Older Nvidia drivers VS newer drivers

[BoboKatt]

Hi there,
I have a small issue -- I am currently running Nvidia drivers for my AGP 6800 GT card that are considerable old. They are actually a moded version of the official ones that date at least... maybe 1 year if not more. The reason I use them is not only are they rock stable but they allow me to play some games with my taskbar showing (namely EQ) which has allowed me to play 2 instances of this game or others and still have full control of the taskbar... other programs and such. There are other advantages. Anyhow my question is just how much improvements has Nvidia places within their new series of drivers? Have they really done anything for the dual core processors? I am currently using an AMD64 X2 3800+ so I guess it's important. Also Have they improved performance or only for benchmarks? I have tested my same system with 3dmark 2005 and I get almost 1200 points difference between the brand new drivers and my old ones... Paaaallleessssee -- I certainly do not believe they got that much improvement.

Also and most importantly I am using Nvidia's PureVideo decoder (paid) and using my TV out from my card to watch DivX and DVD movies to my TV. Have those features significantly improved? Everything is working fine and looks ok so trying to read if they had any significant improvements with CPU usage, picture quality ect...

I think my drivers are still based on the 6x.xx series rather than the 80.xx series. I am using however the newer 5.11 Nvidia chipset drivers.

Thanks,
Robert

 

[Acanthus]

Nvidia has implemented *hundreds* of driver fixes( since a year ago ), as well as dual core performance increases in the latest official drivers.

Cant you play EQ2 in windowed mode?

 

[SergeC]

Yes, EQ2 has a windowed option.

Yes, it's a major improvement, especially on a Dual-core machine.

 

[Genx87]

I have had an issue between my 6800Gt and my Nforce3 250 chipset. This issue doesnt appear to be small either. When I started doing research on this subject last August there were many threads about people having an issue with the 70.x series drivers, their 6800GTs and Nforce 3 chipsets.

I am assuming since you are running the 5.11 chipset drivers you indeed have an Nforce 3 chipset?

Anywho the bad news is the 70.x and 80.x series drivers still dont work on my system correctly no matter what I do. The symptons are lockups of the game for 3-5 seconds and texture rendering issues. I am still using the last 60.xx series drivers they made and it runs fine. The only downside is mpeg playback absolutely sucks donkey.

 

[screwd01]

these last 3 or so driver sets have cause a problem with my 6800. Whenever from a cold power up I could have my Res @ 19x12 (2405fpw) and 32bit color. Whenever i start up cs:source (only thing i play) then quit, my res would be at 640x480. I can put it at any res but 19x12 with 32bit. The only way I can return to 19x12 is at 16bit. I can play cs:s and the res will stay correct.

 

[Golgatha]

Don't do it for Purevideo. It's not supported on the 6800 series.

 

[BoboKatt]

Hum i never really had any issues stability wise with my current 6800GT and my nf3 250 chipset (you are correct -- MSI neo2 Plat here). Honestly it's EQ not EQ2 and the windowed mode with any newer set of drivers does not correctly show on my screen... it just a bittoo big whereas the 6X series look perfect!!! No other version since that and I tried them all, display the game on my 21" at 1600X1200 that well. I have never noted any "visible" performance improvements between the older 6X series and 8X series in that game alone with one instance and/or 2.

Anyhow honestly I am picking on small things. If folks tell me that the MPeg playback is a huge improvement and that the dual core fixes within the newer drivers ACTUALLY do something rather than just look good on their new improvement list then I am sold. However this PureVideo not working for 6800 series is freaking me out WTF??? On their site they say it supports the 6800 and 7800 series... tell me they did NOT tell us that the 6800 is not actually using it properly!! Did I just pay for that for nothing?

 

[Aoleleb]

I play eq 1 and i use WinEQ2 to play in window mode. It works much better than eq's built in window function. I had a 6600gt till last month, and past driver version 79.11 (i think, it was somewhere near that release) the component out stopped working, and I researched it and it looks like nvidia screwed it up and hasn't fixed it yet. So if you do componet out to watch tv, you should look into seeing if nvidia ever fixed that problem.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
Don't do it for Purevideo. It's not supported on the 6800 series.

MPEG2 and MPEG4 acceleration work fine, just not WMV-HD.

Edit: which you will never, ever... run into unless you specifically buy a product with WMV-HD (MS has a specialty store, and theres a few demo vids on the net, thats about it)

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: Genx87
I have had an issue between my 6800Gt and my Nforce3 250 chipset. This issue doesnt appear to be small either. When I started doing research on this subject last August there were many threads about people having an issue with the 70.x series drivers, their 6800GTs and Nforce 3 chipsets.

I am assuming since you are running the 5.11 chipset drivers you indeed have an Nforce 3 chipset?

Anywho the bad news is the 70.x and 80.x series drivers still dont work on my system correctly no matter what I do. The symptons are lockups of the game for 3-5 seconds and texture rendering issues. I am still using the last 60.xx series drivers they made and it runs fine. The only downside is mpeg playback absolutely sucks donkey.

Hi Genx87, by any chance have you disabled fastwrites and adjusted your video cards latency via the PCI latency App on guru3d.com? I had the same issue on my Neo2 with both my FX5900 and my 6800nu and after exhaustive testing, this was the only thing that fixed the issue for me.