Nvidia based drivers from Leadtek?

Valter · Jan 2, 2003, 08:29 PM

Hello all!
My first posting here...

Well, I've just Bought Leadtek Winfast GForce Ti 4200 64M s250 Le. I've had untill now FG3 MX and I've been kind of used to play with nVidia drivers, trying to win additional 5 fps for my Il2 (my os is a Xp Pro).

However, last night I've learned the hard way that Leadtek has it's own Nvidia based drivers. Those from nVidia site, as well as beta ones, made the Leadtek card do some wierd things (like triple mouse cursor, ctd,...). The only way to reestablish the peace was to install leadtek made ones (from a cd and then updated ones from the Leadtek site). Usual nVidia tweakers don't work but Leadtek has it's own software (WinFox) that does the same thing.

So, basically, I'm not complaining but the cuestion remains:
- How do these Leadtek drivers relate to official ones?
- Is there any place where I could read more (I wasn't able to find anything "deep"

on the Leadtek site)?

Thanks in advance and take care all,
Valter

digitalwanderer · Jan 2, 2003, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Valter
Hello all!
My first posting here...

<Nelson voice on>

"Ah-ha! Newbie!"

</Nelson voice on>

Quote:

- How do these Leadtek drivers relate to official ones?

The Leadtek drivers are based off the official nVidia detonator set of the same number, but Leadtek has customized them to take advantage of particular features unique to their card. (The last bit is just a nicer way of saying, "they mucked around with the drivers to make 'em work better on their card"

)

Quote:

- Is there any place where I could read more (I wasn't able to find anything "deep" on the Leadtek site)?

You could probably use the "search" feature of this site and find some info on it, or I'm sure you could find a bit more over at nVnews. They're an excellent nVidia site that has some really guru-level viddy card peeps in their forums. (I've learned a lot there.)

Also, putting up a post here about it is a great way too. Someone's bound to either know something about it, know somewhere to find out more, or just feel like typing their opinion about something they don't know that much about.

(BTW-Welcome to DH! Sorry for the Nelson greetz, but I couldn't resist...I'm in a Simpsons kind of mood today. )

Valter · Jan 2, 2003, 09:37 PM

Thanks digitalwanderer,
great site, looking forward to investigate it. And, man, you are fast, I wasn't expecting an answer before tommorow or smt like that

So, Leadtek muck around with Detonators...hmm...I guess they deserve the benefit of a doubt...for a time being....
Thanks for your wellcome and see you around here,
Valter

digitalwanderer · Jan 2, 2003, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Valter
So, Leadtek muck around with Detonators...hmm...I guess they deserve the benefit of a doubt...for a time being....

Well, before you judge them bear in mind that almost ALL companies that build GF cards muck with the nVidia drivers to put out there own version. Hercules, Abit, Asus, VisionTek(RIP), etc all put out there own version based on the original nVidia drivers.

It varies from company to company on compatibility. Sometimes, (a LOT of the times, IMHO

), their "mucking about" is nothing more than editing their own corporate names & designations into the .inf file so that it'll show up with their brand in the display properties. (I do it meself, I always rename "GeForce3" to "LittleZ (250/530)" so it shows up in control panel that way. No idea why, I'm the only one who ever looks at that bit on me pc.

) Sometimes the mucking is pretty extreme for specialized controls or operations on that are proprietary to their card and will make those drivers incompatible with a "generic" GF of the same make, and vice-versa.

dai · Jan 3, 2003, 12:29 PM

i had the same problem with a leadtek mx card when i installed the beta drivers loades earlier version and the problem disappeared,on the leadtek site it said if their server was busy you could download the nvidia drivers so i assume that they are the samenow using nvidia gf4 mx440 and have no problems with the latest drivers

DaSnIpE · Jan 4, 2003, 05:13 AM

I used to love the Leadtek drivers, but they haven't done anything for the 40.00 series

Valter · Jan 4, 2003, 04:15 PM

Yes DaSnIpE, that's what basicly bothers me, now my choice of drivers is up to (or, better to say, down to) only two Leadtek drivers:
- the one froma an install cd
- the newest one from a Leadtek site (which isn't exactly updated to new nVidia and beta drivers)

nVidia ones and beta ones produces all kind of problems, starting from a triple cursor

to complete freezing and ctd in some aplications.

So, I can kiss goodbye experimenting with many drivers. C'est la vie, I guess...

