Should I update my Nvidea drivers?

[Max]

It's been more than a year since I last updated drivers for my Nvidea 9800 GTX. The current driver is 6.14.11.8618

Given the past graphics updates of AH2 should I update?

Thankees

[Skuzzy]

I wouldn't.  All the latest drivers are optimized for the Fermi based video cards.  The driver you have is probably the best one there is for that model.

[Max]

   One less thing to do

[633DH98]

I did a Nvidea update a couple weeks ago and wound up reverting back.  Strange behavior when switching windows while running X-Plane and restoring back to the previous driver cleared the problem.

[Skuzzy]

You really have to pay attention to the release notes for any NVidia/ATI driver update.  If there isno specific mention of the video card model you have, then it is best not to update the driver.

Both companies update drivers more for new product support than to fix problems with older products.

[Krusty]

PCIe GeForce 9600 GSO (1GB) here, and I ran the 188 drivers I think (188, upper 100s, 180-something?) for a while. I was skeptical about the update, but after a while I bumped it to my current 257.21 and it gave a noticable boost in smoothness and fps in several games. It has even eased up some of the choke in BFBC2 and that plays a bit smoother (surprising, that!).

It didn't specifically say it changed anything for my older card, but overall they optimized something somewhere so that I'm getting better performance. I kept that version and have been running it since.

[BoilerDown]

They often improve their drivers in ways that speed up many of their graphics cards, not just the new ones that they want you to buy (and therefore list in the release notes).  So yes, I would definitely update.

You can of course keep a copy of your current drivers on your hard drive somewhere in case you want to go back.  When I update drivers, I always keep the present version, install the new version, and if it looks ok, delete the old version, so I always have two versions, (one that I know is good and the newest version) on my hard drive.

[Skuzzy]

Neither company NEVER leaves off a video card when they list what the changes are all about.  The cards they list, are the cards that are tested with the new code.  If it happens to work with an older card, it is sheer dumb luck and that is all.

I run into more problems from people updating to the latest drivers, when they have a 5 year old video card, than any other problem I deal with.

[BoilerDown]

Alright we can play it that way.  The version that broke the fan speeds fixed a blue screen problem with GeForce 9s, the version that fixes the fan speed problem is 197.13 .  So upgrade to that.  Unless you have Adobe CS5, then update to 197.45 instead for faster performance with that software.  All that is documented in the release notes.

Or just update to the latest version and call it good for another year.

[eagl]

Neither company NEVER leaves off a video card when they list what the changes are all about.  The cards they list, are the cards that are tested with the new code.  If it happens to work with an older card, it is sheer dumb luck and that is all.

I run into more problems from people updating to the latest drivers, when they have a 5 year old video card, than any other problem I deal with.

You used to say you had more problems with vista than with any other problem...  Are the vid drivers worse than vista now?