A Look at NVIDIA's GeForce 270 Driver

[Tharic-Nar]

During a recent briefing, NVIDIA went into detail about what its upcoming GeForce 270 graphics driver would be bringing to the table. In addition to general performance boosts in a multitude of games, an automatic updater is introduced, as are major improvements to certain 3D Vision features and also 3D Vision Surround performance.

Read up on NVIDIA's latest GeForce Driver and then discuss it here!

[Rob Williams]

Beta driver is out!

http://www.geforce.com/#/Drivers/Beta

[Jakal]

It broke my computer.

[Kougar]

I ain't touching a beta graphics driver with a 20 foot insulated pole!

[Jakal]

I'm not entirely sure what caused my issue. Used CCleaner and Driver Sweeper before installing the driver. Afterwards, it couldn't find/wouldn't use the stock Windows driver.

I tried several things which I found online relating to issues on the install. Removing/reinstalling Visual C++ 2005 - 2010, reinstalling the previous driver, using Windows update to install a driver, etc.

Eventually my only recourse was to remove SP1 from Win 7, and then doing a Windows Repair Install.

Didn't lose any programs, documents, icon placement. Did have to reset the background/theme, and several programs weren't loading properly which were quickly taken care of by repairing them. Windows installed the 197 driver, which I easily upgraded to 270, with no problems, without using CCleaner/Driver Sweeper.

Only thing I can think is that cleaning the drivers removed a file it shouldn't have.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by Jakal

Eventually my only recourse was to remove SP1 from Win 7, and then doing a Windows Repair Install.

It's a huge pain, but I think the moral of the story here is that when dealing with beta drivers, it'd be a good idea to create a restore point before installing them.

As far as I know, Windows is supposed to do that automatically, but it doesn't always.

[Kougar]

Originally Posted by Jakal

As far as I know, Windows is supposed to do that automatically, but it doesn't always.

I have actually been told that is exactly what happens, oddly enough. I do not remember the specifics nor where I picked up that info. It was recommended to boot into safe mode before using a driver cleaner for graphics drivers... I never did that myself as I didn't think it was needed, but now I usually do if I'm going to nuke the drivers.

Originally Posted by Rob Williams

It's a huge pain, but I think the moral of the story here is that when dealing with beta drivers, it'd be a good idea to create a restore point before installing them.

As far as I know, Windows is supposed to do that automatically, but it doesn't always.

Most people seem to find a way to disable it unintentionally, or they disable it intentionally. I've heard about others that erased their restore points during a disk cleanup, or they erased all but the most recent which was auto-created after the initial event they needed a prior restore point for.

Speaking of which, somewhat amusingly I had trouble with my own System Restore backups... somehow the drive space limit to use for restore points got set to 0GB, so every time the OS would start generating one it would run out of room and abort the automatic restore point. Error/event logs weren't helpful as it made it sound like the drive itself lacked the space. Didn't even know there was a problem until I went to check one and the system informed me no restore points existed for use...

But yes, graphic drivers seem to be the best at causing complete system havoc. Beta graphics drivers are probably the singlemost thing I won't touch... alpha/beta software, drivers, even firmware sure.. but beta GPU drivers I refuse as long as the drivers I use work fine,

[Tharic-Nar]

Have to agree with not using beta drivers too. I used to use them a lot until I get stung with a non recoverable problem. I had a resolution mismatch when I upgraded the monitor, moving the mouse around at 1920x1200 was fine, but as soon as i got to drag a window around, it would snap to the previous 1280x1024 monitor resolution. Also, any kind of AA would cause frame rates to drop to 5fps... be it 8xSSAA or 2xMSAA. Worst still, the problem persisted after switching Graphics cards from NV to the then ATI. No amount of driver cleaning, roll backs or updates would fix it, something just stuck somewhere and could only be recovered after a complete OS install. Needless to say, restore points are critical before updating new drivers or installing new equipment.

[DarkStarr]

Betas are just fine, these still didn't help me, any driver newer that 260.99 screws up my system, basically the GPU control panel wont open and if it does it just freezes. I ripped the OGL D3d and the Nvlddmkm.sys from the 270.51s and put em in the 260.99s and they are working good, less driver errors and all. SLI enabled too.