new nvidia drivers?

[Tom]

ftp://download.nvidia.com/Windows/66.81/

From another forum, I'm downloading them now, they don't appear to be on the nvidia site yet so they might be beta.

 

[Cyradix]

Some peeps are reporting a 500+ increase in 3DMark05 using GT cards.

Will try them tonight

 

[Tom]

I just got a massive increase. Think I'll muck around withe the OC settings now

 

[Ono]

I got a 1000+ increase on 3DMark 05 with my 6800GT with the new drivers.

 

[fatbusinessman]

I wish I weren't past the point where I think "Ho-hum, another graphics company fiddling with the benchmark scores".

No doubt ATI will release "new and improved" drivers soon as well...

 

[smurkin]

well, its a fair point...theres fiddling and then theres fiddling....say a game comes out...its only natural that if the game is popular, nvidia/ati will optimise their drivers for it...hopefully improving overall performance. I think its reasonable for them to do the same with 3dmark, which tries to emulate the current/coming game technology.

Of course its utterly different when the drivers detect that they are running on 3dmark and take unreasonable shortcuts (aka cheating) to improve performance

 

[Honza]

well, its a fair point...theres fiddling and then theres fiddling....say a game comes out...its only natural that if the game is popular, nvidia/ati will optimise their drivers for it...hopefully improving overall performance. I think its reasonable for them to do the same with 3dmark, which tries to emulate the current/coming game technology.

Of course its utterly different when the drivers detect that they are running on 3dmark and take unreasonable shortcuts (aka cheating) to improve performance

100% agree with Cryton here.

 

[Panda On Smack]

Kryton?

 

[Honza]

Kryton?

Look at his avatar And if you don't know it, watch Red Dwarf series

 

[smurkin]

Incidentally, off topic, but rivatuner version 15.2 is out. This enables you to convert a 12x pipe 6800 to a 16x pipe. I tried it - seems my disabled pipes are faulty - but apparently 50% of 6800s can be successfully converted - theres alot of contraversial info on this - but it seems some 6800u/gt chips that are downgraded to plain 6800s in factory are downgraded because they dont clock high enough and not because they have faulty pipes. My card clocks to 400/933 with my stock cooler - so what I seems to have gained in clocks...I seem to have lost in pipes still .. musnt grumble.

 

[old.user4556]

I wouldn't touch the "unlocking pipeline" scene.

G

 

[smurkin]

Yah....I was nervous about it too...I did my legwork and came to the conclusion its easily reversed and unless you visciously overclock, its not likely to damage the hardware. Still, others think its risky...with any overclock/mod...theres always the risk you'll bugger something up.

 

[Xavier]

The rivatuner route is a softmod - zero risk.

 

[smurkin]

Good drivers those by the way, gave me an extra 5fps on doom3 (utterly broke the MSI control panel tho) - that gets me 75 fps on high detail, 1280x1024, no aa, timdemo demo1 *chuffed*

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 3200 (2420 MHz o/c aka 220x11)
GPU: MSI NX6800 128 Mb (400/900 o/c)
Mem: 2x512 GeIL Value Dual Channel PC3200 400MHz DDR @ 173 MHz (o/c) 2,3,3,6 (stock)
GA-K8NS Pro (nForce3 250 Chipset) FSB 220 MHz
OS: Microsoft Windows XP
Hard drives & other things

 

[old.user4556]

I should be more specific and say that I wouldn't touch the pipeline mod incase I was to purchase a card that wasn't successful in opening up - i'd rather pay the cash and get the real mccoy....... /he says with the GT clocked to Ultra spec and beyond...

 

[Xavier]

Well, it's a softmod, totally reversible by simply unticking a box and rebooting, not to be confused with a software mod which means reflashing the bios

So if you try it on a card and it doesn't work, <clickety-click> and you're back where you started, nothing lost.