Substantial frame rate drop with new NVidia driver :(

I recently upgraded the display driver on my system (Pentium D 805, ASUS EN7600GS Silent video card) to the new NVidia driver (91.31); I had previously been running 84.21. Yes, it fixes the ground texture rendering problem if you turn on "bumpmapped and cloth" avatar rendering -- but it reduced my frame rate by 25 to 50 per cent! That's comparing with the SAME graphics settings, not with the "bumpmapped and cloth" avatar rendering turned on. I experimented with various graphics settings, both inside SL and in the NVidia control panel, but nothing fixed the slowdown.

The other peculiar thing is that, with the new driver, CPU utilization sometimes goes significantly ABOVE 50%. It looks as though the new driver is trying to use the dual core somehow, though not successfully. Yes, I tried using the affinity settings to limit SL to a single CPU core; that kept the CPU utilization to the usual 50%, but didn't help the frame rate issue.

For now, I put the old NVidia driver back on my system. Does anybody out there have any suggestions of possible causes of the slowdown that I might be able to fix?

Thanks for the information and warning. I can only imagine that the new driver is using more system memory if it fixes some of the rendering problems but with a dropped frame rate.

I just tested this on my system. (AMD 64 @ 2221 Mhz, 1 Gig Ram, 7800 gt video w/ 256 MB)

I seem to be getting better frame rates with the older, 84.21 driver too. About 15 to 20 percent faster. Go figure.

Not sure how it'll affect the 3d games that I play, but if I don't notice slower rates there then I am keeping the 84.21 drivers - at least until nVidia releases another update. Thanks for the tip, Shirley.

Been using 91.31 since it came out, fps diffrence was about 0.4 fps higher, eh go figure guess your milage may vary, dont really play fps's muc more so wouldnt know if it dropped much.

x2-4800
4gig ram
7800gt

x2-4200
4gig ram
6800gt

fx55
4gig ram
6800gt'

I do get the annoying (your sli is disabled blablablam, disabled in registry now tho -.-)

I've been using 91.31 since it was a beta release. On my Athlon XP 2600+ (1.9ghz) with 1 gig DDR333 RAM and GeForce 6600GT I didn't notice any FPS gains but SL does look signifigantly better. I also noticed no FPS loss cranking up the Anti-Aliasing and Ansitropic Filter in my profiles. From what I noticed, especially with these drivers, nVidia cards like to be pushed to their limits and actually run better as a result. An aquantence of mine Fausk has a 6800GT and cranking up her AA & AF like I did actually improved her FPS by like 5 FPS.

Now keep in mind, each brand of videocard (remember nVidia and ATI are just the base chipsets) reacts differently from driver to driver. Some cases an older driver performs better then a newer driver and vice versa depending on the brand/card. Also it might be worth looking at the new 85.13 drivers that SONY released for thier laptops. TweaksRUs.com just released a modded INF that will allow it to be installed on any system so it might be worth a shot.

I had a similar problem. It kept saying that I was SLI capable. I have a SLI capable motherboard (Asus A8n-SLI), but I run with only one card. This seems to fix things.

Absolutely. I run a Pentium D and a 7900GT video card (Asus) and with the same versions of the drivers you've mentioned, I have exactly the same symptoms.

I noticed the CPU being hammered on both cores, and the same immense performance degradation - rolling back the driver helped. I notice that Asus are still only providing 84.21 on their website and I wonder if this is an Asus issue.

Cheers

I found a very interesting page here...

http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=542&Itemid=1

It compares frame rates over different drivers. Ok maybe it's a *tad* premature to declare this an SL problem, given the variation in the examples they give, but the main point is that not *all* games take a massive hit when upgrading to NV9 drivers. Therefore I suspect SL's doing something which is upsetting the NV9 driver pretty badly, and it'll be up to LL to work out what and correct it.

<Caveat> I'm applying a heap of logic on very little experience

Not true. I have a copy of 91.31 that I got from the Asus web site. I tried it; it was no better for SL than the one I got directly from NVidia.

I do hope the performance issue gets sorted out though. SL looks BETTER with the 91.31 driver, but the performance hit is just too big. I'd like to have both speed and beauty

Just a little FYI, there's a new beta driver out if anyone is interested: 91.37. All I gotta say is WOW. This driver has a night and day difference with 91.31. Ran a 3dmark2003 test since my system is a little old and holy sh*t, I gained 1000 marks. SL also runs pretty good and looks great with the AA and AF cranked up. Only downfall is the driver is designed for the 7950GX2 in OEM packaging, but a nice modded INF fixed that little issue so now it installs for a majority of nVidia cards.

If anyone wants, I've uploaded to a file host a file containing the 91.37 drivers with the modded INF. It also has the Tweaks R Us Tweakerizer if anyone wants to try out the Quality or Performance tweaks with it.

Forceware 91.37

And for those who are paranoid here's the OpenPGP signature

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I found the driver (Rapidshare was giving me a SQL error so I had to go searching). No good - with that driver, standing in my house doing nothing, I was sitting on 12FPS. Reload 87.25 from TweaksRUs and it's back to 30.

I've realised I've made a silly mistake, the new card I have is a Gigabyte brand card, not an Asus card so the good news is - this isn't an Asus problem!

So - anyone else having a poor FPS experience with 9x.xx nVidia drivers, please contribute as much information as you can about your system so we can see what the common factors are.

Ummm, the fact that there are some others that show BAD performance, very strongly suggests that it is the driver, not SL that in fact has the problem.

I would guess that it will be something that has gone amiss in the OpenGL support, whereas the DirectX support is broadly the same still, which would explain why some games DIE and others don't.

That sounds very sensible too! Ok Sold to the man with the top hat

With the 9.xx drivers, unlike the 8.xx drivers, processor affinity seems to be the solution. Setting affinity to 1 CPU and using the 9.xx drivers restored my good framerate.