Latest release of NVIDIA drivers do not work on my Mandriva 2006

Hi. This is more to inform than it is to ask for help, though I would appreciate any help on getting the latest drivers to work, if I've done something wrong. But the fact is, I think it's an issue with the drivers themselves.

I'm running Mandriva 2006 free edition on an Intel Celeron 2.26 GHz PC with an NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX400 running on AGP. Kernel is 2.6.12-12mdksmp

The free drivers worked fine (of course, without 3d accel). When I tried to install the latest version of the IA32 drivers (version 8756) via the script, I couldn't start up the X server.

I had previously done 'urpmi' for the correct kernel source, and the install went without a hitch. I also modified the xorg.conf file correctly, etc. The only symptom was a display that couldn't be started.

Then I uninstalled this newest driver, downloaded and installed version 8178 the exact same way. This time, it worked perfectly.

So I think it's a problem with the newest drivers that NVIDIA has supplied, and there's little I can do about it. But I just thought I'd let you guys know to avoid future exasperation. :)

I think I'd better seek help on this too. Even though the install seems to have gone OK with the previous version of the drivers (get the splash screen on KDE startup), I'm not getting good 3d accel.

glxgears gives frame rates of around 330 fps in small window mode. IIRC, I was getting 500-600 fps at least with this card on my old distro (Mandrake 9.x) with the previous version of NVIDIA drivers.

ppracer plays, but there are frequent frozen frames which greatly hinders gameplay.

I'm using 1280*1024, the native resolution for my 17" LCD monitor. 32 bit color depth. The rest of the details are in the post above. Thanks for any help/advice/troubleshooting tips. :)