Windows 10, Windows Update and GeForce driver: is this what you callthe GeForce Experience?

I have Windows 10 RTM build currently running in my PC. I also have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 graphics card installed. I had the GeForce driver version 353.30 installed until the day before yesterday. This was the latest driver offered for Windows 10 on GeForce.com website at that time.

On the day before yesterday I found out that there was a newer driver offered by Windows Update, with the version number 353.54. Before I even knew it, Windows Update had updated the old driver to this version and was awaiting a reboot. There is no way to skip updates In Windows 10. However you can defer updates for 24hrs. That's it. I don't like to update the graphics driver hence I first clean the existing driver and then install the newer driver from the scratch.

But Windows Update didn't give me a choice. So after it updated the driver, I rebooted the PC and went into the driver control panel to change the default settings to the settings that I use. (I change the default settings because default settings cause high input lag.) For some reason, the control panel had retained my old preferences, including the custom refresh rate (100Hz) that I set for my display. Weird, I thought.

Later that day, I tried to play a couple of matches of Crysis 3 and immediately encountered a problem. ShadowPlay wasn't functional. It wasn't totally dead, because the FPS overlay was visible and seemed to be working. But video recording wasn't functional at all. The indicator overlay was missing from the screen. I launched GeForce Experience and disabled the ShadowPlay option (it was enabled) and tried to re-enable it. It turned off alright, but never turned back on. (There could be a reason for this but I didn't want to troubleshoot it because it is time consuming.)

I know what this means: clean up the driver and reinstall fresh. First I tried to download the 353.54 driver, but sadly it wasn't available outside of Windows Update. Not even Nvidia's website had it. (Even as of writing this post, it is unavailable outside Windows Update.) 

Since there wasn't anything I could do at this point, I decided to download the latest driver hosted by NVidia, version 353.30. Then I proceeded to clean up the existing driver (the one Windows Update installed) using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU). The author had added support for Windows 10 with the latest build. Phew! The great thing about DDU is that it would automatically boot into the Safe Mode, clean up the driver and reboot back into regular Windows. Too bad it is not completely unattended because the user has to specify which driver (AMD, NVIDIA or Intel) to remove after booting into the Safe Mode. It would have been perfect if the user could specify this at the initial stage or if it could automatically detect it. (For example, I only have the NVidia driver installed so I don't have to specify which one to remove.)

After cleaning up the driver, I managed to install the 353.30 driver without any drama. Without messing with the preferences, I headed straight to Windows Update and sure enough, Windows Update was ready to install version 353.54 driver. I let it update the driver. I thought the update wouldn't go bad this time because the old driver was at its default settings.)

Just as expected, everything went smoothly this time around. I could enable ShadowPlay after the reboot and set all the preferences as I would usually do.

So was that itl? Not quite.

I saw a glitch in the system after updating the driver. There was a new icon on the desktop. It said, 3D Vision Photo Viewer. It's been many years since I had seen that because when I install the GeForce  driver, I always choose custom and choose only the components that I use. The 3D Vision component and the HD Audio component are always unchecked because I don't need that bloat.

But Windows Update isn't sensible. It just had done a full installation. This is what Programs and Features window showed. Sigh!

I has to remove the 3D Vision driver and HD Audio driver manually. Now things are as should be.

One thing that I could have done differently is skipping the 353.30 driver and letting Windows Update to install the 353.54 driver from the driver-less state. I'm not entirely sure if Windows Update would be able to see the card though. I'll try that next time. Hopefully NVidia will have the drivers up on their website before Windows Update hereafter.

[Rant] NVidia driver issue made the electricity bill skyrocket!

Last month’s electricity bill was a record high for us. For the first time it went past JPY10,000. Our usually electricity bill is around JPY6,000 and even that’s because the heater is running throughout the day. Usually it is below JPY4,000. We couldn’t figure out what caused this huge increase. Even though the charge was about 70% higher than the previous month, we hadn’t consumed that much units. What caused the increase was because we went into the crossed over to the next unit pricing. Just as in Sri Lanka, in Japan too, the unit price goes up as the consumption increases, in a step by step manner.

Today I think I found the culprit. I’m not entirely sure if it is the actual cause. We’ll find out next month. But it seems that the GPU had been running at full blast all the time. Instead of using like 10-20W of power while at idle, it had been using over 100W. No idea about the actual power consumption, but I believe it is over 100W. When I checked in PrecisionX, the power usage was above 60% so it is definitely above 100W. The GPU clock was at 1066MHz instead of 324MHz.