Take care, Valter

zak326 · Jan 9, 2003, 12:12 AM

I have the Leadtek A250LE Ti4200 128mb My Vivo, as well as 3 of their other cards, They currently are posting version 41.09 of the Nvidia drivers, which is the same ones that are posted on Nvidia's site.

One big difference is that Leadtek also posts bios updates for these Geforce 4 cards with the drivers and they are very easy to use with winfox. What I typically do isfirst uninstall all the display drivers in t he add remove part of the control panel. ater rebooting I install the nvidia drivers then winfox then the leadtek drivers trhen deal with the video bios if needed. This should give you both the control panel of the nvidia package and the winfox tweaks as wellSometimes the card gets finnicy during install a and you =might have to reeinatll oportions til you get it right *usually jusrt have to reinstallportions ofr change settingfs for the monitor etc.

I'vee been runing the 4.01 driv ers for about 2 weeksa with no problems.
The only problem there is that if you try to flashthvideo bios after in\stalling the 4201s it wont do it, because it will show different driver info. so you shld flas the bios b efore doing 4201s

`jaw · Jan 17, 2003, 06:46 AM

Just to let you know have Leadteck winfast 250 LE 64mb (Ti 4200) and nvidias drivers works great here. Did you uninstall the other drivers before trying nvidias?

zak326 · Jan 17, 2003, 07:07 PM

I've had various Lead tek cards oover the last forur years ansd must say taht I have gotten the best results lately \buty they've been great all along. They do have a couple of quirkks tho. First of all. When you go to install the drivers.You don';t really need the cd unless you are going to install some of the dvd stuff or that colorific thing.

Go to the dfownload page on the leadtek sirte and download the latest driver package for your card, the latest Winfox,the video capture drivers and software if appropriate and here;'s the quirk. The bios updates are in a grid right below the drivers. \Theyt are listed by card, amt of memory, and either ntsc oir pal for the tvout.
also dopwnloadthe latest nvidia package. The leadtek and Nvidia driversaren't that different but if you install them tight, you'll get the benefit of both winfox and tyhe new nvidia control panel..

One other thing iof you have had the 30xx series of drivers installed,there;s an invidia fix file floatihng around. you run that first and oit clears all the old settings from both your registry and your strtup files. run that first. then run msconfig from the run command and go to the boot tab and check the base video box. This will give you the equivalent of a vga sc reen when you reboot the first time. then remove the nvidia and winfosx and winfast stufffrom your add remove panel.then reboot. the first thing to do whenthe machine rebootgs is to cancel out of any automatic that try to take over then, go into check that thing on onth msconfig ppopup that says dont sho me this., go into msconfig and uncheck the bacsevidseobx, then go out of msconfignw ithout rebooting. Install the winfast drivers, then winfox, thenyour bios iusing wwinfox to flash.after you get comfortable with where you afr so far. sedt a restore point just in case then install the nvidia drivers,. the latest floating arpound are 42.01 and are failry stable. in this p process it may want to uninstall the leadteki drivers, that's opk they've served their pur[ose by gettin winfosx setup and flashing the bios.,after yuou install the nvidia drivers and go into properties you see bith the leadtek tabs and the nvidia ones boplus a slisde out control panel from i=nvidia. Thge whole process shld take no more than 30 minutes and you'll be amazed at the results.! you may have to refresh your monitor settings and adjust the resolution on a couple of reboots becauyse it will tend thefirst time after the install to go to 800x600 at a lower bitsize. a the optther thing that can happen is that for example my Eizo LCD has a maximum res of 1280 x 1024.but occasionally after install oing the drivers , it will show 1600 by 1200 oor something like that, in that case then dpo an advance desktop in winfox but get reaedy caust it will plaay this loud giorgio moroder type music while its doing it and shooting holes in the picture. Also make sure your refresh reate is set to the one recommended by the monitor manufacturer not the card.

This sounds compllicated but iots worth it. also if it screws up fool aroundwith the order of install a bit, but if you put the nvidias in forstt and the leatek overwrites them it will also overwrite the coNvidia control panel for some reason. Also there is a new version of the coolbits registry ywealk that works well wiith this. I am running a Deell Dimension 8100 P4 (1,87g processor) witgh one gig of ramb us ram. fyi. and my leadtek on this maching it the A250LE g4 Ti4200 1298mb My Vivo.

