1. Intro
Yo, folks. After planning on when to do this, I've decided that it's time. (Only reason behind is I have nothing to do right now)
We are all somehow familiar with what video cards and their drivers are. At least for once some lucky one of us had to be the subject of "did you update your video drivers?" ritual.
Now, I'll try to carry the meaning of "video drivers" to a new level, called "modified video drivers". Let's move on topic by topic, lads.
2. Neon-Lighted Video Drivers
Um, no they aren't. Basically modified video drivers are the products of dedicated people who have tweaked the settings, parameters etc. of plain video driver files obtained from major graphic chipset manufacturers, for today, such as NVidia and ATI.
They either leak unreleased versions to work on or tweak officially-released sets to obtain a higher level of performance and eyecandy graphics. Remember, these guys have no relationship with those manufacturers, with neither NVidia nor ATI or somebody else. They just love playing around with internal dynamics of how video drivers work, which we gamers benefit indeed.
3. Blades With Two Sharp Tips
These "glowing gremlins" can do significant performance and visual enchancements on your system while being careless with them can screw your PC to a need of formatting.
You know, video drivers have versions, each higher one having more of codes or ones omitted etc. So, say, if you have a plain Nvidia Forceware 66.67 and then install 78.03 over it (vice versa), you may end up having a business suit patched with a hippi shirt. You'll be asked to take off that...thing.
As valid in most part of our lives, "work clean" is the thumbrule. How? By uninstalling your previous driver, taking a clean sweep by a third party program such as Driver Cleaner Pro, then installing your new set of modified drivers. I'm telling about this to make you aware about what is likely to come. You'll have a step-by-step (un)installation guide below.
What's more, since as everything made up of 0's and 1's can include bugs, so can the plain drivers, so can the modified drivers. All driver releaser groups have active fora where they interactively gather feedback so as to spot any weird circumstances with their sets, and do a fix for the set as soon as possible. Believe me, most of them are faster than big companies when it comes to problems.
Finally, as they all do underline in their disclaimers, you use these drivers at your own risk. Just as it is you that enjoys the performance/visual enhancement gained from a modified set, although happening rarely, it can be you who's cursing for a blue screen of death due to some driver bug or conflict. There are reliable, good-tempered releasers out there but you should not be whining for a problem they have never intended to.
That's been a long part, enough to scare some of you out of this from the start. But personally, I'm not a vanilla video driver user anymore, for more than 1.5-2 years, and I'm absolutely happy with what these modifications can do. I wrote this much because things you are familiar with hurt less if things turn tasteless, and, well, I can't dance around singing "hey this is the golden age of the video drivers!" and then receive PMs cursing for a screwed system.
4. Recipé, Ladies
This delicious meal needs a bunch of materials, of course. Here are what we need:
- Desired set of modified drivers
- Driver Cleaner Professional
- FRAPS or any other FPS-benchmarking utility of choice (optional)
- And uh..a working OS
4.a Desired Set Of Modified Drivers
Here, I'll give you the names of the well-known modified driver release groups and where to find them. But before..
As there are so many versions of plain drivers, so are the modified ones (multiplied by the number of releasers: whoa!). How will you choose what suits best to your gfx card ?
It's impossible to yell out a single set's name generally. One can do wonders for me while it can't "move a leaf" for your system. But of course there are sets which are approved in general.
I'm not an ATI owner but for Nvidia owners, what you should know of is that the driver version's first digit number minus one equals to the chipset the driver is intended for. e.g. Driver set version 7x.xx all include essential improvements for Geforce 6 series gfx cards, such as 6600GT or 6800 etc. Yes, they are told to be universal but all they can do may be "handshaking" your old gfx card to the system. When it comes to playing games where new guys will be "talking closely", your gfx card may not be able to get on well with the game, and driver set is responsible for this. I know that an old vid card could smoothly run MTW with bundled driver while it was creeping with newer sets.
