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Windows 7 with nVidia FX Cards


LSudlow

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A lot of people with FX cards are upgrading to Windows 7 and having trouble finding a working driver. Here's what we know so far.

The only official W7 driver for the FX series is version 96.85, which is available on the Windows Catalog site.

FX 5600 here:

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=geforce%205600

and FX 5200 here:

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=geforce%205200

For something more recent, you need to use a Vista driver. Unfortunately, nVidia dropped official Vista support for the FX cards after the 9x.xx drivers. Our most recent 9x Vista driver with a modded inf is 98.13.

The 9x.xx drivers work quite well and support Aero Glass. The FX series' only problem with Aero Glass is VRAM. If you have 64MB or less, you'll be limited to 1280x1024 or 1280x768 resolution max. 32MB cards will probably be limited to 1024x768 or less.

I mentioned that nVidia dropped official support after the 9x drivers. However, some people have gotten more recent Vista drivers to work, including 156.73, 158.18, 163.11 and 173.90. 173.90 has been tested extensively and should work well for most FX cards.

Note that these are all 32 bit drivers. If you need a 64 bit driver, both 171.12 and 171.37 are reported to work.

We would love to verify whether these work well on a wider variety of FX cards. If you try any of them, we'd appreciate hearing your results. Please use the modded inf with each one and let us know how they work.

Thanks!

(Edited to reflect information recieved below. We appreciate the updates!)

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Thanks, aaaaaa, I'll add it to the list.

nvidiaguru, thanks to you too. Yes, other 9x Vista drivers do work if you can find one with the right inf.

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I got an fx go 5600 working with 98.13 on win7. I got a resolution of 1280 x 800 and it works fine. I'm not sure about aero, as I don't know what it is.

Graphics are all right for daily work. (Email. Internet. Office. ETC)

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Thanks, uwbe - I've had a couple of reports that 1280x800 and 1280x1024 work with 64MB cards, so I'll update the top post. Thanks!

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Guest Christian

Hi,

in my Dell Inspiron 8600 is a FX Go5650 128MB.

Resolution: 1920x1200, Aero enabled

All 9x.xx driver works okay (i use 98.16).

For Powermanagement i use the tool powermizerswitch.

Newer driver makes problems:

- first 100.xx driver wont switch UAC properly (display hangs)

- 1xx.xx - 176.xx broken display, garbage not usable.

- 177.xx - seems nvidia drops support for this card. Driver wont install. Device can not start error.

Would be great if we can find a way to get newer driver to work for better driver control and options.

Chris

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Thanks, Christian - your findings confirm what others are seeing. (I use 98.16 myself.) While most of the newer drivers behave the way you describe, I'd be interested to hear what happens if you try 163.11 or 173.90. We're hoping they may be exceptions. Thanks.

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Guest retama91

I installed the 97.34 driver in windows 7 for my FX5200 128MB graphics card without problems @ 1280x1024

aero works fine but video is very poor, practically unusable

When I try to install the 173.68 I get a message like:

"The best software for your controller is already installed"

and does not install the new driver.

Thanks

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Ah so glad to finally see some talk about the FX cards. I made a post in the Gaming forum about my issue for my Quadro FX 350M (256MB) card.

I contacted Nvidia tech support in December 2009, and the representative confirmed that my particular card is now deemed as a "legacy card," which is no longer supported; he then pointed me to this website.

I'm currently on Driver: 8.16.11.9073 (or 190.73)

None of the suggested drivers from the thread, nor recent drivers via the Driver search page remedy my in-game graphical stutter. When I get home later today, I'll try dropping down to the 9x series drivers. At the moment, due to this graphical stutter I'm left to outright quit playing my MMO. :)

Edited by Sam G
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retama91, please try 163.11 or 173.90 and see if they install for you. Of the two, I suspect 163.11 might have less video stutter. The 17x drivers are more demanding (at least the XP drivers are).

Sam G, the fact that you can even get 190.73 to load means your Quadro card has a more recent GPU than other FX cards. The 9x drivers will demand less of your card, but they many not enable all your features. Still, they're worth a try. If speed is important, I'd try 163.11. As I mentioned above, the 17x drivers are more demanding.

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Try the below in IE7, 8 or 9 )Other browsers will not work)

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=wddm%205600

Forceware 181.72, 181.71, 179.43 and 179.23

Will bring up WDDM drivers for the FX 5600 and Windows 7 with the above versions.

A small INF mod to allow the go5200 to work should be all that is needed.

These may work for go5200's

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Pieter, those are for the Quadro FX cards, which seem to be based on a newer GPU core. I'm pretty sure they won't work with standard FX cards, but they're probaby exactly what Sam G (a few posts up) needs. Thanks!

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Whoops still in holiday mode, Quadro :)

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=geforce%205200

Here are the actual Win7 Client drivers for the GeForce FX 5200 :)

96.85 looks promising, and it the only real choice.

The smaller driver (30MB) will be the 32bit one.

