Nvidia Forceware 158.18

[drumthrasher109]

Ok my WEI score for graphics wenr up from 3.1>3.4, and desktop went up from 3.0>3.1. (7300GS).

I REALLY HATE THE NEW CONTROL PANEL INTERFACE!!!!!

165.01 - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KFE5BZP8

Whats the differences?

Nevermind i'll post them from Guru3D here.

Wait I can't find it...

[jakem1]

You're not a gamer and you have an 8800GTX? :blink:

Yah, I guess I have too much money at the moment but not enough time to play any games.

Anyway, this driver is crashing more and more often doing simple things like surfing the web. I think I'm going to have to roll back soon.

[drumthrasher109]

Its weird how for some people this works fine and some it works weird.

For me it works great!

[1Frothy]

Whats the new control panel interface look like, screenshot?

[Mark Schieldrop]

Working fine for me, continued improvements in games over the 101.70 drivers. I have heard the 165 version is a fake. We'll see.

[-Pats]

this driver works much better than 165.01, great FPS with all games. BF2142 wouldnt load properly with 165.01

[Shadow XL]

my gaming performance went from 4.8 to 4.4 with these drivers i have a 7600gs :(

[Unimatrix Xero]

EDIT: just found post in Vista Support

please delete

Just had this email from nvidia

NVIDIA Windows Vista Driver News

April 17, 2007

Dear NVIDIA Customer,

On behalf of NVIDIA, the Vista Quality Assurance team would like to thank our user community for participating in the bug report system. The information you provided is valuable and will help us improve the quality and performance of our drivers.

There is a new Windows Vista Beta driver release available to download from NVIDIA, v158.18. This is a new driver which will support GeForce 6, 7 and 8 series graphics boards; it does not support GeForce Go mobile GPUs. Please continue to check with your notebook manufacturer for a new driver for GeForce Go GPUs. GeForce FX users should continue to use the v96.85 driver.

Before installing the new Windows Vista drivers, please make sure to review the installation steps for the v158.18 driver. These instructions will be found after clicking on the 'Download Driver' link on the next page.

Download Windows Vista 32-bit driver

Download Windows Vista 64-bit driver

Here is a summary of new features and bug fixes this new driver addresses:

New Features

Adds support for GeForce 8600 GTS, GeForce 8600 GT, and GeForce 8500 GT, GeForce 8400 GS, and GeForce 8300 GS GPUs.

Increased performance in 3D applications.

PureVideo? HD support.

Add support for forcing Vertical Sync in DirectX applications.

Updated NVIDIA Control Panel with improved user interface (Please see the Release Notes for more details).

Numerous game and application compatibility fixes (see below for some of the top issues).

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.

Windows Vista Limitations

In previous drivers, Vertical Sync (vsync) was listed as a Windows Vista limitations. However, NVIDIA has worked around this issue in our drivers.

Please view the driver Release Notes for a list of all Windows Vista limitations.

Application Limitations

NVIDIA has found application limitations and is continuing to document in our driver Release Notes. Please view the driver Release Notes for a list of all application limitations.

NVIDIA Vista Graphics Driver Issues

Please view the driver Release Notes for a list of all of known issues in this driver release.

NVIDIA Features No Longer Supported

Please view the driver Release Notes for a list of all features no longer supported

Edited April 18, 2007 by Unimatrix Xero

[Unimatrix Xero]

downloading the offical ones now

anyway used these with a 6600GT??

thankx

[Edreamsz]

Guys,

I have a samsung lcd connected via dvi/hdmi to a Nvidia 7900 GTO. I just installed vista and these drivers but have the problem that due to overscan i miss out on a big section of my windows screen.

In Windows XP i would just use pan & scan in the Nvidia Control Panel to fix this issue. In Vista it is saddly not possible to just Pan & Scan and thus fix the overscan problem.

Is their any other way to fix the overscan problem? Could I use custom resolutions? How do I do that? Hope you guys can help me out.

Thanks

[Si Veteran]

Threads merged

[goggles]

this is nuts.

