6800GT Shipped! Questions...

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citizen__erased

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 24, 2002
Messages
445
Hi all. My 6800GT has been shipped after coming back into stock earlier than expected. Just wondered what drivers would be best to use with it. I've also heard that coolbits is useful to enable overclocking features. Which coolbits is best?
 
Okay..
A good rule of thumb is: Always use the latest drivers.
nVidia's drivers have only been improving performance lately. Any differences in performance are very negligable between driver builds.
That's nVidia's drivers, but there's also Omega drivers. They are unofficial, and I don't have too much experience with them, so if anyone has any info or suggestions concerning omega drivers, shoot.

Coolbits is not a utility. It is simply a registry entry that enables the "clock frequencies" control panel in the driver options. There are no versions or anything. It's just like a key.

But if you didn't know that already, I don't suggest you dive straight into overclocking. take things slow, relax.

Congrats, btw, on a good purchase!
 
Not sure but Omega's drivers is for ATI ? If there is one for Nvidia, i'm learning a new thing :)
 
Cheers for the reply. I checked the Nvidia site and the latest drivers appear to be 61.77. However, i have seen people talking about the 66.81's. Are these beta? Should i use them? Sorry for all the questions, but i've been out of the Nvidia loop for the last 18 months with a 9800Pro. I'm aware that coolbits is a registry hack, but i've seen people list the contents differently. Any ideas?
 
citizen__erased said:
Cheers for the reply. I checked the Nvidia site and the latest drivers appear to be 61.77. However, i have seen people talking about the 66.81's. Are these beta? Should i use them? Sorry for all the questions, but i've been out of the Nvidia loop for the last 18 months with a 9800Pro. I'm aware that coolbits is a registry hack, but i've seen people list the contents differently. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

I am using the 66.81 beta's and they rock.
 
Nah, coolbits is just a registry key. No versions, just one value.
Here's the actual info:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak] "CoolBits"=dword:00000003
Click to expand...
Just change 00000000 with a 3 at the end.


I did think Omegas do exist for nVidia at one point... perhaps I'm wrong.
 
I didnt know the maker of the Omega drivers was still publishing them for Nvidia. I remember a little while back he had a run in with Nvidia and they told him to stop making them, but he still made them for ATI. If they are still being made though thats cool indeed. I am using the 66.71's I believe. Working fine for me. Saw some nice increases in certain things, gotta lover free performance gains.
 
Since switching between different sets of Nvidia drivers is reletivly safe and easy, try a few of them. Results seem to vary from system to system (especially with the Beta sets). Pretty soon you'll have formed your own opinions and find a set that works best for your system. For me and my lowly 5900xt, the 65.73 Beta set seems to work the best.
 
Blauman said:
I didnt know the maker of the Omega drivers was still publishing them for Nvidia. I remember a little while back he had a run in with Nvidia and they told him to stop making them, but he still made them for ATI. If they are still being made though thats cool indeed. I am using the 66.71's I believe. Working fine for me. Saw some nice increases in certain things, gotta lover free performance gains.
Click to expand...

Yeah they are still being made, but they take forever for the nvidia ones. He has a lot more released for ATI. His latest ones for Nvidia's drivers are 61.77 I believe.

www.omegadrivers.net
 
61.77 drivers are still the best IMO and I've tried them all, the 66.81 drivers are the most popular but give a lot of people terrible slow down when using 4xAA and 8xAF in alot of games at there highest settings, myself included. They'll give you the highest benchmark scores for 3dmark though. The 61.77 omega drivers might be good but gave me instability with my moderate overclock of 410/1100. Other drivers are really iffy and are missing certain key features like support for dualview.
 
has any of you heard about the NV40 and the NV43 chips not doing the hardware decoding for dvd's? i know nvidia aint talking about this...but i heard somewhere through the grapevine that their hardware decodeder is "broken" and may be fixed soon by a driver release...anyone heard about this?

also, i need to make a decision between the two cards, the X-700 Pro (ATi) and the 6600GT (nvidia) . Me is gonna be playing Doom3, HL2, and of course UT2004 (which runs awesome on my 5600 Ultra) Which card would you guys recommend? (And dont say ati cuz ati rocks or same with nvidia... i have look at framerates test and see that the 6600gt overtakes the ati card, except at HL2...but i dunno...the ati having 256mb and the 6600gt is only 128...)
 
