NV Verde Notebook Driver 258.96 *WHQL* - Discussion relating to M11xR2

Folks,

Given the size of the beta discussion thread, I wanted to give you a clean slate for discussing the latest 258.96 WHQL release. Nautis has been very active with us and many thanks to him for his community support of Optimus and Hybrid for the M11x.

The US based driver download page @ NV seems to be down at the moment, however you can grab the driver from the UK NV site. see here:

NVIDIA DRIVERS 258.96 WHQL

Corrected - Apparently Kopicha was responsible for the modded INF, see post 1 of the beta discussion thread for info: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-258-96-beta-discussion-relating-11xr2.html. Nice job Kopicha!

Post away folks... good or bad, share your thoughts on 258.96 with the M11xR2.

Sidenote: I am not sure if this is still an issue with 258.96, if you are having a problem with a title not using the NV GPU, see this video which we have Chris-M and Dell/AW to thank for... it shows the proper way of adding a title to the whitelist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U874jC2blJQ

As an alternative, do not forget Dell also recently posted the 257.30 driver... If you end up going the official Dell route, please post your results in the .30 thread.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ell-released-nv-whql-257-30-discuss-here.html

 

I recommend this driver version to anyone that is reading this post...after removing the drivers that came with the laptop when I bought it, I will never go back. The biggest thing with this release is the addition of an Nvidia GPU activity monitor on the windows taskbar. To enable this icon, right click on your desktop and go to the Nvidia control panel, click view on the top bar and check "Display GPU Activity Icon in Notification Area". This allows you to see how many/which programs are utilizing the Nvidia 335m GPU.

 

It is important to note that the 258.96 INF was modified by kopicha using instructions that I posted. Kopicha is the one who took his time to modify this one and deserves the credit for enabling its use on the R2.

I very much appreciate the kind words BatBoy. For me it is about educating people on what they have and how to best use it. Optimus seems to have a bit of a learning curve to it and takes a bit of training at the early stage it is in now. I definitely recommend watching the video posted by Chris-M on how to configure things properly if you are new to the R2 and Optimus.

I want to reiterate here about the fantastic support you are getting from the likes of Erawneila and Chris-M who work for Alienware. I haven’t seen a company so dedicated to supporting its users in a long while. It is extremely important to give them as much feedback on the things officially released by Alienware as possible, as it is the only way they will be able to tackle some of these issues you are experiencing. This official support is something you do not want to loose and something that I do not want to get in the way of.

For every positive comment received it is also very important to remember to thank the fantastic people over at Nvidia who are really doing most of the work here. They are the ones who actually write the driver code and settings that allow these things to work on our notebooks. The only thing I really do is change around or create an install information file (INF). An INF is just the file that tells the how, where and with what settings to install the drivers. Hope you guys enjoy your M11xR2 notebook, wish I had one.

Optimus will only continue to get better but I am glad to hear how much things have improved with 258.96.

 

Well said, Nautis. And many thanks for your great contribution to the community.

 

Updated post 1 - thanks for the correction Nautis. Agreed, we are very fortunate to have Alienware Reps hanging out here and helping out. The folks over @ NV... well, I guess I can 'thank' them as well.

In regards to the INF, yep - been there myself with the mod side and adding/changing in order to support additional devices. Either way, I know how much of a pain it can be - so, a big thanks!

 

Many thanks to the guys who made it possible to put these drivers on the r2! I tried to mod the file myself and went wrong somewhere. It begs the question though, when will nvidia officially support our laptop? Will it always have to go through the Dell channels first?

 

Thanks batboy for setting up this thread. Actually on a side note just in case you didn't notice I actually updated the 1st page of my beta post of 258.96 with the newest whql link/info as well as the inf. Just that I couldn't change the title.

anyway it's nice to have a clean place to talk about the new "whql" release. Thanks to nautis who shared his modding tips making all these possible. Also not to forget the folks from Dell/alienware who hang around here with the rest f the users to gain feedback and helped. It's really hard to have a branding that actually goes out to this level of support. So thank you! And kudos to nvidia too for making optimus so much better everytime. Remember optimus consist of not only the hardware but software layer that make everything wor together. Without good software support optimus won't be where it is today too. No doubt it's still not perfect. But for ppl who have followed since day one. You should have seen how much things have start to change. And it will just get better. R2 is definitely a great piece of technology that still have much potential hidden that is waiting to be tap.

Thanks everyone for the support and enjoy your R2.

