Vista - GeForce 260 and Vista Experience Rating

I just built a new machine:

Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Processor
OCZ Reaper 4 GB DDR2 1066 RAM
EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Graphics Card

I ran the experience index test, and I got 1.9 on the Aero performance index and 1.0 on the 3D Graphics Performance index.

This is the report that I got from Vista:

Display adapter type NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Total available graphics memory Not detected
Dedicated graphics memory 0 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 0 MB
Display adapter driver version 6.14.11.8122
Primary monitor resolution 1920x1080
Secondary monitor resolution 1680x1050
DirectX version DirectX 9.0 or better

This graphics card should be more than fine to run pretty much anything, especially Aero, but with this rating I don't seem to be able to enable it.

Does anybody have a suggestion on what could be my problem?

Thank you very much guys and gals

You are still running with the microsoft drivers. Install the Nvidia drivers and you Experience rating will be 5.9.

Alan

I downloaded the 181.22 drivers from the nVidia site and ran the installation, which seemed to finish succesfully, after which I restarted the computer.

I guess its possible I'm being completely stupid, but is there a special way of installing video card drivers in Vista (other than downloading the package and running the setup)?

I even ran used the option on their site to detect which drivers I needed, and their application detected that I have 181.22 installed and there are no further updates available

OK, it's seeing the card and drivers but not the memory... strange. Do you have both of the power connectors plugged to the GTX 260? If so, you might try removing the card and reseating it. Don't have any info on your mobo... is the card in the right PCIE slot?

Alan

Hey man, thank you very much for your help!

So, the card was seated properly in the right slot and both connectors were up. It turnes out, that even though I ran the nVidia installer, it didn't install the driver I guess. When I went to the goold old right click on the screen, and updated the driver through that menu (settings, advanced, yadda yadda), only then did it work. So now its fine

Again, thanks a lot, I appreciate it!

Happy to see you got it up and running. If you got the "nudge" in the right direction to figure it out for yourself that's even better than someone answering the question outright.

Alan

Vista likes it more when you install and run as administrator. Being said that, next time, uninstall the driver, run a registry cleaner, restart and install a fresh copy of the drivers (Run as administrator of course )