[quote]Outside of gaming, we find it's difficult to come up with any situations where regular driver updates are critical[/quote]
A year ago, a colleague nearly reinstalled Vista on his Dell XPS M1330, because "the darn thing would freeze in the middle of playing a video". I told him that I had experienced the same thing on my desktop and that a nVidia driver update did the trick... Sure enough, a quick visit to laptopvideo2go.com, and his problem was solved.
Had he waited for an "official" nVidia driver, he would have ended up waiting for several months as I recall. Not a good situation.
So no, gamers are not the only one who cares about fresh nVidia drivers. There are many other issues fixed as time goes by. (quite a few issues introduced too in my experience) Didn't MS post an overview of what caused the most BSODs in Vista? Video drivers, wasn't it?
Agreed, I've had a dell latitude for over 2 years and I'm still waiting for a video driver that does not cause random blue, or even black screens of death invoked by docking, undocking, standby or hibernate.
Does anyone know whether the driver will allow me to use Hybrid SLI on my Macbook Pro when using Vista? It alwys gets noticeably hotter on Vista than it does on OSX.
Anything I should know so this won't interfere with the driver installtion utility from Apple?
If the driver supports Apple's requirements, it should install fine; if it doesn't, it probably won't even allow you to install. I'm guessing that this won't support Apple, but it doesn't explicitly list them on the "not supported" page so you can give it a shot. Even if it doesn't work the way you'd like, you can always go back to the Apple provided driver.
These drivers do work just fine with the regular aluminum Macbook and Vista 64-bit. This is the first non-OEM driver to officially support the 9400M so I would assume it enables hybrid SLI for it as well. Apple was probably using older drivers that don't support hybrid SLI, as OEMs are inclined to do. They don't exactly keep them update. Apple doesn't limit what drivers you can use under Windows AFAIK. At least I've never run into those issues beyond their limiting 64-bit Windows to certain machines, which is crazy easy to get around.
You can not mention all Vostros as one, ie my Vostro 1500 has the 256MB 8600GT. It works really well as a gaming platform, I score ~5000p in 3DMark06 when oc:ed. Also, it runs the 185.x beta-drivers from Nvidia just fine, you can find them at laptopvideo2go.com if you missed that one.
Apart from that it's nice with more laptop-support from Nvidia, even if only partial.
Note: I've added a final paragraph discussing the "supported laptops" situation further. It stinks for some, but certainly I can understand the logic. I also don't know how well NVIDIA is able to test the drivers with every laptop. I do know that they put in all the hooks for laptops that need special functions - i.e. bringing up the brightness controls and getting the graphical widgets when you change levels. That sort of functionality gets broken with a lot of the hacked drivers. I also am disappointed that there's no way to add custom resolutions if your vendor doesn't want that feature exposed; I routinely use laptops that don't list all of the common resolutions (i.e. 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x720, 1280x800, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1600x1200, 1920x1080, and 1920x1200 should all be available on every laptop, provided your LCD has enough pixels).
I should have noted that the list of supported laptops is based on what the OEMs agree to allow NVIDIA to support, so any missing laptops are *not* the decision of NVIDIA. Dell feels the need to maintain control of drivers for their business lines and certain other products, and the same goes for a lot of companies. If you want to complain about the lack of support, I'd recommend emailing your specific vendor to complain. Tell them why it's important, and let them get in touch with NVIDIA.
That said, I don't think new drivers are a serious concern for people that don't play games. And if you're trying to play games on a business notebook that likely has at best 9500M GS graphics, I'm sorry for you. Sure, it's possible, but the experience is less than thrilling IMO.
I'm still waiting for Lenovo to deliver new drivers for my T43 with ATi X300 - not because I play games, but the shipping driver did not support widescreen resolutions, and the newest driver does widescreen, but switches to 1024x768 (on a 1400x1050 display) whenever the lid is closed and requires a restart to get the full screen functionality back.
I'm sorry but I'll have to disagree with bundling all the drivers into a single release. I really hate dl'ing close to 100meg files for a DRIVER update. My latest computer build had me rebuilding my old rig in the basement. I have a 64meg flash drive that I keep for transferring small files and was shocked when I couldn't even put the Nvidia drivers for my aging 6800GT on it. I ended up having to use my 320gig external HD to transfer over graphics drivers....
I know AIO is nice for the general consumer, but please offer the ability to pick your specific product and update drivers in under 10megs. Just think of the bandwidth savings on Nvidia/AMD's end when thousands of people are logging on after a new driver release!