I installed the new drivers on my system running two 6600 cards, and have noticed two things:

1. my second monitor has been detected as non-PNP and therefore its max resolution is 1024x768

2. my WEI went down from 3.8 to 3.4 compared with the 97.46 drivers.

looks like going back to the 97.46 drivers.

at least these drivers installed without doing the BSOD like the 100 drivers did.

[BryanChung]

I'm also running on 6600 card ... but i'm noob at this things and i simply upgrade =x

[lil_psc]

at this rate, i predict forceware 3xx.xx to be out by years end

[Slugsie]

These drivers haven't fixed the screen corruption bug I was getting from the last drivers (101.something.or.other I think). Basically any Vista UAC prompt and also the login screen is a mess. Virtually unreadable. Everything else seems fine. Haven't had a chance to test gaming performance yet.

BTW, Vista 32bit, 7600GS AGP.

[Xerxes]

Finally some new drivers for Vista! :) perhaps my 6800GS will run a little better now....still I'm worried about installing them, since your required to uninstall the old drivers...will Vista think your installing new hardware and need to be re-activated?? (updating my m/b drivers de-activated Vista on me) to be honest I preferred XP when is comes to activation, you activate it once and that was it (till you reinstalled the OS) but Vista seems alot more sensitive to system changes...

[Xerxes]

Finally some new drivers for Vista! :) perhaps my 6800GS will run a little better now....still I'm worried about installing them, since your required to uninstall the old drivers...will Vista think your installing new hardware and need to be re-activated?? (updating my m/b drivers de-activated Vista on me) to be honest I preferred XP when is comes to activation, you activate it once and that was it (till you reinstalled the OS) but Vista seems alot more sensitive to system changes...

Edit post timed out...

EDIT: I installed them anyway, no dramas Vista didn't ask to re-activate so all is good...now to see if anything runs better!

EDIT2: Sadly no :( my games still seem unplayable in Vista...guess my card just can't handle gaming in Vista (it is getting old)...still at least I can still game fine in XP. Probably won't go pure Vista till my next computer, I think this one is just too old to handle the gaming side if things in Vista :p

Edited April 18, 2007 by Xerxes

[Malisk]

That's what I'm wondering. It's a HUGE jump in version number.

Yeah, but read the release notes PDF document in the original post's link... :blink:

Not many fixes and changes in 158.18, but the document also covers 158.14 which was the first documented post-101 release, and wow... :blink:

I think the version number jump is warranted -- there are heaps of very important Vista 64, as well as SLI fixes for one thing, along with "driver has stopped reponding and Vista had to restart" fixes.

[Leddy]

My 2D performance dies when I install 158.18.

I rolled back to 101.70.

[Malisk]

my gaming performance went from 4.8 to 4.4 with these drivers i have a 7600gs :(

Look more for actual game performance than at those scores. They're sometimes a bit misleading. What matters is your gaming performance, not those numbers.

[freak_power]

Make sure you uninstall old drivers propertly. This is a solid set.

[simmorya]

I wouldnt take the Windows Experience Index to seriously. Mine keeps jumping from 4.3 to 4.9, then back to 4.3 and up again.

I dont think its a reliable view of the system performance.

[George P Global Moderator]

I sure hope it is, for such a big number jump. I figured by 150.xx things would start to finally be good, but that seems not to be the case.

[Lawliet]

I hope this driver fixes some "screen corruption" issues I have randomly. My Windows Experience Rating score for gaming graphics improved by 0.1 though.

[+Tantawi Subscriber²]

The driver is great on my 7800GS, but they still didn't' fix the desktop color settings wont get saved after a reboot, I filled the bug for the third time!

As for people who ask why the big jump in driver version, I have a logical explanation, that older versions (say 101.70), is actually version "7.15.11.0170" on the device manager, and games used to detect the last 4 numbers as the installed ForceWare version, and then adjust game's features accordingly. The Sims 2 for example wont enable AA because it thinks no proper driver is installed, "01.70" in our case.

But when it jumps in "158.18" = "7.15.11.5818", it's now detected as "58.18" which is a decent version for games that aren't series 100 aware. And The Sims 2 now have the AA option back.

Hope I was clear :p

And for the one asked for a screenshot, see below: