NVIDIA 169.xx, Shaders & Shiny

Selected NVIDIA forceware drivers have problems with shiny objects in the Windlight client. These drivers may also cause shaders to fail to load.

Known drivers to have problems:
169.01
169.02
169.04
169.09
169.10
169.13
169.17
169.21
169.25

Be prepared to downgrade your drivers if you install the 169 series of drivers.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3402
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3164
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3590
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3744
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2899

Add 169.25 to the list of drivers that don't work well with SL.

I am currently using an Nvidia 8800GTX and when trying to use the 169 drivers in XP, it makes a $500 video card run like a $100 one, it basically makes the Windlight client look like a 2005 version of SL on a laptop.

Bad news as an owner of a new 8800gts 512.

The only driver that works for the 512 I know of is the 169.25 beta.

I can confirm it runs like absolute crap in second life. Framerate horrible, bump mapping avatar options not available. The 8800gt at least had liveable performance with the 169.12 drivers. Too bad the card was an overheating crash fest that I exchanged for the brand new gts 512.

The bleeding edge hurts.

Santa just gave me a new GeForce 8600 GT card, and I've spent the last 24 hours trying to debug using it with SL I tried it with the most recent driver, as well as the one that came with the card (169.21).

Note that the issue with "shiny" in Windlight has been fixed (see Jira VWR -3164), but bumpmapped takes about 5 seconds to load on my system.

More serious for me is water transparency in the current viewer - ocean reflections and ripples are totally broken, which is a big downside to this new card. I understand this is a NVidia bug, not an SL one, but hope it can be resolved somehow.

The original drivers for the 8600 are like 100.01 or similar I think which the water reflections didn't work and the latest drivers don't work either, try a 167.xx driver from Nvidia's archive.

As reported in another thread, 163.75 works like a charm in both current edition and windlight.

I don't think the 163.75 will work with Nvidia based 8800GT or the 512Mb version of the 8800GTS cards (these are newer). When I try to downgrade it that driver it says it can't detect any compatible hardware.

However 163.75 should work with 8600 series cards without issues.

Has anyone tested the 169.xx drivers on the new version of Windlight that came out yesterday?

...the driver archive on www.nvidia.de only has the 100.xx.yy and 169.xx.yy drivers, where can i find 167.xx.yy?

Sorry, that was supposed to be 163.75 , miss typed that. Any previous driver should be listed under archives on the Nvidia web page. http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html

I have loaded Vista 32 bit on my quad core 6600, 2 gig, 8800gtx and loaded the 169.25 drivers and it all seems to work fine for me, all options are available in the latest Windlight as far as I can tell. I saw a few FPS improvement over XP and 163.75. Haven't tried 169.25 in XP yet.

I am assuing that your refering to the BETA drivers

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.28.html

ForceWare Release 169 BETA
Version: 169.28
Release Date: January 10, 2008
Operating System: Windows XP, Windows XP Media Center Edition
Language: U.S. English
File Size: 38.1 MB

then the

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.21_whql.html

ForceWare Release 169 WHQL
Version: 169.21
Release Date: December 19, 2007
Operating System: Windows XP, Windows XP Media Center Edition
Language: U.S. English
File Size: 43.8 MB


for the 8000 series Geforce

Nvidia control panel reports it as 169.25. It was the latest released driver available when I set up Vista a few days ago.

ForceWare Release 169 WHQL
Version: 169.25
Release Date: December 20, 2007
Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit
Language: U.S. English
File Size: 31.8 MB

In Vista 32 bit not XP

um he was not refering to vista
Dah people know diff

These days the driver website anyone can get the drivers they need without problems. Problem is people have to SAY which they want ( which that too is nolonger aproblem with driver downloads ) XP or Vista Simple..........

I'm attempting To use the Nvidia 169.21 with an 8800 GTX and getting the error update your drivers or contact customer support. their response was to get a compatable card lol. update just tried beta version 169.28

On Vista or XP? I have the 169.25 working with the 8800gtx with Vista.

on XP,

Yes I have tested and the rendering is slightly better, but still totally unacceptable. The 169 series drivers do not appear to have vertex shaders and testing on the mainland and on a Havok 4 island yields the same results. Tweaking advanced settings in the nVidia control panel also makes no difference.

I have now tested the current stable release, current Preview, and both the previous and yesterday's Windlight, all on a dual-core Windoze XP box. I've not tested on my Linux or Vista rigs and don't plan to. The 169.xx drivers make SL near unusable in all of viewer, at least on XP.

Consensus seems to be that the 163.75 driver works best ... it can be found on Softpedia.

One wonders how many people running nVidia GPUs with the 169 drivers will try SL and decide it is borked and leave permanently? Given nVidia's marlet share and the rate at which their newer GPUs are selling, this could have a measurable impact on LL's sign-up rate.

here you go............

what are you all seeing that makes you think 169 is broke?
i'm new to SL and use a 8800gtx with latest drivers and i have tried all 3 clients from release to windlight.
All are stuttery which is shocking considering my 8800gtx and dual core and 4gb ram.
Avilion area runs at like 5 fps in windlight.

Evga has 169.28 drivers for XP and Vist on their download site.

I am getting stuttery play when using a 8800gt OC with the 169.25 drivers.
Looking at the framerate info, it doesn't appear to be slowing at all, just stuttering
However, all the shaders are working fine in Windlight (1.19.0)
SL reports things as folows:

CPU: AMD (Unknown model) (3013 MHz)
Memory: 2046 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista (Build 6000)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 GT/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!
OpenGL Version: 2.1.2

Any thought on why this is stuttering so much?
Thanks for any help offered.

Yakumo Masukami

Read the other posts in this thread. I have found the same to be true for me. The 169.xx drivers do not work well, at least for some of us.

I have been having success using the 163.75 driver, as recommended in this thread.

I'm not so sure it is GC related as such, but the Windlight Client.. I was getting constant freezes (every 20 seconds for 5 seconds), until the latest 'small update' to the Windlight client over the weekend. It seems stable for now at least.

Hello. Just to input more data. I'm reporting little problem with 169.21. Shaders and bump enabled on 1-19-0-80044 WindLight. Just a rare freeze here and there, once every few sessions. That could mean anything anyway. I also run with multi threading enabled in debug.

XP Home SP2 latest updates
Mobo XFX 6801 LT SLI
CPU Intel Core2 Quad Q6600
2 XFX NVidia 8600 GT. (SL doesn't seem to run well in SLI mode. Trying to force any of the SLI options chopped my FPS in half)
OCXZ SLI tuned 4GB RAM (2X2GB)
SLI ready Ultra X Pro Power supply
No overclocking on anything.

FPS is between 30 and over 50 in normal activity.

Hope this helps someone out there.