older nvidia card users : possible fix for fps woes (inside)

[skyfallr]

Worked for me.

My nvidia geforce 7800 GT 256mb has stutters of 5fps when in treelines zoomed with the current whql drivers. Installed the beta driver below and voila! fps is back up to the mid 20's when zoomed in treeline, 60fps when not seeing trees.

remember to uninstall your current video driver, reboot system and then install this driver to have a clean install.

GeForce/ION Release 256 BETA 257.15 May 24, 2010 Release Highlights:

This is the first driver release from the Release 256 family of drivers (versions 256.xx to 259.xx). This driver package supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, and 400-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs. Learn more about Release 256 drivers here .

New in Version 257.15

• Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0222.
  
• Adds support for OpenGL 4.0 for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs.
  
• Adds support for CUDA Toolkit 3.1 which includes significant performance increases for double precision math operations. See CUDA Zone for more details.
  
• Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel setup page for SLI and PhysX for ultimate control over multi-gpu configurations.
  
• Adds a new NVIDIA Control Panel feature for ultimate control over CUDA GPUs, allowing the user to effectively choose which GPU will power each CUDA application.
  
• Includes numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.
  
• Users without US English operating systems can select their language and download the International driver here.
  

Additional Information:

• Installs HD Audio driver version 1.0.9.1 (for supported GPUs).
  
• Supports the new GPU-accelerated features in Adobe CS5 .
  
• Supports GPU-acceleration for smoother online HD videos with Adobe Flash 10.1. Learn more here.
  
• Supports the new version of MotionDSP''s video enhancement software, vReveal, which adds support for HD output. NVIDIA customers can download a free version of vReveal that supports up to SD output here.
  
• Supports OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language) for all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
  
• Supports OpenGL 3.2 for GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
  
• Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology * on DirectX 9 and OpenGL.
  
• Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software.
  

*Note: The following SLI features are only supported on Windows Vista and Windows 7: Quad SLI technology using GeForce 9800 GX2 or GeForce GTX 295, 3-way SLI technology, Hybrid SLI, and SLI multi-monitor support.

[ubermicro]

I installed this driver, and it made everything worst or didnt change anything in term of fps.

Im having non-stop CTDs

[caydel]

I installed this driver, and it made everything worst or didnt change anything in term of fps.

Im having non-stop CTDs

This driver has been rock solid on my BFG 250 GTS

[geckopow]

This driver certainly helped me with zoomed in optics drop in fps, no difference in general fps though.