Nvidia Geforce/TNT drivers 3.81

[Aegeas 0]

Okay,

This driver set rocks. I now have D3D, full motion video in a window, OpenGl, and powerstrip almost works completely again!

It still won't let powerstrip alter any opengl settings (or D3D for that matter). Load times have reduced but there seems to be a marked problem. When starting graphics intensive applications I sometimes get a tiny window around my mouse pointer and the game takes forever to load. This is rare though. If I exit the application and return it is fixed. It appears to be an irq issue.

 

Use this driver set.

[Reidyn 0]

Has anybody actually confirmed whether TV out works in W2K with 3.81? Or whether NVidia themselves even intend to do it at all, or is just leaving it up to the OEMs? I'm sick of having to boot to 98 for TV out support.

[tourettes 0]

Have anyone got 3.81 drivers working on dual system? Desktop is working great and no sync loss on mediaplayer, but OpenGL games and screen savers will lock up immediadly my whole system. No BSOD just lock up.

[Sensei 0]

Hmmm...it seems as though I'm beginning to get random lockups while in Half-Life. It's an OpenGL game and if AGP has been enabled in OpenGL with this driver set, that could be causing it. It'll be fine for a while and then out of the blue I get a lockup. This is all while playing Counter-Strike. I haven't tried any D3D stuff extensively yet, but once I get back into Everquest for a while, I'll get a good long look at D3D and how stable it is in these drivers. I just hope that the progress continues and they just keep getting better and better. These are a HUGE improvement over the ones where I couldn't even navigate through Windows with.

 

Pete

[Dragon-Lord 0]

geforce ddr here on a dual P3 ACPI SMP...no problems whatsoever with graphics. SBLive is still garbled under EAX, but those drivers aren't cooked yet. :}

[Andy_25 0]

The 3.81 drivers work great here! No probs whatsoever. In fact, I noticed a significant improvement in all the games that I tried (Q3, UT, Rally Champ. 2000, Sportscar GT). Now the games run just as well in Win2k as they did in win98.

[nMan 0]

Same problem as all drivers since 3.68: OpenGL screensavers reboots the system at once (but Quake runs just fine!!)

Back to NT4's OpenGL driver. (Will this bug ever be fixed?)

[spacey 0]

I've been using the NT4 opengl driver for sometime now, its great for me. I doubt I'll change to an Win2K one until there is a major release thats good and reliable.

[Sgh in DC 0]

I've tried these 3.81 drivers and they are STILL not as fast (or stable ) as the Win2k drivers from creative labs. I DO have a CL TNT2 card, but untill now I thought nvidia was nvidia was nvidia! I have no doubt that most of you are getting good results from these, but I used Wintune benchmark to check. OpenGL with 3.81 was at 10% of the reference card (GeForce). The creative drivers run at 80%. Gyess I 'd better get a GeForce!

[dieu 0]

Just finished testing the new 3.81 drivers under Q3 Demo 1 DEFAULT SETTINGS.

In resolutions 1152X864, 1280X1024, and 1600X1200, driver set 3.81 outperforms driver set 3.78 (w/3.66 NV4_mini.sys).

 

In contrast, 640X480, 800X600, and 1024X768, driver set 3.78 outperforms driver set 3.81

 

[slkh 0]

I think I am going back to 3.78 again. 3.81 although the benchmark looks great but often hang my system when I play Quake 3 after a few games (usually 5 to 8). When I force Win2K to shut down the quake 3 process when it hang, it gives me blue screen. Page locked or something like this.. Never happen to me in 3.78.

[deckard 0]

I'm with Sensei and his post on page 2, but read on. I might as well tell the whole story in case anyone finds it to be a useful comparison.

 

Today I upgraded 2 key things at once (note that my system prior to these upgrades was incredibly stable):

official liveware (from default win2k)

P3-800E (from celeron 300a OC 450)

 

Win2k booted up great after the CPU upgrade and the first thing I did was fire up Quake2. A few mins into it smack, hard lock. Rebooted, tried again after turning off every background app I could and un-overclocking my geforce with Powerstrip. Hard lock after a few mins. Rebooted, this time ran a D3D app, the X-tension rolling demo (awesome stuff by the way, like something out of the Mind's Eye series), and had absolutely no problems.

