**Official** Video Card Drivers Rev2

[deathwalker]

Well...there is a lot of diatribe going on in the post...gee...what's the bottom line? I have a dell 9300 with a 256 meg 6800 Go graphics adapter. I currently have the only driver Dell has posted and that is the 67.71 version. I have been monitoring my favorite 3rd party driver site Omegadrivers.net and they do not have a newer version available. Does anyone know of another 3rd party driver around that has been adapted to Laptops?...and is it current?

 

[McArra]

XG 76.50HD works in laptops I believe.

 

[Paul]

Is there any place to get tweaked drivers for Intel Extreme Graphics 2? I'm guessing no but I thought I'd ask.

 

[gobucks]

is anyone using the nvidia optimized 76.71 64-bit drivers, or just the plain 76.71s? I found the openGL fix for riddick, but it only patches the x86 executables, not the AMD64 exe. is there a patch for the AMD64 one so i can play with these drivers?

 

[Gamingphreek]

Updated everything and the ATI links are fixed, they seem to go bad after a couple of days :\

 

[PrayForDeath]

Any comments on the 76.45? Is it newer than the 76.50? That's confusing.
Nice update date

 

[Hyperlite]

we need some updated benches on the front page. =) i'd do it my self, but being on dial-up, downloading drivers takes about 15min a set. =/

 

[MADMAX23]

I would recommend you to use the 76.44 nvidia modified drivers. I have tested my Gpu with 71.89 official Nvidia drivers and these ones and the difference is amazing!. In Aquamark 3,using the 76.44 drivers I get 45fps overall with the following settings: 1024x768 AA:4X AF:8X Detail:Very High!With the same settings but with the official 71.89 drivers I got 35 fps!It's a 10 fps difference by simply installing improved drivers!
The whole crowd is amazed with these drivers,by now the best ones!

 

[Gamingphreek]

Hmm somehow i got unsubscribed from my own thread lol. At any rate the 76.45's are indeed newer than the 76.50's.

Right now the drivers i recommend using are the 71.89's or the 76.45's. Same goes for modded driver versions. Yes we will definitely have to get some benches back up.

-Kevin

 

[Ruroni]

Originally posted by: McArra
XG 76.50 are great!!!

What is XG?


edit: Thanks for the reply GamingPhreek. I'll google them up. )

 

[Gamingphreek]

Xtreme G Modded Drivers. I highly recommend them.

-Kevin

 

[Hyperlite]

no good on whql 76.45 for me, blue screens like crazy. sticking with 71.89 for now.

 

[Gamingphreek]

New ATI Catalyst drivers released. Anyone have any comments on performance.

-Kevin

 

[spazo]

New ATI Catalyst drivers released. Anyone have any comments on performance.

I have an increase of about 100 3d05marks and I haven't tried any games yet as I don't really have any new games which demand a lot from my x800xl...that will change when I get Half Life tomorrow...

 

[Miklebud]

Any suggestions for a driver for a BFG 6800OC that should be arriving at my house in a few days? What gives the best performance for CS:S? The link in the first post only show outdated drivers?

So the best drivers for Half-Life 2 are?

 

[Gamingphreek]

The Original Post is updated as i see new drivers. They are the very latest. For CS:S... i recommend drivers based off of the 71.89 or 73.00.

As for the Catalyst drivers, is there anything different. Same interface, same IQ, just a little faster or what?

-Kevin

 

[amol]

I WOULD try out the new 5.5 drivers for ATi, but for the first time in a long time, my computer is running VERY smoothly, and I don't want to mess it up right now

 

[Megatomic]

I installed the 5.5s (non-CCC of course) and I'm pretty happy so far. The biggest thing I noticed is that the WDM drivers installed properly this time. With the 5.3 and 5.4 sets I had to revert to older self-contained WDM drivers, not so this time.

 

[Mem]

I WOULD try out the new 5.5 drivers for ATi, but for the first time in a long time, my computer is running VERY smoothly, and I don't want to mess it up right now

It really is simple to install ATI video drivers,I have installed them all from 3.4s all the way up to 5.5s,just uninstall old ones via add/remove programs ,if you really want a clean install try Driver Cleaner,the process is simple and ensures any old ATI files left behind from normal uninstall way are removed.


5.5s are working fine for me as usual,I don't bother installing the new CCC.

 

[PrayForDeath]

I gotta try those 73.00
Kevin, you forgot to update the title
Do you guys recommend using DriverCleaner to remove VGA drivers on an nForce based PC? Wouldn't that delete the nForce drivers as well?

 

[Megatomic]

Yes, there is an nForce chipset driver option in Driver Cleaner. I use it when I update my nForce chipset drivers and it's safe.

 

[PrayForDeath]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
Yes, there is an nForce chipset driver option in Driver Cleaner. I use it when I update my nForce chipset drivers and it's safe.

What I meant exactly was, if I wanna clean the Geforce drivers in an nForce system (using DriverCleaner), wouldn't that delete the nForce drivers as well?
Thanks

 

[Megatomic]

Only if you tell it to. Have you ever used Driver Cleaner? You can pick and choose which drivers you want to clean up.

 

[kovboi]

Here's a little comparison I did of some of the more popular modified drivers. The NGO drivers worked best on my system, though they were pretty close to DNA's drivers in HL2. Below I've included the improvement over the official forceware drivers in parentheses. When Omega gets around to doing a 7x.xx driver I'll add that one to the mix.


HL2 Benchmark
(1024x768, Max Detail, System settings, Heap size 128 Mb)

Hardware OC Coast
Forceware 71.89: 62.8
XG 71.89HD: 62.8
XG 76.41HD: 62.6
DHzer0point 76.44: 61.8
DNA 76.50: 76.4
NGO 76.50: 76.5 (+13.7)

Guru3D demo4
Forceware 71.89: 113.6
XG 71.89HD: 113.5
XG 76.41HD: 113.6
DHzer0point 76.44: 106.5
DNA 76.50: 114.4
NGO 76.50: 114.8 (+1.2)

FarCry Benchmark
(1024x768, Max Detail, Default Shader, Anisotropic filtering ? system, Antialiasing ? system, Renderer ? Direct3D)

PC Games Hardware Demo
Forceware 71.89: 49.94
XG 71.89HD: 50.01
XG 76.41HD: 50.76
DHzer0point 76.44: 50.65
DNA 76.50: 47.92
NGO 76.50: 50.82 (+0.88)

Aquamark 3
Forceware 71.89: 51,530
XG 71.89HD: 51,466
XG 76.41HD: 52,062
DHzer0point 76.44: 51,514
DNA 76.50: 51,658
NGO 76.50: 52,094 (+564)

3DMark05 1.2.0
Forceware 71.89: 3611
XG 71.89HD: 3554
XG 76.41HD: 3599
DHzer0point 76.44: 3582
DNA 76.50: 3617
NGO 76.50: 3675 (+64)

 

[Gamingphreek]

Wow!!! Wonderful set of benchmarks. They would however lead me to believe that the DNA's and the NGO's sacrifice some image quality as they are about 15fps faster in some of the benches.

As for driver cleaner, Megatomic is correct, you can pick and choose. However, i dont bother with it. I simply add/remove the drivers, and install the new ones. IMO really no need to use driver cleaner unless you wont be installing the same drivers (ie: switching from ATI to Nvidia you should use DC)

-Kevin