Hey guys, so Nvidia is about to officially come out with new drivers, also cards, 158.16 for xp and a likewise unusually high number for vista. The thing is, the xp 32bit drivers are already posted at guru3d.http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=221342I installed them and I noticed a significant improvement! The rumor is that the drivers enable some offloading from the cpu to the gpu so perhaps this is the result. For instance, in areas with lots of autogen, like anchorage where I was getting 15fps with dense autogen, I am now getting 22 with little drops to 17 with extremely dense autogen. Now of course I already had the autogendescriptions and altered no gas stations, etc default.xml, along with terrain_max_autogen_trees 1500. Anyway, I am very pleasantly surprised. I'll probably move back to conservative settings and enjoy the added smoothness. I should note that I have an 8800gts oced, but people are reporting gains with the earlier series as well. That is, in reference to games. I noticed a sizable performance increase there as well, with oblivion; but this is not the place for that kind of talk. I believe what really matters to us is the aforementioned offloading, since fsx is not gpu bound. With the new drivers and service pack 1 on the way, things are looking up.

nvida releasing anything that A) actually works and :( actually adds a capability to offload cpu to gpu has got to be a double miracle. Either that or I have just woekn up in some kind of alternate reality. I'll believe it when i see it based on their driver track record over the past 6-12 months.________________________________________________________________________________________________Intel D975XBX2 'Bad Axe 2' | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.20Ghz | 2 GB Super Talent DDR2 800 | Big Typhoon VX | eVGA 8800GTS @ 565/900 | Seagate 2x320GB SATA RAID-0 | OCZ GameXStream 700W | Creative X-Fi | Silverstone TJ-09BW | Matrox Triplehead Setup

>nvida releasing anything that A) actually works and :(>actually adds a capability to offload cpu to gpu has got to be>a double miracle. Either that or I have just woekn up in some>kind of alternate reality. I'll believe it when i see it based>on their driver track record over the past 6-12 months.>>________________________________________________________________________________________________>>Intel D975XBX2 'Bad Axe 2' | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.20Ghz>| 2 GB Super Talent DDR2 800 | >Big Typhoon VX | eVGA 8800GTS @ 565/900 | Seagate 2x320GB SATA>RAID-0 | >OCZ GameXStream 700W | Creative X-Fi | Silverstone TJ-09BW |>Matrox Triplehead SetupI haven't had any issues with many of the recent Nvidia drivers.

You'll believe it when you see it? See it. Right there. Unless this is a very elaborate hoax, and the gains and bug fixes are faked. It makes sense if you think about it. New cards, new improved drivers to coincide with the advent of the competition's r600. A bit annoying in a way. But who cares. I too sat through the nvidia shenanigans but the results speak for themselves. Decent vista drivers is another story, about which I cannot attest. A couple days or so and we'll know.

These are LEAKED beta drivers and I would not recommend installing them unless you're willing to put up with potential problems. Nvidia hasn't released an XP driver in almost 6 months now and many many people are reporting issues with this new leak and questioning whether or not it's even legitimate since the version number jump is so gigantic and because of the fact that it has the old Nvidia logo they haven't used in over a year on it.

Ryan,First, 97.94 was officially released April 5th for xp. Yes, October before then, so six months roughly until the 5th. The same rule applies to all beta drivers that are leaked, and beta drivers in general, which has happened almost every cycle as far back as I can remember. (It really also applies to all drivers period. All drivers are betas now, even whql ones, as the whole vista fiasco has shown us.) I get what you're saying but there is no way these did not come from nvidia in some fashion. Unless there's some genius making drivers in his basement. The reason I say this is because there are specific bug fixes, such as the CSS fog bug, better s.t.a.l.k.e.r. performance (which they promised to work on), and stuttering alleviation. As for people reporting issues, that doesn't mean much, since people have been reporting issues with all nvidia drivers for the last slew of months. I'm guessing what you're referring to are mostly install issues, which happens either because of the altered nv4_disp.inf to make the drivers function for all nvidia cards - on top of the new 8600's or for whatever they're intended - not working; or usually because of people manually installing them and/or not having a clean uninstall. If you read the threads you'll find the response is largely positive. Anyone downloading in the first place should and probably does understand the risks in installing any beta driver, but it won't fry your card, that's for sure. Worst case some BSDs, safe mode trials, maybe system restore.

