DX10 drivers for ION LE (tested)

[runawayprisoner]

All modded drivers that enable DX10 support will/should be here after they've been tested.

186.44 - default HP drivers for full-ION Mini 311 (tested under Windows 7, for ION LE only. If you have ION, you should already have these installed)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WS1YXJNJ

Pros over other drivers:
- Greatly improved DX9 performance compared to any other drivers I've tried.
- DX10 support (obviously)
- Less micro stuttering compared to the 19x drivers.

Cons against other drivers:
- DX10 support forces all supported games to go into DX10 mode by default so now you have to manually add console commands or parameters if you want to fall back to DX9.
- No PhysX support by default, if you installed these drivers after installing PhysX, you have to reinstall PhysX to take advantage of hardware decoding.
- Might get you more addicted to gaming on your Mini 311 since it should run heaps faster now.
- Doesn't work under Windows XP so XP still gets "poor" gaming performance.

Know bugs:
- Flat screen scaling settings in nVidia Control Panel does not properly indicate which settings are in use (either stretched to fullscreen or stretched with aspect ratio or no stretching) under Windows 7.

191.56 originally for Quadro GPUs (for Windows 7 only)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CHV4IQFN
http://www.2shared.com/file/8813717/59b ... 0modd.html (uploaded by Tartagnan)
http://ul.to/ck9p1k (also by Tartagnan)

Pros over other drivers:
- Latest version as of this time.
- Supposedly more stable since it's a workstation GPU drivers set.
- Better than 18x in that it lets you set power settings per application regardless of whether you're plugged in or on battery.
- Some games get slight performance boosts.

Cons against other drivers:
- No Vista support... (yet)

Known bugs:
- Flat screen panel scaling under nVidia Control Panel still doesn't work right... and actually gets worse than 18x so if you care about this, stay away from these drivers. You can work around this by installing 18x, set your desired scaling settings, then upgrade to these drivers.

187.66 - newer than 191.56 in terms of release date. (has Vista support but untested)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CFOVMHI4
http://ul.to/6gs734 (uploaded by Tartagnan)
http://jump.fm/ENQBB (also by Tartagnan)

Pros over other drivers:
- Micro stuttering significantly reduced compared to other drivers.
- Added new lower widescreen (16:9) resolutions than 1280 x 720 so you don't have to run at 1280 x 720 all the time to get fullscreen. Also some games perform nicer at lower resolutions (Lost Planet, Devil May Cry 4, and Resident Evil 5 come to mind, also Crysis)
- Inexplicably boosted CPU WEI score to 2.4. Proof: http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/969/wei.png . Other scores are relatively the same but if you compare them to my old WEI score in the other thread, you'll see that this is quite a boost.
- Enabled PhysX page in nVidia Control Panel so now you can enable/disable PhysX anytime.
- Some tweaks to HDMI hot plug and other stuffs... may fix some problems for people, I'm not sure...

Disadvantages over other drivers:
- No per-application power settings. 19x series are still better in this regard.

Known bugs:
- Sometimes nVidia Control Panel won't install if you install the drivers using the provided "setup.exe". In such a case, uninstall the drivers, then use Windows Device Manager to install instead, and you should have the Control Panel back.
- Need For Speed Shift is barely playable with PhysX enabled, but will crash a whole lot.
- Enabling PhysX may also crash your games and applications a whole lot even if PhysX is not used. That's why I added the PhysX page into the Control Panel so you can disable it. PhysX doesn't get installed along with these drivers, by the way.

195.55 - Latest driver release (Windows 7 tested, Vista not sure. ION profile included by default)

http://www.zshare.net/download/68696421c63f66ee/

Advantages over other drivers:
- OpenCL support.
- Flash HD playback compatibility improved for most contents.

Disadvantages:
- None

Known bugs:
- WHQL signature not present for all drivers in this set, therefore... it's not signed completely. But the signing does nothing anyway.

Last but not least, try at your own risks. You have been warned.

Oh, and if anyone can provide mirrors for any of the already uploaded drivers, it'll be greatly appreciated!

[chesh]

Thanks a ton for uploading these. I was just about to download the drivers and do the .inf file myself. You should send a msg to laptopvideo2go.com about the ability to make this change so they can add it to their custom .inf file maker.

[runawayprisoner]

The process is a bit different than what laptopvideo2go is doing (which is just adding in device ids for the most part, sometimes other tweaks) so I'm not sure if we should burden them/him with this task. Support for ION LE in some drivers are almost non-existent and that's where it gets complicated since you have to manually add everything (registry settings, which files to copy, which resolutions to add, etc...). Also they/he might not have an ION LE device handy to test the drivers.

At best I guess we can spread the words in the community so everyone can do his or her own drivers.

I'm testing 191.56 (latest drivers, from the Quadro series) right now. It installs fine, so next is DirectX 10 support... if it's still there.

[bobkat]

you mentioned better game performance and a con as "poor" gaming performance in XP.

Is this only true for all games including WoW (which is what i use my mini for)? Or is it just some games that get the boost with the dx10 enabled drivers in windows 7 vs. dx9 in xp?

[runawayprisoner]

The con is actually a joke. Since Windows XP does not have DirectX 10, enabling DirectX 10 support is... redundant. And these drivers are Windows 7/Vista only anyway.

As for better gaming performance, it actually depends on the game. If the game has always been CPU-limited, then this won't improve the situation at all. However, if the game is GPU-limited, like you are trying to run Crysis at 1280 x 720 for instance, then it will get the boost.

[SHiN06]

Thanks for the upload ! But why did you upload this version (186.44 32)? i've modified the inf on this version 191.07 and it works fine and i've same results in dxdiag

[runawayprisoner]

Thanks for the upload ! But why did you upload this version (186.44 32)? i've modified the inf on this version 191.07 and it works fine and i've same results in dxdiag

Just for people who would like to try HP stuffs, ya know. Plus it's relatively stable. I'm working on getting 191.56 to work now since it didn't even have an ION profile even though you could put in the device ID. Only one thing is missing from 191.56: brightness control.

[SHiN06]

Oh ok, i'll stay in 191.07 then

[runawayprisoner]

191.56 uploaded! Brightness control works! I don't have Vista so I haven't tried to work with that yet. Will do when I have free time.

[solarnoise]

for compatibility purposes, wouldn't it be best to use the ION Notebook driver from nVidia, and mod that one? I know there aren't any "official" releases for it yet, but I would probably want to use those instead of the Quadro based ones.

[Thinkharder]

for compatibility purposes, wouldn't it be best to use the ION Notebook driver from nVidia, and mod that one? I know there aren't any "official" releases for it yet, but I would probably want to use those instead of the Quadro based ones.

They use a unified driver architecture, so basically all drivers in one file kind of thing. It shouldn't make a difference.


I'm using 191.07 myself, work great although suffer slightly from micro stuttering. Not really noticed an increase in DX9 performance though.

[alaiwy]

How do you install the driver in your megaupload link?