Best Nvidia Driver for OFB? Anybody know?

[Braveheart]

What a pain in the patooty! My next video card will NOT be an Nvidia if I want to continue to play Sims 2! Could someone tell me what the latest most stable (rolls around laughing at the word stable) driver is for use with a 128MB Nvidia FX5200 card. I absolutely fear doing a driver update without getting some feedback first. Thanks so much. Tracy
My system specs are as follows:

P4 2.2ghz
80GB hard drive (50 gb free)
Nvidia FX5200 128mb Driver version 78.01
1024 mb RAM

[Mister Roboto]

Hmmm, I think actually the problem you're having with playing the sims 2 2 isn't the video card driver, but the fact you have a FX5200.  You need a new card, not new drivers.

Try a 6600 if you have an AGP slot or a 6800 as they're dropping in price, or a 7600 which comes in AGP I believe.

Also what's your processor?  That will have a huge effect also.

The sims 2 is a resource hog, you really can't play smoothly with most any high end system (I mean TOTALLY SMOOTH), but something stronger than a FX5200 will be a big improvement.  If that's not an option try more RAM, how much have you?

[BlueSoup]

I can still play fine with my old MX4000.  I did recently update the drivers, but I really don't know much about it either.

Granted, I'd love a new card, but since I have only a PCI port, that's not really an option right now either.

[yetyak]

I had great luck with the 77.77 version drivers with my FX5200.

[pinhead]

I use Fx5200 as well and i have no problems at all with the 71.84 drivers.
I just turn off vsync in the video card properties and the performance is great.

my processor is an athlon XP 2400+ and i have 768 Mb of RAM

[Braveheart]

Pinhead, what does turning off vsync do? and how do I turn it off? Thanks

Yetyak, What are your system specs and do you have vsync on or off? Thanks

[Minena]

I was using an FX5600 256 AGP card with the 81.95 drivers with zero problems. Upgraded to a 7600gs 256 pci express with production drivers 8.3.9 and had occasional blinking issues, deleted groups.cache and have had no further problems.

Friend has 6600gt 128 AGP and was having terrible problems with shearing went to the 81.95 drivers also and deleted groups.cache and its been working fine since.

seems delelting the groups.cache on a semi-regular basis can help alot.

[pinhead]

vsync is the Vertical Syncronization of your monitor.
I'm not an expert in this part, but if i turn it off will not be too slow when moving around
the camera in the game or zooming.

You can adjust this property here:
right click in your desktop
select Nvidia/"Monitor Model Name" (mine is Samsung Syncmaster)
When a NVIDIA window open up, select "Performance and Quality Configurations" (sorry, my version is in portuguese)
In the box at the middle (Driver Global Configurations) has some options of quality and performance. Highlight the Vertical Syncronization and uncheck
the box setted as "Controlled by Application". Move the slider to "Off" and click "apply" and "ok".

anyway, is just a small improvement, but make my game less slow when moving the camera.
I don't recommend changing and forcing other properties there, since the game already have some good
performance adjustments and may forcing 2 times the same option (like smoothing edges/anti-aliasing and such..)
will make the game really slow.
let the other options as it is when you install the driver.

[yetyak]

I didn't do anything with vsync, don't remember ever hearing that term before....I had that card in 2 different computers, the first one had a 750 mhz P3 with 768 MB ram and the second one had a 3.0 ghz P4 with 1 then 2 GB ram.  That video card was an upgrade from a MX 440, so it was a fabulous difference.

( Thanks for the vsync lesson, pinhead, now I know what it is.  And it was nothing I ever messed with.)

[Ruann]

I'm not sure what driver version I'm on at home, but I have the same video card on a lower end processor and I'm not having any problems at all.  It actually runs better on my home machine than it does on my laptop, which has a better CPU and more memory (same graphic chipset, but in the GO flavor).

[pinhead]

i know that the game has a cheat to turn off vsync using the cheat box, but i never tried since I'm forcing this
in the driver config.

the cheat is:

vsync off
vsync on

description by maxis: "vsync [on|off] Enables/disables vertical sync - can improve performance, but will sometimes cause visual artifacts if off"

but i don't know if has the same effect since i never tried.

anyway, the cheat will take effect only if the driver property of vertical sync is setted as "controlled by application", of course.

