Nvidia GeForce Release 174.74 Beta Drivers

**MIG-31** · Mar 27, 2008, 02:17 PM

Supports GeForce FX, 6, 7, 8, and 9 series GPUs including these newly released GPUs:
- GeForce 9800 GX2
- GeForce 9600 GT
- GeForce 8300
- GeForce 8200
- GeForce 8100/NVIDIA nForce 720a
- NVIDIA nForce 730a
Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI� technology on DirectX 9 and OpenGL.
Adds new PureVideo HD features for GeForce 9800 GX2 and 9600 GT:
- Dynamic Contrast Enhancement
- Dynamic Blue, Green & Skin Tone Enhancements
- Dual-Stream Decode Acceleration*
Improved performance on many DirectX 9 and OpenGL applications.
Numerous game and application compatibility fixes. Please read the release notes for more information on product support, features, driver fixes and known compatibility issues.
Users without US English operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.

BlueMak · Mar 27, 2008, 02:55 PM

ANyone tried it? Is it worth it?

***Vikingod*** · Mar 27, 2008, 03:27 PM

Pretty good list of fixes in the release notes. I'll give them a shot this evening if I get the time.

OmegaRED · Mar 27, 2008, 03:31 PM

I didn't see anything in the release notes which made it look interesting for my vid card. I'll check the feedback on a few other forums and see how their benches are.

slickric21 · Mar 27, 2008, 06:02 PM

Great drivers these. I've been using 174.xx series for a while now, (some with modded .infs to support 8800 series).

Have some nice new features such as 'Pre-rendering limit' in 3d settings, 'show only programs on this computer' in profiles menu. Also some new features under video + tv section.
Also the 174.xx series finally allows me to add custom resolutions very easily without having to set up the paramaters manually, and custom res's are scaled/centered correctly if i chose 'do not scale'.

Performance is good and IQ is great for me.

BlueMak · Mar 28, 2008, 12:53 AM

It took me 3 efforts and 2 minutes to start downloading the drivers. Sure it was at 1400kb/s but still weird from nvidia.

slickric21 what you said about scaling made me want to try them.

BTW, I find it funny I have signed up for their newsletter like 10 times over the last 2 years and still to receive a single email from them.

BlueMak · Mar 28, 2008, 02:51 AM

Update:
This is so funny.
So I uninstalled the previous display drivers rebooted, installed these beta and rebooted.
I went to the control panel to check for the flat panel scaling and this time indeed I can't choose anything and as soon as I hit the Apply button have it go back to Le my display handle scaling.
No, this time it is even better, it has selected that option and all the options are greyed out, I cannot choose anything.
Excellent work Nvidia, well done! I would say some more things here but they are not right for this section of the forum.

slickric21 · Mar 28, 2008, 11:00 AM

Sorry Bluemak, I didn't add that I still used the Enableovercan compensation fix to first allow me to change the scaling option.
I just assume that its a given to apply this fix if you've got a 8800 series card and want to change scaling options on Win xp.
This driver still hasn't fixed that issue, I doubt any will. Its nearly a year since we first discussed the very same issue right here on driverheaven.

What 174.xx did fix was it easliy allows you to add your own custom res's (the old drivers used to fail the 'test' of your custom res unless you click advanced and manually chage timing options etc etc).
And now these custom res's will scale correctly (if you've used the overscan fix) wheras previous drivers would only scale res's that were in the control panel by default.

Sorry you got your hopes up

***Vikingod*** · Mar 31, 2008, 07:54 AM

Gave these a shot this weekend, and I'm impressed. I don't know what changed, but I can finally play Lost Planet on Xp X64. Previously, the game would load, there would be no other characters on the first level, and I couldn't go anywhere (very strange), also the benchmark would typically crash the game before it would load. Now, everything is fine (pretty fun game actually).