NVIDIA Achieves Holy Grail of Drivers

Okay, it's time for a short tangent. Gary mentioned recently that NVIDIA posted new Windows 7 compatible drivers on their website. What he neglected to mention is that new drivers are also available for Windows Vista and XP. Note that all of these are "beta" drivers, so there may be a few bugs left to work out, but we often feel that way about official drivers as well. So what makes these new drivers so special that they deserve a second mention? What exactly is the "Holy Grail" of this driver release?

Given this is a laptop article, you've probably already guessed, but the new drivers are available for notebooks as well. That's right, NVIDIA managed to release updated drivers for all major platforms on the same day! The drivers are available for all users whether they run the latest Windows 7 Release Candidate, Windows Vista, or Windows XP -- in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. If that's not enough, NVIDIA updated their drivers again one week later with the 185.85 WHQL release, once again available for all the major platforms and cards.

If you're running an older laptop, we do have to curb our enthusiasm. Users of GeForce Go 7 series hardware will have to continue using the last 179.48 beta drivers. Of course, it's also very unlikely that the latest drivers will contain any optimizations for older DirectX 9 hardware, so the 179.48 release should continue to work fine for the time being. (It's interesting to note that in quite a few titles we test with, performance has actually dropped somewhat over the past six months of mobile driver releases, so GeForce Go 7 users have even less incentive to want to upgrade.) Everyone else that runs a laptop with NVIDIA graphics will probably want to update... well, almost everyone.

As in the past, NVIDIA's mobile reference drivers only work with laptops from participating vendors. That covers the vast majority of users that have laptops, but some vendors/models are not supported:

  • Hybrid SLI notebooks:
    • Acer Aspire 7530
    • BenQ Joybook S42
    • Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 3650
    • MSI EX630
    • Qosmio X305-Q706
    • Qosmio X305-Q708

  • Fujitsu notebooks -- (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks). Note: Fujitsu Siemens (FSC) notebooks are supported in this release
  • Lenovo ThinkPad notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)
  • Sony VAIO notebooks (please contact the notebook OEM for driver support for these notebooks)
  • Any notebook that is launched after the release date of this driver (Ed: naturally)

If you've been following NVIDIA's mobile driver releases, you may notice that Dell's Vostro line is no longer on the unsupported list -- most likely Dell heard your complaints. We're not sure why the Hybrid SLI notebooks aren't supported, but a far bigger concern is that several major vendors are apparently unwilling to participate in NVIDIA's mobile driver program. So let's make this clear: Lenovo, Sony, and Fujitsu, get with the program! Granted, none of those companies focuses on gaming laptops, but updated drivers are still important for other reasons -- for example, if you want to run the release candidate for Windows 7 with optimal performance. For reference, the latest driver currently available from Sony appears to be the 176 series, Lenovo offers the 178 series, and Fujitsu is still serving up 174 series drivers.

Is this going to be the way of all driver releases from the green team going forward? We certainly hope so, and if that's the case their competitors are in a difficult bind. It's absolutely great that notebook users won't have to wait several extra months before they get updated drivers for once. Put another way: NVIDIA has just moved all-in with pocket aces and there's another ace on the flop. ATI has their work cut out for them if they want to match that high standard, and that goes double for gaming laptops where driver updates are even more crucial. We can basically state that any game launched after a driver release is not likely to have any specific optimizations. Sometimes that will matter and other times it won't, but newer drivers are particularly helpful for multi-GPU configurations running new titles, which brings us back to the ASUS W90Vp.

Index ATI's Mobile Driver Program -- or Lack Thereof
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  • tynopik - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link

    the charts are a COMPLETE DISASTER

    the first few, I'm still not sure what they're trying to say

    the FRAPS charts are better, but:

    1: thousandth's of a frame per second? talk about unnecessary precision
    2. NO CONSISTENCY. different tests were run for each game, it's bizarre

    we have:
    - W90Vp OCed / W90Vp 1080p OCed / W90Vp (new drivers? who knows?)
    - OCed New Driver / OCed Init Driver / Initial Driver
    - OCed New w/o CCC / OCed New Driver / OCed Init Driver / Initial Driver


    3. The HD (1920x1080) benchmarks suddenly switch over to 1680x1050 with Mass Effect

    - even though you have 2 charts for 1680x1050 results (one on the 1080p page and one on Standard gaming page), the results don't match (for instance on the 1080p page it says the Q6600 had 51.674 fps in Mass Effect while on the standard page it says 53.375)


    I can tell it took a lot of time to run all these benchmarks on all these different platforms, but you have to FINISH!
  • JarredWalton - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link

    The 1080p Mass Effect listed as 1680x1050 is merely a typo. I'll correct the labeling of the initial charts - I didn't subtract the 100%, but it makes for an easier chart since there aren't negative values. The earlier poster is correct that it's a ratio, so 100% means equal performance.
  • JarredWalton - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link

    FWIW, I initially "finished" at 5:30AM. I have now edited the graphs, added a bit more commentary, and inserted a page analyzing the overclocking results of the W90Vp. Enjoy!
  • strikeback03 - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link

    One more - last page first paragraph under the photo, I'm guessing you said "ear splitting" but Dragon has 'your spreading" there for the description of the volume levels.
  • Jackattak - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link

    LOL poor Jarred... ;) Get some rest, mate!

    Thanks for the article. Was nice to see benches on a system like this. Why anyone would lug around a 17er I have no clue, though. I think the 15.4" form factor is the perfect balance of size/weight/performance.

    I just wish more manufacturers offered higher-end GPUs or at least gave more options for end user installable discrete GPUs (would love to slap a 8800M GT 512 in my XPS1530).
  • The0ne - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link

    I have a loaded vostro 17" with wuxga and it's very nice. However, lugging it around with me on oversea business trips can become tiresome. This thing is almost 12lbs O.o I can't imagine having this at all even if I wanted the specs.

    Most people don't realize those extra small lbs will drag you down sooner than you ever can realize :)
  • The0ne - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link

    Oh, and this comming from a guy that's actually in shape and built lol
  • Golgatha - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link

    "ATI's Mobile Driver Program -- or Lack Thereof"

    Seriously, if they want to sell a multi-thousand dollar laptop, they better have drivers available the same day as the desktop GPUs. I can't imagine anyone buying a gaming laptop with anything but nVidia GPUs inside it.

    BTW, I have 4870 1GB cards in Crossfire on my desktop, so this isn't a post to just bash ATI. However, they do need to get with their industry partners and correct this issue fast.
  • Zoomer - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link

    Don't know what the fuss is about, I recall installing up to date ATi drivers on my 9600 mobility and possibly even the Rage 3D (can't really that well, unfortunately).

    *Requires mobility modder or inf editing.
  • JarredWalton - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link

    The ATI Catalyst drivers on their website "install" without apparent issue, but they don't actually update the drivers - just the CCC. In the past, ATI may have provided drivers that would work with all of their chipsets, but that's not the case with modern GPUs as far as I can tell. Certainly, it's a problem with HD 4870 CrossFire.

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