'New' nVidia 180.84 Beta drivers....

[FalseChristian]

I installed them for my SLI'd 8800GTs and every time I started a Direct3D game I'd get the BSOD and everytime I started up an OpenGL game It'd just freeze! I went back to the WHQL 180.48 drivers and everything is OK again. These are the worst drivers I've seen from nVidia! What are you doing?!?

 

[nosfe]

unstable beta drivers? impossible

 

[VirtualLarry]

have you tried the 180.70s?

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: FalseChristian
I installed them for my SLI'd 8800GTs and every time I started a Direct3D game I'd get the BSOD and everytime I started up an OpenGL game It'd just freeze! I went back to the WHQL 180.48 drivers and everything is OK again. These are the worst drivers I've seen from nVidia! What are you doing?!?

NVIDIA isn't going to put drivers on their website, beta or WHQL, that cause a common rig like 8800GT SLi to error on every game.

My suggestion:

1. Uninstall the NVIDIA driver in the Control Panel.
2. Reboot
3. Reboot to Safe Mode
4. Remove the remnants of the NVIDIA drivers with Driver Sweeper (you'll have to download this and install if you don't have it of course)
5. Reboot
6. Install the 180.84 drivers
7. Reboot, enjoy

NVIDIA beta drivers posted on the website go through the same QA testing as their WHQL drivers, so it's impossible to download driver from NVIDIA.com that make it impossible to play video games.

Hope this helps.

 

[FalseChristian]

Well, nRollo, I generally agree with you but, as I explained, that is exactly what happened. I tried the 180.60s and the 180.70s and they worked fine!

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: nRollo

NVIDIA isn't going to put drivers on their website, beta or WHQL, that cause a common rig like 8800GT SLi to error on every game.

Really? The 180.84 beta is up on nV's site and FalseChristian is not the only one having problems with it. Even a simple task like running 3DMark06 will cause my rig to freeze.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: FalseChristian
Well, nRollo, I generally agree with you but, as I explained, that is exactly what happened. I tried the 180.60s and the 180.70s and they worked fine!

Give what I said a try, and try it with single card first, then Sli please.

I just installed those drivers on a machine with a 9800GTX+ installed, played Warmonger, UT3, and Far Cry 2 fine.

There has to be something else going on.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Blazer7

Originally posted by: nRollo

NVIDIA isn't going to put drivers on their website, beta or WHQL, that cause a common rig like 8800GT SLi to error on every game.

Really? The 180.84 beta is up on nV's site and FalseChristian is not the only one having problems with it. Even a simple task like running 3DMark06 will cause my rig to freeze.

All drivers from every vendor have known issues on one app or another. I can imagine an almost 3 year old synthetic benchmark not being at the top of NVIDIA's testing rotation.

I don't know if 3Dmark06 has issues with this driver as I haven't had it installed for years, but I stand by what I said, and add to it that the drivers work for me. ()at least at Warmonger, UT3, and FC2 so far)

 

[Blazer7]

3DMark06 was just an example. NWN2 freezes after a couple of minutes even if I don't do anything. I'll try with Oblivion later today but so far the 180.84 appear to be far from stable.

 

[apoppin]

Nvidia has released turkeys before
- wasn't an Official release "recalled" this year?

Just use another driver

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: FalseChristian
I installed them for my SLI'd 8800GTs and every time I started a Direct3D game I'd get the BSOD and everytime I started up an OpenGL game It'd just freeze! I went back to the WHQL 180.48 drivers and everything is OK again. These are the worst drivers I've seen from nVidia! What are you doing?!?

First thing you should try is backing down your overclocks or increasing fan speed. Its not uncommon that drivers that increase performance can make previously stable overclocks unstable. This was pretty common when COD4 was released in my experience as it stressed GPUs more than any other game (even Crysis) at the time.

Also try going into Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Options > Restore. Then change back whatever settings you had changed in Global Settings. COD World at War and COD4 wouldn't run until I reset the settings with these drivers, gave me some error about 2D textures.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I haven't had issues with these drivers and my single GTX280 *shrug*

At least you aren't suffering like some crossfire owners are now with their official 8.12s that refuse to turn on crossfire. 8.11 works fine, 8.12 doesn't. Then people blame them for running driver sweeper and claim they have to reinstall windows now. Seriously? that's laughable...you should never have to reinstall windows for a driver to work.

 

[jonks]

The last stable drivers for my system was 178.24 and that's what I have currently installed. I've tried every 180 beta release and the latest whql's but they all cause my games to crash after anywhere from 10-30 minutes of playtime. Any ideas what might be causing this? I'd love to get the boasted performance improvements in Far Cry 2 and some of the other games listed on nvidias site.

e4300 @ 3ghz
8800gt sli
2gb ddr800
audigy2

 

[cmdrdredd]

It would seem the common denominator is 2x 8800s in SLI.

 

[AdamK47]

These drivers also BSOD on me with my system listed in sig. It seems like SLI only really works for the games listed as fixed with this driver.

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: chizow
First thing you should try is backing down your overclocks or increasing fan speed. Its not uncommon that drivers that increase performance can make previously stable overclocks unstable.