 

Help me please.. I just got my m11x and im trying to follow kopcia's directions. I cant find how to start it in Safe Mode. Press f8 does nothing. The key f12 says boot menu, but once in it, I cant find how to boot into safe mode.

Please help

 

you hit f8 after the first screen with the alien head

 

Keep pressing F8 as soon as you see the AlienHead

 

Nm im an idiot.. i was tapping the f8 rather than holding it

 

It's actually ok be it you tapping or hold just the timing. As long as you do that immediately after post screen where the initial alien head is

 

kop.. stay online for 15 mins.. im doing your process to upgrade the drivers and would love some tech support in case i screw up.. currently just cleaned using drive sweep and now onto installation

Update: ALL DONE! Thanks for the easy directions! now i just need to find out how to add steam games to the optimus list

 

i was replying you earlier on my iphone.

 

Hi
I have a quick question. When uninstalling the nvidia drivers in the control panel 'Uninstall or change program' menu the unstall program states that you must reboot to finish the uninstall. I rebooted and checked the control panel again and the nvidia drivers where still listed in the 'Uninstall or change program' menu (the nvidia PhysX and nvidia control panel were gone). I decided to uninstall a second time - got the same results - so I ran DriverSweeper and continued with the 258.96 install. All went well and it appears I was successful in the update but I was concerned that I may not have completely uninstalled the older drivers. Is this a concern or is this common when uninstalling the drivers? Also as an aside - Dawn Of War 2 still can not change the graphic settings and keep them - is this likely to be fixed with a nvidia driver update? Thanks

 

Anyone having stability problems with these drivers? I get crashes in WoW & DDO after a few (5-10) mins from just running around.
I have reverted to 275.45 and I can't recreate the crashs, except one specific problem in WoW with /timetest.

It's a 1day old M11x so my concern is it may be a hardware issue rather than driver one.

BTW DDO runs smooth on Ultra High with the 285.96 drivers, much better than the 275 ones.

[EDIT] I have managed to crash DDO on older drivers so looks like a h/w thing

 

Hi , just bought this little Laptop and installed these drivers .
Was a smooth and easy operation and thanks for the support on new drivers .
I just played a little COD 4 , COD2 , L4D2 ,Tombraider AE and Portal and Alien swarm on steam , I get better frame rates with this driver compared with the last Dell ones I installed 2 days ago when I got the M11x and experienced no problems yet .

Very nice !

 

Make sure you followed all the steps as instructed.

 

Done it a few times now.
I am back to reset + latest Dell drivers and in support calls with Dell.
Just loading more games to make sure it is a general fault atm and have longer call with Dell on Monday.

I expect it to go back.

 

I seem to be having the same problem as some of the others in these 2 threads. I am 100% positive i have the inf file in the right place and followed all the instructions to the T but i still am getting the hardware error. My hardware id also happens to be the same as m11ash's

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0CAF&SUBSYS_04651028&REV_A2
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0CAF&SUBSYS_04651028
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0CAF&CC_030000
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0CAF&CC_0300

Any new leads on this? Or maybe im still the only one who hasnt figured it out...

 

Hey most games seem to be playing better, with the exception of BFBC2. Not only does punkbuster kick me out of every game but the frame rates are also much lower. Any suggestions? I made sure it was whitelisted.

Edit: Problem regarding fps solved.

 

u sure u are doing it on R2? I have modded this with support for R2 but not R1 since R1 works in a different way(hybrid gfx) while I do not have a R1 to test with either.

Also u are on R2 and still getting error. Try after uninstalling driver, go to safe mode then go to your device manager and look under your vga card, right click on the video card that relate to Nvidia and uninstall it (if it ask you for a reboot to make changes select "NO"). Then run driver sweep and reboot the machine. Once back into Windows go to your device manager again and see how many VGA adapter listed. You should see Intel and Standard VGA adaptor. If you only see Intel, then right click and click on scan hardware. it should detect a new hardware then leave it alone and run your driver set up.

 

The interesting thing I had when installing these drivers is that they still showed as not being WHQL certified, and this was after running driver sweep 3x to get rid of the Beta's.

The Beta's worked better than any driver set so far and all my games play flawlessly. Seems to be the same case as these.

 

When you modify the inf you change the WHQL checksum process (or something like that) so they no longer show as WHQL-certified.

