Decided to try 270.61 on my (i7/950 SP1, EVGA GTX460SE) machine and had to back out to 266.58. GPU tasks went from approx 15 - 30+ min per task. GPU memory went from 993Mb to 958, even though EVGA Precision & CPU-Z is reporting correctly as 1 Gb. Not acceptable even after several machine recycles. Don't even want to think what it would to with my slower (Q6600, EVGA GTX275/GTS250) machine.

By selecting a clean install, the new install manager came in handy as it accomplished everything in one swipe. Un-installed the old software, recycled the machine and automatically picked up where it left off. Always had a problem with upgrading the video drivers in-place prior to the new installer package, so I always did a complete manual un-install, recycle, install. Time consuming, but it worked without screwing everything up.

Ok I'm using the Win7 x64 270.61 drivers again and I thought I'd try out some 32 bit cuda 4.0 dll files that I had laying around and all I got were computation errors(309), I tried this twice, Once altering the app_info.xml file and once just altering the new files to use the old names, Both tries yielded the same result, the word absent was mentioned of course. Now I didn't lose anything as I'd taken the precaution of shutting internet access off in Boinc and making a backup of all My files from both locations. Unless someone asks I won't post the app_info.xml file. It would be nice to be able to use cuda 4.0, Here on My 2 GTX295 cards. Boinc is 6.10.58 x64 and the cuda file is the Lunatics_x32f_win32_cuda30_preview.exe of course. I do have some idea as to where the files should go in the projects folder. But I don't know what I did wrong, If I did anything wrong at all that is. I do have the 2 x64 4.0 cuda files, Which I did not use once as I don't have an x32f in x64.

libfftw3f-3.dll
cufft32_40_10.dll
cudart32_40_10.dll

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I do have some idea as to where the files should go in the projects folder. But I don't know what I did wrong, If I did anything wrong at all that is.

Hi Victor,
Only a couple of things. Firstly Cuda 4.0 hasn't reached final release status, but is only in release candidate 2, and appears to have several issues on Windows (one being that it seems to be slower). No doubts many of those will be resolved prior to release (hopefully all :) )

Secondly, the old trick of swapping DLLs (as with 2.2->2.3) to upgrade has been discouraged by nVidia since Cuda 3.0, because they now only guarantee compatibility of application & DLLs corresponding to the relvant SDK it was built with. They call that being now 'strongly versioned'. That's because as new hardware comes out, features are being added that change some semantics and fucntionality in the language itself, so the DLL interface changes too.

If it's a matter of thinking 4.0 must be faster, well I can tell you that so far it isn't. It's primarily to add new programming features for multi card evironments, and speedups will probably come down the line in a newer version.

Jason

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Btw, 275.27 are out, with CUDA 4.1. Guru3D has them.

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NVIDIA offsite have 275.27 drivers too

Yeah all 172MB of It, In 12 mins It'll be fully downloaded.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I do have some idea as to where the files should go in the projects folder. But I don't know what I did wrong, If I did anything wrong at all that is.

Hi Victor,
Only a couple of things. Firstly Cuda 4.0 hasn't reached final release status, but is only in release candidate 2, and appears to have several issues on Windows (one being that it seems to be slower). No doubts many of those will be resolved prior to release (hopefully all :) )

Secondly, the old trick of swapping DLLs (as with 2.2->2.3) to upgrade has been discouraged by nVidia since Cuda 3.0, because they now only guarantee compatibility of application & DLLs corresponding to the relvant SDK it was built with. They call that being now 'strongly versioned'. That's because as new hardware comes out, features are being added that change some semantics and fucntionality in the language itself, so the DLL interface changes too.

If it's a matter of thinking 4.0 must be faster, well I can tell you that so far it isn't. It's primarily to add new programming features for multi card evironments, and speedups will probably come down the line in a newer version.

Jason

No I didn't think It would be faster, improved possibly, I guess I'll wait for the Lunatics to sort It all out then, As 270.61 does seem to have sped up a few things, Not to mention going to FF 4.01, Which has It's own pitfalls:
Photobucket Uploader 1.3 & WeatherBug 2.0.0.4 extensions aren't 4.01 compatible, yet.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

NVIDIA offsite have 275.27 drivers too

275.27 is still flagged as Beta at nvidia.com - I don't really call them 'out' until WHQL.

275.27 is still flagged as Beta at nvidia.com - I don't really call them 'out' until WHQL.

They technically aren't considered stable, reliable, or supported until they are WHQL. I've downloaded the 275.27's however some people are reporting weird issues with various settings in different games. So I've stayed away from those, I don't expect the 275 series to go WHQL, but then again I've seen Nvidia put out some crap from time to time.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

btw, WHQL requires paying a fee to Microsoft to test the drivers so they get that certification. I wouldn't say they are more stable then others just that Microsoft has tested them. I have seen a number of WHQL certified drivers that suck. I normally test beta drivers to see if they are worth it only after either having a restore point before the install or a full backup, sometimes both.

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Do not Use Windows Rollback for Graphics Drivers
To reinstall a previous or older NVIDIA graphics driver, do not use the Windows
rollback feature. This method will not reliably restore all the previous driver files.
Instead, use the Windows Add and Remove programs to remove the current driver, and
then install the older driver using setup.exe.

This is from here, page 27:
http://de.download.nvidia.com/Windows/275.27/275.27-Win7-WinVista-Desktop-Release-Notes.pdf

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Do not Use Windows Rollback for Graphics Drivers
To reinstall a previous or older NVIDIA graphics driver, do not use the Windows
rollback feature. This method will not reliably restore all the previous driver files.
Instead, use the Windows Add and Remove programs to remove the current driver, and
then install the older driver using setup.exe.

This is from here, page 27:
http://de.download.nvidia.com/Windows/275.27/275.27-Win7-WinVista-Desktop-Release-Notes.pdf

With the installer package beginning with the 260.xx series, if you choose a clean install, it will remove the old drivers first and recycle the machine prior to automatically installing the current driver. This works both with upgrading and recession installations. I have done this several time with Win7 (64-bit) on both a GTX460 SE & a GTX275/GTS250 cards.

Do not Use Windows Rollback for Graphics Drivers
To reinstall a previous or older NVIDIA graphics driver, do not use the Windows
rollback feature. This method will not reliably restore all the previous driver files.
Instead, use the Windows Add and Remove programs to remove the current driver, and
then install the older driver using setup.exe.

This is from here, page 27:
http://de.download.nvidia.com/Windows/275.27/275.27-Win7-WinVista-Desktop-Release-Notes.pdf

I finally went back to 266.58 as I noticed that the 270.61 was not loading the gpus nearly as hard in S@H as the 266.58 or before and so I reinstalled the 266.58 drivers, Rollback is something that I've never used. It was a 9-10C difference in gpu temp that I noticed.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's