Latest NVIDIA ForceWare Video Drivers

[xguntherc]

wow now there is a .89. I haven't even done the .83

it looks like those are for some openGL coders and what not. not for me.. lol.

I need to just try a few and see what works out best i think. thats what I'll do my next day off.

 

[johngalt]

WTH! No wonder nVidia did not release the .83 publicly lol

 

[johngalt]

Oh. This is from nVidia Developer pages - not from the main nvidia page - that one still shows 177.79 as the latest.

 

[Spd2Last]

Oh. This is from nVidia Developer pages - not from the main nvidia page - that one still shows 177.79 as the latest.

This special page allows direct access to the new drivers for Siggraph attendees -- the drivers will become part of the standard release NVIDIA Graphics drivers in the days immediately following.

These drivers were meant to showcase the new OpenGL 3.0 and for developers to get a head start on the new technology, but they will be releasing these to the public in a couple of days.

I usually do not keep up with the unofficial drivers since they usually pour out every week or so, so I just stick to nVidia's official drivers (WHQL and Beta) because that's what nVidia meant for the user to have. Either way, I posted this up for your enjoyment.

 

[johnwillyums]

Hi All.
I installed the 177.83 drivers yesterday and they seem great. I have a BFG 8800GTS 512MB and they are running it well.
Not sure what PhysX actually does but I downloaded Warmonger and it certainly looked very good and extremely detailed.
I blasted my way through loads of partitions of wood and concrete and even tried to blast a hole in a wall and might have succeeded if I hadn't run out of ammo but then got a bit bored with it after about an hour as I had no clear idea of what my objective was and the game got repetitive. I'll have another look at it to see if there are any info buttons to tell you what you're aim is.
Then I played Half Life 2 Lost Coast. This isn't really suposed to play on my rig-it needs 2.9Ghz and my Q6600 only provides 2.4. However the game ran fine and looked gorgeous and I played for about 2 hours.
So after 3 hours of intense gaming I'd had no crashes or freezes and RivaTuner told me the core temp was 77, up from an idle in the early sixties.
So I'm pleased with the .83 so far but can anyone tell me how I tell if this PhysX is working?

Best wishes: to you all, John:D

 

[skunksmash]

Hi All.
I installed the 177.83 drivers yesterday and they seem great. I have a BFG 8800GTS 512MB and they are running it well.
Not sure what PhysX actually does but I downloaded Warmonger and it certainly looked very good and extremely detailed.
I blasted my way through loads of partitions of wood and concrete and even tried to blast a hole in a wall and might have succeeded if I hadn't run out of ammo but then got a bit bored with it after about an hour as I had no clear idea of what my objective was and the game got repetitive. I'll have another look at it to see if there are any info buttons to tell you what you're aim is.
Then I played Half Life 2 Lost Coast. This isn't really suposed to play on my rig-it needs 2.9Ghz and my Q6600 only provides 2.4. However the game ran fine and looked gorgeous and I played for about 2 hours.
So after 3 hours of intense gaming I'd had no crashes or freezes and RivaTuner told me the core temp was 77, up from an idle in the early sixties.
So I'm pleased with the .83 so far but can anyone tell me how I tell if this PhysX is working?

Best wishes: to you all, John:D

....... control panel / view 32bit control panel / Nvidia physx..

 

[Spd2Last]

Not sure what PhysX actually does but I downloaded Warmonger and it certainly looked very good and extremely detailed.
I blasted my way through loads of partitions of wood and concrete and even tried to blast a hole in a wall and might have succeeded if I hadn't run out of ammo but then got a bit bored with it after about an hour as I had no clear idea of what my objective was and the game got repetitive.

