Suggested i5150 Drivers

[Dunga Bee]

Hi all. I have been having some issues with my drivers as of late, specifically nView keeps getting turned off somehow so I was thinking I'd install an updated driver to hopefully solve that issue and perhaps add some performance / features since it has been quite some time since I updated.

I have an Inspiron 5150 with the 32 MB Go5200 card so I am not thinking I am going to get some super upgrade with new drivers, but I am curious what is the recommended driver for my model or how high of a version I can/should go to?

Right now I am on 97.44. Video BIOS version is 4.34.20.34.D2. Laptop has a 3 GHz CPU and 2 GB of RAM.

Not sure if you need anything else to recommend something to me. If so, just let me know.

Thanks in advance.

[LSudlow]

I'm a fellow i5150 owner. I've developed a series of modified infs for the i5150, which you can find at the bottom of the first post here:

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index.php?showtopic=7755

For XP, the 176 series is the highest that will work with the i5150 and other machines with the Geforce Go5200. Support was dropped with the 177 series.

However, the 169 series is the highest that works WELL with the Go5200. Significantly better performance than the 17x series. In this series, 169.47 is the driver of choice, and it works quite well. I've been using it for several months with no problems at all.

98.13 is the latest driver that works (and only driver that works well) with Vista.

Of the earlier XP drivers, there are two worth considering:

The grandaddy, and still the fastest and most compatible driver ever created for the Go5200 is 67.66. It's only problem is that it lacks fixes for all the games that have been published in the last several years.

If you're in the market for one of the earlier drivers, then 84.98 is the driver of choice. It has all the good points (mostly game fixes) of 84.25, but also includes quite a few bug fixes over 84.25.

Bottom line: If you prefer the older drivers, then go with 84.98. If you prefer the newer drivers, then go with 169.47.

Good luck!

[Dunga Bee]

Thanks for the info. I really appreciate it.

I installed 169.47 and that seems to have gone well.

I do still have this REALLY annoying issue though with nView where none of my settings seem to stick. I am not sure how, why, or what is resetting them. I have not been able to pinpoint the exact scenario in which they revert back, but they always do.

For example, I'll set the window snapping and other settings and save it. It'll work and I'll reboot and it'll still work and then all of a sudden, even without a reboot, the settings are gone. Right now as a matter of fact, if I go to the nView settings and change the snap setting from none to any value and hit apply, I can watch it get switched right back to none.

Anyone else seeing this same issue? I really depend on nView for things like window snapping and setting things to always be on top from time to time.

Thanks again for any help.