“Run and gun” driver cleaning…
Looking through the installation files/folders, it looks like [nodejs] and [PPC] folders aren’t necessary. Deleted these two folders and installed. So far so good.
These people are messing around with drivers using trial-and-error. And what testing was done before publishing? Sound like when the “updated” driver is installed and doesn’t immediately crash, it passes QA testing.
Hi Pacific. I am not sure there will be any QA testing because they are already release candidate drivers from Nvidia but presumably, literally stripped to the ‘core’. I don’t think it’s trial-and-error, at least I hope not because Guru3D appears to be a well respected and trusted website with a great following. Would they risk a trial-and-error approach to this type of software distribution? This is the first time that I have used one of these modified drivers, obviously there are what appears now to be unnecessary background processes running with the official driver, as to weather not having them improves performance or does something else beneficial, is unclear to me. This information should be easy to find and kept with their download link on the website. If it’s there, it’s not obvious. Charles
My biggest concern is, although highly unlikely, if these cleaned up drivers from Guru3D or anyone else somehow caused hardware problems, would NVIDIA honor warranty replacement? My video card was expensive and it has already been replaced once by NVIDIA. I wouldn’t want to get into a ■■■■■■■ match between NVIDIA and any other company over a warranty dispute. After warranty expiration, I’ll be much more open to drivers modified by other companies. This is just my personal opinion FWIW.
Yes, that’s a good point!
I would not like to put it to the test. I think it would be difficult to damage a GPU with drivers though. Fortunately there is built in thermal hardware protection from the effects of bad overclocking with most, if not all modern GPU’s. With the cost of GPU’s being so astronomically high, it’s wise to be cautious. Charles
Well I did a lot of testing this morning to try and work out what’s different in my system that would cause the major stuttering issue which started when I installed the 460 series drivers.
I restart the PC between every set of tests.
I installed 460.79 and the stuttering starts right from the loading screens. Rolled back to 460.51 no stuttering
I installed 460.89 and again the stuttering starts right from the loading screens. Rolled back to 460.51 no stuttering.
Installed 460.89 and disabled everything in the background (RGB, NVIDIA Control Panel, ICue etc). Still stutters.
Turned off GSYNC. Rebooted PC and guess what! No stutters.
My Acer 4K monitors are natively Freesync but are supposed to be compatible with GSync. They have worked perfectly with NVIDIA drivers up to 457.51 with GSync turned on however it appears there is an incompatibility introduced from 460.79 onwards 
Why oh why can’t AMD and NVIDIA get their act together over sync compatibility!
Hello Captain,
I disabled HAGS as you suggested and everything is almost ‘gravy’ now. Just the occasional micro stutter. I did have it, (HAGS) disabled at one-time. Many thanks for reminding me about disabling it.
The ‘weight watchers’, (slimming) driver performed as it should. No problems and it uninstalled without a hitch using DDU. I have installed the latest ‘weight watchers’ Nvidia driver 460.89. No problems here, performance is pretty good now on my aged computer. I have no concerns about these drivers, I feel confident using them, there is no evidence to suggest the core files have been tampered with. I will keep this latest driver installed. I like the idea of loosing the extra Nvidia processes running in the background on the simple premise that, ‘less MAY be more’, less to look at in my Windows task manager. Charles
one question, what is HAGS?
Thanks for the test. I have gsync on, but my acer monitors are gsync not just freesync, so may be different for me. I’m not having much stuttering, only an occasional freeze. Could be in my case an internet connection glitch (I have comcast, but I’m not sure how good it really is).
I’ll try with gsync off and see if that happens to eliminate the infrequent issues I’m having. I’m on .89
Mark.
Your question was not to me however, it’s a Windows feature that can be turned on or off easily. Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling, (HAGS). There are many links to this subject on the internet, here is one https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-10-may-update-could-boost-your-gaming-performance-for-free/
Charles.
I found an interesting article which warns against using the Nvidia driver trimming utility. I don’t know if there is any real validity in this persons argument. I am currently using a ‘naked’ driver trimmed with this utility, (460.89) and getting excellent results. I downloaded it from Guru3D. Importantly, the work has already been done on my driver and the utility is not necessary.
The issue here is with an older version of 7.zip used and NOT the driver itself. Where 7.zip is only used to extract the utility tool package and is used for so much other software too!
Bear in MIND this article was written in 2018 and is probably very much out of date!
I personally feel happy and will continue to use these drivers.
As I am getting very good results from this driver, (460.89) I will keep it installed. My FPS has improved along with a significant reduction in stuttering, this is probably more due to the fact that I turned HAGS off. Anyhow, here is the link to the article FYI …
Charles
Truly amazing graphics with this driver 460.89! ‘Naked’ version, (just core files). I don’t think the light stripped down version of the driver has anything to do with the better looking graphics.
I am using 1080P with high graphics settings on an i7-2600K and GTX 1070. The anti-aliasing is fantastic , I think it’s the best I have ever seen in this simulator. Here are some pictures taken using the Ultra version of the freeware Gatwick airport. I have a virtually stutter free experience now. I have turned HAGS off and have render scaling set at 120, ultra clouds and textures, lots of aircraft traffic and my frame rate rarely dips as low as 27 FPS at this Gatwick airport. The clouds suddenly look fantastic, now that I have disabled post rendering, film grain and image sharpening within MSFS. I turned on volumetric lighting withing the .cfg file and set the value to quality=1. Not sure if this makes the sim look better or if it even works? I noticed that entering and leaving clouds is a graphically better experience, something has changed for the better.
but there is nothing new with this driver related to MSFS … at least I can’t find things in changelog 
Yes, I know and that is what I don’t understand. The driver just works better with my system and graphics card. Sometimes I feel if Microsoft are optimising some of off-line components, something that other people have thought they had sensed too. Yesterday, I started buying airports because I had felt a vast improvement in the performance of this simulator and noticed a leap forward in graphical rendering. I became really immersed in the game, I am now using live traffic and have lots of static aircraft at the airports. Something has changed and I don’t know what I have done, maybe I have had something running in the background eating up my computer resources that I have removed, I don’t know. I see that you use a rolling eye emoticon, but the pictures speak a thousand words. Charles
hmmm… strange… but nvidia caused also lots of trouble 
meant was a → not sure
EDIT:
be carefully
Does, enabling volumetric lighting in the .cfg file make any difference in the simulator, would that make entering and leaving clouds appear more naturalistic, (wispier and softer) ?
I understand we might get an update to clouds on Tuesday.
BRGDS. Charles
Thank’s Micha for that warning. So far I have not been effected and I don’t have any airports on that list.
Cheers! Charles
Check this out!
Have a read here … General Interest
What do you want to tell us with that?
GPUs have been in Task Manager for a long time. The blog is from 07/2017.
I assume @TheAviator3506 give you a hint “General Interest” and possible as same reason I done it here:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/100-gpu-load-main-menu-because-background-hangar-rendering/339365/8?u=michamma
A lot of users are not aware what the taskmager shows, related to GPU, and what which value means or from where it comes.
