Which Nvidia graphics driver should we be using?

Scenestealer wrote on 3/4/2013, 12:33 AM

I am wondering if all new Nvidia driver updates are suitable for MEP2013?

I originally had the version 280.26 Magix said they had tested with Cuda and GPU Hardware acceleration (see FAQ at Magix Support). This showed the GPU (load sensor in GPUZ utility) to be around 25 to 40% when playing AVCHD 1080 50P footage in the timeline at full resolution and through, crossfades, etc. I have a GTX460 card

Since updating to the newer drivers offered every couple of months by Nvidia I noticed the GPU activty has halved (10 to 20%) so I did a clean (custom option) install back to the 280.26 and have seen the GPU usage return to the previous level.

I am not sure if the playback performance is significantly better with this older driver but I think so. I also think the MPEG4 export with Cuda goes faster.

Has anyone else had any experience with this?

The newer drivers are usually to add support for newer series cards 5, 6 etc. but I have seen some discussion on the German forum that suggest that HW Accleration doesn't work with the 6 series cards!! Can anyone confirm this? Maybe the driver Magix tested is the only one that works properly.....!

Peter

Comments

terrypin wrote on 3/4/2013, 4:11 AM

Hi Peter,

A very interesting question that I've been hoping might crop up! I'd love to know if there is an optimum.

I'm technically weak in this area but from reading around I get the impression that some/all of recent versions would offer no improvement for XP 32-bit users like me. And/or would offer no improvement unless I was an enthusiastic game player, which I'm most definitely not.

I think the most recent version I installed was 310.90. I have 314.07-desktop-winxp-32bit-international-whql.exe in my Download folder. But (for reasons I've forgotten!) I'm now using 306.23. But I'll now consider trying 280.26 in view of your comments.

How does the PhysX version affect this? Here's what i currently have installed:

Hmm, I see that I have two versions of Physx installed!

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On an associated topic, do you know a foolpproof method of converting the driver version shown in Windows to the 'nVidia driver' that always gets used in discussions like this?

Or for better quality: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/nVidiaDriver-1.jpg

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Scenestealer wrote on 3/5/2013, 1:02 AM

Hi Terry

Maybe we need to ask Ralf about this one but I am definitely sticking with the 280.26 for the forseeable future. As I said most of the newer versions only add support for newer cards and optimisations for some games.

I think the PhysX driver is irrelevant to MEP. Coincidentaly, this time I decided to use a driver dowload of the 280.26 from the Graphics card manufacturer's (EVGA in my case) web site, instead of Nvidia's site, and it does not include the PhysX drivers in the package, being 40MB smaller. This in conjunction with a clean install via the Installer has cleared physX from my system with no ill effects.

BTW the German experts always say to use the manufacturers drivers instead of generic drivers from the chip maker. I know this is important with laptops as driver customisations are often made by the manufacturers but I would not have thought it would make much difference with Graphics cards. But who knows why EVGA decided to take out the PhysX drivers.

I do not know why the naming convention is different with the 3 series drivers as I have always understood (and seen written by magix support) that your method is correct for splitting out the relevant numbers.

Peter