[Article] Unresponsive display after waking up Dell Latitude 10 Essentials tablet

Since the A03 firmware update, a new problem seems to have come up with the tablet. When you wake up the tablet from sleep, the screen becomes completely unresponsive to the touch. The only way to get it back to work is to press and hold the power button to power down the tablet and press it again to power up the tablet. It is the same thing as pressing the reset button on a PC.

Now, I don't think the firmware is the culprit here. It most likely are the drivers that were released alongside the firmware. The issue is, we have to install these new drivers with the new firmware. That is specifically mentioned in the release notes. (This also applies to A04 update which I mentioned here.)

 

At first I thought it was an issue with Windows 8.1 Preview that I have been running for a couple of weeks. But when I refreshed the tablet and went back to the fresh Windows installation, the situation didn't change. It would randomly lose the touch support when it wakes up from sleep.

 

 

I talked with Dell Support personnel via Twitter. They told me to calibrate the display first but it didn't make the situation any better because it wasn't a calibration problem. Then they told me to refresh the tablet and see. When I told them that I had already done that, they told me to do a full recovery from the backup. I told them that I don't feel like going through with it.

NVidia finally releases a fix for the broken 320.18 WHQL drivers

NVidia released the GeForce 320.18 WHQL drivers with the release of GTX780. But in the past people in the forums started talking that these drivers were crap and breaking the GPUs. They were getting lockups, BSODs, micro-stuttering, rendering artifacts and all sorts of stability issues. I also noticed some micro-stuttering, but luckily not anything else.

Seems like NVidia concurred and they have finally released a new driver that fixes these issues. It’s the 320.49 beta. Yes, it is a beta driver after all. They didn’t release this driver just to fix the issues of 320.18 driver, but because they just released their new midrange king, the GTX760. Luckily, it is slightly slower than a GTX670, but way cheaper. Only $250. (Read a review here)NVidia is really messing with the prices. Their enthusiast cards are way too expensive and their midrange to high-end cards are way cheap. It’s not my loss. I am not looking to upgrade my graphics card anyways. I only play one game and that’s Crysis 3 and I can just do fine with my existing card.

OK, I digress. You can download the 320.49 beta driver from GeForce Experience software. That’s what I always do. I download it and then launch the installer as custom install and then uncheck everything other than the driver (you cannot check or uncheck it) and PhysX driver. Everything else is just bloat. I don’t usually do a clean install, because for some reason it messes with the Creative X-Fi drivers.

Or if you are still too lazy to download GeForce Experience, you can download the new drivers from the following links

• Windows Vista, 7, 8: 32bit driver,  64bit driver
• Windows XP: 32bit driver, 64bit driver

Intel Rapid Storage Technology 12.5 is faster than 11.7

Remember I recently upgraded the firmware on my Samsung 840 series 250GB SSD? Even though the release notes said that I would see some performance improvements with the DXT08B0Q firmware, I didn’t see any. Then I upgraded the Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers to see if it yielded in any improvements.

I originally had version 11.7.0.1013 installed. This was what I had when I flashed the firmware. There was a newer version out when I checked it a few days ago. Version 12.5.0.1066 (download from here). I don’t know what happened to version 12 though. Maybe I didn’t check for a new driver in a while. I only got to know that there was a newer driver from OCN forums.

I first uninstalled the old driver and installed the new one, just to be sure. Updating drivers doesn’t go really well most of the times. Ironically, I always update the NVidia drivers, never uninstall the old one and install the new one. I do that because I haven’t had issues doing so in the past. Sorry, I digress.

BTW, I downloaded the floppy driver, not the Windows drivers. The floppy driver comes with… just the RST driver. But the Windows driver comes with their monitoring and management software as well. Since I don’t use Smart Response Technology or RAID in my PC, there is no need to install them. No need to add more junk to the PC. I want to keep it as clean as possible.

Here are the benchmarks, before and after the update. Both were done after I updated the firmware to DXT08B0Q. For the entire specs of the test rig, click here.

Before (11.7.0.1013)

After (12.5.0.1066)

So you see, there is nice speed bump after the driver update. I don’t think that is a noticeable difference. Heck, you cannot feel the difference between two SSDs to the naked eye, without running benchmarks anyways. I just got this SSD because it was the cheapest 250GB one available back in January. not because it is the fastest.

Creative X-Fi Titanium audio card went missing in action

I wake up early in the morning to play Crysis 3 before my wife woke up and what do I get? There is no audio. The audio icon in the system tray is crossed out which indicates either the mute button has been pressed or the device is not available. It was the latter.

I rebooted. No go. Dammit!

Then I uninstalled the drivers of my Creative X-Fi Titanium (PCI-E) audio card, cleaned up the remaining clutter using Driver Sweeper and reinstalled the latest PAX drivers. No go! Device Manager wouldn't show that a card even exist. Weird.

