I tried the 28.90 and didnt notice any performance gain. I did get some spontaneous reboots and alot of dropped frames in Castle Wolfstein. Ive gone back to the old drivers and the dropped frames are even worse now. Id like to try the new drivers though.

Over here they seem pretty convinced that the 28.90 are evry good -> New Detonator's "Significantly" Improve Performance

You might wanna take it out with them.

vegasgmc,

Since I'm running 98SE/NT & the 29.11 here: http://guru3d.com/files/ is only for W2K/XP, no I haven't tried it.

I wonder if you used the 'Detonator Destroyer' between installs (available at the above link). I also note that you say 98SE/W2K for your system(s). That requires 2 different downloads. I can see a possible 'conflict' being created if the video card boots to the wrong driver for which each game is installed.

I've found the 28.90 to work very well on my GF2 MX400 64mb card. Better than the 23.11 & the 28.32.

6 noisy fans, at least it isn't a heat problem. If you are overclocking the cards thru 'hardware', try overclocking the driver instead. 210core clock speed/380memory clock speed with 'Riva Tuner' (@ above link) is what I'm using w/28.90 on my GF2.

Hope this helps,

I just used the 29.11 and it totally sucked. My machine kept locking up and there was no improvement in visuals. Maybe I'll get brave and try the 29.20. I also used Riva Tuner and Wolfenstein kept freezing.

I tried the 29.11 but my desktop kept shrinking upon reboot, my icons also doubled in size when I return from a game, any game. I went back to the 28.32 drivers and all is fine. I also tried the 28.90 but Quake 3 kept freezing.

I am using this under Windows XP with no problems.

Vegas,

I'm confused: your system specs say "Win 98se/2000". The Win 9x drivers are a specific download & the XP/2000 are another. Could you please explain to me: how you are running both 98se & 2000 & are you dl'ing both drivers & installing them seperately?

We're running the same basic card, you have a faster CPU & I have more RAM. Your experience w/the same drivers is different than mine tho'. For me: 23.11 was fine, 28.32 wasn't at all, 28.90 was real good & the 29.20 I'm 'testing' is benchmarking the best of all when oc'd. I've only been running it a day tho', so ...

I find it odd that we are experiencing differences. I don't have the same games, but the games I do have will gobble up over 256mb of my PC133 w/Win running. Internet playing will eat almost all of the 320mb I have, sometimes.

I'm interested in the Win98se/2000. I *thought* they weren't compatible. PC133 is cheap right now & I'm getting another 256 stick, suggest you do the same: couldn't hurt, ya know.

FWIW: we're neighbors. If I flew 100miles due east over these Sierra Nevada Mtns. > I'd be in Vegas.

I only use NVIDIA certified drivers for those reasons. I use my computer to play games and do other stuff, not to screw around with freezing up problems!!!

Hey Jav.

Windows 2000 has a boot manager so it will let you run multiple operating systems. You choose which one you want at boot up. The operating systems share resources like periferals and system drivers(motherboard, chipset) but they dont share drivers for audio, video, ect. So I have to do everything at least twice but as soon as I get a new audio card Im ditching 98.
I got really good performance with the older detonator drivers, Im just always messing with this machine. Most of my trouble started when I used the 28.90. Ive gone back to 28.32 which worked great before but now Im still having alot of dropped frames. I thought about more memory but Im going to overhaul my system soon with XP processor and DDR.
The 29.11 drivers also screwed up Motherboard Monitor so I had to reinstall it.

I just used the 29.20 and same story. Back to good old OEM.

I've gone between 21.30, 21.80, 23.11, 27.x, and 28.x and none seems to like Microsoft's Dungeon Siege very much...

Surely these new drivers offer no benefit to most of you, since you are using GF2 MX cards, and all drivers after 23.xx are optimised for GF3/GF4 cards.

D8,

I'm using a GF2 MX & the new drivers show both 'real life' frame rate improvements & benchmark improvements.

They may be intentionally optimized to take advantage of the tech in the 'new' GF3 & GF4's, but they are working/improving my GF2 MX. :grinthumb

I tend to agree with what you are saying, but there evidently are some residual benefits to the 'newer' drivers on the 'older cards' or nVidia wouldn't say in their documents that these drivers are for all their chips.

I have a post below on the 29.20 driver. I included the 'benchmark' results on the 28.90 & the 29.20 @ the same oc speeds. The 29.20 shows improvement on all fields except 'circles' & on them: it is only 32p/s lower. I didn't 'save' the 23.11 file, but it was lower on all fields.

Theory: since these drivers are 'optimized' for the GF3 & 4's & they run higher clock speeds than the 2's > the drivers deliver better performance on the 2's when oc'd & it won't adversely affect the 'drivers' because they are designed to handle the higher clock speeds of the 3's & 4's. Just a theory on why they do work 'better', for me.

Have a good one,

I just thought that the 16.xx drivers that were released after the 23.xx drivers were supposed to be the best drivers for GF2 cards.

As for the 29.xx still supporting the GF2MX, they also still support the TNT2 . I didn't actually know that the newest drivers offered such a big increase for GF2 cards.

If I get time, I will try and benchmark several different drivers on my 2nd RIG, which has an MSI GF2MX and see which are the best.

D8,

If you could do that w/your MX, that would be cool. Some of the other MX users here have *not* been experiencing what I have. I realize that mfg, memory ns, CPU, operating system, etc. does have an effect, but if this is all cross platform compatible > shouldn't we all be very similar? I'm not getting 'lock-ups' or dropped frame rates.

Thanks,


CrazyAce,

I believe you mean Microsoft certified. These drivers are coming from nVidia. Some are released as beta versions to get feedback. W/o people trying them & responding, future developments would wait on Microsofts WHQL certification. nVidia is simply releasing them prior to WHQL cert, but they do test them 1st.

Have a good one,

Not yet

Still using 28.32's from Leadtek.
Have tried quite a variety of drivers and have had probs with a few of them.If I get bored one day I might put 28.90 on and see what happens
It's almost like there's a driver for every system running a NV, and some days you think "well let's see what these babies can do":blackeye: . And sometimes they work great/good/mediocre...or just :dead:
Do you ever wonder if the NV authors are having a quiet giggle to themselves...:rolleyes:

I think all the driver swapping Ive done has damaged my system. I removed all the drivers and reinstalled the originals and my system is still locking up.