+1 I've wondered the same thing.

I'm not aware of any existing database, but creating a list (in one place) would be very useful.

It varies by GPU architecture, OS, motherboard, game, and probably other factors. It would be very difficult to catalog...

Not really. I would approach drivers on a per-game basis. Pick a game, check the release date, study the readme, check driver release notes up to a year following the release of a game for game specific issues and fixes.

I'm pretty sure you'd need to go per-game per-card for it to be meaningful. Some cards can't run older drivers. Sometimes a driver does behave differently on the various GPUs as well.

And there are complications like I had 440BX BSODing on drivers newer than 56.64 with some card. It might have been GeForce FX.

With GeForce 3/4/5 though I will say that 43.45 / 45.23 tend to be very dependable drivers for a lot of old games (up to DirectX 8) and they seem to work fine on every platform I try them with.

Would be nice to know at which driver they stopped tuning for a certain card (while still supporting it). Often performance took a dive when newer cards got released.

I thought about testing all 98se drivers but there are just to many drivers and to many cards. Then there are lots and lots of games.....

I tend to look at reviews (anandtech, toms) and see what the release driver is. For example: if they released gf4 ti with driver 40.00 and fx5800 with driver 50.00 then everything in between is at least optimized for gf4 and should work very well.

If it is for a certain game, i do what Phil said but optimized for a certain game could mean breaking others.

That seems still true today: drivers optimized for the latest Farcry/AC etc. takes 5-10% off my fps in Grid autosport for example on my current Radeon 290. Had the same thing with my last Nvidia (gtx660).
In the past they even managed to break compatibility with my sony tv: Latest games ran perfect but using my tv to watch a movie resulted in getting purple glitches (tested with r290 and 5870)... amazing.

Also unbelieveable is the fact that you buy an AAA title and the first thing you see is the big Nvidia logo, but Sli doesn't work yet (same with AMD). The number one reason i will never use sli/crossfire again.

There never was/will be a perfect driver 🤣

meljor wrote:

In the past they even managed to break compatibility with my sony tv: Latest games ran perfect but using my tv to watch a movie resulted in getting purple glitches (tested with r290 and 5870)... amazing.

This is reaaaally weird.

Anyway, I already talked about a driver collection featuring a heap of beta and OEM versions, usually never officially released by nvidia. This may especially help to dissect issues. Especially if they are caused by just a simple dll.

+1 for the by game approach, unfortunately.
I spent many hours tweaking 42, 43, 45 detonators and some forceware drivers for win98se and xp to squeeze the last frame out of an overclocked gf4200 card. Some are faster and better supported by tweakers, but have their own problems...

philscomputerlab wrote:

Not really. I would approach drivers on a per-game basis. Pick a game, check the release date, study the readme, check driver release notes up to a year following the release of a game for game specific issues and fixes.

I have noticed that NVIDIA does not always update the list of graphics cards supported in their driver readme file. For example, driver versions 66.94, 71.84, and 77.72 have no mention of GF6 6600GT support in the readme, however this card is supported. I've noticed the same problem with NT4 driver readme's as well. As such, I am back to testing a wide range or NVIDIA driver releases per OS per card per system per game.

NVIDIA driver version 43.45 is the only revision to work with the GF4 MX440 AGP8X card in NT4 with Quakes 1, 2, and 3 in an Asus TUSL2-C (i815EP) using a Via C3 Nehemiah. The non-AGP8X GF4 MX440 card, on the other hand, will work with lower versions, such as 29.42. GF6 series cards with newer driver versions will not function with OpenGL in NT4 for whatever reason.

I ran a little comparison of NVIDIA driver revisions in XP Pro SP3 on my VIA C3 1400 machine. The frame rates noted are for Quake 3 "demo four" with the MX440.

Nvidia driver 77.77 = 57.2 fps
Nvidia driver 67.66 = 62.4 fps
Nvidia driver 61.77 = 65.0 fps
Nvidia driver 56.72 = 62.8 fps
Nvidia driver 52.16 = 63.0 fps

I also ran a comparison between operating systems using the VIA C3 1400 with Quake 3. I used the results from the driver version which yielded the fastest frame rate.