Then I removed the audio card from the PC. Rebooted into Windows to clear out any erroneous statues in OS/software/drivers. (No idea if this would make a difference, but I did so anyway. ) Then I plugged back the card and rebooted into Windows. Before installing the driver, I checked device manager and there was the audio card, with an exclamation mark. I didn't worry about it too much at that point and reinstalled the drivers. When I came back to Windows, the audio card was nowhere to be found. :/

Nvidia 314.14 beta drivers released just in time for Tomb Raider

The next iteration of Tomb Raider (the game, not the movie) and Sim City are coming out tomorrow (US) and just like always, NVidia has released a new video driver to give the best to their customers. They do come with some performance improvements for older games as well. Unfortunately, there is no mention of anything for Crysis 3. Shame. I thought Crysis 3 was THE top of their priority list. Who the heck cares for Tomb Raider or Sim City or other games that are coming out this month? We all only care about Crysis 3.

Anyways, if you happen to be playing games that show some improvement, go ahead and check them out.

You can download the drivers and check out which games got a performance boost from Geforce.com.

Or you can simply use NVidia GeForce Experience.

Note: I only install the driver and the PhysX software. If you too don’t wanna install all the other stuff, use Custom Installation when it prompts.

Nvidia posts 314.07 WHQL drivers just in time for Crysis 3

Crysis 3, the latest iteration to the well known Crysis moniker, is scheduled to come out today for North America. I don't know why they don't do a world wide launch as most people are buying it as a digital copy via Origin, but apparently that's the way it is. Just like NVidia released beta drivers for Crysis 3 MP beta that was released last month, they are following suit with the retail game. NVidia has released the version 314.07 of drivers for their Geforce family of cards just in time for this AAA-grade title. It's not even a beta driver. It is the real thing - the WHQL certified driver.

I don't believe it will give better performance over the previous beta drivers as the version number hasn't gone up significantly. The last beta driver was 313.96. So a minuscule increase in version numbering, but I bet it would be much more stable. There was a hint of micro-stuttering when I played the beta, although I am not sure whom to blame there, so either way I hope the experience in the full retail version of the game couple with the WHQL driver would give a much better experience. (In fact, they still say 65% increase in performance over the last WHQL driver, the 310.90 so performance should be the same as with the beta.)

You can download these drivers from here .

Download 314.07 driver for Windows Vista, 7, 8 32bit

Download 314.07 driver for Windows Vista, 7, 8 64bit

As usual, AMD is late to the party.

I am hoping to do a comparison between the performance of between the drivers and the game itself, but there is one little problem. I don't have the game with me yet. Japan is getting it next month. I can buy from the Indian Origin Store so I hope it will be available there soon. Perhaps there are other ways to get it, so I'll make sure that I search around when I get back home.

For the rest of you, happy gaming with the new driver.

AMD HD7970 vs. NVidia GTX680: FPS vs. Frame Latency

Until a year or so ago, all the graphics card reviewers were going by the conclusion: more FPS ⇒ smoother gameplay. Sure, there isn’t anything wrong with that conclusion, if you keep rest of the parameters the same. But that actually is not the case.

People who have bought AMD’s HD7900 series high-end cards have been really pissed to find out that their gameplay is not actually as smooth as those reviewers suggest. 60FPS means pretty smooth gameplay. You might not see any difference between 60FPS and anything higher. Funny thing is that, people are actually getting the FPS that the reviewers claim – there is no mistake there. But for some reason, gameplay isn’t smooth. You would see pauses every few seconds. If you run a frame rate counter, such as FRAPS or MSI Afterburner, you would not notice any glitches. But you are NOT feeling that the gameplay corresponds to which the FPS counter is showing.

Guess what? That’s because of “micro-stuttering”. The phenomenon called micro-stuttering happens when a certain frame takes abnormally longer to render than the previous subsequent frames did, and his being repeated over and over the entire time. (That last part is important to create the illusion of stutter.) If you plot the frame times in a graph, you would see spikes appearing roughly in similar gaps. Funny thing is, if you average out the FPS, you would not see a drop. That’s why you cannot go with just the FPS.

Look at the following example.

Say, you are getting 50fps in your game. It could either be that all of your frames took 20ms each to render (1000ms per second/20ms per frame = 50fps), or it could be that the first 49frames took 19 seconds each (931ms total), and the last one took 69ms to render. 50 frames, 1000ms ⇒ 50fps It would still give the 50FPS, but you would be seeing terrible micro-stuttering in the latter case.

