Why use old drivers?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Can someone explain to me exactly (technical reasons welcome) why older
drivers are reccomended as being better for some cards than newer ones???

Surly the newer drivers have all the bug fixes in, and have been refined
along the release stages. I know its not like they are re-writing the
drivers for old cards as well when new ones are released, but surely there
is some improvement in the existing code??

TIA

Matt

--
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Gamertag: GLY7CH
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[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

GLYTCH a écrit :
> Can someone explain to me exactly (technical reasons welcome) why older
> drivers are reccomended as being better for some cards than newer ones???
>
> Surly the newer drivers have all the bug fixes in, and have been refined
> along the release stages. I know its not like they are re-writing the
> drivers for old cards as well when new ones are released, but surely there
> is some improvement in the existing code??
>

I can tell you there is: the BSOD that occasionally happened with Madden
2k4 and NFS Undergr'd on my Ti4600 has only been fixed with the present
driver, although there was one more thing to do, and that was to restart
XP "with the last good known configuration" option. That fixed
everything for me - at last!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

Here is my reason for using the older drivers.


Usually you should alway use the newest drivers with hardware, but in the rare
case with Nvidia its different because the hardware keeps changing. What I mean
by that is there is one driver package that handles all of their graphic cards.
The hardware on all those cards is not exactly the same so how do you write
drivers that work with all of them? You start with a default set of drivers
that works with all of them. You then focus on optimizing them more for the
hardware of the newest cards at the expense of losing performance with the
older cards because they matter less to the company.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. : )

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

PRIVATE1964 wrote:
> Here is my reason for using the older drivers.
>
>
> Usually you should alway use the newest drivers with hardware, but in the rare
> case with Nvidia its different because the hardware keeps changing. What I mean
> by that is there is one driver package that handles all of their graphic cards.
> The hardware on all those cards is not exactly the same so how do you write
> drivers that work with all of them? You start with a default set of drivers
> that works with all of them. You then focus on optimizing them more for the
> hardware of the newest cards at the expense of losing performance with the
> older cards because they matter less to the company.
>
> That's my story and I'm sticking to it. : )

I agree. I've been using a Gainward FX 5900 Ultra w/ 256 MB since
February. The newest driver posted on Gainward's site is the 56.72.
Every time I've tried a newer driver from Nvidia, up to and including
the 61.77, I've had problems with dual-view, my dvd software, and/or
lower 3DMark03 scores. I really have no complaints with the card's
performance using 56.72. It can be kind of hard to ignore everyone
jumping up and down and cheering about the latest drivers, but I'm
learning to do just that.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

In my experience, the newer drivers absolutely do offer fixes over the older
ones, but this can sometimes (not always) come at the expense of overall
speed, which a lot of people don't like even if it's arguably a negligible
difference. There are some people that run into problems when upgrading to
new drivers, but I believe this can sometimes be due to the upgrade process
and not the drivers themselves. I've run into more than one occasion where
NOTHING would solve issues that popped up after updating the graphics
drivers -- nothing but a full OS reinstallation that is. Driver cleaner
utilities, uninstalling/reinstalling, etc. -- nothing worked until I did a
full reformat, after which the problems vanished.

If you happen to be someone who doesn't need any bug fixes, then using older
drivers will of course work fine. If you are fighting with graphics related
bugs in various apps, however, don't be afraid to try the newest drivers on
older cards. Do not assume that just because you use an "older" card you
should use an older driver as well. The idea that new drivers aren't
designed with older cards in mind is false -- many of the fixes they
implement into the latest drivers absolutely can apply to cards that have
been out of production for quite a while. I've personally experienced new
drivers fixing issues with 2 or 3 year old cards.

Which works best will depend each individual situation, but it's not prudent
to simply dismiss the idea of using new drivers on old cards.

Larry

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

>In my experience, the newer drivers absolutely do offer fixes over the older
>ones, but this can sometimes (not always) come at the expense of overall
>speed, which a lot of people don't like even if it's arguably a negligible
>difference.

I wouldn't say the loss in overall speed is negligible from what I have
experienced with my 4200. Comparing the 44.03's to any of the recent driver
versions I lose around 1500 points in 3DMark2001.When you add that to the 200+
points I lost upgrading DirectX, another 200 or so for upgrading to WinXP those
losses add up to a real noticable loss of framerate in actual games.


>If you happen to be someone who doesn't need any bug fixes, then using older
>drivers will of course work fine.

Totally agree. If you have problems with specific applications and the only way
to solve those problems is to use newer drivers then do so, but I would try all
other options first. If newer drivers have an added option that you want would
also be another case to use them. I have found that most of the newer options
in the Nvidia drivers you can get with other software though and it usually
works better and is easier to use such as Atuner for changing the graphic
profiles for each game.

>The idea that new drivers aren't
>designed with older cards in mind is false -- many of the fixes they
>implement into the latest drivers absolutely can apply to cards that have
>been out of production for quite a while. I've personally experienced new
>drivers fixing issues with 2 or 3 year old cards.

I agree to a certain point. They will make fixes for older video cards, but
only if those fixes will not effect the newest cards in a negative way.

>Which works best will depend each individual situation, but it's not prudent
>to simply dismiss the idea of using new drivers on old cards.

Totally agree. Every computer system is different and no one can be sure how
well all the hardware in that system will interact.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia (More info?)

"GLYTCH" <GLYTCH_2k4@(Ham Egg and Spam)msn.com> wrote in message
news:2vmiruF2k0rkmU1@uni-berlin.de...
> Can someone explain to me exactly (technical reasons welcome) why older
> drivers are reccomended as being better for some cards than newer ones???
>
> Surly the newer drivers have all the bug fixes in, and have been refined
> along the release stages. I know its not like they are re-writing the
> drivers for old cards as well when new ones are released, but surely there
> is some improvement in the existing code??

Because the older drivers often work much better with older cards, whereas
many new driver sets contain app-specific optimizations at the expense of
compatibility and function?
>
> TIA
>
> Matt
>