When will Dell release a fully supported GPU driver for Vista?

Chances are that you won't see another Dell Vista driver until NVidia has something worthy of using. Every Vista driver is beta at best right now, so Dell is remaining cautious about it - which is the smart thing. I personally like the 101.71's the best, but am currently testing the 165.01's now (they arent any better than the 101.71's...) Just stick it out for a while. NVidia surely has an infinite amount of pressure on them at the moment to get something out to their users, so hopefully they can deliver sooner not later...

Neither 101.71 nor 165.01 has anything but basic 3D support. Most features like powermizer, TV output settings, or custom timings, are STILL missing...

I don't really care about the features, give me more frame rates!!

Yes Guspaz, thats exactly right. These new drivers have mostly been being put out to support the 8800 series of desktop cards. NONE of these drivers have even an inklink of Powermizer support built into them. None of the mobile features will function as they should yet with these drivers...

u kno, On xp with powermizer I never got more than 2hr 45 min of battery life, but on vista I'm still getting around there so I don't really know what powermizer would do to add more batterylife. I feel like vista has sort of a built in powermizer or something

Its also been reported that just having Aero on kills battery life there reports of it which has spread so far even onto engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/04/v...-battery-life/

Lately i havt needed to use the system much outside the house or work so its all gravy for me.

Yeah, I generally find Vista's aero performance to be spotty. Low framerates and jerky animations. Why? Because Vista has my GPU clocked to 100/100 despite running a 3D UI (and that I'm on AC power), and doesn't jump up to a higher performance level unless I'm doing something grahpically intensive.

I'm a lot MORE concerned about the lack of other options, though. HD output via DVI has been seriously impacted under Vista. Under XP, I had three resolution options that worked for the TV; 1280x720 (with copious overscan), 1176x664 (IIRC), and 1176x668. These were all set up by the nVidia drivers with the proper timings for an HDTV (not a PC display). The thing is, one of those two strange resolutions (they're both output as a native 1280x720 signal but with a lower desktop res) was perfectly framed on the screen with no overscan and just a little bit of underscan, and the other one (which is the only one I see under Vista) also has little underscan (which is OK), but the whole image is shifted UP by about an inch, leaving a bunch of empty screen at the bottom and the top cut off. This is my only real option for watching anime on the TV though, since overscan cuts off subtitles and softsubs can't be easily shrunk with the image in MPC like the video can be.

So my primary complaint is the compete lack of TV or image placement adjustment options, or custom timings. TV output under Vista just doesn't work properly compared to XP, and the nVidia drivers are to blame!

165.01 are very good and OC'ed quite well for vista using atitool

i think the D-Dock lack of support sucks, i agree on that, also the lack of control of it yep, but there are other issues that i believe are gone on the 16x.x and that's the flickering and bad animations, also i agree on powermizer setting being on since when i put it on power savings profiles i still get flip 3d but i get's rid of the transparency on the bars and stuff.

My main complain is the lack of control over the driver,the TV out and dual vga has worked pretty good but i haven't tried the dvi output so i cannot coment on that one, but using 1280 x720 on my tv has worked pretty well and other resolutions have worked pretty well.

There is definatly a lack of control and aot of missing features, but performance wise they are gaining up ground on xp pretty fast, but i can assure that it really is a power hog maybe due to the lack of powermizer optimization (it's not mature enough on vista) since i have lost 15% of battery time or so.

Also i noticed after the posts that the drivers have no control over image size and position but they added this flat panel scaling options thatwork pretty well - was that on XP drivers?? i don't recall.

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I feel your pain!!!!! I love Vista Ultimate.
I had very bad flickering - Xterem 101.70 fixed the flickering but I want my D-dock back.
Kind of stuck between XP and D-dock or Vist 64 and no D-Dock.. sigh.....

I'm confused about powermizer then. When ac adapter is plugged in, the videocard runs at its max potential. When ac adapter is unplugged it downclocks. Isn't that what powermizer does? Isn't that good?

Also, for those complaining about Aero on battery life, you can turn it off. Example, when I want to watch a movie, I generally use media player classic. So I just changed my media player classic shortcut to turn off Aero automatically when its launched, and then Aero turns back on when I'm done.

powermizer undervolts the video card i think?? i not really sureand also turns down clocks on normal and high power 3d modes on the normal 2d it does nothing on them. But i'm kinda concerned on people talking about flickering on teir systmes since i get none but then again it could be driver issues. Some gefroce 5xxx used to have this trouble when starting windows.

Powermizer is implemented a variety of ways in the different drivers I use...However, this could be because I still use 70 series all the way to 90 series drivers. Yes it does undervolt the card but that doesnt seem to be a big factor of it imo. Its reducing the core speeds that causes less power consumption and lower temperatures. Powermizer does the same thing on battery as it does on AC with the exception of not allowing you attain your 3d performance level on battery. So even with the power adaptor plugged in your card will still throttle. Ideally, you want your 2d to be used on desktop, throttle on videos, and 3d on games.

hey guys. sorry to be a little off topic. but are you guys able to download LV2Go drivers? i wanted to try the 160 series but i cant download it. I have the 100.70 XG and they are great. but wanted to try those.

Powermizer (or something) clocks the videocard down to 100/100 even on AC power.

160's are great, the link on laptopvideo2go should be working now since i'm using those, no stuttering etc, they are pretty solid. but i can't report on the d-dock issue since i don't have it and don't know if it's fixed.