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phoronix
08-21-2008, 06:50 PM
Phoronix: NVIDIA 177.68 Beta Driver

Tuesday the NVIDIA 177.67 Display Driver was released and then yesterday the ATI Catalyst 8.8 Driver came out with OverDrive and CrossFire support. Today though we are back with another NVIDIA Linux driver release. Due to fallout from the 177.67 driver, NVIDIA has replaced it just two days later with the 177.68 Beta.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12785
deanjo
08-21-2008, 08:52 PM
Due to fallout from the 177.67 driver

That's a bit a bit of sensationalism isn't it? Overall response for the 177.67 beta drivers were overall very well received. If anything they should be credited for keeping their customer's in the loop and releasing a new version when sufficient amount of bugs have been fixed.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=14

The 177.68 driver did have a lot of changes from the 177.67, they were able to find and fix more bugs on a beta driver and released it to the public to try out in a extremely fast manner. Is that not after all what beta releases are for?

ATI's binary has had on going (and very old) bugs still not addressed in them either despite just releasing an "official" driver every month with the same bugs present over and over.
Spydr4590
08-21-2008, 09:56 PM
Well you have to realize this board is geared more towards ATI users. However that being said this is great coverage, and pretty non biased for a fan site. I'm using these new drivers on my Nvidia box and I'll report back my findings.
Adny
08-22-2008, 12:05 AM
Hmm... I was initially quite pleased with the 177.67 drivers (they fixed the WINE problems I was having with 177.13, for instance) but I did also notice some weirdness (including one X hang).

There was also some extra corruption if I ran compiz without indirect rendering (with it, all is well - but sucky animation-wise... without it the animations are slick but various things redraw (or fail to) quite badly).

So.. I'll be interested to see if I can see a difference with 177.68.

Oh, as for the whole fallout thing... when was the last time that nvidia released a bugfix so quickly? Methinks that something convinced them to be quick about it this time ;)

Update Well, well... 177.68 is running better for me than 177.67 did. Interesting :)
dickeywang
08-22-2008, 03:14 AM
It would be helpful if you include a link to the actually Nvidia release note/changelog, wouldn't it?

Personally, I don't like how Phoronix arranges links in their articles, I understand it is good to have a high clicks rate so people tend to have links in their article that would link to other articles on their own website, but from a reader's point of view, most of the links in Phoronix's articles are useless to me.

Sorry if it is a bit off-topic. :D
taipan
08-22-2008, 04:18 AM
BRAVO Nvidia.
apaige
08-22-2008, 04:38 AM
What are we complaining about again?
oyvind
08-22-2008, 05:17 AM
I've used 166.67, and it worked fine. Now I'm using 166.68, and it works great as well (GF8600 GT).
Med_
08-22-2008, 10:05 AM
It is still far from being reasonably correct. On my NVS 135M, in KDE 4.1, it takes a good 4-5 seconds just to resize konsole for instance. Try moving the folderview plasmoid, it is shaky (also the case on my 8800GT though whereas it is perfectly smooth with the 2D nv driver ...). There is some progress but still a very long way to go nvidia.
deanjo
08-22-2008, 10:49 AM
It is still far from being reasonably correct. On my NVS 135M, in KDE 4.1, it takes a good 4-5 seconds just to resize konsole for instance. Try moving the folderview plasmoid, it is shaky (also the case on my 8800GT though whereas it is perfectly smooth with the 2D nv driver ...). There is some progress but still a very long way to go nvidia.

Did you apply the performance tweaks?
Med_
08-22-2008, 11:19 AM
Did you apply the performance tweaks?

Yes, unfortunately.
M1AU
08-22-2008, 12:00 PM
It would be helpful if you include a link to the actually Nvidia release note/changelog, wouldn't it?

Personally, I don't like how Phoronix arranges links in their articles, I understand it is good to have a high clicks rate so people tend to have links in their article that would link to other articles on their own website, but from a reader's point of view, most of the links in Phoronix's articles are useless to me.

Sorry if it is a bit off-topic. :D

That's somehow true.
Links could generally be better applied, especially to external websites.
ferreira
08-22-2008, 05:40 PM
It appears that the CoolBits (and overclocking in general) are totally broken for me on 177.68, my card is 6600GT AGP. Can anyone confirm that?
Tares
08-25-2008, 03:48 PM
Can anyone confirms that 177.68 kill "3d" mode in diablo 2 ? :)
Adny
08-25-2008, 04:22 PM
I'm happily using 177.68 with Diablo 2 here (8600GTS, Fedora 8, WINE 1.0, Diablo2 1.12a using Direct 3D).

I've not had a problem with Diablo2 for a long time now with any of the NVIDIA drivers... I used to use a GLIDE wrapper with it, but that started causing problems and lately the D3D option has been solid so it's in "it just works properly" here.

Speaking of "killing" WINE using games, 177.67 and 177.68 both solved the problem I was having with 177.13 killing "Max Payne" whenever I tried to save / pause / drop to the menu, etc.