New 8800 drivers released.

[chuckskull]

Nvidia has finally graced us with a decent set of 8800 drivers. Boasting higher performance, a new control panel(again) and an end to the dreaded "Display driver has stopped responding and recovered" message in windows Vista. I've been using the XP versions for a few hours and theres a definate performance increase in most games and a good 1000 points 3Dmark05. Will report back with Vista x64 results when Ive re-installed it.

Key Bug Fixes

• Fixed numerous "Display driver has stopped responding" error messages.
• "This is not Vista" error message appears when installing Windows Vista 32–bit drivers on a Windows Vista 64–bit operating system. The error message did not indicate which operating system (32–bit or 64–bit) is installed. NVIDIA has fixed the installer error message to better tell the end user which version of Windows Vista drivers and operating system are running.
• Warhammer 40k Dawn of War (all versions) has driver error message and does not run.
• The gamma and brightness controls in the NVIDIA Control Panel Adjust Desktop Color Settings page do not function or affect the desktop appearance consistently.
• GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS, Windows Vista Ultimate Edition: Text in the Ultimate Game:Hold'em flashes at the start of the game.
• GeForce 8800 GTX: Elder Scrolls: Oblivion-NVIDIA Control Panel antialiasing does not work when HDR is enabled.
• GeForce 8800 GTX: Half Life 2-fog is broken or misapplied. This fix requires the user to update their Valve Source–based games to the latest versions of the game engines.
• GeForce 8800 GTX: Splinter Cell Double Agent-there is corruption in the game.
• GeForce 8800 SLI: The system does not resume from S3 mode when SLI mode is enabled.
• GeForce 8600/GeForce 7900 GTX SLI: "Display driver has stopped responding" error message appears when changing the resolution, or when resuming from Standby\Hibernate.
• GeForce 8800 GTX: The Windows Experience Index tool crashes when trying to refresh the system score in Windows Vista 64-bit.
• Please view the driver Release Notes for a list of all of the fixed issues in this driver release.

Vista x86
here

Vista x64
Here

Last but not least XP x86
here

[staffsMike]

Cheers for that

[Blitzen]

I've just installed the 64Bit Vista drivers and all seems well.

My FPS score in CS:S went from:
132.98 FPS - Old Drivers
146.14FPS - New Drivers

(Thats at 1400x900 and all eye candy)

[Clunk]

Ill give these a go in a sec cheers

Any difference from the ones earlier today?

[lanceuppercut]

althought crucially its labelled:

ForceWare Release 158
Version: 158.19
Release Date: April 17, 2007
Beta Driver

[noTHINGface]

Its been a really busy day over on the guru of 3D forums! Lots of spasmodic action - they have 165.01's over there. http://forums.guru3d.com/forumdisplay.php?f=21

[chuckskull]

Its been a really busy day over on the guru of 3D forums! Lots of spasmodic action - they have 165.01's over there. http://forums.guru3d.com/forumdisplay.php?f=21

I've tried 165.01 but didn't post it here because it can seriously break video playback, 158 gives the same performance increase with less bugs right now.

[chuckskull]

Ill give these a go in a sec cheers

Any difference from the ones earlier today?

Spit and polish as far as I can tell, admittedly. Much more stable than the 165's I posted though. Right now these would be my recommendation. If thats worth anything to yah

A lot of people are complaing about a big jump in temps on their 8800's though. Just checking mine now and it's idling at 79c Compared to mid 60's on the old drivers.

[EtheAv8r]

OK I am new to nVidia graphics cards, the 8800GTX is my first - always had ATI up till now. There appear to be two different series of drivers or maning?

I currently run 97.92_forceware_winxp_international_whql

and have downloaded the 'latest release' 97.94 from here
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/winxp_2k_97.94_uk.html

and now I see these 158.19 in tis thread and am confused - what is the difference? Why two series of drivers?

[chuckskull]

and now I see these 158.19 in tis thread and am confused - what is the difference? Why two series of drivers?

Until this morning, 97.xx drivers were the newest. No-one really knows why theres such a huge jump in version numbers; best guesses are to make room to keep support older cards without causing confusion with the numbering process in the future or the fact these use version 1.5 of the new nvidia control panel.

Maybe nvidia cut development of some of the other version numbers because they knew it would be a dead end. They admitted to having some pretty serious problems in their driver development process a couple of weeks ago, maybe this is the first step in sorting it out. It's all just speculation really.

Right now these are the recommended 8800 drivers from nvidia.

Despite the huge version number difference these are just the usual driver progression; bug fixes, more performance etc etc. Download, install, enjoy. If it all goes belly up, just roll back to the old ones.

[kalniel]

A lot of people are complaing about a big jump in temps on their 8800's though. Just checking mine now and it's idling at 79c Compared to mid 60's on the old drivers.

What are you using to report them though? Obviously you can't use a driver based probe to compare driver revisions

[chuckskull]

What are you using to report them though? Obviously you can't use a driver based probe to compare driver revisions

AtiTool, nTune and Everest all reporting the same temps. I also used my high tech temp sensitive finger to see if it felt hotter and it does.

[aidanjt]

A lot of people are complaing about a big jump in temps on their 8800's though. Just checking mine now and it's idling at 79c Compared to mid 60's on the old drivers.

That's because the drivers are feeding instructions to the shaders units more efficiently, clearly by a significant margin, thus the better performance

[chuckskull]

I have to admit the only reason the temp jump bothered me is I was considering a voltmod for a bit of extra corespeed.

I think instead I'll use this as an excuse to take some power tools to my side panel.

[Nick F]

Cheers Chuckskull, I didn't know about these and I thought it was just me suffering these Display driver has stopped responding and recovered" errors!

[chuckskull]

Cheers Chuckskull, I didn't know about these and I thought it was just me suffering these Display driver has stopped responding and recovered" errors!

Those errors have caused nvidia huge headaches. Forcing them to open up public bug reporting and openly admit they were ill prepared for Vista development http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/d...412224213.html

For me they got so bad my motherboard completely locked and wouldn't boot at one point. Had to through everything at it to bring it back to life. Hence, (I never thought I'd say this) moving back to XP for stability.

In better news I just managed to squeeze 18052 out of 3Dmark05. Not to shabby if I say so myself.