vista x64 and 8600GT, so I never bothered upgrading to 174.16 or newer, especially since the newer sets seem to have more BSOD reports.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
They are for ALL nvidia cards ? Including the 8800gts 320mb ? I downloaded new drivers last night from nvidia's website, but they were from december 2007 ? 169.14 or something ?

Yeah, the WHQL drivers on nvidia.com for the 8-series are from Dec. This is a newer driver with a modified inf file that makes it work with all 8/9-series cards. It works fine with my 8800GTS 512MB. It seems to allow AA adjustment by application profile again (Vista x64), which is a nice improvement over the drivers on NV's site.

 

[Tempered81]

Yeah nvidia plans to release drivers like this for 9 series cards with massive AA improvements and general performance improvements which reside driver-side. This makes a 9600GT look like a serial killer in games.

The funny thing is that if you goto nvidias website tommorow and tell them you have an 8800gt, you'll be directed to download drivers from dec. like you said, with features included in driversets like 169.25whql. If you tell them tommorow you have a 9800gt, they'll probably direct you to 174.50 or whatever the newest version is. Sites like laptopvideo2go.com and guru3d.com take the nv4disp.inf file that recognizes the cards suitable for the newest drivers and they just add in all the old cards to it.

If you download 174.31 from nvidia.com, they will tell you your card does not support this driver when you attempt installation - you will get a stop message and error screen. If you use one of the ones I linked to, it will install on any old card, and in the case of 8 series versions of g84, g86, and g92 you can get a bit of that g94 performance.

This drastically changes the performance margin on reviews comparing 8800gt on 169.25 vs. 9600gt on 174.16. That is what makes these links more useful than nvidia.com.

 

[taltamir]

jared, those drivers are currently just for the GF9 because they are really just beta, they had to have SOME sort of driver for the GF9, and the 169 wouldn't work with it. so they WHQLed the latest betat that worked with the 9600 and made it an exclusive driver.

Wait a little and I am sure all the nvidia cards will work with the new drivers.

Everyone complained that the 8 refresh was BS and that they should have named it GF9 because its completely different, and it has been refered to as incomplete GF9
Now they finished some pure video enhancement features and call it GF9. its essentially the same core.
As far as I am concerned the GF9 is nvidia fixing their 8800WTF naming mess. Not a new set of cards, the new cards were already released.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: taltamir
jared, those drivers are currently just for the GF9 because they are really just beta, they had to have SOME sort of driver for the GF9, and the 169 wouldn't work with it. so they WHQLed the latest betat that worked with the 9600 and made it an exclusive driver.

Yah that's true. Nvidia only lets gf9 users run these, but why not run them if you have a gf8 too?

 

[Narse]

I was unable to enable SLI for my 8800GT with these drivers, I would select enable and it said it required a reboot. After the reboot I would go into the nVidia control panel and SLI would not be enabled.

Has anyone else seen this with this driver?

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: jaredpace

Originally posted by: taltamir
jared, those drivers are currently just for the GF9 because they are really just beta, they had to have SOME sort of driver for the GF9, and the 169 wouldn't work with it. so they WHQLed the latest betat that worked with the 9600 and made it an exclusive driver.

Yah that's true. Nvidia only lets gf9 users run these, but why not run them if you have a gf8 too?

Because the drivers aren't ready. when they will be ready every would be able to use them.
Or maybe its a sneaky way to get higher benchmarks on the 9 series early on like you say.
Either is possible, but I am inclined to believe that the drivers are just not as ready. If they release buggy "first release" drivers for the GF9 its easily understandable and forgiven. If they break the stable GF8 drivers for users who had perfectly stable system before they will get lots of flak. It is safer to confine major changes to new cards while they are getting thoroughly tested for bugs.

There is also a matter of support. any nvidia card since the TNT2 uses the same driver model. They just stopped including their names in the inf file so that it will not install and get people complaining (waah, my geforce2 card is having bugs running crysis on windows vista 64 using the 169.25 WHQL driver...)
Or maybe microsoft WHQL actually TESTS those drivers with all the cards they claim to support, and nvidia simply does not have any TNT and early geforce cards to give MS to test those drivers with.

That inf project simplys adds all the cards to the list of supported cards, and installs the unsupported driver anyways.

So don't be so quick to come up with conspiracy theories there.

 

[ja1484]

I get me drivers when Nvidia says they're ready, and not a moment before...

 

[BFG10K]

Because the drivers aren't ready. when they will be ready every would be able to use them.

Well nVidia are certainly dragging their heels. In either case I don't think 169.21 are ready given they can't even apply profile AA properly, yet they've been up for about two months.