Reference driver & betas

As well as otherwise, if the manufacturer of GeForce chips offers drivers, it is so called reference drivers, which serve as the basis for the producers of individual graphics cards. These extend the necessary base functionality partly by additional functions that supported their respective product or just their logo set into it. Some simply take the complete reference driver. Forget you should not here however, that ultimately the manufacturer of the graphics card for it to ensure, that the purchaser is provided with a suitable, high-performance and compatible driver.

It is the temporal proximity both announcing the Radeon9700 Pro by ATi as the availability of the first products with this chip, which are expected in the near future, not by the hand to show, that nVidia is on the spot set looks to lose not the connection.

Features of the “Beta”

As already in our news yesterday to read, there are some new features in this beta drivers, so, as you’d expect it also because of the huge jump in version number.

nVidia has come to finally get and put an end to the uncomfortable and laborious Look & feel of the previous driver options, as well as some, overdue partly original options added.

Features of the new beta detonators 40.41

• Up to a 25% increase in performance
• nView ™ 2.0 multi-display technology increases productivity and provides the necessary tools to control the way users access and view applications.
• NVRotate ™ enabling image rotation on today “s advanced flat panel displays.”
• NVKeystone ™ allows for real time image correction on portable projectors and heads up displays.
• Digital vibrance control ™ allows users to adjust color controls to achieve accurate, bright colors under all conditions.
• New control panel streamlines user interface and enables faster and easier access to all video settings
• Robust channel enables higher faster performance and better stability for all applications through fail-safe paths in the drivers
• CineFX Simulator allows developers to use CG — “C for graphics” — to write complex shaders in a high level language faster and more easily than before.
• NVIDIA “s patented unified driver architecture (UDA) – supports all products in single a driver binary”

The marketing seems almost unwilling to be, once again promised performance en masse. This time however not global, but at least with the small addition “up to”, which leaves a pretty big loopholes.

Treibereien and…

nView 2.0 is a little more useful, at least for those of us who have major problems with the space available on their monitor, as with the space on your desk. nView control of two displays with independent resolutions and Refreshraten, so even users with two unequal monitors could optimally exploit both display devices allowed in the original version. It remains unclear which nView except the multiple desktops now the predicate “2.0″ earned…

nVRotate is also rather interesting for minorities, but because nVidia for some time in the area, the Apple Macintosh computer expands its activities, it has to adapt the requirements of this new market. It is sometimes quite handy to be able to represent an A4 page in original size and distortion on a display for desktop publishing, one of the domains of the apples, and for this you can in the absence of 24 “monitors for example some TFT displays also upright conduct.” So that you can use the display now also makes sense, of course that the content can be rotated accordingly. This is precisely the purpose of nVRotate.

Often times, who issues the one or the other video on the TV, whether in the popular DivX format or a proper DVD, will be pleased about the advanced features of overscan.

Driver innards

A little further into the realm of hardware control back following tabs. First of all the General tab, where such interesting things hiding like the built-in graphics card, the BIOS revision, and, what could be some really important, the built-in TV-out chip. This CPU and RAM, as well as installed DirectX and driver versions there of course.

Before getting to the nitty-gritty, the tabs on the individual APIs, here briefly the anti-aliasing tab. The only change here is the setting of “Texture Sharpening”. This includes the increase in the anisotropic filtering level hides (but not on level 8,).

In the OpenGL and Direct3D tabs a lot has happened, especially in Direct3D.

Good to see the newly added setting for the level of the anistropen filter is here. It ranges from level 0 (point sampling) over 1 (BI / trilinearer filter) to the real AF modes 2 x, 4 x and 8 x. With the 8 x-setting but incorrectly works and only four anisotropic filter is enabled. From top to bottom the filter methods are stopped here by drivers. (0 x = point sampling, 1 x = trilinear, 2 x 2xAF = 4 x = 4xAF and 8 x = 4xAF)

OpenGL is, however, virtually unchanged, up to some Kompatibilitäseinstellungen, that will probably soon be required for the OpenGL 1.4 compatibility.

A Word to the point of sampling: Instant is given the default on this filtering method a performance fraud to think about, is bi- or tri in all games tested by us but not so, because the speed rather than the normal point sampling and benchmarks will not change. It seems to be, especially since point sampling is only active, when to change the AF level or confirmed only level 0 a simple bug in the beta driver.

Enough of the preface, we come now to the interesting part…

Test system

The following system stood for some short tests available:

• CPU:
  • AMD AthlonXP 1700 + (1466MHz)
• Motherboard:
  • Elitegroup K7S6A with SiS745 chipset
• Memory:
  • 1 * 512 MB Nanya/Apacer PC2100 DDR RAM Cl2, 0
• Video card:
  • ASUS V8460 ultra DeLuxe (Ti4600)
• Peripherals
  • IBM DTLA 307015
  • Pioneer DVD A03
  • Realtek RTL8029 NIC
  • Castlewood ORB removable drive
• Other
  • A4 tech double wheel mouse
  • Enermax PSU with 431 Watts
• Software
  • WindowsXP
  • Beta-detonator v40. 41

Benchmarks

We begin times simply to. The GeForce4 Ti distinguished himself most recently by strikingly poor performance anisotropic filtering. Reason for this was a drop of the fill rate and thus the achievable performance in 3D applications as soon as the chip had to anisotropic filter more than a texture per triangle.

