New / Update Nvidia Drivers XP & Vista

Nvidia has been busy

Nvidia Vista

April-17-2007 Forceware Ver 158.18 (BETA) - Geforce 6xxx - 8xxx
Vista 32bit http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_158.18.html
Vista 64bit http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_158.18.html

** This driver will uninstall any old vista driver, reboot, install new one, reboot **

Nvidia XP/Media Center

Nov-2-2006 Geforce 2 - 7xxxx (WHQL Certified)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_97.94.html

Now for the fun confusing part... Geforce 8 Users

April-5-2007 Geforce 88xx ONLY Ver 97.94
XP 32 bit - http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_97.94.html
XP 64 bit - http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_97.94.html

April-17-2007 ALL Geforce 8xxx Cards inclusing 88xx (BETA)
XP 32 bit - http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_158.19.html
XP 64 bit - http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_158.19.html

Now for the VERY brave people... if you own a Geforce 6 or 7 card here is what you can do. If your not comfortable with this... DON'T

Download both the (Nov 06) 97.94 Driver and the newest beta 158 series.
Use a program to extract the files from both drivers... (I like power archiver 2007 but winzip or the free 7zip should do the trick).

From the Nov driver, find nv4_disp.inf file and open it up and find the
[NVIDIA.Mfg] section. Add these entries to the newest beta 158 series nv4_disp.inf in the beta drivers under the same section.

Run setup from the and install... and enjoy some BETA drivers... may be better... may be worse

I am not very brave.

Just to make clear...we have to run the same setup twice? Once to remove, once to install? Just making sure. Probably not going to update, as my 8800GTX works just fine. If only ASUS would update their gamerOSD though :/

Yes, but it's automatic. Run install, detects old, uninstall - reboot, and triggers the setup to run automatically when it comes back up (runs setup again), installs new driver, then one more reboot.

Installed the Vista version for My 7800 GS and it totally killed my FPS in GW, bringing down to around 10....

OUCH!

Maybe we need to give some NVIDIA GPUs to ANET development team to test with? *no sarcasm*. I am serious. These jumpy graphics, losing FPS is just frigging annoying.

Anyhow, I wouldn't recommend updating drivers unless you specifically know it is an improvement or solution to your problem. "Don't fix what isn't broken!"

- Vel

Mine is now "blockier" and my FPS dropped. Anyone using a decent driver set for an nVidia 7600GS?

Can't wait to get home to install this beta. Recently installed the previous version and it screwed the graphics on GW - distant graphics now sparkle and flicker with popup aplenty. I'm running a pair of SLI'd 8800GTX - it looks crap at the moment, but never drops below 60fps :/

Incidentally, for my setup, could anybody recomend the ideal setting for the Guild Wars profile in the nVidia cpl thingie? SLI/Single Monitor is a given.

[edit]...on XP Home, by the way. Not risking the move to Vista 'til it's necessary

I run vista +8800gtx just fine...Only the resolution changing hurts your eyes because it flashes alot.

Yeah, personally I'm sticking with the driver set that came with Vista, its stable and i have the graphics options I need

my 8800gts on vista 32bit has major fps drop with those ... imam roll to the old ones :S

I think I am going to format and go back to XP for now.

Hi ya,
I upgraded to Vista 32bit, and also had the same issues regarding the graphics fps.
on xp my fps was around 40-45 but after the upgrade to vista it dropped to 15-20 so like most other ppl i upgraded my driver from the nvidia website, unfortunatly this resulted in my fps dropping further to about 7-10.

from there i did 2 things so anyone else who is suffering from the same thing could try one of these until vista brings out the first service pack or nvidia launches a workable driver.

Option 01:
Stay on vista and stick with the vista driver for now, but lower your resolution to 1024x768 max, it will free up some of your graphics resources increasing your fps.

Option 02:
re-format your HD and go back to xp until vista fixes all the bugs and nvidia catches up with its drivers.

regards
Nite

Guild Wars used to run fine with fps just as high as windows xp until the April 5th audio update, now for some reason many nvidia users are getting a massive reduction is frame rate with the game. Arena Net messed something up with the game big time. Its not really windows vista as such the the game was messed up since april 5th. I have heard that some windows xp users are having similar issues.

As someone eles said there was no need to make such as huge change to the game after 2 years post launch when it ran fine before.

Btw, Anet was no help when asked about the drastic fps drop. Just told me that GW isnt compatible with Vista.... :|

That's correct. We do not currently support Vista for any NCsoft games, including Guild Wars. Vista is a new OS that works differently from the old XP amd some key features related to gaming (such as DX10 and how sound is handled) do not work as well with software designed for the XP OS. We're in the process of fully testing GW on Vista and solving any problems that arise, however we cannot support GW on Vista until this process is complete.

In the meantime, GW does run on Vista. You just need to be aware that you may encounter issues, especially as hardware drivers are updated over the next few months.

I've tried both recent driver releases, XP and an 8800GTX. Performance is awesome, in between the BSOD's and total system lockups. 5 BSOD's in 4 days on a system that hadn't had one in over a year.