GeForce ForceWare 262.99 WHQL Download & Discussion

Guys, anything about the drivers? It's really not that interesting to read a discussion about an OS that's almost a decade old.

 

I never bashed anyone just told him the truth so get off high horse :wanker:

Also just because you get different results from me does not make me wrong !

Back on topic now ?

 

:cheers:

 

Bliss your wrong, read my explanation please. As I said before, the amount of Video RAM you have doesn't get directly addressed by the computer''s CPU and OS. You interface with the address mapping table for the card in the relevent PCI/PCI-E slot. Typically for most single PCI-E slots this is 512Mb. The card and GPU itself then addresses the Video RAM. So on the same machine with either a 512Mb Graphics card or a 2Gb Graphics card you could still see the same 3.25Gb of memory.

You can check exactly how much memory your machine is addressing by running winver as follows:



Kindest regards

Zoozer

 

Why is yours service pack 1 and it isnt even out yet?lol

 

Thats vista.Of course it's out ,I think even SP2 is out for vista.

 

ooops I thought it was windows 7.

 

Hey anybody have the Power management mode in nvidia control panel change back to Adaptive by itself?I must of changed it to "prefer maximum performance" 3 times since I installed this driver.260.99 did it too.

 

I have a dual boot machine into a 32bit version of vista and a 64bit version of Windows 7

That screenshot was rather old I took it some time ago.

Kindest regards

Zoozer

 

WTF you still posting off topic BS for ?

I am NOT on 32bit and ain't been for long time so I cannot check anything at this end now.

Topic is drivers not 32bit v 64bit OS.

 

Minor correction as this 1 simple inaccuracy makes your entire argument, 100% false.

Applications in 32bit versions of Windows can only address 2gb of ram regardless of how much the OS can "see", not 3gb as you initially claim. Even if that same 32bit application is run on a 64bit OS, it's still restricted to a maximum of 2gb of memory space. It's a hard-coded 32bit restriction.

Yes, I removed the stupid picture because some people don't understand how much more effective scaling is...

Winver doesn't tell you how much memory your "machine" is addressing....it tells you which version of Windows you're running....hense the command "winver" aka Windows Version....Winver, does on the other hand, tell you how much ram Windows can address based on what the system itself will permit Windows to address.

If 4gb of memory is installed, the system is addressing the full 4gb. The difference in memory between the installed 4gb of memory and the "Windows addressable" memory limit is due to 32bit hardware restrictions. The "missing addressable space" is used for hardware level system resources such as memory addresses, etc. It is in fact NOT used by the graphics card. If you install 4gb of ram, you will have roughly 3.25-3.5gb of "Windows addressable" memory depending on the specific hardware used. Every addressable piece of hardware, will have it's accessable memory addresses stored in the "missing" memory. Microsoft was even kind enough to add an update for Windows Vista that allowed Windows to display the full installed ram capacity....

 

Is anyone getting some crazy crashes with MSI afterburner on these drivers?

My overclocks were great until the 260 series, and I've been seeing A LOT of lockups and screens going black on me but the audio still playing, and weird stuff like that...

Can anyone confirm?

Possibly my power supply, but... Nothing was happening before.

 

Where's the poll! =[

 

The picture was scaled correctly and it showed the amount of addressable memory your machine can handle IF your running a 32bit machine. It shows nothing on a 64bit machine. The full addressable range will always be limitted to 4Gb on a 32bit machine.

Erm, yes thats exactly what I said a couple of posts back so I agree with you

Zoozer

 

Just one last comment. No, that small error does not make the argument "100% false". Even with the error, the point still stands, video ram takes up addressable space so it does not make my argument "100% false". Video RAM takes up addressable space, that was the argument, they were wrong.

Of course I copied some of it, I said IN my post it was from a "simple google search". Now let's get over it and play some games and test some drivers.

 

On a 32bit system the 'hardware mapped memory' hole has to be mapped under the 32bit limit hence the default use of that space. Most systems actually support PAE since the advent of the PPro in 1995, and since that allows larger pages to be assigned (the page tables are increased to 8 bytes allowing the base addresses of page tables and page frames to be 24 bits) for up to 36bits of adressing space *AND* to enable moving the 'memory mapped hole'.

But thanks to crappy driver ports from Win98SE "WDM compliant" driver models to WinXP (and 'class compliant' drivers for obscure hardware) that incorrectly assumed things were always 32bit and just wrote there regardless (causing a bsod) MS limited PAE in XP (sp1 or sp2 I forget) to avoid such BSOD's and still allow PAE to be enabled for DEP support which requires it. Ie, 36bit address support is no longer available for non Server & Enterprise class OS installs, and again we were limited to the 'memory mapped hole' being under the 32bit limit and thus losing some physical ram on systems with up to 4GB installed.

64bit systems suffer neither of these limitations (32bit limits or the need for PAE to go beyond) and also don't *need* physical devices mapped anywhere near the '4GB hole' so you shouldn't lose any ram to the 'memory hole' on any modern 64bit system with Win7 64bit. Also for the GPU's mapping most bioses allow you to specify a window of a given number of pages (you dont need the equivalent to your gpu's memory buffer unless you're looking to shave off a few tiny fractions of a % of overhead in paging through a more limited window versus mapping the whole thing.). Ie, with my 1GB GTX285 I still use a 256MB 'vga' window, and it works just fine.

Also some 32bit applications support the /3GB switch which allows the memory paging on 32bit Windows to switch to 1GB for OS/kernel & 3GB per app, instead of the 2GB allocated per app otherwise. This also is not relevant for 64bit windows with 64bit apps, though I suppose the 32bit WOW subsystem might have some switch that's similar that I've never bothered to use. I never found /3GB to be well enough supported across my 32bit apps to make using it wortwhile.

 

It does not show the amount of memory your "machine" can handle....it shows how much memory WINDOWS can address after the system reserves what it needs. Windows shows the limitation permitted by licensing...not by architecture limitations.

video ram does NOT take up "addressable space" in system memory unless the graphics processor is integrated and shares system memory directly. If this was done, then during the "XT/AT" era, systems would have never managed to operate. The original 32bit AT systems were no different from current 32bit ATX systems in underlying operation. The few exceptions are that AT systems could boot on as little as 4mb of ram....which, according to you, a system containing a graphics card would be incapable of running because the graphics card would consume the memory necessary for the system to function....and since all AT systems required a dedicated graphics card, no computer would have ever functioned with less than 8mb of ram, which would have made the requirement of 4mb false.

 

I think we're saying the same thing

 

No, you keep saying "machine"....which is WRONG. "Machine" and Windows are 2 completely different things. The system itself, can handle 4gb, Windows on the other hand, can not. The "system" is the collection of hardware. Windows is simply the operating system. YOU can't seem to grasp that Windows and the "machine" are 2 completely different things. 1 being hardware, the other being software. The "machine" is restricted by architecture limitations, whereas Windows is limited by licensing.

 

These wont install on my 280gtx. says i don't have graphic compatable hardware?