Not impressed with latest Nvidia card/drivers

[CrashEd]

Hi all,

Last week I upgraded my PC to a nice new i7 processor and various other bits and bobs. Shortly after, I decided it was daft not upgrading my gfx card as I play other games as well as FS. Also, I could use my old hardware for building a second PC to run my glass cockpit software.

Looking a the reviews I decided to go for the Nvidia GTX285, as it was a reasonable price and I'd heard a lot of problems regarding multiple GPU cards and FSX. However, to my surprise, the image quality of the new card is shocking. I get no end of horrible flickering textures (buildings, trees etc). I tried an install of Crysis on my new rig to see how it performed. This is even worse. Crysis never looked so bad. Last night, around 1:00am, (couldn't sleep, these things keep me awake you know!) I messed around with an older driver, but still no joy. I'll try a pre v190.xx driver next, but if that doesn't fix it I'll RMA it and buy an ATI card. The only other thing I coyuld try is to uninstall nHancer, but I don't think it is that. I'm getting fed up with Nvidia's nasty artifacting.

Is anyone running ATI cards sucessfully in FSX and FS9? Are there any problems in doing so? Would appreciate your feedback.

Cheers,
Ed

[BHawthorne]

Both ATI and nVidia have had a real bad run of driver issues the last 6 months. If anything ATI drivers are way worse off at the moment because of 5000-series driver debugging issues,EyeFinity bugs and CrossFire incomatibility. You might try 182.50 for the nvidia drivers. You can pick it up at Guru3D.com. That was the last really bug free driver I've used.

[Peter Dowson]

You might try 182.50 for the nvidia drivers. You can pick it up at Guru3D.com. That was the last really bug free driver I've used.

I have to agree there. I keep trying later drivers but end up going back to 182.50.

When/if you do backtrack, remember to take the intermediate step of uninstalling the current drivers. I don't go as far as using any of the assorted driver cleaners / sweepers there are out there -- with Windows 7 64-bit at least it seems the normal Windows uninstall option works fine.

Regards

Pete

[BHawthorne]

Also, those that don't know, you can also manually delete any files within System32 and SysWoW64 that start with nv* right before you reinstall your nVidia based hardware drivers in safe mode. That way you are 100% sure you've nuked all stray nVidia driver files from the system. Those with nForce chip based mobos need to be aware that if you do this you should also do a current nForce mobo driver install too.

[CrashEd]

Thanks for the info guys, looks as though I'm better off staying with the GTX285 for now and messing around with the drivers. Hopefully I'll be able to reduce the (bad) effects somehow.

Does anyone know if 182.50 is compatible with the GTX285 and Windows 7? I'm not sure when that version came out and whether it supports the two?

[andarlite]

You can use the Vista version of 182.5 with Win 7. Also make sure you are using nHancer. Use NIckN guide for the settings:

http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041

Regards,
Henry

[Peter Dowson]

Does anyone know if 182.50 is compatible with the GTX285 and Windows 7? I'm not sure when that version came out and whether it supports the two?

Yes, it is compatible -- I am using Windows 7 64-bit and the GTX 285 with nVidia drivers 182.50. The driver installer actually says Windows 7 too, so it is perfectly aware even if the download said "Vista 64 bit". I think nVidia made their drivers Win7-aware/compatible as soon as, or before, the RC version of Win7 was made available.

Regards

Pete

[CrashEd]

That's great, good to know that you are using it with Win7 x64 Pete. I'll give it a try this evening.

For anyone else who might need it, it can be found here:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Forceware-182.50-Vista-64-bit-WHQL-download-2233.html

[CrashEd]

I have to say, these drivers have made a world of difference. I can't believe I put up with so much shimmering with the ones I were using before! I've also seen an improvement in some of my other games too (Crysis, although not great, is much improved). Updating to the latest Direct X also helped somewhat.

Super, I'm back in business! Many thanks :cool:

[richard hutchinson]

I am currently running Win 7 32 bit and have a Nvidia PCI-e GTS250 512Mb card, with the latest drivers installed. However, on runways I am getting "shimmering" across them, and have just noticed that the progressive taxi system isn't showing up. This smells of a driver problem to me, but am wondering if anyone has experienced this. Ground scenery isn't as good as I know it can be either.

I was assured that this card would be man enough for the job, but up to now, it seems worse than the 8600 1Mb card I had in it before.

Any assistance appreciated.

Richard

[CrashEd]

Hi Richard,

I would definitely try the 182.5 drivers as mentioned above. They may not solve your problem entirely, but they will make a big difference if what you are describing is similar to what I had. Make sure you download the 32-bit version and uninstall the old drivers before instaling 182.5. I'll find a link for you when I'm back at my home pc.

I tried quite a few versions before the guys suggested 182.5. They were all poor, but the lastest version was the worst. Not quit sure how they've managed to do that!


EDIT> Here are the Vista 32-bit drivers that can be used with Windows 7 32-bit:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Forceware-182.50-Vista-32-bit-WHQL-download-2232.html

[richard hutchinson]

Many thanks for taking time out to reply. Hopefully, all artifacts will dissapear with this. I wish Nvidia would get their acts together a bit sometimes. I found out the other day that driver CD's supplied with cards contain only generic drivers that will work on anything, but no-where do they advise to ge the latest one's (at least not in this box).

I am impressed with the GTS250 but don't know how it fares compared to others.

Thanks again.

Richard