Agreed. I don't care if I have a petabyte of storage. I want a freaking MINIMAL drivers for my hardware. I don't need ancient driver packages. It's just like Windows. I would rather load drivers for each device as I install Windows, than to have to load ALL the drivers onto my hard drive. nLite FTW.
I don't know about you, but video drivers are usually fairly late on my list of things to install with a new build. Couldn't you have waited on video drivers till you had a network connection up and running on the machine?
Also, you can get 2GB Kingston USB sticks for $5 at Walmart nowadays (I got one for my girlfriend as a stocking-stuffer). I've never bought a USB stick for myself, and I haven't had anything smaller than 512MB in 3 years.
Okay, I'm a little annoyed that the previous quartly notebook driver release on Dec 18 was 179.28. Now this quarter on Feb 11 we get 179.48. How is this progress? There were some pretty significant improvements in the 180+ drivers that we could all use. Desktop drivers are currently at 181.22, two major releases behind.
I am thankful that these notebook drivers are available now, but I think I will need to agree that their release should be merged into the regular desktop driver release.
May be unified drivers later. Since Laptop has pasted Desktop Sales Unit. I am wondering if the amount of testing required on a Laptop is any different to a Desktop?
GPU on Laptop hasn't seen any movement at all. ( Due to all GPU being too power hungry ). So i hope we have some breakthrough from them in the near future,
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strikeback03 - Monday, February 16, 2009 - link
Is it actually new hardware, or another G92 rebranding?BikeDude - Sunday, February 15, 2009 - link
[quote]Outside of gaming, we find it's difficult to come up with any situations where regular driver updates are critical[/quote]A year ago, a colleague nearly reinstalled Vista on his Dell XPS M1330, because "the darn thing would freeze in the middle of playing a video". I told him that I had experienced the same thing on my desktop and that a nVidia driver update did the trick... Sure enough, a quick visit to laptopvideo2go.com, and his problem was solved.
Had he waited for an "official" nVidia driver, he would have ended up waiting for several months as I recall. Not a good situation.
So no, gamers are not the only one who cares about fresh nVidia drivers. There are many other issues fixed as time goes by. (quite a few issues introduced too in my experience) Didn't MS post an overview of what caused the most BSODs in Vista? Video drivers, wasn't it?
bludragon - Friday, February 20, 2009 - link
Agreed, I've had a dell latitude for over 2 years and I'm still waiting for a video driver that does not cause random blue, or even black screens of death invoked by docking, undocking, standby or hibernate.JonnyDough - Friday, February 13, 2009 - link
and I may have to actually consider buying your products again.JarredWalton - Friday, February 13, 2009 - link
Announced != leakedNickel020 - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
Does anyone know whether the driver will allow me to use Hybrid SLI on my Macbook Pro when using Vista? It alwys gets noticeably hotter on Vista than it does on OSX.Anything I should know so this won't interfere with the driver installtion utility from Apple?
Thanks!
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
If the driver supports Apple's requirements, it should install fine; if it doesn't, it probably won't even allow you to install. I'm guessing that this won't support Apple, but it doesn't explicitly list them on the "not supported" page so you can give it a shot. Even if it doesn't work the way you'd like, you can always go back to the Apple provided driver.mmntech - Tuesday, February 17, 2009 - link
These drivers do work just fine with the regular aluminum Macbook and Vista 64-bit. This is the first non-OEM driver to officially support the 9400M so I would assume it enables hybrid SLI for it as well. Apple was probably using older drivers that don't support hybrid SLI, as OEMs are inclined to do. They don't exactly keep them update. Apple doesn't limit what drivers you can use under Windows AFAIK. At least I've never run into those issues beyond their limiting 64-bit Windows to certain machines, which is crazy easy to get around.LoneWolf15 - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
Drivers do not support Dell Latitude line, HP/Compaq, or Lenovo ThinkPads.That's only what percent of the notebook market using nVidia cards? Lovely.
(sarcasm tag off)
LoneWolf15 - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
Forgot to mention Dell Vostro, Sony VAIO, and Fujitsu as well.crimson117 - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
Latitude and vostro are not in any way meant for gaming or even intensive graphical workstation work.Dell Precision and XPS (the laptops that might have high end GPU's) are both supported.
xeizo - Friday, February 13, 2009 - link
You can not mention all Vostros as one, ie my Vostro 1500 has the 256MB 8600GT. It works really well as a gaming platform, I score ~5000p in 3DMark06 when oc:ed. Also, it runs the 185.x beta-drivers from Nvidia just fine, you can find them at laptopvideo2go.com if you missed that one.Apart from that it's nice with more laptop-support from Nvidia, even if only partial.
