nForce4 Driver 6.70

[teddyv]

You mention NOT installing the audio drivers - what drivers should I then use? Should I use the Epox disk or the nVidia package?

Building today

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: GadgetBuilder
The issue with NAM varies from system to system. Most systems work fine (that's how nVidia is able to ignore the problem).

The most common complaint for NF3/NF4 systems is failure to respond when you click while browsing; clicking a second time works. This also manifests as a "No internet connection" message which works when you try a second time. Could be NAM or the NIC driver, hard for a user to tell. P2P problems are probably the second most common reported problem. Distorted jpg files are another common problem, e.g. I captured this:
http://img370.imageshack.us/my.php?image=firefoxdistorted6gh.jpg This happens several times a day on my system.

And my personal favorite is NSVCIP accessing my disk 1 to 3 times per second continuously; this is reported by an even smaller minority of NAM users, I am aware of only 3 complaints so this is likely a permanent feature of my system.

The changes in the 6.70 release seem to be minor and don't affect NAM or the Ethernet driver, apparently, nVidia doesn't see any problems with them in spite of the noise in their forum. The recent uproar caused by the Inquirer picking up on someone's mis-diagnosis of a disk problem as being an NF4 driver problem lets nVidia off the hook for the forseeable future as far as fixing anything...

Visit the nVidia forums and read the most viewed topics to see what people are having trouble with: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s=f3...ead353326152f9b12af806c46&showforum=34

Your best bet on a new installation is to use the 6.70 release; the installer has been updated again and seems to be working better with each release. (The programmer in charge of the installer needs to be put to work on some of the other problems now that he has gotten the installer fixed.) I simply removed the earlier NAM and all nVidia drivers and ran the 6.70 installer; none of the magic sequences involving Driver Cleaner etc. which were required for 6.53 and earlier releases - YMMV, of course.

HTML destroys the tabs in the following so try looking at the source if you're interested in seeing this in easy to read tabular format - you can see what nVidia is working on here.

nVidia Driver set vs Driver versions - except audio.

Date 03/17/05 06/09/05 06/29/05 07/15/05 10/26/05
Release 6.53 I-B7.12 I-7.13 6.66 6.70
Installer 4.60 4.72 4.78 4.78 4.93
Ethernet 4.75 4.82 4.82 4.82 4.82
NAM 4.75 4.88 4.88 4.88 4.88
SMB 4.45 4.48 4.45 4.45 4.50
IDE 5.18 5.33 5.35 5.34 5.52

NAM for me caused random BSOD's with NVTcp.sys with 6.66. After having the system up and running for about 2 hours, and being able to google it, I promptly uninstalled NAM and life has been good since then.

I may try the newer drivers though as I'm still not on a final install of Windows.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: teddyv
You mention NOT installing the audio drivers - what drivers should I then use? Should I use the Epox disk or the nVidia package?

Building today

I don't know what audio chipset the Epox uses but for my mobo, the Realtek audio drivers provide me with more flexibility(changing port configurations, etc) while the Nvidia drivers don't. Up to you and you can always uninstall and switch to the other if you're not happy. Good luck.

 

[RampantAndroid]

I just did a windows reinstall....untill I killed NAM through task manager, all of my DLs were corrupted!!!!!! Stupid nVidia!

 

[xtknight]

Heh...wow. It's amazing how erroneous these drivers are. NVIDIA makes great video drivers, but the chipset drivers are just awful. They need a lesson from Intel here.

 

[Superguy]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Heh...wow. It's amazing how erroneous these drivers are. NVIDIA makes great video drivers, but the chipset drivers are just awful. They need a lesson from Intel here.

Totally agree.

I updated the drivers according to the procedure someone posted in this thread and my system would boot, but my monitor was black.

Did the system restore, updated the RAID driver manually, and ran the wizard. Things seem to be updated. :thumbsdown:

I could just run the program to install the Intel chipset drivers and be done with it. Why can't Nvidia get it right?

It'd be one thing if this were their first chipset, but we're on the 4th generation. Nvidia get it right already! :thumbsdown:

AMD performs very well and I enjoy my system. However, as an IT pro, I'd never deploy AMD workstations on my network if I have to deal with this from the premier A64 platform. Intel might be slower and hotter, but it just works.

 

[Sentry2]

So far I hate the 6.70's on my Asus A8N SLI deluxe. Just got 2 evga 512MB GTX's. Installed XP, used these drivers, and then installed the 81.94's. After I install the video drivers I get the windows loading screen until it eventually just locks up. Doesn't matter if I'm running SLI or not. Even removed the X-Fi. I'm going to try the 6.53's or 6.66's again. Had no problems with those. Not using NAM or audio btw.

 

[GadgetBuilder]

I ran into distortion of jpg's and response failures when browsing which I blamed on nVidia's ethernet or NAM driver. The response failures have been with me since I built the system but the distorted jpg's began when I installed 6.66 and continued with 6.70

However, Ethernet autosense can cause corruption of downloads and/or slow ethernet performance, see: http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/network/autosense.html

Per a suggestion from PaulDriver at PCPER, I changed full autonegotiate to "Autonegotiate
for 100FD" (my router is 10/100mb so there is no possibility of 1000mb). This is found in Device Manager/Network Adapters/Advanced/Speed-Duplex Settings. There have been no distorted jpg's since although I still see stalls when browsing and have to click again.

Not a cure-all but it may help a little in some situations.