100.65 driver / Powermizer / Vista

You are going to have to wait a while before you can get a driver that will support powermizer. Right now, ANY driver you can download that will work on your video card is considered BETA! There will not be a final release until sometime towards the end of March. Even then, none of the drivers that are being released right now are considered MOBILE drivers anyway, as they lack support from the OEM's. Nvidia (as a general rule) doesn't concentrate on mobile GPU's. They make desktop drivers, then give the OEM's a roadmap of how to make the drivers perform the power saving functions so that each manufacturer can release their own custom tuned driver for their own specific hardware. This is why under XP, only the original DELL driver can shut your display off when the lid is closed. NVidia doesn't program that into their drivers, Dell does.

Give it a bit more time for a good stable driver release to come to Vista. I can promise you guys, since I am now a part of TweaksRUs.com's mobileforce driver team, that as soon as there is a full featured and stable mobile driver for Vista you guys will have it in true MobileForce flavor. I am currently testing a lot of the beta drivers for Vista, and haven't found even ONE driver that I would consider tweaking at this point. Just another month guys!

Well, I am using a fan profile that keeps my temps in that ballpark. If I force the fans on high all the time, it will keep the GPU between about 47-51 while idling. If I run my profile, the temps hold in the mid 50's with only a short burst of max fans to keep the temps below the threshold. Your best bet is to tinker with different profiles to get your temp/noise level into a zone you are personally comfortable with. Might take a while to get things just right for ya. Yes, but bear in mind I have lapped the surface of the gpu heatsink to a mirror finish and also applied AS5. These both helped greatly to keep the temps in check.

Just remember to clean the heatsink for both CPU and GPU at least once every 6 months (depends on how often you use, I got my lappy on almost 24/7)

Krayzie, I know that the current Vista drivers are not up-to-par with XP's, but I have noticed a significant drop in my 3dMark05 score. Where I was getting around 8500s in XP, I am not getting around 7000s. Not only that, but I am getting some weird sprite problems with some of the games I play (primarily HL1).

I am currently using LV2Go's 100.65 drivers. Should I consider another driver? Which one do you recommend? Are there tweaks available to current drivers to improve its performance to resemble XP's performance better?

Thanks in advance...

I will be honest .Poneh, the 100.65's seem to be the best performing at the moment. The only downside is that there is no way currently to software overclock with the Forceware X drivers (should be working again in the next couple releases /guess) With my GS clocked to stock GTX speeds (500/600) I get around 7700 points in 3DMark05. I would assume if I had it overclocked, I would be over 9000. Your issue may be related to the fact that you have a Quadro compared to the GeForce and the driver support is definately lacking for the Quad's right now. Just as a temporary fix you could force flash the BIOS to a 7900GTX, and you should (may) see a boost in all your games for now. That should help out with gaming and framerates at least until you guys get a good driver. In the meantime, NOBODY has a good driver so its best to just sit tight...

That's a good idea indeed Krayzie. Now, I have flashed my BIOS with the information from the Sticky on these forums. Do I do the same thing to flash it to 7900GTX or is it a different process/file that I need to do/run?

Thanks again...

BTW, would Notebook Hardware Control allow you to manipulate Powermizer settings under Vista? I don't see why not?! That could be a good option for the time being.

(in reference to post 12)No, its just one performance table entry in all the bioses I've seen so you just have to force flash it -4 -5 -6.... You can check your video card rev by looking at the bios (w/ nibitor) or using the properties listed by the driver (Display Properties -> Advanced) Revision 0 (rev.0) - bios 05.71.22.16.13 Revision 1 (rev.1) - bios 05.71.22.28.01

NHC in its current form does not function in Vista... we are all holding our breath on the update. Anyway, to flash to a 7900GTX you just need the stock GTX ROM and force flash it with "nvflash.exe -4 -5 -6 -auto -y romname.rom"

ah --auto (aka -A) is useless (well not really) in newer nvflash's from what I've seen...it will never work if you HAVE to use the force flash switches to do the flash....

Do I force flash it with the unlocked BIOS from the sticky?

yep thats the one you want to use...

Did exactly as you guys recommended.

Downloaded and burned JLMod v.6 and flashed the card using the nvflash.exe -4 -5 -6 -y 790GTXUO.ROM command. For some reason, when I had -auto in there, the screen would immediately go black and reboot. When I removed the -auto, the operation proceeded as normal.

I then removed the drivers with Driver Cleaner Pro and reinstalled them. I ran 3dMark05 and got a slightly higher score: 7157. Better than before, but still pretty darn low. Worst of all, the erratic sprites issue are still present. I have talked to some of the other players in the game and some claim their games are running fine on their 7900GS with 100.65 drivers.

Is there anything else I could try? In addition, what do the command -4 -5 -6 -auto and -y do?

Thanks for everything...

PS - I flashed with the 790GTXUO.ROM, which is unlocked and memory optimized. Should I try one that isn't memory optimized? What does that actually mean?

-4 -5 -6 are force flash switches (flash different bioses or flash custom bioses hehe) and its --auto (long version) aka -A which attempts to automatically flash when possible...used to work fine but after nvflash 5.31 it (-A) has lost its effectiveness imo...-y reboots the computer after flashing...hences nvflash -4 -5 -6 --auto -y [romname].rom used to automatically flash your gpu without any user intervention at all in most situations....just type nvflash without arguments to see the various arguments you can use...