 

I may be the only one who experienced this but I thought I'd put it up just in case. Anyways, after following Kopicha's post (which worked perfectly) i noticed a significant drop in fps for BFC2. After tinkering around with settings and having no luck i decided to check if my cpu was still overclocked. Turned out it was disabled. No clue why but the problem easily fixed. Hopefully this helps someone.

 

that sounds weird... a video card driver disabling cpu overlock in bios? hearing this for the first time. i do not notice this since i dont have my cpu overclock.

 

Hmm... I don't notice any FPS increase when playing BFBC2 whether I overclock or not. I'll have to try it again.

I run textures, effects and objects at High, Shadows at Low, 4xMSAA (sometimes 2xMSAA) Vsync ON (I can't stand screen tearing) and HBAO off. It rarely dips below 24fps and usually stays between 30-40fps and sometimes 40-50fps.

I do OC my GPU though. Though I don't get a very high OC (533/1100/833) it does make a considerable difference.

Happy to know that losing the WHQL signature is normal.

I love this machine so hard.

 

WHQL is just a driver signing. no big deal since we can still bypass it and it suppose to still work as the driver intended. thats the most important point

 

Yeah its a brand new r2.

Thanks for the idea ill give it a shot.

 

I tried your suggestion, still no dice. I uninstall drivers, reboot into safe mode, check to make sure stardard vga is in the device manager list, run driver sweeper, reboot into windows, run the driver set up, replace the nvdm.inf with yours, run setup again, and i still get the error saying no drivers could be found for hardware.

Thanks for the attempt though. I have the core i5 processor do you think that could be a reason why?

 

dont think thats the reason. be it i5 or i7 this is a completely different issue here. Nvidia is not part of the processor. I am sure one of the steps somewhere is wrong. Just have to figure out which step you taken is the wrong one. Since you mentioned that you have the same hardware id as M11ash then the more it shouldnt be any issue. i think maybe your Windows UAC prevented you from replacing the modded inf file however you did not notice that and think that its being replaced already. but actual fact you are still running with the original inf from Nvidia. Please verify.

To confirm this. Extract my nvdm.inf to your desktop. Next go to the Nvidia folder that contain the nvdm.inf and try to delete that file then verify its really gone. then cut and paste the extracted copy from your desktop to the same folder and verify its really back in there. then run setup again.

 

Bossnam make sure all other drivers other than the Nvidia ones are installed correctly including the Intel chipset drivers.

The hardware is string you pasted from device manager matches the hardware id in the INF so it should identify it correctly.

You could always try to do a manual (have-disk) install. There is a great walkthrough about it on LV2G (screenshots are old but the info still stands.)

 

Do these drivers yield superior performance to Dell's 257.30?!

 

why dont you install them and find out? Posting this in both threads isn't really going to help. Only you can decide if you prefer one driver over another.

 

Absolutely. Without question.

 

Well, according to 3Dmark06, I gained only 24 pts. with these drivers. Doesn't really seem to be any better if taking variations into account. Aside from the "NIVIDA GPU Activity" icon in the taskbar, what other benefits have people gained from this driver?

 

3dmark06 is just some static benchmark which only suppose to give you a rough idea and should not be taken too seriously. losing or gaining pts in 3dmark06 dont necessary mean you lose or gain fps in games either. whats most important is how the driver perform in real world condition aka running your daily task and running your games. i believe you dont buy a machine back and sit there all day just to play with 3dmark? There are suppose to be something else better like playing some REAL games on it.

As an owner of R2 with Optimus I believe for those who have installed 258.96 should pretty much cant live without the build in Nvidia GPU Activity icon by now. At least for me thats how I felt. Tried rolling back drivers but just couldnt stand without that icon. This can consider as one hell of a big thing for Optimus users. Previously we had to rely on State Viewer tool which we had to launch them manually and seperately just to check if Optimus is kicking in or not. But its not the case now with the new drivers.

I cant say this is the best drivers since every drivers come with their own set of problems. But at least to me this driver seems to give me better overall results in REAL gaming condition compared to ones posted by Dell/AW. And I also understand that it fixes some issues that other ppl are having here with for eg crashing bug with Just Cause 2 and etcs. Also resolve some bug like Flash 10.1 in Firefox not triggering acceleration from Nvidia. Optimus also work much better in the sense that most stuffs in the whitelist will work as intended as of previous drivers even some whitelisted app does not respond to the setting and not trigger Nvidia. Most of these are not documented thou its fix in this driver. So I think as far as feedback goes most ppl gain more than they lose. Only known issue now that hinder quite a few ppl including myself is with this driver we wont be able to play BFBC2 online due to punkbuster. But bear in mind this occur on the 257.30 driver that Dell/AW posted as well. Only driver set that worked was the original stock 189.69 that was shipped with the machine.

