NVIDIA GeForce 295.73 WHQL Drivers Released

Rizen said:
Surprising. I hear it's a good port though, and they did do enhancements to the graphics, so I guess I can see that happening.
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Yeah, the graphics and the lighting in particular are very good. I think the volumetric lighting is probably what is causing it.
 
polonyc2 said:
have they fixed the TDR issues yet with this driver?
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No confirmation. All I've seen regarding desktop/browser TDRs and 295.73 is, "There are changes for the next driver" ... helpful, eh?
 
Xonim said:
Any ideas this release supports the 560ti 448c cards? I'm currently using a 290.xx beta driver.
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Every current beta in the past few months have supported the 448s, and I've no doubt these will as well.
 
This is taken from Nvidia's blurb on their website.

"In December, the 290.53 beta driver introduced our first performance optimizations, helping improve frame rates by about 19% in Skyrim’s many shadowy dungeons, and 2.8% in its wide-open outdoor environments. For 295.73 we’ve delved back into our driver’s code and coaxed out even more performance, which should be especially helpful for GeForce GTX 560 and 560 Ti users who wish to increase the game’s graphics settings, make use of Bethesda’s high resolution texture pack, and install user-made mods from the Skyrim Workshop."

By my reckoning it seems like these drivers perform up to 45% better compared to the old WHQL 285.62 drivers and roughly 25% better than the 290.53 Beta drivers.
 
Buztafen said:
By my reckoning it seems like these drivers perform up to 45% better compared to the old WHQL 285.62 drivers and roughly 25% better than the 290.53 Beta drivers.
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I've seen a slight increase in Skyrim with these drivers. Some dungeons still have a bit of lag, but it's not too bothersome. Settings are maxed out with ambient occlusion on quality. Outside and town areas run like butter.
 
Destruya said:
Every current beta in the past few months have supported the 448s, and I've no doubt these will as well.
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I'll have to give these a try then. When I installed my 448, whatever version I'm using (290.xx) was the one that was recommended for the card due to issues on some of the other beta releases. I guess if this is awful I'll just roll back.
 
Tried these out on my rig last night (GTX 580 SLI 1.5GB). Played the Witcher 2 for a few hours, no problems. Thumbs up.
 
about the same performance on skyrim, slightly better in some areas, using the texture pack, no bugs, GTX470.
 
I played both Star Trek Online (No issues with the new drivers) and Battlefield 3 (Again, no issues) They have produced nice results so far on both games...
 
okay i am waiting to upgrade my system soon, but for now is it worth updating to these drivers on my 8800GT on system in my signature ?

think i would see any improvements in alice the madness returns on this old card ?
 
the snake said:
okay i am waiting to upgrade my system soon, but for now is it worth updating to these drivers on my 8800GT on system in my signature ?

think i would see any improvements in alice the madness returns on this old card ?
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Get the newer version of PhysX, which wasn't included in these drivers. That card is pretty old, so I doubt you see much of an improvement.
 
so i can just update the physx drivers themselves, i never knew that, or should i just update the entire driver set for a 8800GT ?

i am on physx driver version 9.10.0514

and display driver 275.33
 
the snake said:
so i can just update the physx drivers themselves, i never knew that, or should i just update the entire driver set for a 8800GT ?

i am on physx driver version 9.10.0514

and display driver 275.33
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You can just update the PhysX driver, just downloaded and installed the 9.12.0213 version that dark_reign linked to without a reboot and the rest of the 295.73 package left intact. The new nVidia installer lest you actually pick and chose the individual components to install, GPU driver, PhysX and 3D Vision which are just separate installers.
 
these drivers load BF3 much, much faster than the previous drivers.

anyone else noticed it?
 
Had to roll back to the last beta drivers, R295 drivers cause graphical bugs in skyrim on my 580, though they work fine in BF3.
 
I installed these as well for my GTX 470 and my machine locks up when I bring it out of sleep mode and the monitor does absolutely nothing. The first time it ran a chkdsk on my C drive which showed no errors, but indications of corruption in certain files. Either that is an indication that my GTX 470 or my motherboard is giving up the ghost, or the drivers didn't like my system. Although, it probably is about time for re-install on the OS anyway.
 
wand3r3r said:
I don't have a 79xx in my machine (yet) but take a look at gtx 560 ti and BF3. How many months ago was it released and they still haven't fixed all the artifacts and white/clear screens of death?

I'm not blinded by a logo, both are likely guilty of many things, but I don't think nvidia is perfect and I am experiencing their negligence.
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What artifacts are you talking about? I am using a 560ti 2GB and I have no such issues in BF3. The only artifact I get is the occasional blacked out terrian, though HD6950 2GBs have the same issue. Simple turn your head away from the blacked out terrian, and it will appear as it should on both cards.

I am still running 285.62. Any reason I should update?
 
the snake said:
so i can just update the physx drivers themselves, i never knew that, or should i just update the entire driver set for a 8800GT ?

i am on physx driver version 9.10.0514

and display driver 275.33
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nah you don't have to unless you run SLI, otherwise just update the physX drivers and thats it.. personally i still think the best drivers for the 8 series are the 258.96 drivers. but of course if you play BF3 you can't use the 258.96 drivers even though the required minimum drivers have absolutely nothing to do with the 8 series.
 
After installing 295.73 (dual 460's in SLI), my contrast or something is messed up. Black looks more like gray, and no amount of fiddling with the Brightness/Contrast/Gamma settings in the Nvidia control panel seems to get it back to normal. Any ideas?
 