LoneWolf15 - Friday, February 13, 2009 - link
I mentioned all Vostros as one because nVidia's documentation on their beta drivers listed them all as one.Laptopvideo2go's drivers have hacked .INF files to get around these things. They aren't out-of-the-box nVidia drivers, so they don't qualify.
xeizo - Friday, February 13, 2009 - link
My reply was mostly meant for for Crimson117 who said that Vostros amongst others doesn't qualify for gaming. I proved him wrong.Of course you´re right about hacked drivers and no official support, but one can use the hacked drivers anyway :)
JarredWalton - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
Note: I've added a final paragraph discussing the "supported laptops" situation further. It stinks for some, but certainly I can understand the logic. I also don't know how well NVIDIA is able to test the drivers with every laptop. I do know that they put in all the hooks for laptops that need special functions - i.e. bringing up the brightness controls and getting the graphical widgets when you change levels. That sort of functionality gets broken with a lot of the hacked drivers. I also am disappointed that there's no way to add custom resolutions if your vendor doesn't want that feature exposed; I routinely use laptops that don't list all of the common resolutions (i.e. 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x720, 1280x800, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1600x1200, 1920x1080, and 1920x1200 should all be available on every laptop, provided your LCD has enough pixels).JarredWalton - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
I should have noted that the list of supported laptops is based on what the OEMs agree to allow NVIDIA to support, so any missing laptops are *not* the decision of NVIDIA. Dell feels the need to maintain control of drivers for their business lines and certain other products, and the same goes for a lot of companies. If you want to complain about the lack of support, I'd recommend emailing your specific vendor to complain. Tell them why it's important, and let them get in touch with NVIDIA.That said, I don't think new drivers are a serious concern for people that don't play games. And if you're trying to play games on a business notebook that likely has at best 9500M GS graphics, I'm sorry for you. Sure, it's possible, but the experience is less than thrilling IMO.
strikeback03 - Monday, February 16, 2009 - link
I'm still waiting for Lenovo to deliver new drivers for my T43 with ATi X300 - not because I play games, but the shipping driver did not support widescreen resolutions, and the newest driver does widescreen, but switches to 1024x768 (on a 1400x1050 display) whenever the lid is closed and requires a restart to get the full screen functionality back.7Enigma - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
I'm sorry but I'll have to disagree with bundling all the drivers into a single release. I really hate dl'ing close to 100meg files for a DRIVER update. My latest computer build had me rebuilding my old rig in the basement. I have a 64meg flash drive that I keep for transferring small files and was shocked when I couldn't even put the Nvidia drivers for my aging 6800GT on it. I ended up having to use my 320gig external HD to transfer over graphics drivers....I know AIO is nice for the general consumer, but please offer the ability to pick your specific product and update drivers in under 10megs. Just think of the bandwidth savings on Nvidia/AMD's end when thousands of people are logging on after a new driver release!
JonnyDough - Friday, February 13, 2009 - link
Agreed. I don't care if I have a petabyte of storage. I want a freaking MINIMAL drivers for my hardware. I don't need ancient driver packages. It's just like Windows. I would rather load drivers for each device as I install Windows, than to have to load ALL the drivers onto my hard drive. nLite FTW.UNHchabo - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
I don't know about you, but video drivers are usually fairly late on my list of things to install with a new build. Couldn't you have waited on video drivers till you had a network connection up and running on the machine?strikeback03 - Monday, February 16, 2009 - link
I usually do graphics relatively early because I can't stand working with the tiny resolutions available without the drivers.And seriously, a 64MB flash drive?
UNHchabo - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
Also, you can get 2GB Kingston USB sticks for $5 at Walmart nowadays (I got one for my girlfriend as a stocking-stuffer). I've never bought a USB stick for myself, and I haven't had anything smaller than 512MB in 3 years.TheMightyTick - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
Okay, I'm a little annoyed that the previous quartly notebook driver release on Dec 18 was 179.28. Now this quarter on Feb 11 we get 179.48. How is this progress? There were some pretty significant improvements in the 180+ drivers that we could all use. Desktop drivers are currently at 181.22, two major releases behind.I am thankful that these notebook drivers are available now, but I think I will need to agree that their release should be merged into the regular desktop driver release.
iwodo - Thursday, February 12, 2009 - link
May be unified drivers later. Since Laptop has pasted Desktop Sales Unit. I am wondering if the amount of testing required on a Laptop is any different to a Desktop?GPU on Laptop hasn't seen any movement at all. ( Due to all GPU being too power hungry ). So i hope we have some breakthrough from them in the near future,