Nvidia V178.24 Driver issues for my PC?

I have a XFX's Nvidia 7900GS 256M PCI-X card installed with the early version of 169.21 driver in Windows XP Pro environment with SP3 and up-to-date patches! My CPU is E4300 Dual-core and has 2GByte system RAMS.

Everything appears to be O.K. even for most of my recent games, except a game called "Overload" which I've bought for my son but it is "freezing" randomly. So I downloaded the latest 178.24 driver from the Nvidia site and un-installed the previous version, i.e. 169.21, in Safe-Mode and rebooted to install this new driver. It appears to work O.K. even in DX tests for graphics. However it is now causing "slowing-down" & very "choppy" in all 3D games, particularly in "Overload". I've tried to re-install this 178.24 several times but it is all the same problem, except after replacing with my previous 169.21 instead. Then the "slow-down" & "choppyness" would go away except I would still have this "Overlord" freezing problems.

I'm just wondering did any of you come across similar issues with driver 178.24 as well?? Thanks

I had random freezes with the 178.24's with my 8800 GT and some games. They are fine with my 7600 GT. The 177.92 versions worked fine with both cards.

I'm graded that I was not the only one who experienced some forms of problems with 178.24 driver! I may, as you suggested, go back the version to 177.92 and try again though.
Thank you for your reply.