Recommenrdation about driver update

[ghiom]

HiMy video driver is nearly 2 years old. I have a GeForce 8800 and nHancer.I have flown FS9 since then with no major problem.Would you recommend to upgrade the driver in order to gain fps and/or smoothness?Or nothing special will be gained?Same question may apply for DirectXThanksGhiom

[tfm]

HiMy video driver is nearly 2 years old. I have a GeForce 8800 and nHancer.I have flown FS9 since then with no major problem.Would you recommend to upgrade the driver in order to gain fps and/or smoothness?Or nothing special will be gained?Same question may apply for DirectXThanksGhiom

GhiomPeople get different experiences from updating their drivers, so why not make a restore point on your PC, and try it out for yourself?If you control anisotropic filtering and antialiasing from the Nvidia control panel (or nHancer) then - I suspect - updating the drivers is more likely to improve things than if you let FSX control these settings.Personally I try to keep up-to-date with the latest video drivers and although it is extremely marginal, in GENERAL things get better with successive versions. For example, the latest betas (186.03) seem to have improved the anisotropic filtering a bit, as well as helping a little with FPS. If there's no difference or an improvement, I keep the update. If things get worse, I roll back to the previous version. Just a quick word on installing video drivers: some people like to follow a particular ritual before updating their drivers, to try to get rid of as many traces of the old driver before the new one comes along. Personally I only do this if I suspect that something has gone wrong in the update process. In GENERAL, running the Nvidia "Setup.exe" intsaller works perfectly. I do not recommend updating DirectX. These updates cannot (as i understand it) be undone by a system restore. And - from memory - if you read the small print very closely, you will find that the more recent redistributables sometimes offer LESS functionality than old versions. Does it matter in practice? I don't know: but why be the one to find out, if your existing DirectX installation is working?Tim

[Guest djt01]

People get different experiences from updating their driversthe more recent redistributables sometimes offer LESS functionality than old versions. Does it matter in practice? I don't know: but why be the one to find out, if your existing DirectX installation is working?

People usually get

[Guest firehawk44]

HiMy video driver is nearly 2 years old. I have a GeForce 8800 and nHancer.I have flown FS9 since then with no major problem.Would you recommend to upgrade the driver in order to gain fps and/or smoothness?Or nothing special will be gained?Same question may apply for DirectXThanksGhiom

Strongly recommend you get the latest version of DirectX and the latest display driver for your 8800. Nvidia has increased the performance of their display drivers dramatically in the past two years, especially for the 8800 series. For instance, in the past two years I have NOT changed anything on my rig other than upgrade the video card drivers for my 8800GTX, kept DirectX up-to-date, and upgraded my Vista 32 OS to SP2. I use 3DMark Vantage as my benchmark beginning back when I installed the Nvidia 174.74 display drivers. My benchmark then was 8516. Today, the same rig, etc., with the 185.85 drivers installed, my benchmark is 13985. That's quite an increase and I don't think it's all in the upgrading of the OS. And, although I run FSX vs FS9, I have seen some improvements and it definitely runs smoother. I haven't seen any increase in fps as I don't really watch that stuff. I gauge my flight simming for the most part on how smooth and clear the graphics are during the flight. If they aren't clear or smooth, I usually lower a scenery setting slider. And, if I can't correct the problem that way, I'll uninstall the aircraft or scenery that was causing the problem.Best regards,Jim YOung

[ghiom]

Thank you for these in-depth answers.Another question: which is the last good driver for 8800GTS and FS9?Since I use nHancer for AF and AA, what should I do in case of driver update?I follow the procedure for the driver (uninstall, safe mode cleaning, install), but what for nHancer, will I need to set it up again or I don't need to change anything at all and nHancer will recognize the new driver and operate as before?ThanksGhiom

[tfm]

People usually get

[Guest djt01]

Yes, I agree.As for the DirectX redistributables: this is something I came across last year when I was trying to track down the cause of a problem with one of my add-ons. It was on the MS website somewhere - honest! - but I haven't kept a note of it. Of course I could have misunderstood it, but it stuck in my memory. It was to the effect that as from some particular date, the redistributables would no longer do such-and-such. Whether it actually breaks anything, I'm not sure: it's just that I first noticed having trouble with this add-on immediately after updating DirectX. Sorry I can't give more detail from memory (and I'm sorry but I'm not going to do a whole research exercise just to meet this point).Tim

This is news to me as I have always made sure to have the latest DirectX installed. I also usually install the latest redistributable on a fresh OS install followed by the latest video card drivers, never had any problems with this method.

[ianoakrhind]

Hi allI hope I am not going off topic here and I hope this is an appropriate place to ask for help!I am using a GeForce 8800GTS 512mb with nhancer 2.5.1 and 185.85 drivers (soon to be updated to 186.08).I would be extremely grateful if some clever person out there could possibly post screen shots of their 2.5.1 nhancer control panel to show me the optimum set up for my card/driver using FS9 on WindowsXP.On the nhancer on-line HELP page, under Section 4.1.1 Anti-Aliasing, it states:Combined: NOT for GeForce 8x000 and later cardsSupersampling : NOT for GeForce 8x000 and later cardsCoverage Sample : ONLY for GeForce 8x000 and later cards.On MY 2.5.1 nhancer control panel......there is NO Coverage Sample box. In fact the AA section looks the same as the previous version of nhancer.I am thoroughly confused!Any guidance/advice will be greatly appreciated. Many thanksIanOR

[ghiom]

Any one interested in answering the initial question?ThanksGhiom

[sargeski]

HiMy video driver is nearly 2 years old. I have a GeForce 8800 and nHancer.I have flown FS9 since then with no major problem.Would you recommend to upgrade the driver in order to gain fps and/or smoothness?Or nothing special will be gained?Same question may apply for DirectXThanksGhiom

If you are happy with the performance you are getting at present do not change the driver. Newer drivers and older hardware normally do not equate to a performance increase since the newer drivers are tweaked to improve performance of newest hardware. Direct X is supposed to be backwards compatible and I have always tried to have the latest redistributable installed.So if you are running FS9 and it runs fine for you at present, I would not think you are going to see any appreciable gains in performance. You have a very powerful video card for FS9, I'm curious as to what type of processor you are running it on and what your average frame rates and smoothness at present are.Regards,Bob