[gethane]

Friend has 6600gt 128 AGP and was having terrible problems with shearing went to the 81.95 drivers also and deleted groups.cache and its been working fine since.

sadly, this "friend" did get a bluescreen/hourglass issue last night

I'm going to try deleting groups.cache again.

[radiophonic]

Stay away from the 8.x drivers from Nvidia's site. They are truly evil (this is from experience with two different cards/machines).

The 7 series drivers work just fine.

[earthmagick]

I haven't been able to play for a few day now because of the blue screen problem. Here is another post about this at MTS2.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=117748&c=1&page=5&pp=25
I had 78.01 installed for NL and it worked great. But after OFB I had graphical artifacts like the picks on the MTS2 thread. I have tried the newest drivers and now I get the blue screen of death with the hour glass. I am still trying to test older drivers. People have tried everything to reinstalling to reformatting. If anyone has any other ideas that would be great.

AMD Athlon xp
1700+ 1.5gh
RAM 1025 gigs
Graphics Card: GeForce FX 5700 LE with 256mb
Direct X 9.0

[Braveheart]

Has anybody ever seen a Maxoid respond to the Nvidia issues in any way? What do they have to say?" MAXIS!!??,  Please at least let us know that you are doing something about this issue." Its obviously quite widespread.

[Emma]

I have the GeForce3 Ti200 and I am still using the 6.14 series....my graphics should be crap really but they aren't! I don't know why.

[LynnMar]

I have the FX5200 , 256MB and I am using the 81.98 driver and mine works allright.

[jrd]

I've finally found an 8-series driver which works good.
83.62

[Ambular]

I also have a GeForce FX 5200 and had some issues, which I fixed when I followed another Simmer's recommendation and backpedaled to driver version 7.7.7.7.  Works fine now, though I do plan to upgrade sometime soon to a spiffier card.

[radiophonic]

Yeah, the 8 series was causing video resets which, at times, would last up to 5 minutes. I suspect it also lead to the demise of my MX440 after which I purchased a 6200.

Now, I assumed the 8 series were no good for me because I was using an older card so I installed them for the newer 6200 card. No dice. Video resets and poor performance. Rolling back to 7 series drivers does the trick.

[Nec]

I am using the fx5500 with the 84.21 drivers and it is running quite well, though I am going to try that vsync thing to see if it makes any difference. I have very densely packed downtowns, and it lags in neighborhood view...that is obviously my fault for insisting that every occupiable space has a building  of some sort on it 

Edit: disabling vsync made it really choppy. I guess it doesn't work for me.

[witch]

nvidia geforce fx5700

I'm using 6.14 as a driver - there's an older thread around where Dr Beast was very helpful, but I just kept going back and back till I found  a driver that didn't misbehave. If you have an older card, often the newer drivers add no functionality to your card so you might as well go back a few steps.

I only have a PCI slot but am getting a Radeon card as soon as I can afford it.

[vilia]

What a pain in the patooty! My next video card will NOT be an Nvidia if I want to continue to play Sims 2! Could someone tell me what the latest most stable (rolls around laughing at the word stable) driver is for use with a 128MB Nvidia FX5200 card. I absolutely fear doing a driver update without getting some feedback first. Thanks so much. Tracy
My system specs are as follows:

P4 2.2ghz
80GB hard drive (50 gb free)
Nvidia FX5200 128mb Driver version 78.01
1024 mb RAM

Ok, our systems are not too different. I've got P4 2.6ghz and more gb in my hard drive.  I am currently using 81.98 with no problems.  I would strongly recommend you back up your files before messing with the drivers as some people have reported they had to uninstall & the reinstall the laatest EP to get it to clue into the new drivers being present. Having said that, just do as witch suggested and play around with it until you get a driver that it least problematic.

btw I am planning on getting a new video card later this year and found DrBeast's suggestions on another thread v. useful

[Simlover]

GEForce 6200 AGP 256Mb card with the 78.1 drivers and no problems.

[Mirelly]

LOL just to add further confusion I rolled back to 71.89 for fx5600/256MB because that suited Civ4 better. Since adding OFB the TS2 has never looked better.