nVidia 8600M GS driver for x64?

[Milhouse Van Houten]

I was quite surprised upon installing Vista X64 SP1 clean on my Vostro 1710
to find that WU did not have a video driver waiting for me. As a result, my
WEI numbers for video (2D and 2D) were a whopping 1.0 with the default
"Standard VGA Adapter."

Naturally, I went to Dell's support site but found only x32 drivers.

I went to nVidia's site, but they said "M" class drivers are supplied by the
laptop vendors.

Surely I'm missing something, as this isn't exactly an obscure -- or new --
card.

Thanks

 

[Curious]

Try the following link. WinUpdate is normally the wrong place for driver
updates.

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com./

 

[Milhouse Van Houten]

Thanks. I know WU is not the place to get the latest and greatest driver,
but it's usually the place to get *a* driver, and usually a stable one. It
seems odd to me that Dell hasn't worked with MS to make one available.

I checked out that site and it's quite interesting. Per my Hardware ID, this
is the appropriate version, though it's no longer available.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com./drivers/vista64/176.44

I'll figure it out (there's a lot to read yet), but I'm wondering why it's
left to that site to make available something that's so fundamental -- and
for 2008 systems yet. Based on the thread for the latest version, the
stability of these drivers seem to leave a lot to be desired, to the point
where I might be better off with the Standard VGA Adapter. Surely all
parties involved would do well to release solid drivers via normal channels.
http://laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=21387

 

[DL]

There are still problems with obtaining x64 drivers, and as such many are
unavailable for various hw
According to Nvidea 8600M is certified for X64, however Dell may have
modified it.
Dell makes no mention of X64 on its supported o/s for this model

 

[Curious]

The reason Nvidia does not provide mobile chip drivers to MS is that mobile
drivers are not general purpose because laptop vendors receive the source
from the vendor so they can modify it to handle unique aspects of their own
Motherboards on which the chips are mounted

 

[Milhouse Van Houten]

They don't, but they do for the XPS line, and that's how I came upon these:
http://tinyurl.com/66jt5z

I chose the first one (R200184.EXE) and it worked fine. I suppose eventually
they'll populate the Vostro side, but they don't sell them with 64-bit so
they probably haven't bothered for that reason.