Best nVidia Driver and How to Downgrade?

[Movieman162 0]

Hi,I made the mistake recently of upgrading to the latest driver software after having problems with the X Plane 10 demo and now FSX is just completely messed up with shadows etc... So i have some questions1) What is the best driver for fsx? What have companies like PMDG advised in the past for best performance with their products?2) How can i find out what drivers I have previously installed?3) How can i downgrade to an older driver?Card is a GTX 580 on Windows 7 64bit.Thanks

Edited January 8, 2012 by Movieman162

[ZachLW 37]

What's messed up? Are you using Nvidia Inspector? (You should) Hopefully you're not using DX10 preview mode.You have very nice hardware. Let's learn how to harness it in FSX! Don't do a driver rollback, let's work with the latest (like you're supposed to).

[Movieman162 0]

I get flickering shadows and at an freeware addon airport i have i get a constant shadow over parts of scenery (that i did not have before upgrading). I am using nVidia inspector and it has been set with NickN's reccomendations. DX10 is off. Thanks

[Turbine777 13]

Hey Tim, If you had Ryan's nvidia inspector settings set previously before installing XPlane (and the new drivers), there's a chance it got reset or altered. I'd run through his AA post again and check your settings. I have a 480 and those cards have shadow issues if using the transparency settings. I haven't heard of any other card having that issue though. Being that you have Win7 and the harware you do, you can ignore the rest of this, but since there are many that may not have newer hardware and have the need to use older drivers I think I should properly answer the second part of your topic title, in "Downgrading".New nVidia drivers have a smarter installer (finally), that will have a check box for doing a fresh install. This will erase other profiles that it finds before installing the new drivers. However, should you have a hardware compatability issue or be troubleshooting something that leads you to testing out other drivers, some won't have the benefits of the new installers. In those cases you would want to manually rollback and not use windows "Rollback" method since it blocks or lacks certain capabilities.To uninstall a nVdia driver and be sure it is completely removed, do as follows:

• Goto Control Panels "Programs and Features" (AddRemove Programs for XP).
• Find "NVIDIA Graphics Driver xxx.xx" and uninstall it (don't use device manager).
• Once done, browse to where you originally let the driver package unpack and install and delete the "DisplayDriver" folder from the NVIDIA folder (by default this will normally be "C:Program Files (x86)NVIDIA", unless you changed it).
  • To be more thorough, the old school way is to download nvida cleaner, reboot in safe mode by pressing F8 during reboot and choosing sade mode. Then run the nvidia cleaner and optionally CCleaner after it to clean up other possible traces, although this isn't really neaded if installing newer nvidia drivers with the newer installers.

  [*]Reboot and allow Windows to install "Standard VGA Adapter" (This may be worded slightly different on different OS's).[*]Open control panel and be sure no other nvidia graphics components are installed like "PhysX, 3D driver, etc". Be mindful not to uninstall any other Nvidia drivers though that may have to do with nforce drivers (chipset, network, raid).[*]Reboot again once it says it is installed and ready for use.[*]Install the driver of choice.

  • Don't just click next, next and next. You should look for advanced or custom options during preliminary install to be sure it's how you want it and with the options you want (such as remove any older profiles).

  [*]After the new install reboot when prompted.

Most people will assume installing the latest driver is always the best, but that's not true at all. An Older nforce chipset combined with certain operating systems do have their best choices in drivers and often needed when troubleshooting. If your hardware is fairly current and less than 2 years old the newer ones should be fine. Older systems dating back to early nforce chipsets (4-7) may not have the proper other drivers installed to properly use newer graphics drivers.If troubleshooting older hardware with nforce chipsets, and wanting a better complete set of drivers for the actual chipset, smbus, etc, I recommend Fernando's packages.

[Movieman162 0]

Ok thanks will take a look. Also thanks for the remainder of the post which will be very useful to others.