Best Nvidia Driver for Geforce 6600

[paulbeers]

So what is the current concenous for the best Nvidia Driver for a Geforce 6600? I recently had to change out my hard drive in one of my clients (the old 5400 6GB hd finally died). In doing so, I had to of course reinstall everything. I tried the 93.71 driver (newest) and I could not get fluid HDTV at 1080i. I dropped down to 84.xx and with overlay I am doing well, but I notice there are some screen abnormalities (I get a bar that runs up and down my screen that darkens the hue on where ever it is). I can't remember what drivers I used to use. I thought this would be a good time to check with all of you. I am using an dvi to hdmi cable currently (which is also new, since I used to connect via component).

[cychou]

I am using 175.19 now and it is quite stable (no stutters) for me. DXVA for Mpeg2 and h.264 are both working. Before this version, I have used 84.21 for a long-long time.



Vince

[bjp999]

I installed 175.19 and found that remote desktop wouldn't work. Lots of searching netted the following gem. It seemed to work for most users, including me on my Geforece 8500GT card. Note you have to reboot after following these instructions.

(From Nvidia Forums - post by "bandom rastard")

"This problem is not specific to any one graphics company. It can probably happen with printer drivers too.

The root of the problem is that the session image space is too small and it can't load any more drivers into it. The session image space is shared for the display driver drivers and printer drivers. rdpdd = remote desktop protocol display driver.

You can fix this bug by increasing the size of the session image space via a registry key. Add the following key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]

"SessionImageSize"=dword:00000020

0x20 == 32 MB works on my system anyway."

[dcardellini]

I have two 6600gt agp's. At one point, could not figure out why I was getting stuttering on HD material. In an earlier post in this forum:

"....On a hunch, I downloaded an nVidia utility to monitor the core gpu clock speed. On a fresh boot, it was at 300 mhz. The minute I started to play a video, it steps up to 500 mhz....and smooth playback. It seems to stay at 500 mhz indefinitely after that.

Now if you go to standby and resume, the gpu clock stays at 300 mhz and NEVER steps back up to 500 mhz. I even made a fresh boot and forced the gpu to 300 mhz witht he nVidia utility, and sure enough....same exact missing-frame stuttering symptoms. However, I was not able to "force" it back to 500 after a resume from standby.

I then loaded up an old Forceware driver that was on my system (81.98), and sure enough, it behaves properly and will always step up to 500 mhz after a resume. THIS IS A BUG IN THE NVIDIA DRIVER. 81.98 works, and I have no desire to step forward to find the point that nVidia blew it. It works great now on 81.98."

I don't know which driver version was "resume-broken," but it was whatever was out Oct-2007 (my post date).

Don't know if it was ever fixed....but still very happy with no issues on 81.98.

[cychou]

I did run into problem with standby/resume a while back, but I resolved it differently - see this thread.

For the new version, I do find it to be better at de-interlacing certain test clips I have. Also stuttering is less likely to happen (I have some really heavy demo mpeg can still make it stutters).

[dcardellini]

Ah ha! Thx cychou. So not necessarily an nVidia driver bug, but something to do with AGP and my Via chipset (A8V Deluxe MB). Interesting that earlier nVidia drivers do not expose this problem. As I get stutter free playback with early version, no need to do the work-around.....but nice to know that the work-round exists.

I suspect by the time I need to do something new here, these mobos will be retired along with hot/loud 6600gt's for new G45 or 790GX uATX's with integrated everything.