Soldato
I just go over the top. I don't do a clean install unless there's problems.
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GeForce R304 306.23 WHQL Drivers
- Thread starter Cosimo
- Start date
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Going from 301.42 to 306.62 dropped my 3Dmark11 score from around 24'100 GPU points to around 23500points, the FPS loss is just in the 1 game game test (from 108 FPS to 101.9FPS), in test 2 and 4 I gain 2 FPS more and test 3 remained the same, but enough loss to give a negative result over the 301.42 drivers. My Over all score drop was from 16'650points to 16'400points. Not a great benchmark driver.
However the GPU down-clocking issue with GTX 600 series in certain games seem to have been fixed (knocking-on-wood).
In Call Of Duty Black Ops the with 301.42 the GTX 670's (all 3) down clocks to 324mhz core and 600mhz something on the ram when I'm in the game menu making everything sluggish ad chunky. The loading a save game the core/ram speeds fluctuate between 324~660mhz core and and 1000-2000mhz memory. It causes a real sluggish gameplay. I check the speeds with MSI Afterburner. The temps were are around 60*c.
I then reinstalled Forceware 306.23 again and it seems to work now with all cards running at 915MHz in Black Ops, and the temps are a bit higher at round 65*c.
I just have to settle with the fact that this driver is better for games than benchmarks.. - then again it's the games that matter
(Actually not quite true in Unigine Heaven DX 11 Benchmark with 301,42 my max FPS was 215~218, with the new 306,23 max is 245 FPS, but the minimum and average FPS remain the same).
However the GPU down-clocking issue with GTX 600 series in certain games seem to have been fixed (knocking-on-wood).
In Call Of Duty Black Ops the with 301.42 the GTX 670's (all 3) down clocks to 324mhz core and 600mhz something on the ram when I'm in the game menu making everything sluggish ad chunky. The loading a save game the core/ram speeds fluctuate between 324~660mhz core and and 1000-2000mhz memory. It causes a real sluggish gameplay. I check the speeds with MSI Afterburner. The temps were are around 60*c.
I then reinstalled Forceware 306.23 again and it seems to work now with all cards running at 915MHz in Black Ops, and the temps are a bit higher at round 65*c.
I just have to settle with the fact that this driver is better for games than benchmarks.. - then again it's the games that matter
(Actually not quite true in Unigine Heaven DX 11 Benchmark with 301,42 my max FPS was 215~218, with the new 306,23 max is 245 FPS, but the minimum and average FPS remain the same).
Games look a lot better? What do you mean by this please
Just looks better, BF3 and Batman Arkham look amazing and to use that word
smoother and has a more fluid look if that makes sense.
My Flight sim has less blurries(you'll know if you have it)
I'll get nailed for this,
It's as if more stuff is being rendered/drawn if you follow?
Dirt Showdown is still a mess though,can't get that to run decent unless I use lowest settings
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Soldato
Runs OK for me if I disable the fancy lighting effect (can't remember what it's called). Jumps of about 70 FPS between on/off
.Placebo effectThere's nothing in the patch notes about image quality.
Quite probable, It looks better IMO so thats good enough for me.
Runs OK for me if I disable the fancy lighting effect (can't remember what it's called). Jumps of about 70 FPS between on/off
Cheers, I'll try that later
Soldato
- Joined
- 6 Feb 2010
- Posts
- 14,582
Anyone that got low GPU usage issue (which they feel isn't caused by CPU bottleneck) in Guild Wars 2 should try this. I've tried Beta drivers it didn't fix the "never hitting 80-90%" GPU usage issue on my 9800GTX+. This one seem to have done the trick, and now I finally see 80-99% GPU usage on the 9800GTX+, comparing to the 50-60% usage before (even with SuperSampling enabled didn't get more usage this this...now enabling SuperSampling instantly smack the GPU usage right up to 99%).
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Never use Driver Sweeper, causes more probs than it fixes (IMHO)
When you run the new Driver select Custom Installation and tick the Clean Install check box.
Hope that makes sense?
Good, someone else sees this also(thought me eyes were deceiving me)
Soldato
These ones don't like me disabling SLI once it's been enabled.
Disabled sli, clicked apply: boooom black screen. Restart pc and driver doesn't load, nv control panel not available, graphics cards not detected. Lol.
Re-installed them and left sli off to finish black mesa (sli doesn't work).
Disabled sli, clicked apply: boooom black screen. Restart pc and driver doesn't load, nv control panel not available, graphics cards not detected. Lol.
Re-installed them and left sli off to finish black mesa (sli doesn't work).
Man of Honour
I thought it was only a problem with GTX 690s when disabling sli.
I have to fiddle around for about 30mins to an hour to get sli working again. This is another reason I don't like changing drivers.
Soldato
I've had that with all drivers (only on occasion not every time). Bugs the hell out of me
.If you hard restart and enable them in Device Manager and then reboot it's fine.
I knew I should've left well alone... 