Valter · Jan 18, 2003, 10:11 PM

zak326, WOW, thanks, this is almost an advance manual for Leadtek cards. Excellent.
jaw, well, depends what does a proper uninstall means. Yes, I uninstalled drivers in my control panel. No I didn't do anything else (like like that ATI drives un/istalling guide here on ATI forum).
Well, I've got it working well now ( winfast bios update --> uninstall all --> new detonator driver --> latest leadtec driver --> winfox). Thanks all for your valuable input.
Take care, Valter

zak326 · Jan 19, 2003, 04:35 AM

nope just the basic uninstall in the control panel. I said that because some stuff does have special uninstall requirements.

I hope it is helpful. It is merely what I learned through trial and error.

Jan 2, 2003, 08:29 PM	#1
Valter DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Valencia, Spain Posts: 4 Rep Power: 0	Nvidia based drivers from Leadtek? Hello all! My first posting here... Well, I've just Bought Leadtek Winfast GForce Ti 4200 64M s250 Le. I've had untill now FG3 MX and I've been kind of used to play with nVidia drivers, trying to win additional 5 fps for my Il2 (my os is a Xp Pro). However, last night I've learned the hard way that Leadtek has it's own Nvidia based drivers. Those from nVidia site, as well as beta ones, made the Leadtek card do some wierd things (like triple mouse cursor, ctd,...). The only way to reestablish the peace was to install leadtek made ones (from a cd and then updated ones from the Leadtek site). Usual nVidia tweakers don't work but Leadtek has it's own software (WinFox) that does the same thing. So, basically, I'm not complaining but the cuestion remains: - How do these Leadtek drivers relate to official ones? - Is there any place where I could read more (I wasn't able to find anything "deep" on the Leadtek site)? Thanks in advance and take care all, Valter

Jan 3, 2003, 12:29 PM	#5
dai DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 126 Rep Power: 0	3d images i had the same problem with a leadtek mx card when i installed the beta drivers loades earlier version and the problem disappeared,on the leadtek site it said if their server was busy you could download the nvidia drivers so i assume that they are the samenow using nvidia gf4 mx440 and have no problems with the latest drivers

Jan 4, 2003, 05:13 AM	#6
DaSnIpE Driverage Snipe Join Date: May 2002 Location: Montreal, Canada or NYC, USA Posts: 372 Rep Power: 0	I used to love the Leadtek drivers, but they haven't done anything for the 40.00 series __________________ Antec SX1030 Case - Enermax 431 W Whisper PS - 4 Case Fans -ThermalRight AX-7 With Panaflo Ultra Fan - Sb Audigy / Logitech Z-560 Speakers / Sennheiser HD497 Headphones WD 80GB 7200 rpm HD - Samsung SyncMaster 955DF - LG 16x10x40x Burner / Pionner 16x Slot DVD View my rig http://nl.dodhq.net/Rig/

Jan 17, 2003, 06:46 AM	#9
`jaw DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: sweden Posts: 72 Rep Power: 0	Just to let you know have Leadteck winfast 250 LE 64mb (Ti 4200) and nvidias drivers works great here. Did you uninstall the other drivers before trying nvidias? __________________ Nothing to se here people, MOVE ALONG!

Jan 2, 2003, 09:37 PM	Thread Starter #3
Valter DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Valencia, Spain Posts: 4 Rep Power: 0	Thanks digitalwanderer, great site, looking forward to investigate it. And, man, you are fast, I wasn't expecting an answer before tommorow or smt like that So, Leadtek muck around with Detonators...hmm...I guess they deserve the benefit of a doubt...for a time being.... Thanks for your wellcome and see you around here, Valter

Jan 4, 2003, 04:15 PM	Thread Starter #7
Valter DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Valencia, Spain Posts: 4 Rep Power: 0	Yes DaSnIpE, that's what basicly bothers me, now my choice of drivers is up to (or, better to say, down to) only two Leadtek drivers: - the one froma an install cd - the newest one from a Leadtek site (which isn't exactly updated to new nVidia and beta drivers) nVidia ones and beta ones produces all kind of problems, starting from a triple cursor to complete freezing and ctd in some aplications. So, I can kiss goodbye experimenting with many drivers. C'est la vie, I guess... Take care, Valter

