Guide to a better driver for your video card

********First off, I'd like to say that I did not make these drivers...I'm just trying to help out the players with better drivers. All credit should be given to the developers of these drivers and I've given the links below in order to find their sites and possible donate for the effort in making these great drivers.*******

Alot of people who have problems with graphics and lag sometimes have it due to outdated drivers. Nvidia especially doesn't release new drivers all that often from their site but send out beta or good upgrades without puting them on their main page. For each new updated driver there are a few different types of "tweaked" drivers from OC hobbyists that come out that modify the .inf files in order to get better gameplay and image quality from their graphics cards(both Nvidia and ATI).
There are a couple though that stand out for me as exceptionally boosting image quality and FPS(frames per second - low FPS gives choppy gameplay) and have listed a few for everyone below to help them get the most out of the game...because I've had about 20-30 FPS boost and less lag because of these drivers I highly recommend you checking these out to see if they help you:smileyvery-happy:.

Please remember that not every system reacts the same to every driver and some may or may not work well for you.

****Also, make sure that you read below in order to follow the steps of correctly uninstalling your previous drivers. If you have problems after installing these and you haven't followed the instructions below then that is the reason why. These drivers are not covered by your cards warrenty, although I haven't heard any situation in which it damages the card without overclocking. I just thought I'd point that out as a warning.********


step 1ownload new drivers


Nvidia Cards

XtremeG 81.84 v.2

download here
the v.2 refers to a tweak that XG recently did to accomidate larger online games like BF2 and EQ2 which, like MxO, have large texture files to download quickly with the worlds. This driver, for me, really smooths out downtown and created less lag as well as having unreal and rich image quality unlike anything I'd seen in regular drivers. If you've never seen these drivers check it out cause it makes the game beautiful.

ATI Cards

XTreme-G WarCats 5.9 XT (based on ATI Catalyst 5.9) - here

This is the super tweaked version of the latest catalyst drivers from ATI.

People on the forums say they've been getting up to 4000pts higher
scores on their 3DMark scores and one person said that WOW ran much
smoother.
They have a new beta version of these for mobile graphics cards that I'm currently testing on my laptop with MxO. I'll post them if they are any good.


Omega Drivers 2.6.71 (Catalyst 5.9) - here

If you don't like the Warcats above from XtremeG then try these out.
These are probably the best known tweaked ATI drivers and are really
good. This is what I use on my laptop and it lets me run MxO much
better and faster. I use these cause they don't have laptop support on
the Warcats.



To get other Xtreme G drivers goto: www.tweaksrus.com

-both Nvidia & ATI tweaked drivers

To get other tweaked drivers goto: www.guru3d.com

-both Nvidia & ATI tweaked drivers



Both the sites above are great sites and have great forums to read
explaining how to safely overclock and tweak your graphics cards as
well as computers in general. Everyone is really helpful and
knowledgeable. They also have great freeware tools to tweak your
system. very nice stuff.


Step 2: uninstall previous driver

*****One MAJOR thing that you MUST do everytime you try new drivers to to properly uninstall your previous drivers.*****



How to uninstall drivers properly:

-uninstall from Add/Remove Programs

-Restart, go into Safe Mode (F8 after BIOS loads)

-Driver Cleaner Pro - *if you don't have it d/l it - here

-Restart

Step 3: Install new drivers


-install Drivers from setup file (after decompressing .zip file-if needed)

-Restart

-Done



*If you don't clean the drivers after uninstalling it can and probably
will cause driver problems that you think will be the new driver but
are really just errors from having an old driver file left behind after
uninstalling.



If you have any problems let me know, I'll try and help

Message Edited by bonopi on 10-12-2005 12:03 AM

just wandering if anyone's tried these drivers out yet?

nice, have you ever tried XG Warcats? if not I'd like to get some feedback, since I'm a big XG fan.

Does this apply regardless of system specs and graphics card model (beyond the "brand" anyway)?

I'm stuck with a PCI Radeon 9250... would these drivers help me (if they would work at all)?

Sounds like an awful lot of work to try something that might not even work for me...  but I could use a boost in performance. 

yes, for both Nvidia and ATI, these drivers work for every Nvidia and ATI card made...if your card is really old it might not help too much really just because you can't push older cards to do much more performance really, but yous sounds like it should get a little kick from it and work a little more smoothly.

If you have laptop video cards then there are different drivers for the Nividia XG, and ATI XG warcats but the ATI Omegas work for all cards.

But, I just remembered that there are a few cards that drivers don't work with because the origional drivers dont work with these cards....moded drivers are just tweaked versions of the origional in which the origional cards supported are the same...so if the card wasn't supported before the tweak it will be the same afterwards.
\

Message Edited by bonopi on 10-12-2005 09:24 AM

Message Edited by bonopi on 10-12-2005 09:25 AM

Ah, let me add a caveat (or 2) for the Omega drivers for other ATI users -

They're great if all you do is gaming - if you're using your ATI card for vid capture and other things, they might not be the best choice.

At least one version of Omega drivers had a fatal bug if you ever needed/wanted to install WinXP over itself; the system enters a loop at boot installing drivers - it would fail, send you back to that goofy setup screen. Probably not a big deal (since the odds are you're doomed at that point anyway) but not good since you can't go back and back up any data - the only option is to go forward and format c:. Kinda ugly, and he's apparently fixed that, but if it happened once, well...ouch.

Note: I'm not down on Omega - they are very good, as advertised, and can really boost your fps. (I used them for a while - the reason I quit has more to do with other functionality than having to format my c: drive, to be honest). If you're comfortable monkeying with drivers, and willing/able to go through the hoops necessary to uninstall unconventional drivers, by all means sample Omega.

On the third hand, my vanilla install with this 9600 card works quite well w/out getting all fancy, so....

"But, I just remembered that there are a few cards that drivers don't work with because the origional drivers dont work with these cards....moded drivers are just tweaked versions of the origional in which the origional cards supported are the same...so if the card wasn't supported before the tweak it will be the same afterwards."

this is what they posted on the XG site for the warcats...

"After intense tweaking and testing, WarAnakin brings you the
XT version of the XG WarCats 5.9.  This version is surpassing the
XG WarCats 5.9 PRO in everything!



All video cards are supported (including all in wonder), except laptops."

why did this get moved?
wouldn't the guide to learn macros be in the same sort of category?
not complaining but not many people will see this here and thus not many will use it.

unfortunately....
i was really hoping for my first sticky...:smileysad:

and now noone will see it except for people who already have problems which is a little backwards I think

Well wherever Joel is or this new dude named "Ronc" (btw, who are you?
and what have you done with joel!?!?)they will probably sticky it. Joel
stickied alot of stuff like this. Not sure how this new dude works
but...I'd sticky it if I could. I'm gonna install those new nvidia
drivers tonight probably, and I'll let you know if it works. I have
been expierancing more lag lately in mxo. I installed a new nvidia
driver couple weeks ago....wonder if that has anything to do with it.
either way, I'll let you know

yea its probably the driver...someone from the faction said that lag from downtown was gone for him after installing those. Good luck:smileyvery-happy:

The NVidia drivers are now easier to install with Tweakerizer.  I didn't notice a major difference, but it may have given my FPS a little boost on Highest Detail.  Besides, I think my main bottleneck for that setting is RAM (1GB).  YMMV.