You may have a point there. My 2 GTS cards are factory oced. This means that they are definitely more subtle to stress increase and if the latest beta does stress them more then this may explain the freezes. After your post I?ve increased the fan speed using the utility that came with the cards and so far I can tell that my rig?s stability has improved. Unfortunately the noise generated by the stock fans is now quite noticeable and so far I haven't noticed any performance gains. Anyways, I?ll continue testing today and report back later.

 

[FalseChristian]

It's possible that nVidia is no longer supporting the 'old' GeForce 8800 series. If this is so then I guess we'll have to be happy with the last drivers for the 8800 series that work well-the 180.48 WHQL drivers. This happens with every older generation of GPUs.:brokenheart:

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: FalseChristian
It's possible that nVidia is no longer supporting the 'old' GeForce 8800 series. If this is so then I guess we'll have to be happy with the last drivers for the 8800 series that work well-the 180.48 WHQL drivers. This happens with every older generation of GPUs.:brokenheart:

No it's not possible that NVIDIA is no longer supporting 8800 level cards. You really shouldn't post stuff like this, someone might believe you and be mislead by this misinformation.

NVIDIA released new drivers for their 6 series cards on 10/15/08, so it would appear unlikely that 8800 series are considered EOL.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: FalseChristian
It's possible that nVidia is no longer supporting the 'old' GeForce 8800 series. If this is so then I guess we'll have to be happy with the last drivers for the 8800 series that work well-the 180.48 WHQL drivers. This happens with every older generation of GPUs.:brokenheart:

Straight from the download page for the 180.84:

This is a beta driver for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, and 200-series desktop GPUs

Nvidia & ATi have both been supporting "older GPUs" for years.

 

[Blazer7]

Ok, I can now confirm that I?m 100% stable and everything works like a charm. Still, I don?t think that I?ll be keeping the 180.84 as I haven?t seen any performance gains and the noise level has increased noticeably. I guess this is why these are still in beta. If everything was ok nV would have probably submitted them to M$ for WHQL certification. I have to say though that I?m a bit disappointed with the cards. The fact that I had to intervene and manually increase the fan speed does not seem right. The cards should have managed the fan speed automatically in a way that would have allowed them to remain functional. Obviously they failed and this has me thinking. Anyways, thanks chizow, that was a good call.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Blazer7
I guess this is why these are still in beta. If everything was ok nV would have probably submitted them to M$ for WHQL certification.

NVIDIA doesn't submit all driver revisions for WHQL, they do test betas the same though.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Blazer7
Ok, I can now confirm that I?m 100% stable and everything works like a charm. Still, I don?t think that I?ll be keeping the 180.84 as I haven?t seen any performance gains and the noise level has increased noticeably. I guess this is why these are still in beta. If everything was ok nV would have probably submitted them to M$ for WHQL certification. I have to say though that I?m a bit disappointed with the cards. The fact that I had to intervene and manually increase the fan speed does not seem right. The cards should have managed the fan speed automatically in a way that would have allowed them to remain functional. Obviously they failed and this has me thinking. Anyways, thanks chizow, that was a good call.

I have seen and had factory overclocked cards freeze in some games,normally underclocking close to default speeds for the card in question fixes the issue.


As to 18x.xx series I have to say I'm not impressed with these,gone back to good old 17x.xx series ie 179.14s which are the best ones for me at the moment in gaming,18x.xx I find unstable in some games with nothing overclocked.

End of the day there is no perfect driver for everybody.

 

[JPB]

I am using the 180's as well. And while they give a nice performance increase over the previous version for me....They have been almost the most stable drivers I have ever used.

No problems at all :thumbsup:

 

[Hauk]

They're good for me..

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Blazer7
Ok, I can now confirm that I?m 100% stable and everything works like a charm. Still, I don?t think that I?ll be keeping the 180.84 as I haven?t seen any performance gains and the noise level has increased noticeably. I guess this is why these are still in beta. If everything was ok nV would have probably submitted them to M$ for WHQL certification. I have to say though that I?m a bit disappointed with the cards. The fact that I had to intervene and manually increase the fan speed does not seem right. The cards should have managed the fan speed automatically in a way that would have allowed them to remain functional. Obviously they failed and this has me thinking. Anyways, thanks chizow, that was a good call.

No problem. Ya its a bit of a nuisance if they advertise certain speeds and specs but you have to understand those TOP, XXX, FTW, AMP etc editions are overclocked to the max and any deviation might make them unstable. Also SLI probably doesn't help as airflow and ambient heat would be higher than single card. If you're not satisfied though you'd have decent enough reason to ask for replacement. Asus CS has been poor in my past experiences, but I think one of the better vendors like XFX, BFG, or EVGA would be accomodating.

Originally posted by: Mem
As to 18x.xx series I have to say I'm not impressed with these,gone back to good old 17x.xx series ie 179.14s which are the best ones for me at the moment in gaming,18x.xx I find unstable in some games with nothing overclocked.

End of the day there is no perfect driver for everybody.

This is on your 7200GS laptop GPU right? Not sure if they promised any earth-shattering gains for laptop parts.....