So far, so good. Under OpenGL the workaround works, since some time in the drivers implemented is still. How it looks now with Direct3D?

Unfortunately not so good. The driver can release although the performance of its predecessor, but also here the chip forces apparently anisotropic to filter more than just the base texture (so the detail, light, and Alpha textures). Too bad, but apparently Direct3D allows not the separate selection of filtering for the individual texture stages.

Here, it seems to have to learn even a little bit optimization multitexturing fill rate and the hidden-surface removal, at least in conjunction with 2xFSAA.

And here again the just obtained impression is relativized. Single-pass multi-texturing seems to work well, as soon as the driver but must make a second pass the chip, the improvements are obviously back then.

Game benchmarks

Who owns a GeForce4 Ti, is certainly no longer play in settings, include the no enhancement, that is why we have driven first of all a few extremely demanding benches with 2xFSAA and 4xAF.

The shaderlastige Aquamark reflected in high quality not particularly impressed by the improvements in the new beta driver, worse still, he produced many funny image, which, as also at the following Aquanox, still make matters worse are added.

With the official detonator 30.82 both applications run without errors.

Serious Sam the second encounter with the Direct3D renderer seems to like the new driver, under OpenGL is unfortunately, still by default on a 16Bit-Z-Buffer switched, so that the results are practically worthless. For this we have renounced however FSAA and AF, because serious Sam is already challenging enough and relies on a higher framerate compared to Aquanox.

Although not a game, but an engine from the many wanted, would that be the graphics in games times take an example from. Codecreatures makes intensive use of pixel and Vertexshadern, as also the nature test in the 3DMark 2001. What this leads, we see same.

Although not too much thrust, but 10% increased output are already not despise. On the next page of the all driver programmer, the 3DMark2001 favorite object.

3DMark 2001

The Supreme discipline among the benchmarks is the 3DMark2001. Not, because he would have any practical relevance, but he is by clever marketing, great efforts of the driver programmer and an easy-to-remember number without disturbing, hard-to-understand unit by many as a reference benchmark considered.

It was tested in 1280 x 960, as the 3DMark is very CPU-dependent and we wanted to reduce this influence as possible.

Quod erat expectandum, how to expect the new beta driver in the 3DMark cuts off much better, when the previous readings suggest it. In the more CPU intensive “games” 1 and 3, the new beta can keep not the connection to the official driver, while in the Dragothic game 2 a lower tab is able to. The nature test shoots but from the absolute Vogel: here are as its only test, which is incorporated in the standings, shared pixel and vertex shader. It seems that nVidia would have here a hefty graft can solve the formerly the performance heavily restricted. 51% Lead as speak a clear language.

In most theoretical tests not entering in the score, the two sets of drivers take not much. Times the old 30 82er is usually the 40.41 beta front. Only in high-polygon count using a light source may get away a little more clearly the latter, without that now would be like another milestone.

Hidden settings

Also in the new betas, there are a few hidden settings that make life easier one or the other again, fix is integrated for example now a refresh rate which can solve the annoying 60Hz-Problem. For the time being, unfortunately, but only under Direct3D.

A page to view and change some AGP settings is available, as well as a (available only with nForce Chipset) temperature measurement of in the IGP integrated graphics. Also the well-known overclocking Panel is not missing.

Although still not everything seems to work, the good will is evident and clearly more useful than 200 points in the 3DMark.

To enable these pages with the following text inserting in a newly created .txt file, renaming these in .reg and double clicks, so that it will be inserted in the registry are.

≪ blockquote > originally posted

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/NVIDIA Corporation/global/NVTweak]

“Coolbits” = dword: ffffffff

“NvCplEnableHardwarePage” = dword: 00000001

“NvCplEnableAGPSettingsPage” = dword: 00000001

Conclusion

If it didn’t exist the 3DMark, many optimizations can also benefit from the games. To or similar to the one or the other might think, and certainly not quite wrongly. But if it didn’t exist the 3DMark with his quite meaningful detailed tests, you would do much more yourself, to recognize the real brakes in driver, graphics card, or even in the system.

With the new BETA drivers from nVidia, it is clear that a brake apparently must have been the combination of pixel and Vertexshadern. Even if the Aquamark drops out through his image with the betas as a meaningful benchmark, you seem to have recognized this and, what is more important, fixed in nVidia.

Also the new look & feel of the betas gives rise to the hope that the formerly Spartan and functional detonator drivers is still a visually and functionally appealing Control Center for the multimedia PC. Until this happens however error-free and mature, it is though still a bit there, but the approaches are good for a BETA.

Unfortunately the ver are performance only on the “up to” sprochenen 25% to reach, so in turn as a marketing message to understand-Zusatz.

If at nVidia that driver developers do remain as good work as the Marketing Department does already for some time, you need not worry to have the final 40 detonator.