AVADirect M570RU: SLI, Drivers, and 8800M GTX Performance

A Word about Drivers

One of the big problems we often have with gaming notebooks is driver support. If you go out and buy desktop system -- regardless of the manufacturer -- you can be relatively sure that you will always be able to get graphics card driver updates from NVIDIA or AMD. We've seen a few instances where support was lacking -- Quad-SLI support on Windows Vista certainly comes to mind -- but outside of truly exotic systems users are usually assured that they won't have to wait on an OEM to update drivers. Unfortunately, the same definitely doesn't apply to notebooks.

Perhaps our worst experience with a notebook was last summer when we tested Toshiba's X205 "gaming notebook" with the then-new GeForce 8700M GT. We encountered at least one game that simply refused to run (Bioshock), in performance and quite a few other titles was lower than we would have expected. The biggest problem was that the most recent graphics drivers were several months old... and if you visit the Toshiba website, you'll find that the drivers still haven't been updated. Lest it sound like we're harping on Toshiba, we should also mention that we've heard complaints from regarding older Dell XPS notebooks and several other gaming notebooks.

Gaming notebooks are quite expensive, and it's not difficult to imagine the frustration a user with experience if their one-year-old $4000 notebook suddenly couldn't load up their most recent game purchase. One option is to simply go out and get hacked drivers to see if they will work on your system. LaptopVideo2Go is a site we have used in the past, but definitely be prepared for mixed results. The problem is that they seem to base their NVIDIA drivers off the desktop driver updates, which may or may not have all of the mobile performance enhancements present. One simple example is the 174.20 drivers that did so well on the Dell XPS M1730; we installed the hacked LV2G 174.20 (and 174.16) drivers on the AVADirect notebook, and promptly watch performance in most games drop by half, sometimes more!

We asked NVIDIA about their stance on hacked drivers. They certainly don't support them out right, and they don't necessarily recommend them. Still, they also don't intend to shut down the operation; NVIDIA has a limited amount of manpower, like any company, so for users that are willing to take a chance on drivers that may be very beta in nature (or in some cases alpha), it's nice to have that option. At the end of the day, however, hacked drivers are often like Frankenstein: powerful in some areas and lobotomized in others. Use at your own risk.

So if you don't want to run hacked drivers, what are you supposed to do? NVIDIA has been working to improve the situation on mobile gaming notebooks by offering beta drivers for participating notebooks. This is a relatively recent addition, with the first release available since December 2007. Our understanding is that the Toshiba X205 and Dell XPS notebooks we mentioned above are supported by the beta drivers. If you have a gaming notebook from another vendor that uses a GeForce Go 7 series or a GeForce M 8 series, you might want to check out NVIDIA's beta driver section. Unfortunately, there are a couple of major omissions.

Since this is a new project, not all hardware is supported on all current operating systems. In fact, the support is quite limited: GeForce Go 7 series drivers are available for Windows XP/XP-64 - and Linux oddly enough -- but not for Windows Vista. Conversely, GeForce M 8 series drivers are available for Windows Vista 32/64-bit (and Linux again) but not for XP. GeForce 8800M hardware is not currently supported with any of the beta drivers, as it didn't become available until early 2008, just missing the December 2007 deadline.

Going forward, NVIDIA's plan is to improve the number of operating systems and hardware combinations that are supported with each driver release. Hopefully, we will see GeForce Go get some Windows Vista drivers with the next release. Releases should come roughly once per quarter, with the next driver update scheduled for April 2008 (but that may change slightly as they are still working out some kinks in the pipes). Rest assured, we understand the importance of drivers and so does NVIDIA; we hope the notebook manufacturers also realize how critical graphics drivers are for gaming notebooks and encourage them to join NVIDIA's "beta" mobile driver list if they aren't already participating.