Windows 7 NVIDIA: 181.71 vs. 185.85

Master Chief

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I have a GeForce 8400M GS in my notebook (see full specs in sig) and when I install RC1 I automatically download the 181.71 driver which I remember was getting a lot of hype a few months ago. It works pretty well. Then I went to the Nvidia website and checked for any newer drivers for my GPU and it gives me 185.85. So I download and install it, and I see no difference except that with 181.71, if I right click on the desktop I get an immediate reaction. 185.85 gives a slight <1 second lag before reacting. I rolled back my driver, but I'm wondering if there's any reason I should go for 185.85 over 181.71.

Thanks.
 
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I'm with you Master Chief. The newer versions of the nVidia drivers (185.81 Beta and 185.85 WHQL) have definitely slowed down the response time on right clicking on my desktop, which is really annoying.

I understand the performance increases, which I particularly noticed in Crysis/Warhead, and the cool new Ambient Occlusion features for CoD: Modern Warfare.

The real question here is, how can I get the nVidia Control Panel back up to speed?

I don't want to roll back the drivers, but will have to if this problem cannot be fixed.

The irony of it all is that the 185.85 drivers are WHQL certified, while the Beta 181.71 actually worked faster in desktop mode. I've noticed this same error both on Beta 7000 build and RC 7100 build

I've searched online to no avail for an answer, but are there any Gurus here who may have fixed it?

Thanks a bunch
 
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Could I make another suggestion? Have you tried Nvidia's 15.35 or 15.37 for Windows 7? You can get them from Link Removed

I haven't encountered any noticible problems with the 15.37 yet.

Sorry ignore my gibberish that is the nforce driver I have been talking about!

I have been using the 185.85 and have not noticed a particular slow down in desktop performance, except when opening the file browser.

Do you notice a difference if you disable the 'add desktop context menu' in the nvidia control panel?
 
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I've tried it both with and without the context menu and I feel no speed up. Even when I open the control panel itself, I'm noticing lag/delay in opening compared to earlier drivers.

I think the culprit might be the 15.37 drivers, as I remember the vista 15.26 not being sluggish.

But even after re-installing I still feel sluggish. might need a clean windows re-install, or a repair.

Thanks anyway
 
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From the release notes"

From the 185.85 release notes:
Accelerates performance in several 3D applications. The following are examples of improvements measured with Release 185 drivers vs. Release 181 drivers (results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings):
  • Up to 25% performance increase in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
  • Up to 22% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with antialiasing enabled
  • Up to 11% performance increase in Fallout 3 with antialiasing enabled
  • Up to 14% performance increase in Far Cry 2
  • Up to 30% performance increase in Half-Life 2 engine games with 3-way and 4-way SLI
  • Up to 45% performance increase in Mirror’s Edge with antialiasing enabled
Seems to me theres a few good reasons to stick with 185.85.
 
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Why not try something in between?
I've heard a lot of good things about 182.50 which I'm currently using.
I've read that 185.85's have a lot of little bugs, including showing 2 instances of the nvidia driver service (nvvsvc.exe) in the task manager, which is the main reason I ditched them.
 
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I've only got 1 instance of nvvsvc.exe showing on 2 of my 5 pc's.. the other 3 use ATI cards.. I'm interested to read the article that stated that.. Do you have the link?
 
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I have a few links I found on google complaining about dual instances of nvvsvc.exe, and two computers running W7 RC1 x64 with two instances of nvvsvc with the 185.85's
 
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Per other posts on this forum, 186.08 seems to have fixed the right-mouse click issue for most people. I have it installed myself under 64-bit and it's working fine for desktop and movies. I haven't tried any 3-d gaming yet - I only play COD4 and am reading about the various multi-player punkbuster issues with 64-bit that remain unresolved.
 
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I believe why some people aren't seeing two nvvsvc.exe's in Windows 7 with the latest 185 drivers is because they don't have Show Processes From All Users selected in Task Manager.

When you use the default of showing current user only, I only see one instance with the new drivers.
 
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Could be, but I have Windows 7 set to show ALL processes for ALL users (on all of my pc's) and there aren't 2 instances of nvvsvc.exe running on either pc.. I'll post a screenshot when I get home.. One PC has an Nvidia Geforce 9500GT 1GB PCI-E card in it and the other has an 8500GT 512MB PCI-E in it.. Odd that so many have this issue.. I guess I'm just one of the lucky one's..

So installing the latest drivers solved this issue for you?
 
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Actually, all of the newest drivers give me 2 instances, anything newer than 182's.
Since so many other people say they get this too and it seems to be normal, I decided to live with it.
 
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One remaining nag for me is the fact the nvidia drivers dont seem to let me lock down the scaling options properly...so any game not running in native res gets sidebars.
 
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Colorspace settings missing

On the Vista drivers, I could change the color space - I cannot find this feature on the W7 drivers. I could switch between 0-255 mode and 16-235 mode.
 
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