XP, 4in1's, Nvidia

[smp]

Okay. I have never installed XP before, my friend has asked me some things because he's having problems, so of course, I come here.

Do you need 4 in 1's with XP? I was under the impression that you don't, because XP supports VIA chipsets? Yes/No?

He has a Asus V7700 and after installing the video card drivers XP won't boot. I have heard rumours of problems with either the latest Nvidia drivers, or just GeForce cards, I'm not sure, I did a search and I didn't find anything conclusive.

MSI K7T Pro 2
some ram
Asus V7700
XP 1600
hard drive
rom drives etc.

Thanks.

 

[benjamat]

Well in fact you do not need to install the Via 4 in 1 drivers as there is already a version of these within XP. Before you think "great" I will load the very latest 4 in 1 then do not do this. If you take a wnder over to Via Arena you will find literally hundreds of posts complaining about compatability between the Via drivers/Operating systems and Nvidia drivers and cards.
My experience and it is a bitter one is that the drivers in XP are the best you can get at the moment so leave them as they are.

 

[smp]

So you don't have to install the nvidia drivers either? XP loads drivers for that too?

 

[Insidious]

I used the device manager (hardware) to update the XP drivers to the Nvidia 23.11 drivers and it did gain me significant performance.

notes:

do not use the self-install feature of the detonator driver download.

use winzip (or any other zipping program) to unzip the detonator file to a directory

then go to the device manager, select the video adapter and do the "update driver" thing

don't let XP search, do it like your drivers were on a disk, but point to the directory you unzipped

your drivers into.



FINAL IMPORTANT NOTE:

I am using a GeForce3 video card................ any "it worked for me" implications of this post only apply to MY card

 

[AtmosFear]

This is smp's friend here, and I got some questions to ask regarding this Asus 7700 GeForce 2 Deluxe TV card and XP. After installing XP, it had recognized and installed drivers for the video card, but I wasn't able to input or output video through the RCA ports. So I tried installing the drivers from the Asus 7700 CD, but Windows kept giving me error messages about the drivers not meeting the XP Logo standard, so I eventually stopped the installation and rebooted, only to find that the system would keep rebooting continuously.. I eventually fixed this by having XP boot into the last working configuration and removing the video drivers. After restarting again, I decided to try and download the latest beta drivers from the Asus.tw web site, and I successfully installed those (even though Windows gave me the same "unsupported drivers" messages). After rebooting, everything seemed to work fine, although there was no "TV" option in the Asus video card configuration menu, so I'm wondering now if perhaps the RCA video in/out features are not supported by XP yet.. Or should I be downloading drivers from the Nvidia web site instead of from Asus? Any information is appreciated. Thanks,

AtmosFear

 

[benjamat]

Once again my experience.

The nvidia drivers are best updated for performance, remember that the nvidia drivers with XP are not the nvidia XP drivers ( i know it is confusing but the "XP" is used simply as a name by nvidia and it has nothing to do with windows XP specifically)

The nvidia XPdetonator drivers give significant performance increases for most people but I have found that in winXp some games have problems with graphics. This seems to apply with the Via 266a I am using.

With regard to the games compatability i could not run AvP2 with detonators but it ran perfectly when i rolled back to the generic 12.40's.

 

[jhites]

I loaded the latest 4in1 which under XP only installs the inf file and then I installed the 4.10 AGP driver. All my benchmarks went down. My personal experience is DON'T USE THE NEW VIA DRIVERS but do load any hardware drivers that are updated.

 

[cookj]

I have a asus 8200 deluxe,and had to use the original cd and drivers to get the tv & input to work.That`s the only way I found.XP ask to continue a few times,said the driver wasen`t up to the xp standard,but everything works.I had to change the refresh rate of the monitor after I installed them,it was set at 60 hz(give me a headach after a minute or two)but everything`s working great.

 

[mschell]

Anytime you install a Nvidia Geforce card, XP will install the Windows certified 21.50? (unsure of the exact rev. #). This driver on my Via system crashes both a GF2 MX and a GF2 Ti around 20 seconds into 3DMark2001. Later drivers like the 21.81 and .83 work fine for 3DMark but make DX 6 and 7 games run like crap. The solution if you are not running a GF3 is to use either the certified 12.41 or the beta 12.60. You might loose 75 pts. in 3DMark but your Via system will be much more stable and older games will play well. I've heard anything less than the 21.xx series slow GF3 cards down too much and with all the $$ you have to spend you should have the card running as fast as it can.
Ignore the "not digitaly signed" warning when installing reference drivers. MS never warned me that the certified "safe"21.50 would crash the system and pop up a warning box on restart - "Your system has recovered from a serious error - details about this error are stored, bla bla, etc.
The Microsoft provided 4in 1's seem to be the best for now however. - M.

 

[benjamat]

Dont know about 21.50 as XP default is 12.40 so you must have a disk for this.

I still do not understand how with the highest quality components I cannot run my GF3 at better than 70% of what it should be - 4793 as opposed to 6972 3dmarks (2001) with 21.xx drivers.

I have heard that the native xp drivers do not have opengl but this seems to be a benefit to me as the nvidia xp drivers with opengl cause game crashes with my system, AVP2, Wolf£d, Black & White, all run ok with native 12.40.

here in the UK it cost me the equivalent of the average weekly wage for my GF3 so I feel very cheated.

 

[Mem]

This question comes up often and the answer is simple it`s up to you,I always install the latest 4 in 1 drivers and it only updates (4.37) the INF and PCI IDE driver which you can deselect on the install,I`ve tried the new 4.10 agp driver and got a speed increase on my rig with XP OS.


Yes XP OS has VIA built-in default drivers(I think they are 4.33 ones) so you don`t need to install them but I like to have the latest drivers and with system restore (never needed to use it yet)etc in WinXP I`ve yet to have a problem with them,I guess everybody`s PC is different since if you ask what`s the best Nvidia drivers you will get different replies so do what works best for you.

 

[rbaibich]

OK, this is what you should do: if you use ASUS software (ASUS Live, ASUS DVD or anything like that) go to TechnoGarb. They mix the latest nVidia driver's core with the ASUS drivers and that fools ASUS programs and gets your video card to fully work with XP.

The other way is to install nVidia's reference drivers and then install the WDM for Personal Cinema. It works just fine with the TV-In feature of your card.

Hope that helps you

 

[JMichna]

My daughter's GeForce DDR Asus 6800/XP/Via 4-in-1s (v4.37) [Abit KA7/100 mobo/slot A 7--@850] doesn't like the nVidia 23.11 drivers (endless loop, BSODs, etc.) but does work fine with the 21.81 and 21.83 drivers. My somewhat newer Elsa Gladiac Ultra (GF II)/XP/Via 4-in-1s (v4.37) [Asus A7V133/100 Raid-0/1.2@1.4] is running the 23.11 drivers, but is not quite as stable as the 21.81 and 21.83 drivers (infrequent BSODs with memory dump... NV4_disp.dll errors).

Re the 4-in-1s, you don't NEED them, but I did install, well... just because ;-)
jmichna