A Guide To Make Older Nvidia Drivers Work With Any FX Card.

it's not that cards are locked to later drivers, just drivers are released before certain cards can be.
so they weren't around to be written into the particular older drivers.

unfortunatly in the case of the 5950 and the 5700-this is a drawback. the 5200+ drivers all seem to suck...

thats kinda where I began this idea.
I was planning on getting a 5950 myself, but I just can't afford it with christmas and such so close, so I just started wondering about the drivers before the 4403 for my 5900 NU.

basically, if a driver still has the temp sensor, then it should be able to work on the FX cards.
so I started with the drivers I new worked for the 5800 series.

so far I have tried most of the 4300 series cards.
I tried to fool the 4200 series with many tricks...
switching INF's from one driver to another, manual editing, adding the 9-10 driver files from the 4201 to the 4403, and a few dozen other tricks...
but as long as the driver can't read the videocards temp sensor, then the driver doesn't stick.
so I haven't figured out how to get a driver lower then the 4303 to work on the FX cards yet...

but so far, this project has been pretty helpful :D

It certainly has as 52.16 are rubbish for 2001.

I am sure I have run my 42 series drivers with my FX5200U and 5600U before and they have worked, though my memory might be faulty. If my memory is correct they did not score as well with 42 series as the 44.03 and so it might not be a great loss not being able to get the 5900 to work with 42's.

Optimisations for nvidia FX cards started appearing with 42.6X series for in 3dmark03 and so it might be that they also got a few optimisations for 3dmark2001 around this time as well, then got pulled after 44.03.

I wish my 5700U card would turn up, I think it is going to top 17K with a bit of luck.

Regards

Andy

Looking at in game values for dissolved's runs Dragothic went from 347 to 408 with the older drivers for low and 187 to 202 for high ... so nature and dragothic both had " optimisations" in the earlier drivers.

Should have run the AMD64 at 2150 for the 44.03 run dissolved, you would have got an even bigger score and made it apples to apples ( to quote everybody's favourite phrase nowadays ).

Regards

Andy

Kunaak,

This is awesome. Can you tell me which of the 43.xx drivers are the fastest for 3DMark2001? I see you like the 43.51.

well, all my tests are only with the 5900 NU.

from testing lots of Nvidia cards over the last year or so, I can only say, each card tends to have it's best driver.
so honestly I'd say just try a few drivers.
its not much work.
just mod the driver, run 4-5 benchmarks, reboot, do it all again.
add it all up and divide it by the number of benchmarks ran.
that gives you a nice average.

rebooting is simply to be alittle more thorough about the average ;)

it's well worth the effort if it gives you alittle upp hand against others with the same card you have :D

I use a 5900NU as well. I'll try the 43.51s. Look at my pitiful score...6 points...I am sure this will put me over the top :D.

Great job Kunaak!!
I wonder if the older drivers could help with the damn throttling at sub-zero temps??? I about killed myself out of frustration last weekend...

Hm I found these...i'm gonna try em out with the 41.09 since its the preferred driver for Nvidia for non-FX cards. I'll see what happens (not expecting it to work though) then try 43.51.

MikeM you can find the solution in the volt modding area.
just look for mickey mouses guide to volt modding the 5900/5900 ultra.
the solution to the sub zero issue of the 5900 ultra can be found in that post.

you can also try this mod, and simply use the 5900 Non Ultra driver.

I know the Non Ultra has no issues with Sub Zero cause I cool mine to about 30C below zero for benchmarks ;)

I just used the inf file above, and neither driver worked, both of them asked for files I didn't have? So I had to continue without installing certain files (?). I don't know.

41.09 worked until I started 3D, it just gave a black screen until it came back to desktop. Nature gave 60.0fps (vsync was off even). Whatever.

43.51 had all kinds of corruption and the display died a couple times, just uninstalled that junk. I'll look more closely at your guide.

Tried again your way and the install went fine this time. Rebooted, but I am still getting the corruption issues and the display dying on me. I have to reboot at that point.

I don't know what the problem is, I did everything the same.

