OK, let me lay the background here.
Start about two weeks ago. I saw that the Matrox W7 drivers were out, and because the L4D2 demo spat out a pop-up at me letting me know that my then-current config of Vista 64 & Nvidia driver 182.50 weren't going to cut it, I decided to do a fresh install of the full version of W7 Home Premium 64.
I upgrade my DTH2Go's firmware, download the W7 drivers and get the latest Nvidia WHQL driver 191.07 straight off Nvidia's site.
No joy.
Pissed, I hunt down possible fixes in these forums for the next few days, trying all sorts of custom rez settings.
No joy.
I call Matrox Support. 3x's over the next few days.
First call finds them poking around my system and trying all the same fixes that I had been trying for days. It ends with the advice to keep trying driver and PowerDesk combo's till I find one that works.
Yeah, riiiiight. (/snark)
I, despite my frustration, do exactly that. Over the course of the next day, day and a half, I try every possible combination with all Nvidia WHQL drivers from 182.50 onward to present, and every PowerDesk from the "beta" that worked with 182.50 up until the new one for W7. I even made a little matrix on a sheet of paper to ensure I didn't miss anything. Tried the standard vanilla install routine, and when that inevitably failed, I would try to set up a custom rez via the Nv CP...
No joy every single time.
I call Matrox Support for the second time. Then a third.
Still no joy.
Then the tech support told me a very, very interesting little tidbit:
Matrox currently is not allowed access to Nvidia's API. They are working on that situation, but until then, there is no possible way for them to build a proper PowerDesk that will work for damn near everyone in the manner that a driver for this type of hardware should. In particular, Matrox is having issues with the GTX 285 and another card in that line, either the 275 or 295. I can't recall because all I was interested in was the 285 since I run three of them.
So, the crux is that until Matrox gets the legal OK to slice open the Nvidia API, any work around is going to be totally situationally dependent. This comes straight from Matrox.
I wanted to say thanks to all those that have posted how they have managed to get their 5040 up and running. Even though it didn't work for me, if might have worked/will work for someone else.
Looks like those of us with Nvidia cards might want to start hitting up the Nvidia forums to let them know how aggravated we are with the whole situation.
Just a thought...
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