EricJD said:
After installing 295.73 (dual 460's in SLI), my contrast or something is messed up. Black looks more like gray, and no amount of fiddling with the Brightness/Contrast/Gamma settings in the Nvidia control panel seems to get it back to normal. Any ideas?
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Try uninstalling the drivers and doing a full clean install first.
 
xorbe said:
No confirmation. All I've seen regarding desktop/browser TDRs and 295.73 is, "There are changes for the next driver" ... helpful, eh?
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I've had several TDRs and multiple black screen loss of video signal/sync type things since installing these this morning. This is unbelievable that these problems have continued since last freaking summer and they can't fix it.
 
ok folks, i just rolled back to 290.53 beta drivers and BF3 is back to running smooth and looking crisp again.

these new 295.73 were just horrible for my system, major stutter during gameplay and image quality looked smudged and blurry.

im with gtx560ti.
 
Yep, I just installed 285.62, put my system into sleep mode and everything came right back up. Will, have to give them time to work through the drivers and hopefully they will correct it when Mass Effect 3 comes out. Either that or it was because I did a clean install. I try it this week end when I have time to fool around with my system. Wasn't ready for GTX470 to go out on me yet. It can wait until June. lol
 
heatlesssun said:
You can just update the PhysX driver, just downloaded and installed the 9.12.0213 version that dark_reign linked to without a reboot and the rest of the 295.73 package left intact. The new nVidia installer lest you actually pick and chose the individual components to install, GPU driver, PhysX and 3D Vision which are just separate installers.
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i did just the physx drivers and the performance in alice the madness returns is about the same, guess i just need to wait till i get a new GPU to really enjoy that game at max settings then.
 
I've had much worse stability in Skyrim since installing these drivers. I've had one CTD while in-game and two instances of the game crashing (with some kind of error pop-up indicating something to do with a Pure Virtual Call) when I was exiting the game. The crash even makes the Windows prompt that asks "Wait for program to close" or "Close the Program" unresponsive. I have to go into task manager and kill the game's process.

Before this I didn't have any crashes of the game whatsoever. I guess I'll go in and start turning off mods, but my mod list is fairly modest (not even ten mods running), and I didn't add any new mods when the drivers were installed.

GTX460 SLI, btw.
 
Stability decrease in BF3 for me. It'll just randomly freeze but it won't end the program by itself.
 
I just join back to team green with 2 GTX560 Ti 448. I loaded up with these latest drivers after a clean uninstall of the AMD 11.12 cat. Played arkham city with no issues. I wish I had physx during my first play through; It really adds some cool graphical features to the game. Civ5 ran with no problems. L4D2 ran great but crashed upon exit which is strange. SWTOR ran fine except some graphical bugs on certain spells.
 
great performance in Skyrim and BF3 with these drivers. Although I've never really had any issues with Nvidia drivers to date.
 
I installed the new PhysX driver and Borderlands had all kinds of fits over it. I wonder what is going on.
 
Have never had any problems with Nvidia drivers EVER before.

Installed these drivers on my GTX570SLI setup and there was no option anywhere in the Nvidia control panel to enable SLI. It was a clean install (as usual). Tried re-installing them and still no SLI option.

Un-installed and went back to 285.79 and everything is back to normal.
 
the snake said:
i did just the physx drivers and the performance in alice the madness returns is about the same, guess i just need to wait till i get a new GPU to really enjoy that game at max settings then.
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the 8800GT can't really do physX and graphics in any game really. so its not a surprise. as a stand alone physX card it works great but it can't do both.
 
Business6 said:
Stability decrease in BF3 for me. It'll just randomly freeze but it won't end the program by itself.
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I recently bought the game and updated the driver to this version before playing it (so I never played the game with other/older drivers) and I’m having the same issues. I’ll try an older version today.

off-topic question, yesterday after I destroyed a stone wall I noticed a small part of it was flying in the air and was surprised this could happen in BF3 (not sure but I don’t think this happens in BC2) so could this be a video driver issue or it’s just an in-game glitch?
 
Finally got the new driver to installed and work properly, but Borderlands did not like the new PhysX driver (9.12.0213) so I uninstalled that one and installed another one (9.12.0209) that also appears to be in the 295.73 and it works. ~sigh~ If its not one thing its another. lol
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
the 8800GT can't really do physX and graphics in any game really. so its not a surprise. as a stand alone physX card it works great but it can't do both.
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oh i know LOL

i first played alice the madness returns @ 1920x1200 with no physx and it played fine, but to enable physx i had to lower it to 1650xwhatever to even stand a chance.

even then in some parts of game it went down to like 8-10FPS, ouch that is not fun :)
 
Interesting. It worked fine for a while, but my computer doesn't properly resume from sleep mode...again. Just sat there and did nothing until I restarted and then automatically went into a chkdsk. It removed one corrupted file, showed no bad sectors, and then came back up. Ran memory diagnostics to see if it would find any errors on my memory and the program found nothing. This problem did not start until I installed 295.73, so I may just go back to 285.62...again. Considering the problems I had with the new PhysX driver, there maybe something wrong with this new driver setup.

Update:

Just re-installed 285.62...again! Everything seems to be working normally. Well, for now anyway. lol
 
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After installing these drivers, SWTOR crashes at start up. Im running SLI Surround Portrait. Looks like I will be going back to 285 drivers.
 
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