What are the best drivers for a GeForce 3 Ti 500??

I am sick of these new forceware drivers, they suck total ***. Can't play RTCW with pb on without hardlocking the system a few seconds after loading a map. I cannot play DVD movies as well. Can someone tell me what are the best drivers for this card? I need to know what driver version has best performance, supports all of the card's features and still runs without trouble like I mentioned before.

come on, doesnt anyone know a good (modded) driver? Maybe a link to a webpage?

Omega 14345.
Choose "Performance" when asked during installation.

I did some research today, tried some different drivers:

Nvidia 53.03:
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7414905

Nvidia 40.72:
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7520032

Omega 45.23:
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7518481


As u can see, there is a BIG difference between those. The 40.72 drivers score more than 1000 points better than the 53.03 drivers. The biggest difference is in the dragothic, nature and advanced pixel shader tests. The Omega I have tried scored somewhere between them. Note that the geforce is not OC'ed in these benchmarks.

I will try the Nvidia and Omega 43.45 soon, thanks for ur suggestion!

Don't put too much faith in 3DMark..You know about the "optimizations", do You?
Better try Codecreatures for reliable results.

how do u mean optimizations? There are only optimizations in 3Dmark 2003 and they are for GeForce FX only. But anyway this shows how much difference there is in these drivers.

crap, just discovered that those 40.72's suck, they do not support directx 9 so most of the new games run like **** and crash totally. Gonna try 43.45 now!

i would run the 44.03 i loved them with my TI4200

@steven....
44.03 isn't bugfree, remember the dragon in 3DMark2k1?

@Panzerknacker
4x.xx are heavily optimized for 3DMark2k1, just check the results for game 4 (nature) and you'll see 30.82 - pretty low, not yet optimized; 40 thru 44 - high, fully optimized; 45.23 - lower again, optimizations withdrawed. Games 1, 2 and 3 won't differ much, cuz these are more CPU-dependant, so the whole thing is no good for videocard testing.
Just give Codecreatures a try, it puts heavy load on the video and yields comparable results. And it's not optimized!

o sorry, didnt know that, thanks for the info . Anyway, why arent there any good drivers out that run both games and 3Dmark good? Arg screw it, 3Dmark sux I will try codecreatures and some game benchmarks from now to see which drivers are the best. I mean the 40 series drivers give way better 3dmark scores than the 50's but the 40's suck total *** with games, I havent found a 40 that runs all my games without trouble! So, I think I do some more research on this and see what performance gain I REALLY get with other drivers, by doing some gamebenchmarks.

Now you're on the right track!

yeah but I am now just getting crazy, this crap is driving me ape****.

ALL forceware drivers suck: when I install one of them I am not able the watch DVD movies (macrovision copy protection fault with any DVD player program), and RTCW and ET lock up directly after loading a map (RTCW is my favorite game so it needs to work).

ALL drivers older than the forceware ones suck too: For example, beyond good and evil has graphical corruption with with 45.43 or older, Halo makes my computer hard-lock with any driver older than 43.45, and the Far Cry demo has extreme graphical corruption with anything below 43.45 as well.

In other words: there are NO drivers for me out there, they all suck! It isnt my computer that causes the probs with the forceware drivers because I have had exactly the same problems on my other computer (with the same graphics card). I have tried the Omega drivers as well but that didnt change anything.

So, this really sux. Can someone please help me and tell me where I can find real good drivers or maybe how I can make those forceware drivers working good?

Panzerknacker said:

ALL forceware drivers suck: when I install one of them I am not able the watch DVD movies (macrovision copy protection fault with any DVD player program), and RTCW and ET lock up directly after loading a map (RTCW is my favorite game so it needs to work).

Click to expand...

This could possible be a OS problem. Not a driver issue.

Go to device manager, then click on IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Highlight the Primary Nforce IDE driver, right click, update driver, install from a list (advance). Then choose, Do not search, I will choose the driver. Choose the Primary IDE channel driver and install that. That should take care of the DVD.

If this doesnt work then odds are it is a OS problem, since I can run any and all dvd programs and play ET and RTCW on my GF3 Ti200 with any nvidia drivers.

As for the best, I have found the 45.23's to be the best for my GF3 Ti200.

well, I already changed those IDE drivers a while ago, because the Nvidia IDE drivers didnt let me burn cd's. The Wolf and ET problem is not a OS issue, I have tried it on a fresh install of windows XP pro and as soon as I install any of the forceware drivers I get the problem. As soon as I downgrade to 45.23 or lower it works fine. There is a topic on planetwolfenstein about this and it seems that many people are having this problem. On my other computer (which is a VIA chipset mobo by MSI) I was having exactly the same problems with the DVD (other DVD drive) and these drivers, same problems with wolf as well.

For some reason I have always trouble with nvidia drivers. As far as I know ANY driver after 40.72 started giving me problems with booting. In win98se the drivers would simply not install because after rebooting to complete the install the system never got into windows. When I started using windows XP I got the problem that with any of these drivers the winxp loading bar hangs for about 20 seconds, then continues loading. This slows down booting up alot and is very anoying. Now with some of the 40's and 50's series drivers I also have the problem that when launching a game, there is a 1 out of 10 change that it hangs at the point when changing the resolution to the one that the game is using. Some times this results in a hard-lock.

I dont understand these things. I think my videocard (Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti 500 by Creative) is just a total exception and does not like these drivers for some reason. Anyway, it's driving me ape**** because the 40's work well expect that some games do not run with them, and the 50's have the RTCW and DVD problems, so in other words there is NO driver for me. I think I'm gonna give up and get a ATI or something, unless any of you knows HOW THE HELL THIS CRAP CAN HAPPEN

I hear ya bud. I play rtcw a lot as well and the 5x.xx with the ti series and punkbuster is a recipe for hard locks. Nvidia says its PB fault, PB says they don't know how it got broken in the new driver releases from nvidia so they can't fix it.

I went with the 45.23, mainly because it was the only driver that would stay installed on my machine after I put the 53.03s on. I haven't had any trouble with it, but I've only played rtcw and morrowind so far with them.

I just used the 30.82 drivers with my TI200. Why use anything never, when Nvidia AFAIK said they wouldn't make any changes for the GF3 range, beyond the 30.82 point?

Had no problems running new DX9 titles.

@PingSpike:
Yeah I hope that nvidia will fix the problem in their new drivers, I'm gonna write them an email that when they don't I go out and get an ATI. I'm using 45.23 now as well, as far as I know it works with any games except Beyond Good & Evil.

@rop
lmao have u ever tried running Halo, Beyond Good & Evil or the Far Cry demo with them?

*update*

just found out that I cannot use the 45.23 drivers as well, because my system has a 50% change of locking up during boot. I'm gonna say screw it all and use 30.82

LOL u wont ****ing believe it!!!!! 30.82 makes my computer rebooting every time just after the windows xp loading bar has gone!! lol! Ok I now go back to 28.32, the last version I know of working 100, no 1000% with my videocard! Lol, 28.32 runs nothing but RTCW but I do not care anymore, screw it

Me thinks you need a new gfx card