Found out last night that there is a new beta driver released with the Crysis 1.2 patch in mind. See link below for 6,7,8 series GPU's.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.44.html

No support for 9 series as yet but it may well be included in your 174.1 driver update

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_174.74.html

I'd be interested to hear what (if any) difference this has made to the games playability