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Thanks, Pieter. And here are the same drivers for the FX 5600 cards:

http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/v7/site/Search.aspx?q=geforce%205600

I've added both links to the top post.

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Guest retama91

retama91, please try 163.11 or 173.90 and see if they install for you. Of the two, I suspect 163.11 might have less video stutter. The 17x drivers are more demanding (at least the XP drivers are).

Thanks LSudlow,

The 163.11 was installed fine but after the reboot I got a near all blue screen (not the windows blue screen!) with few vertical bars, windows was working but I could not see anything so I had to do a hard reboot. The 173.90 does not installed correctly, but I did it with dpinst.exe ( /LM /P /F options) but the same blue screen after reboot. When I restart windows to the "last good known configuration" I get the 175.19, probably I installed sometime ago but it was no the version I was using before I tried the 163.11 ( It was the 97.46 ). This 175.19 works fine but without aero (no WDDM drivers).

Finaly I installed ( with dpinst.exe /LM /P /F ) the 98.13 and works fine with aero.

I do not find a big difference with respect to the 97.46, video and TV degraded compared with the XP (175.16 driver) in the same hardware.

I will run Win 7 with 98.13 driver waiting for a better driver

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Guest aaaaaa

first you MUST install driver over win update then upgrade over device manager with modet driver and you can see blue screen only on startup (welcome) and driver f.e. 173.90 works fine :)

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remata91, thanks for your results. Your experience is fairly typical and is one of the reasons for this thread. When you get a chance (and if you're in the mood for experimenting), try aaaaaa's suggestion, just under your post and see if it helps.

Another thing to try would be to uninstall your current driver before trying one of the newer drivers. The newer drivers sometimes have trouble upgrading over the older drivers. You end up with files from two sets of drivers, with results like the ones you describe.

aaaaaa, thanks for the tip.We'll hope it helps a few people.

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Well so far no luck.

After locating the small list of Vista/Win7 64-bit drivers compatible with my DEV and SUBSYS id's, I have tried:

97.46 -- This was the lowest driver number compatible when searching via the two ids. This refused to install, claiming my OS was not Vista and the uninstaller was a 32-bit uninstaller. (LOL)

179.47 -- I'm currently on this. I loaded my MMO game and still experiencing the in-game graphical stutter.

The next driver I'll try is 179.68, but I'm starting to think it's rather futile now. I've changed drivers about 10 times now and still no resolution. Most of the drivers found while searching using my SUBSYS id did not have modified INF files, but rather only the installer.

Edited by Sam G
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Sam G, thanks for the update. Let us know if you have any success.

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Firestorm, no. The latest drivers that will work are the 175.xx and a few of the 176.xx series. But I don't recommend those. The 169.xx series drivers perform much better with FX cards.

Try 169.61, which can be found here:

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I can confirm 173.90 working on a Geforce FX 5900XT. Details as per my previous post here. Had to edit the inf for 1280x960. ntune works fine. I also tried some 177.xx series with no luck. I may try 179.47 & others for confirmation another time.

Results:

17390.th.png

VMR9 works OK. Default codecs, WMP11.

vmr92.th.png

vmr95.th.png

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Ah so glad to finally see some talk about the FX cards. I made a post <SNIP> for my Quadro FX 350M (256MB) card. <SNIP> I'm currently on Driver: 8.16.11.9073 (or 190.73)

Umm, your GPU is a G72M & not an NV3x GPU as per this thread title, hence 190.73 works fine for you. Edit the inf of the latest driver set to see if it works on your notebook. Needless to say 179.47 is a bum stear.

first you MUST install driver over win update then upgrade over device manager with modet driver and you can see blue screen only on startup (welcome) and driver f.e. 173.90 works fine :)

This is not required and has only to do with your GART driver. I put a vanilla OS on my test system & installed modified drivers manually. No BSOD or artefacts at all. Aero is robust. Startup/shutdown/S3 sleep all work fine.

Using modifiers for dpinst.exe is pointless when the driver is missing hooks for the FX series ASIC... Is everyone talking about WDDM 1.0 sets aka Vista Aero capable? Else, installing legacy WDM drivers aka WinXP is hardly worthwhile, even if newer...

The reason some newer Vista drivers work on the FX series is because some beta builds include legacy code forks. Thank Nvidia for throwing us a bone. It might be useful to track/confirm good candidates down.

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Guest retama91

Hi again,

I have try to follow the aaaaaa suggestions, if I have understood correctly ...

1- "first you MUST install driver over win update"

I updated the driver from device manager -> update driver -> find automatically the update driver

It install the 175.19, works fine but without aero.

2- "upgrade over device manager with modet driver"

After reboot I go to device manager -> update driver -> find driver manually -> select the dir for the

173.90 with the mod inf , but I get: "Windows find the software driver for you device was already

updates" and of course, does not modify the drivers

I have to follow the LSudlow suggestion :

So I changed first to the standard VGA driver and after setup the 163.11 driver version but I get again the blue screen.

So I return to the 98.13

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