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BootCamp 4.0 rare NVIDIA Drivers

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pharonyk

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 13, 2009
46
0
After installing Lion, I found out a new version of Boot Camp was released. I think I'm the first to ever discover this... but Apple supplied us with a rare NVIDIA driver! The NVIDIA driver is version 261.41 and there isn't any additional information about it on the web.

Just out of curiosity, I would like to know more about this.
I find it quite interesting. :rolleyes:

2r77knp.jpg
 
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Considering the current drivers are 275.33, I believe you're a bit out of date.

And sorry to burst your bubble, but you're not the first to have Bootcamp 4.0 drivers. It's been out since GM was released on the 1st to developers.
 
ayeying said:
Considering the current drivers are 275.33, I believe you're a bit out of date.

And sorry to burst your bubble, but you're not the first to have Bootcamp 4.0 drivers. It's been out since GM was released on the 1st to developers.
Click to expand...

Learn how to read.

I never said I was the first to have Boot Camp 4.0. I said I was the first to discover that Boot Camp 4.0 is SUPPLYING us with a rare NVIDIA driver (261.41). Thus, we are given a driver that may be outdated (which NVIDIA has never released).

Sorry to burst your bubble. ;)
 
pharonyk

Thanks for this information, that is very interesting. Obviously you are running Windows and before I go out and obtain lion I like to know something: can you check if under windows the HDD is in ATA or in AHCI mode? (impossible to get it going in AHCI under Boot Camp 3.2 due to no information on the Nvidia chipset drivers and all development on the Nvidia chipset has stopped)

PS AHCI is necessary to get NCQ and TRIM working under windows.

Thanks!
 
In this digital age where everything is a download away, nothing is rare, especially not an outdated driver you could probably find again on nVidia's website.
 
JacaByte said:
In this digital age where everything is a download away, nothing is rare, especially not an outdated driver you could probably find again on nVidia's website.
Click to expand...

Cool Story Bro.

Let's find some more information about this driver and why Apple decided to package it in Boot Camp 4.0.
 
MJL said:
pharonyk

Thanks for this information, that is very interesting. Obviously you are running Windows and before I go out and obtain lion I like to know something: can you check if under windows the HDD is in ATA or in AHCI mode? (impossible to get it going in AHCI under Boot Camp 3.2 due to no information on the Nvidia chipset drivers and all development on the Nvidia chipset has stopped)

PS AHCI is necessary to get NCQ and TRIM working under windows.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Sorry for the late reply.

Fortunately, Boot Camp 4.0 is actually supporting the HDD to run in AHCI mode. I think I've checked it correctly by inputting "fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify" in CMD. A "0" means it's enabled and a "1" means it's disabled.

Zero here. :eek:

(If I didn't check it correctly, please let me know how to do so and I'll be more than happy to figure this out with you)
 
pharonyk said:
Sorry for the late reply......
(If I didn't check it correctly, please let me know how to do so and I'll be more than happy to figure this out with you)
Click to expand...

Many thanks for checking this, unfortunately you used a command that gave the same answer as mine (and mine is ATA) but I am not familiar with that command and do not know what it really means. (I will look it up later)

The way I do it is as follows:

- EITHER in the start menu right click on computer, go to properties OR instead go to control panel - system.
- In the left column select device manager.
- In device manager go down to IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.

If it is running in ATA then you'll see : ATA channel 0, ATA channel 1, Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller.
- It is the last one that changes to AHCI.

Why I am asking is that Windows and SSD do not play nicely together unless you have TRIM (Garbage collection works fine with OS X) and I am running 95% of the time Windows 7. (running in ATA has some performance penalty, but not a lot)
 
MJL said:
Many thanks for checking this, unfortunately you used a command that gave the same answer as mine (and mine is ATA) but I am not familiar with that command and do not know what it really means. (I will look it up later)

The way I do it is as follows:

- EITHER in the start menu right click on computer, go to properties OR instead go to control panel - system.
- In the left column select device manager.
- In device manager go down to IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers.

If it is running in ATA then you'll see : ATA channel 0, ATA channel 1, Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller.
- It is the last one that changes to AHCI.

Why I am asking is that Windows and SSD do not play nicely together unless you have TRIM (Garbage collection works fine with OS X) and I am running 95% of the time Windows 7. (running in ATA has some performance penalty, but not a lot)
Click to expand...

Darn, it's ATA.

2yxn8d2.jpg
 
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pharonyk said:
Wait, what? Really?
It's running in AHCI? :eek:

Awesome.
Click to expand...

No it now recognises that it is SATA and that - should - mean that AHCI can be enabled (hoping). Basically on a normal PC with BIOS the HDD can run in "compatability" or in "AHCI" mode. If it is running in compatibility mode then you see this message, if it runs in AHCI you see something like "IHCM(?) SATA AHCI".

If I am correct then in Windows 7 the TRIM command gets passed on. (If it had reported AHCI then it would certainly be passing it on. ) I base this on the following:

I just fired up my Thinkpad laptop with the Intel X25M 80 GB SSD and switched to "compatibility" mode (similar to what is reported in above screenshot that you posted). Then rebooted and checked if the SSD was recognised in the Intel SSD toolbox and it was. The command ran also (took slightly longer than normal but that would figure).

In actual fact it makes sense (I strongly suspect the following is the case): Apple was a major customer using the Nvidia chipset and I am pretty certain Nvidia would have been supporting SATA but one can imagine that Apple could not have no support under OS X for TRIM and then having support for TRIM under bootcamp so they got a driver that had it disabled. Now that they support TRIM under OS X the older driver in bootcamp (having SATA support) could be used. Highly likely we'll never get any conformation from Apple if this is true or not...