I reinstalled 3.78 and the Quake2 lock-ups ceased. I'm too tired to draw a bunch of conclusions right now but that is my tale to make of as you will.

 

My setup right now:

Abit BX6 2.0, P3-800E OC 824, 384 meg PC100, Creative DDR, Nvidia 3.78, SB Live, official Liveware, Adaptec 2940 U2W, Win2k

[Sensei 0]

Well, these drivers are actually more stable in D3D than the 3.66 drivers were for me. The problem is that in OpenGL, the 3.66 drivers are more stable. So, when I play D3D games, I use the nv_mini.sys from the 3.81 drivers and when I play OpenGL games, I use the nv_mini.sys from the 3.66 drivers. That SEEMS to make a difference, but I could be wrong. It's a pain, but I have confidence that Nvidia will correct the problem.

 

Pete

[Jerry - 0]

These drivers are faster for geforces. < That's a period. And the only crashes I've had were in halflife after a half and hour, and that's when I'm running my 366's at 600. Unlike the 3.78's which would'nt even work half the time. Quake3 and UT are great. Just can't get SMP to work in the Q3 demo AT ALL, of course that's probaly because of something stupid like theres no smp in the demo.

[Sensei 0]

Hmmm. So you get those lockups in Half-Life also eh? Maybe just an incompatibility somewhere. Well, it's good to know it's not just my system. After a while, it gets kind of old thinking it's another one of those "Athlon problems". Right now, I'm SERIOUSLY thinking about getting one of those new KX133 boards like the Asus K7V. I hear that all the AGP problems were corrected. That would eliminate the only problem I really have anymore.

 

Pete

[deckard 0]

Also, I am now getting hard lock playing MPG and AVI files and 3DMark2000 either immediately locks up the computer or crashes to the desktop. At this point I have normalized everything so that the only thing that is really different is the CPU upgrade. Perhaps these Nvidia drivers are not optimized for the P3? My system was as stable as I could have dreamed with these same Nvidia drivers and my old Celeron 300a.

[Mindz 0]

The 3.81 drivers SUCK for my geforce..

I'm getting random REBOOTS, and my sound stops all of a sudden in a game of HL..

Then I installed the 3.78 drivers w/nv4mini.sys swap, and it is working like it used to..

So i'm going to wait for the next driverset of NVidia..

[deckard 0]

Running with the 3.81 Win2k drivers and Q3 and UT seem are running very stable as does any video I run through media player.

Only real problem I am still having with games is that Q2 crashes after about 5 or 10 mins. Not a system freeze but an application crash and I'm back to the desktop with an error dialog box. I have tried the nvoglnt.dll from 3.81 back to 3.75 as well as the latest one from the NT4 drivers with no luck.

All I really want to know is if anyone else is having this problem with Quake 2 so I can relax, knowing it's a driver issue.

 

System:

Win2k, Abit BX6 2.0, 384 meg PC100, P3-800@897, Creative DDR, SB Live, Adaptec 2940 U2W

[cknyc 0]

I think these drivers are the most stable ones yet. Now whenever q3 crashes because of me trying smp the computer just shuts down q3 and goes into windows.. I dont have any other problems, they seem to be faster also..

[CUViper 0]

The 3.81 drivers worked fine for me in games, but most (not all) of my OpenGL screen savers crashed to DrWatson as soon as I ran them. Even the screen savers that ship with Win2k (i.e. 3D FlowerBox) would crash. I went back to 3.78 and everything works fine. Anyone else try this?

[Rudy 0]

Anyone tested 3DMark2000 with 3.81? I've got a TNT2U and it always crashes back to the desktop within the first 3 benchmarks (helicopters). I only finished the bench once right after installing new RAM...