New GMA 500 Driver

Just did a clean re-install of Windows 7 RTM. During Windows Update, it found a new GMA 500 driver (I believe it said it was posted to Windows Update on 9/23/2009). Intel driver 8.14.10.2011 dated 8/27/2009. I haven't checked if it still has the corrupted graphics under Aero after sleep, but will post an update once I play around with it for a few days.

FYI, I searched for updated drivers on the Intel site to see what the changes were, but it did not list this driver yet.

UPDATE: No screen blacking upon return from sleep or hibernate with this driver under Aero. Looks like they fixed it.

 

Bump. This is a good driver to update...

 

Hmm. This seems to have improved full-screen 720p WMV/MP4 for me to the point that it's watchable. Still not great when there's a lot of diverse movement but then again, I don't watch all that much 720 stuff. WMP seems to do best but was still jerky in spots. MPCC doesn't handle WMV9 sound, and VLC didn't do well at all with WMV9. I'm not an expert on this and didn't spend any time tweaking.

Cross-coding to Quicktime reduced quality a hair, but helped tremendously with smoothing playback on all three players. VLC was still jerky. WMP was till the best and as good as on my Core i7 desktop.

 

This new driver is only for Win07 and Vista?

 

Doesn't seem to be much better than previous drivers:
- sometimes still crashes with EVR custom renderer + cyberlink codec
- no OpenGL
- multitexturing fill rate is still very low, so gaming performance is probably still very bad

 

I updated to this driver via Windows Update, and had serious issues with way too much gamma on the screen. Barely readable unless I brought the gamma back down to minimum using the Intel control panel--and then it wouldn't stick between boots. Rolled back to 10.1006 and it's normal again. Interesting since the 10.1006 drivers are the newest listed on Intel's site that I can find.

 

I had the same problem under both the .1006 driver and the newest one available under Windows Update. I discovered that turning off the Power Saving Technology option (go to Graphics Properties, Display Settings, Power Settings button) resolved the issue. I don't think it is a newer driver issue.

[attachment=0:qv5lph2f]Intel GMA 500 Power Saving Option.PNG[/attachment:qv5lph2f]

 

Very cool! I was having the same issue with the settings I created not sticking between boots.

I will try disabling the power saving & see if that works.

What does the power saving feature do, anyway? Will it make a noticeable difference in battery life?

 

That does actually help! I'm running on Battery right now and I definitely notice the difference. The contrast is much higher with that turned off. I wonder if it sets everything to some "non-tweaked" state that so that the GPU has less to process... I really can't imagine it making much of a battery life difference given that the GMA 500 chipset uses very little power even when it's going full-bore. But someone can do the full benchmarks if they like.

 

The help pop-up says it changes brightness and contrast to maximize battery life. Mystery solved.

I moved the slider bar further to the "performance side" and it seems to have helped with the contrast. So you don't have to fully turn off the power savings features to get reasonable levels of contrast.

 

So I unchecked the "Power Saving Technology" box, and my computer still booted into the default color/gamma settings.

I checked the box and moved the slider all the way over to "max quality" and still no difference at all - rebooted a couple times to make sure.

How can I make this 751 boot into the settings I've entered into the Intel control panel??

 

Hi DrJones. The slider only influences the system under battery power. Setting it all the way to maximum power savings results in lowered contrast in order to save power while on battery.

I haven't changed the default color/contrast settings, so I can't say if changes "stick" between boots... I'll try it and see, but tomorrow! It's late here... I'm using the latest driver available from Windows Update.

 

There are new drivers for Windows XP and Windows 7 . Download : http://downloadcenter.intel.com/default ... +downloads
XP driver: .1019 . When i installed it, DXVA ran ok, but graphics....it was much slower :shock: When i opened GTA vice city, i could get only 1-2 FPS per second (before i had something about 15 FPS).

7 driver : 8.14.10.2019 - i can't see any difference.

 

Thanks for reporting this. That's bad! 1-2 FPS! The new drivers seem to bring their own problems, which seem to be worse that the small ones they were fixing. I'm still running the last Vista driver (under Windows 7), since it's the only version that allows DXVA acceleration under Flash 10.1 (Beta 1, but not on Beta 2). As long as you don't use Aero, this works quite well. If you do use aero, you'll have more driver and system crashes with that older driver. So you have to choose between accelerated flash video or the Aero theme and Desktop Composition. You can't have both...

 

And the freezes?

 

Newest win7 driver 2019 works perfect with Flash 10.1 beta2. Now I can watch all HD videos on Youtube.

 

Thanks for the update. I'm going to check it out! I had only tried the new beta with the older and *previously newest* driver. I hope it works.

EDIT: *** THIS DOES NOT WORK FOR ME YET ***
Even using the new driver, I get no acceleration of flash videos. HD videos play at barely 1 frame per second - totally unwatchable. What operating system are you using? And what browser? I'm using Windows 7, Driver 2019, installed Flash ActiveX and Plugin 10.1 Beta 2.

I wonder what factor causes it to work on your system, but not on mine.

 

I can't get HW acceleration with .2019 with Flash 10.1 beta2(and 1) too(Youtube HD - 1 FPS).

 

I am running .2019 with Flash 10.0.22.87 and it runs just fine. Pretty sure it is not a beta release of Flash.

 

Only the Beta has hardware acceleration...