NT4 (Nvidia driver 43.45) = 65.8 fps
W98SE (Nvidia driver 53.04) = 64.3 fps
W2K (Nvidia driver 61.77) = 66.6 fps
XP (Nvidia driver 61.77) = 65.0 fps

whats the best driver version for 6600GT 8x on windows me that doesn't hang the system on shut down please 😀

Apologies for reviving an old thread but did anyone manage to find anything? I just thought of this exact question today as I was looking at the pile of VGA cards and GPUs I still have to test on my systems and realise that driver management is a b*tch.

after havin troubles with my GF3 Ti 200 and testing alot of drivers, 23.11 for win 98 seems to do the best job at the moment

I did some compatibility tests and benchmarks today.

Card: Riva TNT2 M64
System: Socket 7 with AMD K6-2
OS: Windows 95 and 98 (results were exactly the same for both OS)
Games: Need for Speed 3 and 3DMark 99

Drivers from https://www.philscomputerlab.com/nvidia-9x-gr … cs-drivers.html

2.08-12.41 work well
21.81-29.42 had glitchy and garbled graphics that made everything unplayable
30.82 and newer either crash to desktop or computer freezes with black screen

I then did some benchmarking and version 6.31 had by far the best performance of the working drivers. The older versions were really slow. It seems that there was a great amount of optimization between the 2.x and 6.x drivers.

But this is not to say that newer drivers are bad - on my newer Windows 98 machine (Athlon 64 + Geforce 4), version 45.23 ran great and had good compatibility. It really depends on the age of your card and rest of the system.

I reported my results for Windows 98 + GeForce FX5600 + DirectX 8.1 here Re: HELP! - GeForce FX5600 in win98se

Basically 53.04 has the best performance, but some compatibility issues (e.g Thief 2) when using DirectX 8.1. For Windows 98 retro rig with FX5xxx I would highly recommend to use 45.23. Don't waste your time trying newer drivers. This should apply to FX5500, FX5800 and FX5900 as well. FX5700 requires newer drivers and is therefore not a good match for Windows 98 retro rig as it requires 53.04.

In my testing, I found that the optimal driver version also depends on what instruction sets your CPU supports.

For example, it's generally recommended to use the 30.82 driver for an AGP4x GeForce4 Ti4200. However, I found that the 40.72 driver provides a non-trivial performance boost on my Athlon64 system because it can utilize SSE2, while 30.82 can not.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-05-21, 19:08:

In my testing, I found that the optimal driver version also depends on what instruction sets your CPU supports.

For example, it's generally recommended to use the 30.82 driver for an AGP4x GeForce4 Ti4200. However, I found that the 40.72 driver provides a non-trivial performance boost on my Athlon64 system because it can utilize SSE2, while 30.82 can not.

That's true! I also had a significant performance boost on my Athlon 64 machine with one of the newer drivers. I couldn't remember the version number though, that's good to know.

I've also read that some of the later drivers (20.x and upwards) made use of MMX instructions to improve performance. I would have loved to try that on my K6-2 machine, but alas, none of the newer versions worked for me. Does anyone know which exact version added MMX support? Maybe it's in the release notes somewhere?

asdf53 wrote on 2022-05-22, 04:47:

I've also read that some of the later drivers (20.x and upwards) made use of MMX instructions to improve performance. I would have loved to try that on my K6-2 machine, but alas, none of the newer versions worked for me. Does anyone know which exact version added MMX support? Maybe it's in the release notes somewhere?

I'm not sure, Nvidia's readme files seem to be a bit sparse on what was changed in which driver version. However, the driver control panel does sometimes show which instruction sets are being used. Here's a screenshot from the 40.72 driver on my Athlon64 system:

Additionally, I noticed that Quake 2 shows which CPU instruction sets it uses when you open the console after changing the resolution:

Note that I'm using the 3DNow! optimized version here, so that may have something to do with it as well.