And that while I had just given up hope and ordered a Seagate 320 Gb 7200 rpm 16Mb cache (Momentus Thin) this afternoon to replace the 5400 rpm 8 Mb HDD.
 
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fhall1 said:
What has all this got to do with NVIDIA drivers?....start another thread.
Click to expand...

the 2010 mac mini is using a nvidia chipset, I suspect that you are thinking of the nvidia graphics. two different items. anyway nvidia has stopped all development on the nvidia chipset and is concentrating only on the graphics stuff.
 
I recently went through the hoops of enabling AHCI on my 17" 2010 MBP. By default, even with BootCamp 4.0 it runs in SATA mode - AHCI is not enabled. But as far as I understand Windows still enables TRIM in this mode.

[ I realized enabling AHCI wasn't worth it - Windows locks up when waking from sleep as BIOS compatibility mode switches to SATA after wakeup and Windows thinks it is AHCI. Bootcamp control panel refuses to run after AHCI is enabled and I lose trackpad and brightness settings. Dear Apple - you suck bad at supporting Windows. Shame on you.]
 
parapup said:
I recently went through the hoops of enabling AHCI on my 17" 2010 MBP. By default, even with BootCamp 4.0 it runs in SATA mode - AHCI is not enabled. But as far as I understand Windows still enables TRIM in this mode.

[ I realized enabling AHCI wasn't worth it - Windows locks up when waking from sleep as BIOS compatibility mode switches to SATA after wakeup and Windows thinks it is AHCI. Bootcamp control panel refuses to run after AHCI is enabled and I lose trackpad and brightness settings. Dear Apple - you suck bad at supporting Windows. Shame on you.]
Click to expand...

AHCI is useful for hot swapping the HDD and for Native Command Queuing (NCQ), supposedly giving up to 10% HDD boost. However it does pass on the TRIM commands which is the most important issue to me. And gains by having a SSD are larger than the 10%....

I've seen some Apple news publication "play nice with your friends" but it was not that many years ago that MSN had to give them a handout of a couple of hundred million to stay afloat. This was in MSN self-interest otherwise MSN might have been broken up (they needed a competitor with a > 4% market share). And this is how Apple repays them, most certainly behaving like a prima donna. Their rapid rise has been due to iTunes and the iPod but their present status can just as quickly change again - one spoke in their whole plan will be bandwidth and already ISP's are capping the unlimited bandwidth (here in New Zealand it has been always capped, depending which plan you have it is 500 Mb, 3 Gb, 5 Gb or 10 Gb / month.
There is also a larger allocation but above 60 Gb it gets quickly very expensive for individuals especially when you start paying by the Mb...)

Apple started with the iPod 4 years ago and have become now the leading manufacturer but Samsung grew at a faster clip so next time figures come out it will be Samsung who is leading. And it may well be that one day Apple will need Samsung more than the other way round, certainly Apple is starting to upset a number of their partners. And having worked all over the place in Asia let me assure you that they are good in biding their time but they have long memories and one day they'll repay the favors bestowed upon them....
 
MJL said:
the 2010 mac mini is using a nvidia chipset, I suspect that you are thinking of the nvidia graphics. two different items. anyway nvidia has stopped all development on the nvidia chipset and is concentrating only on the graphics stuff.
Click to expand...

Yes, I was thinking graphics...based on the screen capture in the original post, why would I think otherwise?
 
Any issues with this driver?

Bump to see if anyone's actually had any issues with this driver. I've suddenly had a few instances where my screen goes black and windows recovers with an error message regarding the display drivers.

I'm on 2010 Macbook Pro with Nvidia 330M Graphics and have been using bootcamp 4.0 since Lion GM.

cheers!

Thought I'd add I'm running Windows 7 x64 SP1 (7601) Ultimate
 
Bignastyjb said:
Bump to see if anyone's actually had any issues with this driver. I've suddenly had a few instances where my screen goes black and windows recovers with an error message regarding the display drivers.

I'm on 2010 Macbook Pro with Nvidia 330M Graphics and have been using bootcamp 4.0 since Lion GM.

cheers!

Thought I'd add I'm running Windows 7 x64 SP1 (7601) Ultimate
Click to expand...

I've also experienced the same problems with those drivers. What I did to solve this was update my NVIDIA drivers to the latest one (280.26) which were released yesterday!

The only downside of having the new drivers are some minor external display issues when starting up your MBP in clamshell mode and possibly troubles of waking up your MBP from sleep.
 
AFAIK TRIM commands should still get passed through to the drive in IDE mode as long as your using the default Windows 7 driver for it (don't quote me on this though).

If you update the driver and the controller is running in IDE mode... well that's anyones guess if it still passes the commands.
 
Quad5Ny said:
AFAIK TRIM commands should still get passed through to the drive in IDE mode as long as your using the default Windows 7 driver for it (don't quote me on this though).

If you update the driver and the controller is running in IDE mode... well that's anyones guess if it still passes the commands.
Click to expand...

I have put the Intel X25M G2 80 Gb into my mid 2010 Mac mini and it appears to be communicating fine with the Intel Toolbox. The Intel Toolbox is a program developped to let older operating systems like Vista and XP work with the SSD. When this SSD was in the Thinkpad T61p the commands on this toolbox seemed to work instanteneous, now it takes a bit longer before the prompt returns. Since all other parts of the toolbox work I assume that it is doing its job in spite of not AHCI. As a precaution I have over provisioned the SSD and allocated only 48 Gb to a partition which increase both performance and longevity by about a factor 5 which in reality means a lower total cost of ownership.
 
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