GeForce Driver Release 256

[Mark Abdey]

May be of interest, esp. for those with 400 series cards, though it seems there are performance gains for older cards too... probably not in FSX though.

BETA release only at the moment [v 257.15], and these apparently do not work with nHancer.

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

This is the first driver release from the Release 256 family of drivers (versions 256.xx to 259.xx). This driver package supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, and 400-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs. Learn more about Release 256 drivers here  http://blogs.nvidia.com/ntersect/2010/05/introducing-the-new-256-driver-release.html

New in Version 257.15

    * Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0222.

    * Adds support for OpenGL 4.0 for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs.

    * Adds support for CUDA Toolkit 3.1 which includes significant performance increases for double precision math operations. See CUDA Zone for more details.

    * Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel setup page for SLI and PhysX for ultimate control over multi-gpu configurations.

    * Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel feature for ultimate control over CUDA GPUs, allowing the user to effectively choose which GPU will power each CUDA application.

    * Includes numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.

    * Users without US English operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.

Additional Information:

    * Installs HD Audio driver version 1.0.9.1 (for supported GPUs).

    * Supports the new GPU-accelerated features in Adobe CS5 .

    * Supports GPU-acceleration for smoother online HD videos with Adobe Flash 10.1. Learn more here.

    * Supports the new version of MotionDSP's video enhancement software, vReveal, which adds support for HD output. NVIDIA customers can download a free version of vReveal that supports up to SD output here.

    * Supports OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language) for all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.

    * Supports OpenGL 3.2 for GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.

    * Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology * on DirectX 9 and OpenGL.

    * Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software.

*Note: The following SLI features are only supported on Windows Vista and Windows 7: Quad SLI technology using GeForce 9800 GX2 or GeForce GTX 295, 3-way SLI technology, Hybrid SLI, and SLI multi-monitor support.

[Wolter van der Spoel]

Thank you for the HU Mark

I'll give 'm a run for their money

[tennyson]

I just loaded these babies to my setup.

I also took a good long look at JV's latest video blog and set up my FSX as per his instructions (rebuilt the FSX.cfg file, etc.).

Unfortunately, I'm not sure which part of the whole process is the culprit, but I've got the best flight experience I've ever had now.

I had been struggling with crashes and such with the 197 drivers (and I'd never had that before) but these beta drivers (and probably JV's hints) has been like striking gold.

Beautiful smooth flight with the triple head2go and I didn't need to drop the frame rate to 40 like John did in the blog.

I'm still running a stock i7-940 (not overclocked) but after I put the new motherboard (Asus Rampage III) in next week, I think I'll bite the bullet and OC to 4.00Ghz.

As I still can't tell what has been the magic bullet, I'd say without doubt these drivers are much better than the 175 whql drivers from NVIDIA,

Frank

[Mark Abdey]

Working well for me too, apart from the lack of xS AA modes that I force through nHancer - that also means you also lose the ability to force vsync, but you can try adding ForceFullScreenVSync=1 to the [Graphics] section of the fsx.cfg.  I can't run FSX without vsync as the tearing is awful.

I'm too far behind in hardware terms to benefit from any performance gain, but this seem absolutely stable to me.  Just hope nHancer catches up quickly.

[Valcor]

Yeah, these drivers are getting very good initial impressions from hardware forums. 

Significant performance increases for 4XX users and even some modest gains for 2XX folks.  (They are actually compatible way back to 6 series).  Now what = higher FPS in other games probably means just greater smoothness in FSX......I'll take it!

[Wolter van der Spoel]

working fine at this end

[Tim Harris]

working fine at this end

Drivers downloaded, waiting 2 weeks for test reports

[drumsonly2002]

Tennyson, really impressed with your findings. Could you post a link to JV's video blog. I have Triple Head but not hooked up, waiting for $ for a video card, ram and a few goodies to complete my build. Any special hoops to jump through to get Triple head working? Gathering up information before the build is finished. One 480 operating TH2Go at 30 FSP? Amazing! Any details shared will be appreciated. Thank You.

[Iain Emms]

Emmsie is using it and it looks fine at this end.

cheers

Iain

[John Venema]

Useless for me without 3DVision drivers, but looking forward to hearing about 480 perf  improvements

[Wolter van der Spoel]

Useless for me without 3DVision drivers, but looking forward to hearing about 480 perf  improvements

As far as I could detect they come with 3D driver stuff, at least in my program files menu I now get a nVidia 3D applet that wasn't there before

[Graham Eccleston]

Installed it but try as I may, I could not get it to accept that I had FSX on my computer so I could customize my 'Program Settings'. It did note that I had FS9 though - but I don't. Go figure!!

Back to 197.45 for now.

[Naji]

Installed the new beta drivers, but then removed them and reverted back to 197.75 whql which seem the best so far on my setup!

[Guest simtechdave]

I also have a new 3d icon I didn't have before installing the beta driver.  I haven't explored it as I don't have a 3d capable monitor, but something's there.

I didn't do a proper benchmark test to compare but this appears to be one of the few drivers I've downloaded in the past year that seems to have made a difference.  Nothing earth shattering, but it did seem a bit smoother, but that's just a first impression.  Have to give it a few more hours of use.

Cheers

Dave

[tennyson]

Drums,

It's JV's Video blog 11.

I've since had a few hassles with FSX starting up properly, but overall I'm still happy with these drivers and I just put some screeny's from Vashon up this arvo that I thought weren't half bad.

Isn't it weird how a setup that is good for some, does not work for others.

Frank

[Alan_A]

Impressive performance on my 480 using Nick N's NHancer workaround (via settings for the NVidia control panel).  Unforunately, I'm also getting 1-2 second blackouts in response to control inputs.  Details re: the Nick N setup and my problems in this thread.

The good news is that even if these don't work for me, there'll be a future version that will...

[John Lovell]

This driver is horrible with a GTX260.... gave me the worse blurries ever. Gone back to 197.75 and all is fine

[alainneedle1]

I was getting bad stuttering with it on my GTX 285....if you are using Evga Precision like I do YOU HAVE to disable speed fan monitoring in the profile cause it is the culpit of the bad stuttering......best driver hever for me on my 285.......I will get a 480 in a week or two because of the impact on FSX with this new driver......

[alainneedle1]

I found something else to try with this driver, I deleted my bufferpool tweak just to try it and the perf are better without it, so I don't know if this will work better on your system but it does on mine.....smoother flight inside or outside the VC.