Different Drivers

shadowscotland

shadowscotland

shadowscotland

Soldato
Joined
31 May 2006
Posts
7,564
Location
West London
As a single gpu cruncher (on my office pc) I've been sticking with the CUDA 2.0 (178.28) drivers for a while now.
But recent comments from members (lower cpu usage) and my previous poor experance with 180.xx drivers got me thinking so I've just tried out the three main current drivers on off from Nvidia.

But before that I was running my 8800GS OC'ed at c600/s1888/m900ddr3 via Rivatuner 2.11 and on a e6550.
First off the CUDA 2.0 drivers (178.28) I've loads of FahMon bench's with these - these are with the OC above an it's rock solid:

511pts-3150ppd
480pts-5120ppd
384pts-4150ppd

Download the current 181.20 driver (note main download page says it cuda and F@H compatable :))
Install went fine and Riva asked me for an update - download 2.22 and I now have a working temp monitor :D 42c idle and 60c OC'ed load
Only a 4c rise over stock timing at load btw - Love this card

On a 511pts (5751) I was running it gave 50ppd less at 3100ppd and task manager only showed a few % of cpu time... BUT
Load up any MS office/IE and the ppd drops to 2500ppd and with AutoCAD it's game over - major slowdown.

Off to try the CUDA 2.1 beta (180.60) - last time I tried the beta's my machine crashed on loading AutoCAD, this time it had problems installing following the reboot and looks to have loaded some of the 178.13 drivers from the web?

Result - PPD is unchanged from 178.28 but now AutoCAD is running even smoother :D - Also when running CAD with Word, outlook and IE running their is only a 6sec increase in step time. Identical stats of the two complete units I done so far.

511pts-3150ppd
384pts-4150ppd

Will give it a few days and see what happens - but for those members that use their folding PC for work/stuff and run 180.xx drivers - might be worth a look at the older ones. More ppd and smoother running.
 
Last edited:
I'm so glad you did!

I just d/l the 181.2 earlier and its a pain....:mad:

As you say, no hit to the CPU (used to be 50% of my dual core AMD) but major ppd loss when running almost anything. :(

And I had a BSOD incident too...:eek:

So I'm just d/l the Cuda 2.1 beta drivers and I'll give them a go..

If that's no good I'm going back to the old ones..:D
 
178.24 here, everything else I've tried since causes memory errors followed in a second with a reboot when folding & doing much else at the same time. CPU is X2 4600 but S939, I'm thinking this may be as far as this old hardware is supported or are you on AMD2 hardware ?
 
I'm on an AM2 board with a 4200x2 and after d/l the cuda beta 2.1 drivers (180.6) I see only a very minor(ish) drop in ppd, about 5secs per frame.

I can live with that! :D

The main advantage seems to be that where the old cuda drivers used a whole cpu core as well as the gpu whereas these new ones dont use any at all! :eek:

If it wasn't for the gpu temps, you'd think from task manager that nothing was happening!!!

I also d/l the new client 6.23, I was on 6.2, doesn't *seem* to have made a great difference that I can see. :confused:

Well, other than losing 5 hours crunching when zonealarm, deciding that it was a changed program, refused it internet access at 4am when I was in bed, so it just sat there all night waiting for me to tell it what to do...:mad:

And I most certainly did!!! :eek:;)

Anyway, it seems to me that the beta cuda drivers are the way to go (or they were for my setup), minimal ppd loss and a whole core freed up for other stuff - result!! :D

Going to try a few games with em now and see if I can still play l4d and tf2.....there may be more later! :p
 
Work just the same as 180.60 here. I'm not sure what the point of the separate CUDA drivers is now as the released drivers seem to work the same.
 
Had a much greater loss of ppd generally, and ultra loss when running almost anything with the production drivers...

So I'm sticking with cuda for the mo, but we'll see how it goes!
 
Having had a whole day using the pc - really enjoying the speed boost with work tasks.
No eue's and no shut downs and ppd while doing stuff holding up nicely :)

Happy to help Viking :D
 
Viking said:
I'm on an AM2 board with a 4200x2 and after d/l the cuda beta 2.1 drivers (180.6) I see only a very minor(ish) drop in ppd, about 5secs per frame.

I can live with that! :D

The main advantage seems to be that where the old cuda drivers used a whole cpu core as well as the gpu whereas these new ones dont use any at all! :eek:

If it wasn't for the gpu temps, you'd think from task manager that nothing was happening!!!

I also d/l the new client 6.23, I was on 6.2, doesn't *seem* to have made a great difference that I can see. :confused:

Well, other than losing 5 hours crunching when zonealarm, deciding that it was a changed program, refused it internet access at 4am when I was in bed, so it just sat there all night waiting for me to tell it what to do...:mad:

And I most certainly did!!! :eek:;)

Anyway, it seems to me that the beta cuda drivers are the way to go (or they were for my setup), minimal ppd loss and a whole core freed up for other stuff - result!! :D

Going to try a few games with em now and see if I can still play l4d and tf2.....there may be more later! :p
Click to expand...

I was tempted by your saying it freed up a core, but then remembered how pathetic the output is of my CPU compared to the GPU. I suppose every little helps but it is a little.
 
True, every little does help....

I must admit though, I have noticed occasional 1 or 2 second hangs when playing l4d today with f@h paused..

Never used to do that, but I'll try it with f@h shut down and see...

I suspect the cuda drivers arent quite as game-optimised as the standard stuff?

Anyway, on the whole, so far, so good...
 
Viking said:
Had a much greater loss of ppd generally, and ultra loss when running almost anything with the production drivers...

So I'm sticking with cuda for the mo, but we'll see how it goes!
Click to expand...

Indeed we will (and did) :(

The f@h end was holding up nicely, and having the core free was nice....

BUT

5-10 sec freezes while playing left4dead is totally unacceptable!! :D

And that was with f@h turned off!!! :eek:

So, I'm back to the trusty 178.24....ok, so I've lost a core again, but production is fine and I can play l4d without getting eaten quite so much.:p

Better luck next time Nvidia.......
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom