Current driver of choice?

It seems that a lot of GPU problems revolve around specific versions of drivers. Though NVidia has their own support structure, you can often learn from information reported by others who fold.

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dschief
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Current driver of choice?

Post by dschief »

Jumping back into GPU folding, Have 6 GTX 760's. still running 327.23. what is the consensus "Best" driver version?
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Re: Current driver of choice?

Post by folding_hoomer »

327.23 my be old, but it is yet still the best one for your GPU´s under Windows.
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Re: Current driver of choice?

Post by Jimboc »

[removed previous contents]

I apologize if my post appears to be “hijacking” this thread that is not my intention. I’m simply trying to encourage constructive discussion. Thank you.
Last edited by Jimboc on Sun Apr 05, 2015 10:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Current driver of choice?

Post by 7im »

Reports of any driver with any GPU? That doesn't make sense. Aren't you looking for help with your Titans? What's best for Kepler has not been the best for Maxwell, depending on several factors. It would be better to start your own thread if you want to go this far off topic from the original poster.
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Re: Current driver of choice?

Post by bruce »

As a general rule, when new hardware comes out, it may take a few upgrades before that driver is "best" for that hardware. Many revisions after that point may just optimize specific games and have no appreciable effect on folding performance. Rarely, a driver problem may be fixed which reduces performance (as has been true recently) and then the fundamental question is whether or not FAH happens to use whatever feature was fixed At that point, nobody has enough data to positively answer the question although folks may express their prejudices.

Also, recently, the new drivers for the new hardware (Maxwell 2, in this case) all seemed to have a bug which clearly affected FAH and it seems likely an upgrade to the latest drivers is critical to FAH. This may or may not have resolved that issue. In any case, the "best" driver for Maxwell is not the "best" driver for Kepler -- and there may be additional variations that apply within each family of GPUs.

You both seem to be talking about Kepler (though different Kepler chips) so the answer is probably the same for both of you, but it's still a question for NVidia and they don't seem to be talking (publically). There's always an implied promise that newer drivers can support new features, provide bug fixes, and that they do not reduce the performance of previous versions -- but that implied promise isn't always true.
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Re: Current driver of choice?

Post by Jimboc »

Hi 7im and bruce,

Many thanks for your useful information concerning how different versions of the Nvidia driver work with different GPU architectures. I naively had forgotten about this difference. This also explains why one driver version might work well for one GPU architecture and not another.

I have removed the contents of my previous post since it hijacked the thread, which I reiterate was not my intention. My apologies for the confusion caused and for not explaining my previous question very clearly.

Have a good day.
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