I am using the 66.81 driver, whql from guru3d, it is also available from the nvidia site under beta. I think the rivatuner is better for tweaking your driver, but you shouldn't really need to. These are fast cards. My Evga is anyway. Works great.
 
bran(d)muffin said:
has any of you heard about the NV40 and the NV43 chips not doing the hardware decoding for dvd's? i know nvidia aint talking about this...but i heard somewhere through the grapevine that their hardware decodeder is "broken" and may be fixed soon by a driver release...anyone heard about this?

also, i need to make a decision between the two cards, the X-700 Pro (ATi) and the 6600GT (nvidia) . Me is gonna be playing Doom3, HL2, and of course UT2004 (which runs awesome on my 5600 Ultra) Which card would you guys recommend? (And dont say ati cuz ati rocks or same with nvidia... i have look at framerates test and see that the 6600gt overtakes the ati card, except at HL2...but i dunno...the ati having 256mb and the 6600gt is only 128...)
Click to expand...

All of the Geforce 6 series cards have an On-Chip Video Processor, and it functions just fine except for some of the abilities and features of the chip are currently dissabled at the software (driver) level. There is still debate and question as to wether or not the actual hardware chip is functioning at all, or if it can be enabled by a driver. There are lots of threads on the subject in this forum if your interested in reading that info. The DVD decode works fine on all the GF 6 series, it's actually only Windows Media Video 9 codecs that are having difficulty, or High Def. videos. And from all reports the 6600 and 6200 series cards will definately have that capability with a newer driver set.
For a recommendation, I would suggest the 6600GT since it is a better over-all performer, however right now it is only in PCI-Express. Unless you have PCI-e, or plan on upgrading to a motherboard with it, or waiting a couple of months for the AGP version to be released, I would suggest getting the X700 Pro which is a great mainstream video card, with agp available now. Hope this info helped. :)
 
yeah it did, thanks..

I am getting a PCI-e board (thanks to the intel purchase program.....) So thats why i was wondreing...since the 6600GT Chaintech Card is 206 on gameve and newegg...and i can get the x-700 pro for 160 at compusa (i work there...so i get good discounts) and i havent checked newegg or gameve for prices yet since i am lazy...lol...but still probably gonna go withthe 6600gt...since i like nvidia better...and it does get better ratings..
 
Plus, as an added bonus, if you do end up going with the 6600GT, this would allow you to purchase another 6600GT later down the line and utilize it's SLI technology, and run dual 6600GT's. :D From what I've seen and heard, it'll be a killer set-up for sure.
 
VvTheDon said:
Plus, as an added bonus, if you do end up going with the 6600GT, this would allow you to purchase another 6600GT later down the line and utilize it's SLI technology, and run dual 6600GT's. :D From what I've seen and heard, it'll be a killer set-up for sure.
Click to expand...
Actually according to Anandtech 2 6600GTs in SLi are slower than 1 6800GT.
 
Cheers. How come the 66.81's aren't on the main page? Are these the ones to go with? Guess i'll try both. I'll have to use driver cleaner before installing though right? I currently have a 9800Pro.
 
OrionNT said:
Actually according to Anandtech 2 6600GTs in SLi are slower than 1 6800GT.
Click to expand...

Of course they are, and 2 6800GT's in SLI also gained a 105% improvement in one case of the benchmarks. But he wasn't asking what the greatest card was, he was talking about getting a budget card. One 6600GT now, and another one in a few months or however long would be less expensive overall to get pretty much the same performance as one 6800GT. It's all about what someone can afford now, and what they can afford later to end up with the better system. ;)
 
i recommend the official 61.77 drivers from nvidia, the 66.81 drivers have hitching problems in farcry and iq problems in cs:s
 
Ok, 61.77's it is then. I should have my GT tomorrow, can't wait to get it up and running. Cheers for the replies everyone.
 