Still no proper Lucid Virtu driver for z68 boards on Windows 8

One of the new things Intel introduced with SandyBridge family of CPUs was Intel QuickSync technology. But at first, only the board motherboards with H67 chipset were able to make use of it. Motherboards with P67 chipset – their “then” highend chipset – didn’t get this support, because it would break the support once the system was used with a discrete graphics card. Even on the H67 chipset, you would lose the QuickSync support if you went ahead and bought a discrete video card. Basically, both of these chipsets could not allow integrated graphics (which is used by QuickSync) and discrete graphics to co-exist.

Then came the Z68 chipset. It fixed that issue by letting you use both the integrated GPU (iGPU) and the discrete GPU at the same time. But it required Lucid’s GPU Virtualization software, conveniently named Lucid Virtu. But Lucid’s support has been very slow. They released updates very less frequently. Still, it worked. You basically specify the applications that require use of the iGPU in its control panel and it will detect those apps when they are launched and will provide the iGPU for its tasks. I could encode videos using Cyberlink Media Espresso.

Then Intel released IvyBridge CPUs and it came with a more powerful iGPU than SandyBridge. Lucid introduced more features for the IvyBridge CPUs. They gave it the name Lucid Virtu MVP. Now you could actually boost the frame rate by combining the power of the iGPU and the discreet GPU (in some games). In addition, you could get more than 60fps with V-Sync turned ON without causing screen tearing. Unfortunately, the old Z68 boards were not supported.

Many months have passed and it’s the era of Windows 8. Lucid still doesn’t have a Windows 8 compatible driver for the old Lucid Virtu technology. If you install any of the drivers for Windows 7, it would break Windows. You will not be able to boot back to your desktop. You will have to recover Windows. They, however, do have a Windows 8 compatible driver for Lucid Virtu MVP.

I contacted their support team about this and they told me to install the Lucid Virtu MVP driver. I did, and sure enough, it didn’t break Windows 8.

But there is one big problem.

 

It only installed as a 30 day trial. This has happened before as well, even with Lucid Virtu driver, when ASRock screwed up something with their UEFI. Apparently there is something that they check in UEFI that would make Lucid driver not to install as a trial. Well, my Z68 Extreme4 board doesn’t have the Lucid Virtu MVP code. It only has Lucid Virtu code.

Now, I don’t know what will happen when the trial period runs out. It might simply give me the Lucid Virtu’s features and simply lock me out of the MVP’s features. I contacted Lucid support team about this and am waiting for their response. I will post back when I hear from them. I just hope Windows 8 didn’t make my Z68 a P67 board. :/

Logitech Gaming Software version 8.40 - a unified experience

Finally Logitech has done something logical. I have the G15 Gaming Keyboard and the G500 Gaming Mouse which needed separate software for each - namely the Logitech Gaming Software and Logitech SetPoint. Finally, they have brought them together in the version 8.40 release of Logitech Gaming Software. Happiness! Why they took this long is the question. 

If you had taken a peek at Windows 8's Task Manager's Startup section, both Logitech Gaming Software and Logitech SetPoint were classified as startup apps that take too much time. I wonder if this is still the case with this new Driver/Software. I hope it is better now. 

You can download the Logitech Gaming Software v8.40 from this link. 

AMD HD7000 series graphics cards: from top dog to under dog then to top dog once again!

There is no official announcement of when the next generation graphics cards from AMD are coming out, but it's been almost a year since they released the HD7000 series. One would expect that the new cards to hit the market in early next year. When AMD released HD7000 series cards, the top of the line cards managed to excel the nVidia's top of the line cards by a fa. For that reason, AMD enjoyed high profits because they could sell the high-end cards at a price never seen before. The HD7970 was originally sold at $549 and HD7950 at $449. But such high price didn't stop people from buying those cards. Those cards were intended for enthusiasts and they would pay anything to own the cutting edge stuff.

There was one problem with the HD7900 series cards though. They did not widen the gap as much as people originally expected. The GTX580 was still competitive in the high-end segment. Only the HD7970 was faster. HD7950 was only slightly faster. Sometimes performing on par.

nVidia releases the long waited driver that fixes GTX600 series microstuttering madness - GeForce 304.48 Beta Drivers

The web was infested with the stuttering issues the GTX600 cards were getting when Adaptive V-Sync was turned on (some were getting problems with even the regular V-Sync). I too experienced it when I tried Crysis 2 with my brand new GTX670. It was unbelievably stuttery. Much worse than what you would get from multiGPU setups. You were literally getting pauses of few milliseconds.

Here’s what they are talking about:

GTX 680 VSync Stuttering Issue Mass Effect 3

GTX 680 VSync Stuttering Issue Skyrim

GTX 680 Vsync stutter Rage