I don't know what to tell you, unless your bypassing something or missing some part.

heres some proof it works.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7224250

I couldn't get mine working for some reason. I got all sorts of corruption on the desktop and then the display would just die so I had to reboot into VGA mode.

On a bright note though, I was able to squeeze out a few more points out of this thing. Finally got me over the wall :toast:.

What is the difference between 43.51 and 44.03? What tests gain and by how much? I would guess Drag Low and Nature.

I ran some tests last night and for my setup ( 5200U and P4 ) the 43.51 drivers were worse than 44.03 by about 100 points. Out of interest I tried the 53.03 drivers and they lost 700 points and so keep to the trend of poor performance of drivers after 44.03.

Regards

Andy

Couldn't get the 5700U to work with 44.03 using this method :( shame as the nature score stinks ...

The Gainward 5700U Golden Sample came clocked at 500/950 out of the box and is rock solid at 550/1000 :)

Got #1 in 3dmark2001 without really trying, not much competition at the moment in that class, I thought it would be like the 4200 class.

Nice card this, would have preferred a Gainward GS 5900 but not enough money.

Regards

Andy

Try other drivers going up from the 4403.

it may take sometime, but usually when one driver doesn't work, a few more tries, and you find one that will.

modding drivers is a weird tweak to learn, but it can pay off, as OPP and a few others from time to time have shown.
you are right though, that nature score is junk, my ti4200 does better then it.
that card definatly has some power under the hood, I just wish Nvidia would stop writing all thier drivers to be slow as dirt.

Obviously Nvidia doesn't care about 3DM01 anymore (big mistake).

I could not get older drivers like 43.51 working on my system, and I followed the method by the book. Its not a big deal though as I got over 20k anyway without them and im selling this card.

I have to agree with both of you on the points you raised in regards to nvidia. I'm doing pretty well on the stock setup for the card, 590/1070 for the last run but the machines BSOD'd .

If you check the top page for the 2001 5700U clas you should spot me. Going for nearer 18k, have 17.7k on hard disk.

It's just that really low nature without using 44.03 is peeing me off as it would be well into the 18k's by now.

Regards

Andy

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7251793

Hmm if you could somehow get 44.03 working your Nature would be something like 140, not to mention your Drag Low...I think you would be getting 19k with that driver but only if you could get it to work.

I have done this for a couple of years now. I did it when 3DMark2001 was pretty new and I was still trying to kick a$$ on 3DMark2000 while everyones focus was on 2K1. I needed older directx7 drivers to work with my GF3 and this was the only way to do it. Also, it's a neat way to get your driver description in 3DMark to say "SPQQKYs GeForce4 Ti4200" instead of nVidia.

:toast:

Have you tried adding the entire line.....

NVidia.NV36.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra"

....under the last card description? This also works so that you don't have to change the description of another card.

Quote:

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Originally posted by SPQQKY
Have you tried adding the entire line.....

NVidia.NV36.1 = "NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra"

....under the last card description? This also works so that you don't have to change the description of another card.

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Hello SpQQky, thanks for the suggestion.

I actually cut and pasted lines from the 52.16 file to the 44.03 file but that did not work. I'll try your suggestion tonight.

I did wonder whether there was something else in the file that needed to go over as well. Interestingly in the 44.03 driver file I have it does not mention any FX cards at all, including the 5200U or 5600U, and it works ok with those. Very strange.

I'll have a peer at it this week and see if I can get it to work.

Regards

Andy

it's fun to see so many getting into the driver modding.

:D

Quote:

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Originally posted by Kunaak
it's fun to see so many getting into the driver modding.

:D

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It's not so much fun having to reboot and it not working :D, but I know what you mean .. it's great to fiddle about and nVidia gives you more fiddling options than Ati.

Regards
Andy

Finally managed to get the 44.03's installed

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7261076

I'll crank it up tonight and see what she will do. Of course in the mean time a Bugarian team has got over 19k :eek: .

This is the second record I have lost to the Bulgarians in a week, a different team beat my 5600U result as well. I think the Bulgarians have it in for me.

When my AMD64 gets back maybe I'll be in with a shout again.

Many many thanks Kunaak for the tip on the drivers. It's appreciated.

Regards

Andy