I instaled this driver last night, and while it was great in every other game I own, the performance was cut in half in LFS. I tired everything, nothing worked. I'm using the 8 series card, 8600GTOC to be exact. I should say though, I've overclocked it some, but not much, about a 5% - 8% OC.

I was averaging anywhere from 75fps with lots of cars to avg 150 or so with none. Even blackwood took a huge hit in fPS, I was averaging 30-50fps, when I usually get way over 100-150, in 1680x1050 everything maxed out. I guess if anyone else has this problem lemme know, I'm getting tired of waiting for Nvidia to catch up to Vista.

After uninstalling the drivers, and reverting back to the 169.xx driver everything was absolutely fine. So is there actually an issue, or did my OC have something to do with it, becaue my OC was there the entire time, within both drivers the OC was there. I used RivaTuner.

EDIT: It must have been a bug, because I decided to go ahead and install the newer drivers anyways, because I play a number of DX10 games, so I need the newer drivers for peformance and compatibility etc etc. Anyways, I did exactly what I did the first time, and it simply worked. I have no idea what the problem was, but it's fine now. The only thing I haven't tested is whether Nvidia's control panel will allow tweaking of LFS, I'm just using nHancer still because of the bug in the old NV driver, I'll test it some other time, now that everything works, I'm creating a restore point, and not messing with anything.

Can we get this moved to the appropriate forum pls?

Ya sry I thught I was in there, half asleep. It is however important if it's actually a bug, for any 8600 users. And god knows whatever cards it may effect in LFS. It seems to only effect LFS.

I just downloaded the same drivers and they work fine for my 8600gts overclocked. Check to see if your 3d settings in the Nvidia control panel have changed or your clocks have changed. The only problem I have with my card is that if I use 16xQ with supersampling, I get frame rates as low as 8 fps at some parts of blackwood (over the crest) and other places.

I hope I don't still have this trouble when I get the 9800GX2, because I'll have no choice but to use those drivers. I'll investigate further. Maybe the problem was I wasn't using Nvidia control panel to force my AA and stuff, I was using NHancer, in fact, I bet this was the problem. The glitch is probably finally fixed for LFS in NV CP so I won't need nHancer..I think I solved it. Btw, 8600GTOC for sale, 3 months old with warrenty, only 4% overclocked and only the last month, temps never even hit 80C. $75 Firm because it's a perfect card for LFS.

Thanks for trying to help guys, turns out it was some kind of bug, I posted the explanation in the original post, again thanks. This was certainly a strange issue, I'm usually the one giving advice..this really had me buggin a bit.

Quote from DHRammstein :

The only thing I haven't tested is whether Nvidia's control panel will allow tweaking of LFS, I'm just using nHancer still because of the bug in the old NV driver, I'll test it some other time, now that everything works, I'm creating a restore point, and not messing with anything.

Nvidia Control panel > Manage 3D Settings > Select a Program to Customize > LFS.

hope your new drivers has this

It does, the older driver did as well, it was just bugged. I guess it is a very common issue among this community with 8 series cards. Anyways, the new driver is good, performance seems the same, but everything works. I still haven't tested to see if the bug is gone, because I finally got nHancer to work, now it looks great again, so I'm not gonna mess with it. Maybe someone else with the 175.xx driver can tell us.

I have the 8600GTS and it keeps messing up the textures. Temps run at about 68-70 underload....sometimes up to 74-75. but around 72 or so, sometimes it missplaces the textures, like the road will be made out of billboards, and the steering wheel will be made out of bricks....lol. I thought I may have ate some bad brownies at first but then I alt-tab out and back in then it was fine for a little.

I'm not entirely sure if its the new drivers or not, but I think I'm gonna just go back to the ones on the CD.

8600 GT here. I've never had any of the problems stated in this thread so far. Only issue I've had is with the AA etc not working in CP with 169.xx drivers.

Having said that I tried patch Y20 and set the AA to max in that and ever since I've not been able to get rid of AA in LFS, even though I have two installs on my PC, Patch Y and Y20. Both now have AA no matter what I try. I actually saw a similar thing in patch Y18 with the 169.xx drivers but put it down to a driver glitch because of that known AA bug in those drivers. As far as I'm aware though the latest drivers dont have that issue, so I'm beggining to suspect the way AA is set in LFS is global.

Either way, I'm not too impressed.

Don't worry it's certainly not global, in fact most racers probably don't even use AA. It requires a lot of GPU power, a 8600GT is probably the minimum needed to even use AA.

I forgot all about this post, and I feal I should go ahead and let everyone know there's nothing wrong with the new NV drivers, at least none that I've found. So please, ignore my OP

Quote from DHRammstein :

a 8600GT is probably the minimum needed to even use AA.

Joke, right?

I was using AA on my old radeon 9700 pro (not a lot mind you )

A 6800GS is easily capable of running 4*s AA with 16*AF with virtually no FPS loss at all.

Quote from The Moose :

A 6800GS is easily capable of running 4*s AA with 16*AF with virtually no FPS loss at all.

I think it's impossible to put that much strain on a GPU and not get any loss of FPS, the term virtually helps, but, nah, you must be running games in extremely low resolutions, making your CPU your bottleneck.