I couldn't believe what I was reading since he had a 8800GTS 512, so i went back and downloaded Warmonger from nVidia's powerpack and it seems that they finally optimized the game for use with GeForce PhysX. I was playing smoothly at default settings (which were set to low). Then I ramped everything up to high plus a max res. of 1680*1050 and I was getting good frames ("stat fps" into console gives you the time between each frame. i was averaging 25-15ms which is anywhere from 40-66fps in offline training team deathmatch in the first map). I have an 8800GT OC'ed to 675/1675/950

 

[xguntherc]

Ya I played warmonger a few weeks back on my 260 and it was choppy. Crysis ran better.. lol so maybe your right and it's not optimized for Physx. but now it is.

Oh and JohnWilly, thats not good news. You just told us that after 2 hours of Playing a game Coretemp said your temps were 77 Degree's. is that on all 4 Cores of your Q6600. 77C is to high, and should never get above 70c. ever.

your at 70 Celsius right.? or did you say 77c in Rivatuner, so that means your Graphics card is at 77. if so then thats ok. the Videocard can reach that temp, but your CPU should not. You can turn the Fan on your 8800 GT up mpre, cuz my 8800 GTS never got above 65C ever. Are you using the Stock cooler than came with your Q6600?? and you do know that you could easily make that Q6600 run very stable at 3.0 GHz 24/7 and then that game would look even more beautiful. What mobo you got.?

Maybe I should try Warmonger again. lol

 

[johngalt]

Hi All.
I installed the 177.83 drivers yesterday and they seem great. I have a BFG 8800GTS 512MB and they are running it well.
Not sure what PhysX actually does but I downloaded Warmonger and it certainly looked very good and extremely detailed.
I blasted my way through loads of partitions of wood and concrete and even tried to blast a hole in a wall and might have succeeded if I hadn't run out of ammo but then got a bit bored with it after about an hour as I had no clear idea of what my objective was and the game got repetitive. I'll have another look at it to see if there are any info buttons to tell you what you're aim is.
Then I played Half Life 2 Lost Coast. This isn't really suposed to play on my rig-it needs 2.9Ghz and my Q6600 only provides 2.4. However the game ran fine and looked gorgeous and I played for about 2 hours.
So after 3 hours of intense gaming I'd had no crashes or freezes and RivaTuner told me the core temp was 77, up from an idle in the early sixties.
So I'm pleased with the .83 so far but can anyone tell me how I tell if this PhysX is working?

Best wishes: to you all, John:D

Wrong, John. According to Half-Life 2: Lost Coast - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia you need a ***Pentium 4 2.9 GHz, with HT - which is a single core processor with Hyper Threading technology running at 2.9 GHz.

Your Quad Core 6600 is a *lot* more powerful than that P4 processor - trust me, I know, I had a 3.2 P4 in my last machine.

Not sure what PhysX actually does but I downloaded Warmonger and it certainly looked very good and extremely detailed.
I blasted my way through loads of partitions of wood and concrete and even tried to blast a hole in a wall and might have succeeded if I hadn't run out of ammo but then got a bit bored with it after about an hour as I had no clear idea of what my objective was and the game got repetitive.

I couldn't believe what I was reading since he had a 8800GTS 512, so i went back and downloaded Warmonger from nVidia's powerpack and it seems that they finally optimized the game for use with GeForce PhysX. I was playing smoothly at default settings (which were set to low). Then I ramped everything up to high plus a max res. of 1680*1050 and I was getting good frames ("stat fps" into console gives you the time between each frame. i was averaging 25-15ms which is anywhere from 40-66fps in offline training team deathmatch in the first map). I have an 8800GT OC'ed to 675/1675/950

I may grab that DL as a test, if I can figure out if I can get Windows Steady State working on Vista x64 (I think it is not compatible) because I don't think I'll be keeping the game, so stead State would be beneficial....

Either that or else use regmon to keep track of what gets added so I can remove it manually :P

Ya I played warmonger a few weeks back on my 260 and it was choppy. Crysis ran better.. lol so maybe your right and it's not optimized for Physx. but now it is.