Jan 9, 2003, 12:12 AM	#8
zak326 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 3 Rep Power: 0	I have the Leadtek A250LE Ti4200 128mb My Vivo, as well as 3 of their other cards, They currently are posting version 41.09 of the Nvidia drivers, which is the same ones that are posted on Nvidia's site. One big difference is that Leadtek also posts bios updates for these Geforce 4 cards with the drivers and they are very easy to use with winfox. What I typically do isfirst uninstall all the display drivers in t he add remove part of the control panel. ater rebooting I install the nvidia drivers then winfox then the leadtek drivers trhen deal with the video bios if needed. This should give you both the control panel of the nvidia package and the winfox tweaks as wellSometimes the card gets finnicy during install a and you =might have to reeinatll oportions til you get it right *usually jusrt have to reinstallportions ofr change settingfs for the monitor etc. I'vee been runing the 4.01 driv ers for about 2 weeksa with no problems. The only problem there is that if you try to flashthvideo bios after in\stalling the 4201s it wont do it, because it will show different driver info. so you shld flas the bios b efore doing 4201s

Jan 17, 2003, 07:07 PM	#10
zak326 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 3 Rep Power: 0	I've had various Lead tek cards oover the last forur years ansd must say taht I have gotten the best results lately \buty they've been great all along. They do have a couple of quirkks tho. First of all. When you go to install the drivers.You don';t really need the cd unless you are going to install some of the dvd stuff or that colorific thing. Go to the dfownload page on the leadtek sirte and download the latest driver package for your card, the latest Winfox,the video capture drivers and software if appropriate and here;'s the quirk. The bios updates are in a grid right below the drivers. \Theyt are listed by card, amt of memory, and either ntsc oir pal for the tvout. also dopwnloadthe latest nvidia package. The leadtek and Nvidia driversaren't that different but if you install them tight, you'll get the benefit of both winfox and tyhe new nvidia control panel.. One other thing iof you have had the 30xx series of drivers installed,there;s an invidia fix file floatihng around. you run that first and oit clears all the old settings from both your registry and your strtup files. run that first. then run msconfig from the run command and go to the boot tab and check the base video box. This will give you the equivalent of a vga sc reen when you reboot the first time. then remove the nvidia and winfosx and winfast stufffrom your add remove panel.then reboot. the first thing to do whenthe machine rebootgs is to cancel out of any automatic that try to take over then, go into check that thing on onth msconfig ppopup that says dont sho me this., go into msconfig and uncheck the bacsevidseobx, then go out of msconfignw ithout rebooting. Install the winfast drivers, then winfox, thenyour bios iusing wwinfox to flash.after you get comfortable with where you afr so far. sedt a restore point just in case then install the nvidia drivers,. the latest floating arpound are 42.01 and are failry stable. in this p process it may want to uninstall the leadteki drivers, that's opk they've served their pur[ose by gettin winfosx setup and flashing the bios.,after yuou install the nvidia drivers and go into properties you see bith the leadtek tabs and the nvidia ones boplus a slisde out control panel from i=nvidia. Thge whole process shld take no more than 30 minutes and you'll be amazed at the results.! you may have to refresh your monitor settings and adjust the resolution on a couple of reboots becauyse it will tend thefirst time after the install to go to 800x600 at a lower bitsize. a the optther thing that can happen is that for example my Eizo LCD has a maximum res of 1280 x 1024.but occasionally after install oing the drivers , it will show 1600 by 1200 oor something like that, in that case then dpo an advance desktop in winfox but get reaedy caust it will plaay this loud giorgio moroder type music while its doing it and shooting holes in the picture. Also make sure your refresh reate is set to the one recommended by the monitor manufacturer not the card. This sounds compllicated but iots worth it. also if it screws up fool aroundwith the order of install a bit, but if you put the nvidias in forstt and the leatek overwrites them it will also overwrite the coNvidia control panel for some reason. Also there is a new version of the coolbits registry ywealk that works well wiith this. I am running a Deell Dimension 8100 P4 (1,87g processor) witgh one gig of ramb us ram. fyi. and my leadtek on this maching it the A250LE g4 Ti4200 1298mb My Vivo.

Jan 18, 2003, 10:11 PM	Thread Starter #11
Valter DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Valencia, Spain Posts: 4 Rep Power: 0	zak326, WOW, thanks, this is almost an advance manual for Leadtek cards. Excellent. jaw, well, depends what does a proper uninstall means. Yes, I uninstalled drivers in my control panel. No I didn't do anything else (like like that ATI drives un/istalling guide here on ATI forum). Well, I've got it working well now ( winfast bios update --> uninstall all --> new detonator driver --> latest leadtec driver --> winfox). Thanks all for your valuable input. Take care, Valter

Jan 19, 2003, 04:35 AM	#12
zak326 DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 3 Rep Power: 0	nope just the basic uninstall in the control panel. I said that because some stuff does have special uninstall requirements. I hope it is helpful. It is merely what I learned through trial and error.