Best GTX 580 driver for 3dsmax ?

[AltoR]

Hello you all

I have a simple question: what is the best driver for my new graphic card ?
It is the Gainward "Phantom" GTX 580. I am quite lost with all these drivers coming around: nitrous, WHQL, non WHQL etc ... Before I buy this new card, I had a Quadro FX 1700 which was running with Maxtreme driver: I liked this driver. But I heard that Maxtreme driver isn't built to run with GTX 580 ... I want to be sure I run the best possible driver to take full advantage of my machine so ... I am waiting for your advices

I work on 3dsmax Design 2011 64bits with VRay, sometimes running VRay RT too.

Here are the machine specs:

_ Tyan S7010 motherboard
_ Dual Xeon X5680 @ 3.33 GHz
_ 24Gb Corsair RAM
_ Windows 7 Pro x64 on a partitioned OCZ SSD Revodrive x1 180Go
_ 2 Western Digital RE4 RAID0 for data storage

Thank you

[vlado]

If you intend to run V-Ray RT on GPU, you need one of the 270.xx drivers.

Best regards,
Vlado

[AltoR]

Thanks a lot for your answer Vlado

I am going to give this one a try. But, for now, I have a 3dsmax service pack 2 installation problem: I have a "Windows Installer" message, something like "the program you are trying to install is not the right version ..." I checked it: no doubt it IS the right sp version. Weird ...

So, I am now running 3dsmax design x64 2011 on Windows 7 Pro x64 and I can't install max SP2: I hope it is not going to cause problems with VRay ...
Did you ever hear such problems ?

[AltoR]

Display problems

I installed the latest WHQL nVidia driver (280.26) and the latest VRay version.
VRay is running fine, except that sometimes cpus are not running at 100% when calculating the Light Cache (although I set "Number of passes" to 24).
But I have display problems: secondary command of the quad menu isn't accessible ... and, with large scenes, the "pan" command works fine when "Pan View" is the active tool but, when the active tool is "select object" and I try to do a pan with middle mouse button, I have a lag time.

I would like to try another driver for my GTX 580 but I just can't find one on nVidia web site.

Does anybody have an idea for where to find another GTX 580 driver please ?

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Nvidia archive section. Google Nvidia Driver archive....

[AltoR]

Thank you: on the nVidia archive drivers page I see Beta drivers ... I am going to test the last Beta one to see if it solves my problems.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

If u want to use RT GPU U need 270.xx drivers...

[AltoR]

Ah ... ? OK. I didn't find time to test RT on GPU yet, and I thought that the very last drivers 280.xx were OK but, ok, I am going to install 270.xx.
Thank you

[instinct]

guru3d.com has quite some archive and quite a lot of beta drivers...beware...testing beta drivers can make you addicted and ruin your live :P

[AltoR]

No need of Guru3D.com to have a "ruined" life, it's already done
Thank you for the link, I will have a look for sure

[Donald2B]

The "lag time" you are experiencing is a well documented problem with the last couple versions of Max w/ nVidia GPUs. To get around it, just assign a shortcut to the pan tool and then you are free to move around without the lag.

[AltoR]

Thank you for the trick but it does not seem to work for me: I changed for 3dsmax 2012, I've done the last update (containing sp1), and I installed nVidia 270.61 WHQL driver for my GTX 580. Then I checked that there is a shortcut assigned to the "Pan View" command ("Ctrl+P" is assigned). I went for the Direct3D 9.0 driver inside max but ... I still have the lag problem, even if with the Nitrous driver ... Any idea ?

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Task Manager > Process (if I'm not wrong) > Pick VRAY > Right CLick > Change priority to Very LOW
Change 3ds max priority to LOW.

Enjoy.

[AltoR]

I changed 3dsmax and VRLservice priorities both to "Low" but it doesn't change anything, there is still the lag problem when the "Select Objects" is active .

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Not Vray Service and dont do both to low.

u need Vray RT engine to be Very low
and 3ds max to be LOW.

So the 3ds max priority outrank Vray RT so it will get the necessary CPU for work - and windows wont lag