Warning! Nvidia Driver Tricks...Again

[John P. Myers]

Today Nvidia released the GeForce 327.23 WHQL driver.

*links below are for Win7 64 bit

3 things you need to aware of:

1) If you have a 500 series or older GPU in your box (or an ION), and *also* have a 600 series or newer GPU in your box, DO NOT update to this driver.

2) If you have a 500 series or older GPU (or an ION), you'll want this driver: http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/66701

3) If you have a 600 series or newer, you'll want this driver: http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/66884

Both drivers have the same release date, are both the same size (188.59MB) and are both numbered 327.23. Clicking on both links and comparing them however, you'll notice the compatibilities are very different.


My advice? Stick with 326.80 beta.

Edit: issue with 600 series referencing the incorrect driver was fixed.

[zombie67]

Shenanigans!

Both links list the same GPUs in the release summary!

[John P. Myers]

Fixed in 331.40 Beta http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/67378

[Sarge104]

331.58

Still a bit wonky, I installed this yesterday and Precision X would not read my Titan any more. After doing a roll back and reinstall the same problem happened. Finally uninstalled Precision then installed it manually and it seems to be doing ok.

For the love of pete please do not install that glutton of a Statistics Tuner...I'm still trying to find out why anyone would want that piece of junk on the computer.

[DrPop]

The new driver gives me *significantly* better times on WUs with the GTX 560Ti 448 compared to the previous 327.3 version.

[zombie67]

The new driver gives me *significantly* better times on WUs with the GTX 560Ti 448 compared to the previous 327.3 version.

On which project(s)?

[DrPop]

PrimeGrid so far, that's what I'm working on at the moment. Probably helps in all of them though. I noticed in the preamble to the latest drivers that it specifically mentioned a large % increase in performance in certain games over the previous 327.3 drivers - and instead of just being for the latest GPUs, it mentioned the 500 series as well.

That makes me think they broke something in 327.3 and now they fixed it in this latest driver.

[John P. Myers]

Yeah so i tried this driver to see if i could have these increases too :D Complete fail :mad: Time to revert!

Since i still had times for Dirt available i could compare to, i ran that.

GTX 560 takes about 10 secs longer - 6119 secs vs. 6109 secs
Titan takes forever longer - 1923 secs vs. 1751 secs. WHAT!

No thanks.

[John P. Myers]

Hmmm....

Now i'm in a tough spot. Like DrPop said, that new driver is faster on PG. And significantly. Before i reverted back to the previous driver, i ran some PPS Sieve, then ran some more with the older driver. The new driver was a solid 15% faster on the Titan. But Dirt was so much slower....which driver to choose...lol

In the Dirt test, the opti-app was used. Perhaps the stock app is now faster though and the benefits aren't seen on any opti-app? Hmmm...tough decision and i sure don't have the patience to keep switching back and forth :p

[Al]

The new driver decreased wu times on PG by 800 seconds, about 12%, on my aging gt430s. Haven't tested it on anything else.

[John P. Myers]

Only the Titan had a gain on PG with the new driver. The GTX 560, GT 640 and GT 640 Rev2 were all unchanged.

[DrPop]

Do you mean times went up (i.e. credits went down) or do you mean a gain in credits?
The 560Ti clearly shaved quite a bit of time off the PG WUs when going from the previous 327.3 to these new ones. I am just trying to figure out what you meant by the 500 series remained unchanged.;)

[John P. Myers]

I mean the Titan had a gain in credits (in PG) :) Of my other GPUs nothing else changed. Your 560Ti uses a different chip than my plain 560. Also i wasn't using 327.3 since it wouldn't be comatible with my setup. I have 326.98.

[DrPop]

Ah! I think they must have broke something in 327.3 - which would make sense, because you were running an older version, and didn't see a change to these new ones, whereas I was coming from 327.3. :)

[John P. Myers]

Would you like to try 331.65? (http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/68799) :)

[Sarge104]

Updated to the new drivers last night after getting my last set of WU's before the Seti@home maintenance. Didn't see much improvement at all but also didn't see any degradation. Everything worked after the install unlike the previous.

[Fire$torm]

Would you like to try 331.65? (http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/68799) :)

Any performance increase over v306.91 for GTX 460 and 570?