Lastly do remember that we are very glad that we have people from Dell/AW looking in this forum knowing our needs and our issues and consistently helping us out. Not to mention also ppl like Nautis who is not even owner of M11x but here sharing his knowledge and give us support to allow us to enjoy the latest available things out there that work with our machine. Remember that all these are volunteery efforts and they dont get paid extra for doing all these for us.

You have no obligation whether to use the modded drivers or not. It's entirely up to you. What benefit me or others might not directly serve any purpose to you. If you feel more comfortable with Dell/AW drivers then by all mean use them if they work better for you. All these comes to individual. I dont think there is any right answer that anyone can give whether if this is good for you or not. Hope this answer your doubts/questions. Lastly... as usual... happy gaming.

 

Well spoken. I have kept them since trying them out and so far, I've been very pleased. For the time being, I can run SC2 at full settings, I'm a happy camper!

 

I whipped up a small tool for patching the nvdm.inf file. You can grab it at k3vn.com | in the apps section. The app is probably buggy, but it patches 258.96 inf the same as the one BatBoy posted.

btw.. this is my first post

 

People are having trouble following the steps required to replace an .inf file before installing?

 

Well for one, all games work with these drivers.

Before this set of drivers Just Cause 2 would only work with one set. Transformers would only work with the others.

If one wants to play games, then these are the driver's to get. If one wants to get caught up in benchmarks looking to increase some imaginary number that doesn't really estimate game performance, but rather a way for an owner to indulge and puff up their ego over their computer purchase; Then keep testing other drivers until you find the one that gives you the highest score, as meaningless as it is since most people run the same configurations anyways.

Using benchmarks to estimate the performance of a desktop system built from the ground up using any variation of components is one thing, but to get caught up in benchmarks on a laptop that has almost the same components as any other of the same make just feels like it's tail chasing to no end.

Me? I'd rather play games...

 

Few updates.

Nvidia posted a video on the new Optimus interface included with 258.96. You can find the blog post and video here.

Nvidia has also posted up the developer driver release of 259.09. You can find it and more info on it here. I would assume you can take the inf from 258.96 and change the DriverVer to the one in 259.09 and it should work. I will do a compare and post a custom INF for it if there are other changes since this will be a little bit more complex than just adding the Device ID string.

 

err could you PLEASE make a detailed, noob-friendly tut on doing this new driver update? PLEASEEEE

 

As soon as I get a bit more time I will try. I am currently modding 8 other driver sets along with testing 259.09 on my own notebook.

This should work AFAIK:
Download the 259.09 drivers and extract them to a folder (I use winrar or universal extractor)
Download the INF put together by kopicha here. Open the INF in a text editor and replace

Code:

DriverVer   = 07/09/2010, 8.17.12.5896

with

Code:

DriverVer   = 07/24/2010, 8.17.12.5909

and save/copy it to the folder you extracted the 259.09 drivers.

Hope this helps as it is as basic as I can get right now.

 

Good stuff Nautis, I'm glad people like you are here to share your work.

 

Anyone trying the new 259.09 dev. drivers with edited .inf file , do feel free to share your findings

 

Is the m11x R2 ever going to be supported to where we don't have to modify the .inf all the time>?

 

I do hope so. I am not sure enough people have reported it to Nvidia. I am not sure how it works with Optimus but it may take Alienware/Dell contacting Nvidia and setting up an arrangement. I know with the standard Verde drivers Nvidia will support the notebook only if the manufacturer asks them to and rumor has it pays them.

These 259.09 drivers are a bit different as they are not Verde drivers and are meant for developers desktop machines. I figured I would report them here in case anyone wanted to be on the bleeding edge. The reason these were released for developers is due to brand new OpenGL 4.1 support being added. This doesnt apply to the M11xR2 though "The new features in OpenGL 4 require a Fermi GPU. Thus OpenGL 4 is not supported on NV3x, NV4x, G7x, G8x nor GT2xx hardware."

 

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what did i do wrong now? lol

 

Bah... 259.09 is missing those files. In that case it will probably not work with Optimus. Sorry for the mixup, I just took a quick glance at it. You did things properly, it is me that overlooked things. If you are still set hardcore on trying to get it to work those files can probably be copied over from 258.96 and it may work, though I do not really recommend mixing driver files.

Sorry