I just got a BFG 6800GT on Friday. I've tried the 66.81 driver and had picture quality problems w/it when playing AO, w/the settings maxed out, quality wise. Graphics were awfully jaggered and horrible for it's settings.

I removed 66.81, using Driver Cleaner3, then loaded up the Omega driver 61.77, which is the officially released version of 61.77, but has internal settings tweaked for either quality or performance, you get to pick when loading. The picture quality is considerably better using the same settings that I had w/66.81. Having upgraded from an ATI 9800Pro, I'm a big Omega fan, he does a great job. I hope to see more Nvidia drivers from him now, for obvious reasons. :D

As I just mentioned, I just upgraded from an ATI 9800Pro, which is a still a great card by the way, it's now in my older computer, replacing it's BFG GF4 Ti4200. Anyway, the BFG 6800 GT OC is noticiably better, graphics wise, as well as for performance, vs. my ATI 9800Pro. Nvidia finally beats ATI, after what, a year and a half, two years, though marginely. I certainly am going to miss the now better driver support, that ATI has. The last official driver from nVidia was way back in July, where as, ATI now releases one once a month.

ATI has a sign up voluntary beta tester program. The testers test everything, and so you see very few beta drivers in the public. With nVidia, I'm not sure how their drivers are tested, other than just releasing them to the public and having them test them and react to them. The net is flooded w/nVidia drivers. I'm not too sure if I like nVidia's process of just dumping beta drivers out all the time. It also seems that they are not in any numerical order either. It just seems that ATI is a lot more organized w/their their process.
 
MONST3R said:
damn, im still waiting for the 6800 ultra to come out. :mad:
Click to expand...

Just go and buy a GT and overclock it. I've tested mine up to 415/1100, w/absolutely no problems of any kind. The GT is $399.99 (US) vs. the Ultra being $499.99.

The official nVidia Ultra settings are 400/1100.
 
GoHack said:
I just got a BFG 6800GT on Friday. I've tried the 66.81 driver and had picture quality problems w/it when playing AO, w/the settings maxed out, quality wise. Graphics were awfully jaggered and horrible for it's settings.

I removed 66.81, using Driver Cleaner3, then loaded up the Omega driver 61.77, which is the officially released version of 61.77, but has internal settings tweaked for either quality or performance, you get to pick when loading. The picture quality is considerably better using the same settings that I had w/66.81. Having upgraded from an ATI 9800Pro, I'm a big Omega fan, he does a great job. I hope to see more Nvidia drivers from him now, for obvious reasons. :D

As I just mentioned, I just upgraded from an ATI 9800Pro, which is a still a great card by the way, it's now in my older computer, replacing it's BFG GF4 Ti4200. Anyway, the BFG 6800 GT OC is noticiably better, graphics wise, as well as for performance, vs. my ATI 9800Pro. Nvidia finally beats ATI, after what, a year and a half, two years, though marginely. I certainly am going to miss the now better driver support, that ATI has. The last official driver from nVidia was way back in July, where as, ATI now releases one once a month.

ATI has a sign up voluntary beta tester program. The testers test everything, and so you see very few beta drivers in the public. With nVidia, I'm not sure how their drivers are tested, other than just releasing them to the public and having them test them and react to them. The net is flooded w/nVidia drivers. I'm not too sure if I like nVidia's process of just dumping beta drivers out all the time. It also seems that they are not in any numerical order either. It just seems that ATI is a lot more organized w/their their process.
Click to expand...
If there is a Omega 61.77 driver, can you share the link so i can get it... I lost the link to the Omega site a long time ago and was a fan of these with my previous ATI cards.
 
Nvidia drivers are better than any 3rd party drivers.

Personally I'd recommend the 61.77 drivers as the best overall set.
 
Well, it arrived this morning and i have installed it with minimal fuss. I've fired up far cry and doom 3 to see what it can do and i'm amazed at how much more powerful it is than my old 9800Pro! I've had doom 3 running with everything cranked to maximum along with 4xAA, 8xAF at 1280x1024 in ultra detail mode and the card still pumps out awesome framerates! Love it.
 
Hopefully these Omega's will run a little bit better than the betas i'm running right now...
 
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