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Anyone tried the brand new NVidia Drivers?


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Well, I tried them.

I can't tell you whether they have the same problems, as I was unable to bring up the control panel window which is supposed to allow me to change the AF/FSAA settings.

With the new drivers Windows (I'm talking XP Pro here) complains about a missing DLL on start-up. This was a problem with 40.71 too, but only if you installed the drivers the wrong way. I installed 40.72 the same way that was right for 40.71, and I get the DLL error.

Then when trying to access the GeForce3 tab in the control panel to the control panel crashes.

So there you go. From my limited tests, 40.72 is worse than 40.71.

NVIDIAs drivers seem to be de-generating with this 40+ series.

Historically I've had three irritating problems with their drivers: firstly the problem with anit-aliased text, and transparent whites (which plagued CMBO), and secondly with a persistent 8-pixel shift it puts on my flat-panel monitor when I attach via DVI, and thirdly they didn't support 1600x1024 (which is the native resolution of my flat-panel).

The third problem got fixed in 23.xx, the first problem in 28.xx and the second problem in 30.82.

The 40.xx emissions seem to re-instate at least two of those issues. I get the feeling NVIDIA and ATi have swapped driver development teams.

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Oh yeah, I just fired up CMBB (never mind the AF/FSAA), and boy is it a horrible experience. The mouse goes crazy, the pointer disappears and reappears randomly. The leftmost panel on the game control panel (victory/morale) flashes constantly.

Come back 30.82, I love you really...

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Uhh, 30.82 is still the latest official driver, right? The later ones are still beta versions as far as I can tell.

I have installed 40.71. As I don't have CM:BB yet (thanks to CDV) I don't know the status there. However, I haven't had any infinite loops in nv4_disp.dll after installing it. If Nvidia has finally managed to crack that one, I'll be a very happy camper! smile.gif

(edited because I still cnat splell)

[ October 04, 2002, 05:04 AM: Message edited by: Hawk ]

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30.82 is the latest official WHQL driver, yes. There's actually a 31.40 floating around too.

Versions 40.71 and 40.72 are official betas, in that you can download them from NVIDIA rather than your local favourite repository of leaked beta drivers. But they are beta nevertheless.

It's just a bit worrying that old, solved problems seem to be reappearing. Someone somewhere isn't doing their regression testing correctly!

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Guys,

You all seem to know what you are talking about. May I just ask, should I upgrade my drivers from 28… to 30.82?

I have a GeForce3 Ti200 64mb card. All seems to work OK with both CMBB and CMBO. Hence my reluctance to upgrade the drivers until I get the all clear from those who understand these matters.

And, yes, it is odd that Nvidia seem to be going backwards and old faults reappearing.

All the best,

Kip

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Ugh, what a question! Well as I think I've said above, my experience has been that 30.82 is better than the older 28.xx and 29.xx series drivers.

As the saying goes "your mileage may vary". Another saying goes "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

If you haven't got a problem with 28.xx then I'd stick with them. I'm sticking with 30.82 for now. The only reason I'm messing about with 40.xx is just plain curiosity.

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Jiggles, what OS are you running? The only time I've seen the Nvidia tab missing is when you install all or part of the wrong version driver to the wrong OS.

I downloaded and installed them last night. They work fine on my machine (Athlon 1.4Ghz, Windows Me, Leadtek Geforce4 Ti 4600). They are actually a huge improvement over the 30.82 as far as reducing shimmer with FSAA (new Texture smoothing feature with 4xS FSAA works and looks great).

The FSAA "problem" with Detonator 40 series drivers has to do with Windows 2000/XP and text displays in CM:BB and CM:BO disappearing, like the scenario list. It can be solved by minimizing CM (Alt+Tab or ESC), then going back in. This should restore the missing text.

Keith

[edited for ID10T error]

[ October 04, 2002, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: sitzkrieg ]

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Originally posted by sitzkrieg:

These new beta drivers (40.72) released yesterday are only for Windows 98/Me.

Jiggles, what OS are you running? The only time I've seen the Nvidia tab missing is when you install all or part of the wrong version driver to the wrong OS.

Well I got them from here where it says "Windows XP/2000" (I'm running XP Pro).

:confused: :confused: :confused:

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Another Antialiasing problem with CMBO/CMBB is that the game won't work in x2 or quinqunx AA. I can only get a picture when I set AA to off or x4. This is mildly annoying, since I find that quinqunx works best for Il-2 (my other Eastern Front fixation!).

I've seen this problem with the 28.32 and 40.71 drivers (the only drivers I've tried recently).

P4 1.0 GHz

Win98

GeForce 4 ti4400 128MB

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Originally posted by jiggles:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by sitzkrieg:

These new beta drivers (40.72) released yesterday are only for Windows 98/Me.

Jiggles, what OS are you running? The only time I've seen the Nvidia tab missing is when you install all or part of the wrong version driver to the wrong OS.

Well I got them from here where it says "Windows XP/2000" (I'm running XP Pro).

:confused: :confused: :confused: </font>

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I have installed the 40.72 a few minutes ago. I did not encounter any problems during installation or when playing CMBB. My OS is XPpro.

I also ran the benchmark 3Dmark2002SE build330, using standart settings without FSAA (I never use FSAA, cause I seriously can't notice a significant difference). With 30.82 I scored 10228, with the 40.72 I scored 11152, that's 9% more. (AMD XP2200+, MSI Geforce4 4600Ti)

[ October 04, 2002, 11:27 AM: Message edited by: Scipio ]

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