nm

The massive leap in driver version is suspicious, but you can't "fake" a lot of what people are reporting (massive performance increases, fixes to bugs which existed in all other driver versions).About the version number, I wonder if Nvidia is going to go heavy on the PR to show they've made huge strides to make up for their recent driver disaster. A massive leap in version number would be a way of saying they've put a massive amount of work in since the last drivers and these drivers are something special.A user here is posting of a 27% gain in 3DMark03:http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread...?t=89731&page=8This may bode well for FSX since 3DMark03 is old and thus its shader programs are simpler than recent 3DMarks, which I believe makes it more CPU bound than the recent 3DMarks in which his gains weren't nearly as much. And since we know FSX tends to be CPU bound if your GPU is any good...25% increase from these drivers plus 20+% increase from SP1 could mean very good times are ahead for me and my 8800 GTS :DBut I will wait until these are official before I install them. Since Nvidia's new cards are released tomorrow, if these are real they'll undoubtedly be official tomorrow.EDIT: Actually, some guy in that same thread claims these are press release beta drivers and this specific version won't see the light of day. He doesn't give a source, however...

I just want to be able to view my %&$ aircraft in the aircraft selection screen of FS9 when I enable AA higher than 4x. Did nvidia "finally" fix this?

>EDIT: Actually, some guy in that same thread claims these are>press release beta drivers and this specific version won't see>the light of day. He doesn't give a source, however...He's saying they will be released, but not officially as they are beta drivers.

Another issue in FSX I have run across; aircraft won't display in the selection window if I have light bloom enabled. At least, not aircraft imported from FS9. Default FSX aircraft display OK.Just to clarify, are these beta drivers only for G80 cards or will they work with the earlier 7900 series of cards?Cheers,Noel.

>Another issue in FSX I have run across; aircraft won't>display in the selection window if I have light bloom enabled.>At least, not aircraft imported from FS9. Default FSX aircraft>display OK.I wouldn't call that an issue... FS9 aircraft aren't designed for FSX... so you can expect 'issues'. But you cannot call these things 'issues' as in 'things that should be fixed by nVidia or Microsoft'. And by saying this in this specific topic you are doing that.

I called it an issue. I did not call it a problem. The two words have different meanings. All I want to know is why FS9 aircraft behave differently in the FSX selection window? Is there some difference in the file format? Obviously I would prefer FS9 planes worked the same as the FSX default planes, simply for convenience sake.Cheers,Noel.

>I just want to be able to view my %&$ aircraft in the>aircraft selection screen of FS9 when I enable AA higher than>4x. Did nvidia "finally" fix this?Doubtful. They never fix anything. I have been having scrambled screen on my 7900gt for 6 months now with no sign of a fix for it in vista. Card works fine in xp. The 8800 drivers give me no problems at all and performance is very good but they are BARE bones drivers still with many options either still not available or not working. These guys are pathetic and like i said before, I'll believe it when i see it if their drivers have actually improved, yet alone added cpu offloading capability. More than likely the increase in performance is attributed to some sort of hack they did to make benchmarks run faster. They have been caught doing that in the past.________________________________________________________________________________________________Intel D975XBX2 'Bad Axe 2' | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.20Ghz | 2 GB Super Talent DDR2 800 | Big Typhoon VX | eVGA 8800GTS @ 565/900 | Seagate 2x320GB SATA RAID-0 | OCZ GameXStream 700W | Creative X-Fi | Silverstone TJ-09BW | Matrox Triplehead Setup

"New drivers: Forceware 165.01 Recived from directly Nvidia Tech apartment" http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=...518#post2224518