Oh and JohnWilly, thats not good news. You just told us that after 2 hours of Playing a game Coretemp said your temps were 77 Degree's. is that on all 4 Cores of your Q6600. 77C is to high, and should never get above 70c. ever.

your at 70 Celsius right.? or did you say 77c in Rivatuner, so that means your Graphics card is at 77. if so then thats ok. the Videocard can reach that temp, but your CPU should not. You can turn the Fan on your 8800 GT up mpre, cuz my 8800 GTS never got above 65C ever. Are you using the Stock cooler than came with your Q6600?? and you do know that you could easily make that Q6600 run very stable at 3.0 GHz 24/7 and then that game would look even more beautiful. What mobo you got.?

Maybe I should try Warmonger again. lol

I am pretty sure he meant temps from his GPU - if his non OCed 6600 is hitting those temps he either has no / passive cooling on that CPU or it has pried itself loose....

 

[johnwillyums]

Gunther, John, Skunk,

Thanks for your input. Yes I was talking about the core temp on my GPU after 3 hours gaming. You think this is too hot?

My rig is as follows:
Q6600, Asus P5N-E SLI, Thermaltake "Golden Orb" CPU cooler, 4GB OCZ 667Mhz RAM,
BFG 8800GTS 512MB OC (675/1675/975), 2x500GB Samsung Spinpoint HDDs, Thermaltake Toughpower 650watt PSU, Thermaltake Tsunami case, Samsung 226BW monitor.

I've just been browsing for about an hour and a half and Rivatuner tells me the core temp on the GPU is 58c. The other night when I was gaming it was a cool evening and I had the heating on so the whole room was fairly warm. Do you think I need to worry about overheating the GPU? >seem to recall it running even hotter a couple of drivers back.

I'd like to OC my CPU but don't know how or whether my mobo can take it. Any ideas or a pointer at a tutorial would be appreciated.

Also. Is Warmonger the only current game to do this PhysX stuff? I have Crysis, Halflife 2, Bioshock and Stalker S.O.C and they also look great with the .83 driver. I think I must be missing the point with Warmonger.

Thanks and best wishes, John:D

 

[Spd2Last]

Here's a list of the current and coming PhysX games: PhysX Games List

These nVidia GPUs can take a bit of heat. I have the original 8800GT design (which is known to have the whiny fan and to get really hot), and used Rivatuner to adjust the fan with the core temperature. I have the fan set to 45% on idle, then step up to 60%, 75%, and 90% as the temperature climbs. Idle, my temp. is about 56* but while at load it will go up anywhere in the 70s depending on the game. I try to be careful that it does not get any hotter than that so I set the 90% fan to go off after it hits 80*. If i hear the fan is constant at 90%, I will back off and alt-tab out of whatever I am doing, but luckily I've never yet come to that point.

 

[xguntherc]

Warmonger, the point is how you can shoot things, and they change different with different things. like pistol it shows one response, the machine gun it moves differently. you can shoot a wall and watch it crumble, then do it again and it falls a different way. If the wind was blowing. maybe something would fall that way, thats the point of Physx sort of.

Also I think that temp is somewhat OK for your GPU. you could always put a quiet and better cooler on it, or simply turn the fan up a little using Rivatuner.

and as for OC'n the CPU, thats a do at ur own risk thing, I was scared at first, but it's very simple. not being sure how your Mobo looks in BIOS. I can't explain. plus all CPU's are different, so just taking someone elses settings is not the best idea. but usually for a mild overclock like 3.0 GHz you'd be fine to hit that pretty easily.

This is one of the most detailed Guides I've ever read, but you don't need all that extreme stuff in it, but has great info if you wanna read it.
Howto: Overclock C2q (quads) And C2d (duals) - A Guide V1.7 - OverclockersClub Forums

and a few scrolls down in my next link there is pictures of your exact Motherboards BIOS. and he is showing what he did to set his overclocks. you should follow this.
I'd leave most things on Auto. and I'd change the vcore, or CPU voltage to Auto or to 1.350 to start. and just go up to something like 3.0 GHz. That would be around 333x9 your CPU has a 9x Multiplier. you can go lower like to 8. but shouldn't. leave it at 9 for a simple OC to 3.0 GHz

Here's the pics and some good info also with pics of your Exact Motherboards BIOS.