However upon having a fresh look to the driver websites, I have seen that there are 10x.xx version driver sets intended for Geforce 8 series. Maybe it's all about 64-bit or Vista-compatibility stuff. I didn't check. But for the previous versions of Forceware, what I said above stands.
Modified driver releasers' fora are very fertile places to spot what sill suit you the best. No no! Don't rush opening a thread titled "I have a 8800, which one would you recommend?". People just don't like this. Instead, take a search in the fora regarding the chipset of your gfx card first. Also, when a driver set is released, it generally has a (sticky) thread announcing its release, also gathering feedback, where would be an excellent area to lurk around for a tasty set of drivers, or to find out that it's a "rotten hunt".
For the final words before introducing who the major releaser groups are, I can say that for a 6600GT (for overall 6 series owners), DHZer0point 's 78.03 set is highly regarded which comes with extra modification files for Doom3, HL2 as well. For an alternative, OmegaDrivers' 66.93 used to work like a charm for people with Geforce 5 series cards. I had a thread in a Turkish forum full of thanks for pointing out that wonder. People who were only able to play a game sluggishly were enjoying the game smoothly after its install. Keep that in mind if you're planning or have to use your "old man" for longer. It can help like an aphrodisiac out of this world.
So who are those releaser groups we'll be keeping an eye on ? Here goes..
The first modified video driver releaser I had been familiar with. After doing wonders with his last 66.93, he dropped out on Nvidia and kept on releasing quality ATI drivers. His dedicated work is also hosted under Driver Heaven downloads.
Headquarters of a hardware news and drivers group, where you'll be able to find solid and updated sets for both NVidia and ATI chipsets. They also have descriptions for each of their releases indicating whether it is a "latest", "stable" or "beta" release. Can be good point to start if you're quite nervous about the stability of your system.
Very active group who are swift on releases. I used to use their sets long ago, it was fine. However I may have to remind you that these guys fell into a dispute with Driver Heaven, if memory serves, and were banned from DH fora, from announcing or talking about their releases. I don't absolutely have an idea which party is righteous or not, nor do I know about the reason.
Their download page also have scripts pointing out which sets are quite "hot".
Download branch of Driver Heaven community and home of the DHZer0point Drivers and a secondary source for Omega Drivers downloads. Both driver releaser's announcements and feedbacks are made through Driver Heaven Forums, which is like a heap of knowledge while stepping into the modified drivers hassle.
These are the ones I have come up with right now, there may be one or two more I used to know about, however these ones I just mentioned should be more than enough for a start. Google out for more in case. "modified" or "optimized video drivers" are the keywords.
4.b Driver Cleaner Professional
When it comes to drivers, it's not all about uninstalling. The video drivers leave such remainders that can cause possible conflicts, causing problems ranging from poor performance to a BSOD.
Therefore, we need this piece of genius - Driver Cleaner Professional. Unfortunately as every program that attracts attention eventually turns into, the DC has been a commercial software (DC Platinum) being purchased from their overly stylized homepage (being a gfx designer, you can't help leaving irrelevant footnotes here and there 
). However, and fortunately this time, the freeware version of DC is still available legally, which is DC Pro, the one I'm talking about from the start. Get it here and install right now.
The utility is very helpful when it comes to sweep clean all remains of most of the drivers, not limited to only video drivers. That's what we exactly want for an error-free upgrade from a vanilla driver to a cherry-sauced one. This program is a must. Please do not ignore acquiring DC Pro.
4.c FPS Benchmarking Utility (optional)
You can get FRAPS or any other FPS benchmarking utility to log before and after stages of modified video drivers installation, to get a better idea of what they did for you or not. If you're willing, go get some testing with a FPS benchmarking tool running in background and log the results before moving to the driver re-installation phase.
4.d A Working OS
This is the most terrifying part, since a working OS will cost you quite some bucks.. Hey hey, spare your tomatoes and eggs for the breakfast, I inherited this sense of humor from Genghis Khan. (No wonder why he had to massacre millions..ahem..)
