I know this forceware driver has been discussed a lot but I felt like sharing with you guys my experience with this particular one.
I am not a huge fan of modded drivers so I decided to go with the original set, and the only modding I did was to include the string for the "geforce go 7900 gs".
I uninstalled the old driver (forceware 87.25 which for me was the best one so far); rebooted, used driver cleaner to remove some of the old files, then installed the new set.
When I first logged on Windows I could see the difference in image quality with this driver. The colors were vivid and crisp. The fonts never looked so sharp.
I personally don't like the new control panel so I’ve decided to go with the classic version. So far none of the default settings have changed.
I started to set it up with my personal settings, and then starting the benchmarks.
I don't consider 3DMark that much because for me the performance gain comes from the games you play, but just to have an idea I gave it a chance.
To my surprise I got some real strange numbers with this one:
3DMark03 (87.25) = 13216 / (91.37) = 13537
3DMark05 (87.25) = 5977 / (91.37) = 6220
3DMark06 (87.25) = 4076 / (91.37) = 4153
All 3DMark settings were kept to its defaults since I don't have a license.
Next step was to test it with the games that I am playing at the moment like GRAW, Oblivion, Tomb Raider Legend and HL2 Episode One.
To begin with I liked the old version (87.25), because the game play experience was smooth and had no lock ups, but with this new set I was surprised because the IQ was superb and when I say superb I really mean it. My FPS got an increase. I don't know how much but it sure did because the game play is smoother than before.
I did the stress test with half-life: lost coast and cs:source and got some surprises.. Did I get a performance increase? Yes I did! Did I get some red shimmering in textures? Yes I did.
So I went back to the control panel and set "anisotropic mip filter optimization" to off and now no more red shimmering; only the crisp shine textures that makes the game rocks!
Both half life lost coast and cs:source were tested using 1440x900 (all settings to high 2XAA and 8XAF).
Half Life 2 Episode One runs smoother than ever. Oblivion as well.
The only game that I don't know what is wrong it with is Tomb Raider Legend. If a play the game with next gen content off I got more than 60FPS (1440x900 all settings on) but if I enable next gen content I got a huge FPS drop. Almost unplayable.
This problem is not related to this driver, because I’ve had this problem with all drivers. For me there must be some problem with the way nvidia hardware deals with this game.
I got a friend which has an ATI Mobility X1800 (Core DUO 1.66 + 1Gb RAM) and he plays this game without problems. With next gen content enabled he got more than 45FPS for sure.
Apart from games, DVD playback is superb and my CPU usage went down as well.
I can't tell you about the GPU temperatures since I don't why I can't have this option in my forceware control panel but for me I think it is normal because I felt no difference.
I know that driver performance changes from user to user, but I wanted to give you guys an overview of how this driver performed on my laptop.
Am I going to keep this one for the moment? sure thing.
I know I was supposed to give more numbers and so on, but my point here is that there is a performance gain and the IQ has been improved, so it is up to you guys to give it a try.
If you guys have any question just let me know.
And for the record, I don't have a DELL laptop but a Toshiba P100. I decided to post it here because it seems that the DELL community is more active than the Toshiba one.
I am not a huge fan of modded drivers so I decided to go with the original set, and the only modding I did was to include the string for the "geforce go 7900 gs".
I uninstalled the old driver (forceware 87.25 which for me was the best one so far); rebooted, used driver cleaner to remove some of the old files, then installed the new set.
When I first logged on Windows I could see the difference in image quality with this driver. The colors were vivid and crisp. The fonts never looked so sharp.
I personally don't like the new control panel so I’ve decided to go with the classic version. So far none of the default settings have changed.
I started to set it up with my personal settings, and then starting the benchmarks.
I don't consider 3DMark that much because for me the performance gain comes from the games you play, but just to have an idea I gave it a chance.
To my surprise I got some real strange numbers with this one:
3DMark03 (87.25) = 13216 / (91.37) = 13537
3DMark05 (87.25) = 5977 / (91.37) = 6220
3DMark06 (87.25) = 4076 / (91.37) = 4153
All 3DMark settings were kept to its defaults since I don't have a license.
Next step was to test it with the games that I am playing at the moment like GRAW, Oblivion, Tomb Raider Legend and HL2 Episode One.
To begin with I liked the old version (87.25), because the game play experience was smooth and had no lock ups, but with this new set I was surprised because the IQ was superb and when I say superb I really mean it. My FPS got an increase. I don't know how much but it sure did because the game play is smoother than before.
I did the stress test with half-life: lost coast and cs:source and got some surprises.. Did I get a performance increase? Yes I did! Did I get some red shimmering in textures? Yes I did.
So I went back to the control panel and set "anisotropic mip filter optimization" to off and now no more red shimmering; only the crisp shine textures that makes the game rocks!
Both half life lost coast and cs:source were tested using 1440x900 (all settings to high 2XAA and 8XAF).
Half Life 2 Episode One runs smoother than ever. Oblivion as well.
The only game that I don't know what is wrong it with is Tomb Raider Legend. If a play the game with next gen content off I got more than 60FPS (1440x900 all settings on) but if I enable next gen content I got a huge FPS drop. Almost unplayable.
This problem is not related to this driver, because I’ve had this problem with all drivers. For me there must be some problem with the way nvidia hardware deals with this game.
I got a friend which has an ATI Mobility X1800 (Core DUO 1.66 + 1Gb RAM) and he plays this game without problems. With next gen content enabled he got more than 45FPS for sure.
Apart from games, DVD playback is superb and my CPU usage went down as well.
I can't tell you about the GPU temperatures since I don't why I can't have this option in my forceware control panel but for me I think it is normal because I felt no difference.
I know that driver performance changes from user to user, but I wanted to give you guys an overview of how this driver performed on my laptop.
Am I going to keep this one for the moment? sure thing.
I know I was supposed to give more numbers and so on, but my point here is that there is a performance gain and the IQ has been improved, so it is up to you guys to give it a try.
If you guys have any question just let me know.
And for the record, I don't have a DELL laptop but a Toshiba P100. I decided to post it here because it seems that the DELL community is more active than the Toshiba one.