Google Image Result for http://techgage.com/reviews/asus/p5ne_sli/asus_p5ne_bios_10_thumb.jpg

I'd start with setting your RAM to unlinked. and try soemthing small like 2.8 or 3.0 GHz. also turn off intels Speedstep, and C1E also. these settings make your CPU crank down when not needed. but I'd leave them off.

Download CPU-Z so you can check your settings, it's a great little tool.
also download and Run Prime95 to test the OC's stability after your done. if you can pass a few hours of that, your probably somewhat ok, some people say 24hrs tho. but thats extreme. something like 3.0 you should be ok.

If you have any questions just ask. Good luck!

 

[skunksmash]

just installed 177.83 & i gotta say ...they are crap!

if this is their offering for the 8 series im going back to 177.41 GT200 drivers

Mass effect looks terrible the colors are too sharp, the shadows & shading are very shoddy
& the cut scenes reveal serious facial imperfection which just wern't there yesterday

COD4 aint too bad but these drivers give a definite cartoon feel
IMO....

 

[xguntherc]

REALLY...

that bad. sadness.. good thing I've been to lazy. and am still on .41 hehe

 

[Brink]

just installed 177.83 & i gotta say ...they are crap!

if this is their offering for the 8 series im going back to 177.41 GT200 drivers

Mass effect looks terrible the colors are too sharp, the shadows & shading are very shoddy
& the cut scenes reveal serious facial imperfection which just wern't there yesterday

COD4 aint too bad but these drivers give a definite cartoon feel
IMO....

Strange,

They seem to work fine with the 9600 series card for me. (so far...)

 

[Spd2Last]

They seem to work fine for me too so far. I've noticed a bit of an increase in fps in some games.

 

[johnwillyums]

Hello. I have to agree with the above. My 8800GTS 512MB has never looked better than this. I've been playing Crysis and Bioshock over the weekend, with the .83 drivers, and everything looks sharper and more detailed. Also the action seems smoother and more like a movie. FPS I suppose. Might it be worth reinstalling them in case that's not quite right.
Also thanks to Spd2Last for the list of PhysX games and big thanks to Gunther for the stuff on OCing. I've bookmarked the pages and am working myself up to try it maybe next weekend.
Best wishes to you all, John:D

 

[skunksmash]

there is no problem with 177.83....they run fine the clarity just is not as great
i changed them now....

im currently running 177.89

these are decent & FPS have increased....
drivers still showing that shader issue ....but maybe that's just me....lol
:D

 

[Ellebrius]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that after installing the latest drivers not to forget to enable dual core option somewhere in the NVDIA control center, I looked and did not find that option. Did I read wrong or am I looking in the wrong place?

I have:
Intel Core Duo 6660 2.40 GHz
RAM 4GB
NVDIA 8800GT 512 Mb
Vista x64

 

[johngalt]

OK, so I got the New GT260 installed, and honestly, I think I might be in love with the beast.

So much so that (here comes the part that is gonna make Gunther mad) I think I'll get the one via Step-up as well and then I'll SLI the to bad boys together.

One question - if you connect the SLI bridge on the two cars does it automatically enable the SLI, or is there a way to manually enable and disable SLI?

Reason I am asking is that I want to use my dual monitor setup for normal (perhaps by splitting the monitors into two cards) and then when I enable SLI I'll lose one monitor but that is the point of SLI....

Anyhoo, I installed the Beta .79 drivers and am going to run a Vantage bench against it with the .79 drivers, then with the .83 drivers, and then with the .89 drivers and see which gets the best performance.

*hopefully* I'll finally have enough for a 10K+ Vantage score...