Tried installing the new WHQL drivers using "Clean Install". Install got as far as "Installing NVIDIA update" before starting to freeze up. Mouse becomes unresponsive (moves around but clicking on anything doesn't work). Left it for a while and it got onto "Installing 3D Vision Driver" but it's still doing the same thing and I think it's pretty much dead now. Has been sat on "Installing 3D Vision Driver" for about 10 mins now and moving the mouse around and has finally made it freeze in place.
This is exactly what happens when I get to the desktop after a new driver install. The mouse becomes unresponsive and clicking on things eventually makes it freeze in place. No BSOD, but no sign of life.
I usually have to start removing a card and trying combinations of cards in different slots before eventually something works.
Bear in mind that once the drivers seem to magically start working I can use the same slots, same SLI bridge, same power cables etc that was doing the mouse-moves-but-clicking-doesnt-work-before-it-freezes in the first place. Once they are working, like the 306 betas were, it is solid and never crashes.
Why?? ARGH!
edit: It seemed to finish installing, took about 20 minutes. Mouse is still unresponsive on the desktop though. It's as if it's constantly doing that driver reset thing in the background, but without any visual clue of it happening on screen, i.e. it's not completely crashed but it's unuseable. This only ever happens with both cards in SLI, and to stress the point again once some magical combination moving cards around slots constantly works, the system then becomes fully stable?
Tried installing the new WHQL drivers using "Clean Install". Install got as far as "Installing NVIDIA update" before starting to freeze up. Mouse becomes unresponsive (moves around but clicking on anything doesn't work). Left it for a while and it got onto "Installing 3D Vision Driver" but it's still doing the same thing and I think it's pretty much dead now. Has been sat on "Installing 3D Vision Driver" for about 10 mins now and moving the mouse around and has finally made it freeze in place.
This is exactly what happens when I get to the desktop after a new driver install. The mouse becomes unresponsive and clicking on things eventually makes it freeze in place. No BSOD, but no sign of life.
I usually have to start removing a card and trying combinations of cards in different slots before eventually something works.
Bear in mind that once the drivers seem to magically start working I can use the same slots, same SLI bridge, same power cables etc that was doing the mouse-moves-but-clicking-doesnt-work-before-it-freezes in the first place. Once they are working, like the 306 betas were, it is solid and never crashes.
Why?? ARGH!
edit: It seemed to finish installing, took about 20 minutes. Mouse is still unresponsive on the desktop though. It's as if it's constantly doing that driver reset thing in the background, but without any visual clue of it happening on screen, i.e. it's not completely crashed but it's unuseable. This only ever happens with both cards in SLI, and to stress the point again once some magical combination moving cards around slots constantly works, the system then becomes fully stable?
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Man of Honour
I find that I can install the drivers ok.
The problems start when I go to enable sli.
If I reboot the system it becomes a race to get into nvidia control panel to enable sli before the whole lot freezes up.
The problems start when I go to enable sli.
If I reboot the system it becomes a race to get into nvidia control panel to enable sli before the whole lot freezes up.
SLI was already enabled for me when I tried to install the new drivers because I already had drivers installed. I guess - having not done it before - that installing new drivers over the top of old ones means you don't have to reboot to start using them as you would with a clean system? This is probably somewhat related to my problem.
The issue is somewhat SLI related because it never happens with just one card installed. With one card (in any slot) I can uninstall and reinstall drivers without any issues and don't get any "new install" freezes at all.
The really confusing and frustrating thing for me is that to solve this problem I have to start pulling cards out of the machine, moving them around until something happens where I can boot up and the mouse won't freeze. At this point I can put the PC back together again and carry on using it. At this point the system becomes perfectly stable and never does the mouse-freeze-background-driver-resets thing again.
To stress the point again it doesn't matter which slots I use so I don't think it's a motherboard problem. I can use the same slots that cause freeze-ups once the drivers have "settled", and once it's working it doesn't crash again.
As someone with a procedural mind it is the most frustrating thing ever. Knowing that I have to remove cards from my PC every time I install these drivers is depressing given how much they cost.
Maybe I should reinstall Windows.
The issue is somewhat SLI related because it never happens with just one card installed. With one card (in any slot) I can uninstall and reinstall drivers without any issues and don't get any "new install" freezes at all.
The really confusing and frustrating thing for me is that to solve this problem I have to start pulling cards out of the machine, moving them around until something happens where I can boot up and the mouse won't freeze. At this point I can put the PC back together again and carry on using it. At this point the system becomes perfectly stable and never does the mouse-freeze-background-driver-resets thing again.
To stress the point again it doesn't matter which slots I use so I don't think it's a motherboard problem. I can use the same slots that cause freeze-ups once the drivers have "settled", and once it's working it doesn't crash again.
As someone with a procedural mind it is the most frustrating thing ever. Knowing that I have to remove cards from my PC every time I install these drivers is depressing given how much they cost.
Maybe I should reinstall Windows.