5. Step-by-Step Re-Installation Guide
Before kicking off the real stuff, I'm assuming that you have downloaded the modified video driver of your choice and have Driver Cleaner Pro installed (asks for a reboot). If so, let me lead the way :
- Open up you Add/Remove Programs from Control Panel. And uninstall your current video drivers.
Note: If you have an Nvidia chipset motherboard along with an Nvidia chipset graphics card, the Nvidia driver installer may have compiled all drivers including the video driver under one option such as above. In that case, if you go careless and be a click-next-click-next boy, you may end up uninstalling your motherboard drivers as well as your video drivers. So in order to avoid that, after clicking Remove button above, in the following window, you should choose "uninstall only these.." (or something like that. Since I have the Turkish version installed, I'm making a rough translation from what I remember) and tick Nvidia Video Driver only. You'll be prompted for a restart, do it with your finger waiting ready on F8.
- Now that you've restarted your machine, somewhere along the table that shows the technical specifications of your PC, hit F8 to bring up Windows Advanced Options Menu.
- As soon as you're logged into the Safe Mode, you'll be welcome by a dialogue box like that. Click Yes to proceed.
- When you're there, Windows may try to warn you with a "New Hardware Found" Wizard dialogue window, Just click cancel. We know that we have an "unintroduced" graphics card, however we are in the Safe Mode to erase all traces of the previous video driver, not to install a driver. So there's no harm in refusing the New Hardware Found Wizard's process.
Now run Driver Cleaner Pro. Since the resolution may be quite low, it can be a hassle finding out the icon in a previously crowded desktop. You may need to browse your computer to run the program from Program Files > Driver Cleaner Pro location in case.
Here you'll have a warning intro about the use of the program. Easy, I'm here, click OK and proceed to the main window of DC Pro. - Now, from the Cleaning Selection dropdown menu, choose the appropriate manufacturer of your video card (ATI or NVidia).
- As soon as you have selected the manufacturer whose drivers we are aiming to sweep clean the traces, click Start. If you click Show Details button, you'll be shown every single registry reference and file DC Pro will be erasing. When you have that "Cleaning Finished !" notification in the middle. Voila ! You're ready for the last step.
- Close the program now. And restart your PC. We need a normal login now, so you don't have to press anything, just let Windows load normally.
- Once you're back again, and in case New Hardware Found Wizard appears, dismiss it by clicking Cancel. Now grab your modified video driver's installer, and run it.
You'll quite likely to see disclaimers and maybe, options about what you want with the drivers. Some present options such as "Quality", "Performance" and "Overall Quality/Performance Balance" etc. They may, they may not, it's all up to the author(s) of the modified driver.
Note: Generally, Windows pauses the installation with a dialogue box saying that the device you're currently installing was not able to pass WHQL. Ignore it and press "Continue Anyway". This is a good sign, because it makes sure that the video driver is properly being installed. If it does not appear, it does not have to mean that things went wrong, but make sure by playing a game. If the game is abnormally sluggish, then it means although we installed the video card driver, it somehow did not establish the familiarity between the video card and the OS. Re-install until that dialogue box appears. I came across with such stuff once or twice.
- Make some coffee or tea or whatever you like know. After this last restart, you're a victorious upgraded militia with a shiny blade.
Alrighty, folks. After that boring pile of murmur, the torment ends for both parties. 
Please drop suggestions, contributions, questions and feedback here. I'll be glad to help.
Regards,
P.S. The performance/quality change is utterly subjective. No guarantees for all the hassle.
P.S.S. I had to use some pictures which I didn't take myself. (Yes I'm such a lazy gfx designer not to remove that Softpedia remark from that screenshot. Yippee!) All pictures stand for exemplifying purposes only, do not have to be looking just as the same at your system.
LEN 's Guide to Modified Video Drivers Galaxy
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Originally Posted by Tamur
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