Modified Video Card Drivers: Good or Bad?

[FlyingPenguin]

Welcome to PCA Joey!

CCC = Catalyst Control Center which is the code bloated control panel ATI forced on us since the 6.x series started. It requires Microsoft's .NET Framework which I refuse to install on my PC.

I have no idea what you're talking about concerning the NVidia Control panel. Either you have an NVidia card and NVidia Drivers and an NVidia Control panel, or you have an ATI card with ATI drivers and their control panel. You don't mix and match unless you're doing something really strange like multi monitor with two different brand cards.

[GuardianAsher]

Okay! That's my fault! I told Joey to downlod the ATI drivers for his nVidia card. My bad! I had a serious brain fart >.<

[joeyll]

Thanks for the welcome Penguin! I do have 2 NVidia 6800XT's on a Asus A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard. So you're saying I definately shouldnt install ATI drivers with my NVIDIA cards right? Oh and dont worry about it ASHER...we all have brain farts now and then Ok then so back to my original question...Does anybody know what the most stable and best driver for the NVidia 6800 series cards are. I'm using the beta 91.31 Forceware now and I really like the Control Panel but there seems to be some issues with the driver itself ...ex: Lagging in games, slow boot up times (30 seconds!!), Internet Explorer completely crashing on me after about 2 hours with multiple windows open. I bought this rig to get rid of just these problems and now I'm having them again...I'm desperate for some kind of advise before I starting ripping out hardware...This system is only 3 months old BTW. I also think I might need to upgrade my chipset driver. The Asus board uses an Nvidia nForce 4 SLI chipset. I know there is one better or an upgraded edition but I'm having a hard time deciding which one to install from the Nvidia website...theres so many. Any Help is tremendously appreciated.



Joey

[FlyingPenguin]

I would recommend the latest official NON-BETA driver from NVidia's website.

[Lazlo Panaflex]

Yeah, I second FP's suggestion Interesting that one can run those cards in SLI. Joey, have you tried benchmarking your setup with some of the newer games (ie Doom 3/HL2)? I'm curious to see what framerates you're getting with that SLI setup. Thx man

[joeyll]

As a matter of fact I just benchmarked my cards using 3DMark 05. It gave me a 3d Mark score of 5567 and a cpu score of 3664. I havent tried any other benchmarking programs. This one just used some generic graphics but they were pretty awesome. I'm fixing to do another benchmark with the cards overclocked to 680 and 360. Factory settings are 600 and 300. I'll let you know the framerates when I get done with it.

Joey

[joeyll]

Well...my highest framerate was around 29fps on the graphics they run on 3DMark 05 which are pretty intense I must say. The strange thing is that when I went to the details section it shows my core clock frequency at 11mhz and my memory clock at 680mhz. I hope the core clock isnt the same thing as the 3d clock frequency because it "should" be running at 365mhz. Thats what I have it overclocked to anyway. Heres a readout of what the benchmark said. It doesnt even recognize both my cards i dont think.....

Display Information
Graphics Chipset NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XT

Driver Name NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XT

Driver Version 9.1.3.1

Driver Status WHQL - Not FM Approved

Video Memory 256 MB

Core Clock 11 MHz

Memory Clock 680 M

Game Tests
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 20.6 fps

GT2 - Firefly Forest 15.8 fps

GT3 - Canyon Flight 26.7 fps



CPU Tests
CPU Test 1 1.7 fps

CPU Test 2 3.2 fps

[Lazlo Panaflex]

11 mhz? that's pretty weird... must be a bug