GF driver guru needed / confusion between GTU and NVmax

[Guest gasebah]

Hi y'all,I have tried a little something over last hours and I have no idea what the hell is going on.I have used NVmax for years, but having read that it is not supporting the latest drivers and that it will not be updated anymore I decidied to try hard page or GTU.I had pretty good graphics in FS2002 but anything can be improved.I uninstalled NVmax and installed the GTU.After installing GTU and pressing a few buttons (only stuff I know a little about like aniso, LOD bias etc.) I started FS2002.It was downright terrible. Unsharp graphics, blurries like hell, slow texture updating... Whatever buttons I pressed, whatever stuff I enabled or disabled it would not go away. So I decided to do clean driver reinstall and deleted any corresponding reg entries in order to get it right.Same probs after the reinstall.I unsintalled GTU again. Made a driver reinstall. And tried NV Hardpage. Guess what. Same problem.I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and went back to NVmax. Messing around anyway I set LOD bias to -3 (!!!). Anisotropic filtering to 16 tap. And guess what. Crisp clear graphics even at pretty good distance. Fast texture updating. Rarely any blurries. Framerate at a constant 22 in the air.Why? The proggie shouldnt even work with my 29.42 drivers.I am running at everything maxed out except Mesh (90%) and Autogen (very dense). Framerate slider at 22. I made the cfg tweaks for image quality.System:Athlon XP 2100+GF4Ti4600512 MB DDR-Ram Could someone pls shed some light on this.

[Guest ScottPilot]

Are you sure that the Geforce tweek Utility if fully compatable with the GF4 line of cards?I was using the GTU also when I upgraded from my GF2 to my GF4MX card and had terrible results tweaking it using the GTU utility.I got rid of the GTU and went back to Nvmax. Even though it will no longer be supported, I have had good luck with this utility compared to GTU after going to the GF4 card.For now, I would suggest (from my own experience) to stay away from the GTU utility when running the GF4 cards, IF YOU ARE HAVING PROBLEMS. Maybe in future updates it will work better.Others may not be having problems with GTU, but I did.Scott :-)PIII 1GHZVisiontek Xtasty GF4 MX440 card 64MB DDR RamDual 17" Monitors120GB hard disk(s)512MB SDRAMCH Products Pro pedals & Flight YokeWindows XP ProFS2K2 Pro

[Guest Max Cowgill]

>Are you sure that the Geforce tweek Utility if fully >compatable with the GF4 line of cards? shoot, I was having trouble with GTU on my GF2! Maybe it's just my messed-up system but that was off a fresh reformat of the HD so I dunno...Max Cowgill

[Guest PaulL01]

>Hi y'all, >>I have tried a little something over last hours and I have >no idea what the hell is going on. >I have used NVmax for years, but having read that it is not >supporting the latest drivers and that it will not be >updated anymore I decidied to try hard page or GTU. >I had pretty good graphics in FS2002 but anything can be >improved. >I uninstalled NVmax and installed the GTU. >After installing GTU and pressing a few buttons (only stuff >I know a little about like aniso, LOD bias etc.) I started >FS2002. >It was downright terrible. Unsharp graphics, blurries like >hell, slow texture updating... Whatever buttons I pressed, >whatever stuff I enabled or disabled it would not go away. >So I decided to do clean driver reinstall and deleted any >corresponding reg entries in order to get it right. >>Same probs after the reinstall. >>I unsintalled GTU again. Made a driver reinstall. And tried >NV Hardpage. Guess what. Same problem. >>I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and went back to >NVmax. Messing around anyway I set LOD bias to -3 (!!!). >Anisotropic filtering to 16 tap. And guess what. Crisp clear >graphics even at pretty good distance. Fast texture >updating. Rarely any blurries. Framerate at a constant 22 in >the air. >Why? The proggie shouldnt even work with my 29.42 drivers. >Any of the above programs will work, and they certainly will not screw up anything on there own as they read what is already there in the regestry each time you open them, it is that there are just some features that will not be available to you to tweak unless said software supports XXXX driver. Heres the scoop:Forget NVmax as you know it is no longer supported, it is better to become familiar with a new program that is updated but heres lies the key...the kind folks that make and offer these tools do not update them every single time someone sneases and post a "new" leaked driver but they do usualy keep them up to date especially if there is a significant new set of drivers, as of right now only HardPage has been updated to enable most tweaking of the setting 29.42 (I dont know about the negative LOD yet) RVtuner may also have posted an update today (I havent looked) and GTU is not offering an update at this time. That said, 16tap anisotropy and 0 LOD mipmaping are all avalable through the normal windows display drivers settings menu, those settings are what you get when choosing "best image quality" so If you like these settings and to keep from any trouble you may want to remove all of your tweaking software or atleast reset your drivers settins by simply rechecking and enableing in the normal display settings driver menu and leaving all alone.As for how things got out of hand, I have no idea, it certainly isnt a "does GTU support GF4TI?" issue as they clearly do and there are no issues along those lines, all I can say is dont try to use all of these at once especially if one of them is outdated and dont mess with other settings that you have no idea what they do (not saying you did). :)

[Guest gasebah]

Hi Paul,thx fr the answer. Honestly I hoped you would answer to my post as I am following this forum quite closely and found that you are one of the more experienced guys when it comes to tweaking (I apllied all your cfg changes for picture quality, great expalantions too instead of just posting settings nobody understands).First of all I made a mistake explaining my setup: I am running on aniso 32-tap of course. That is basically the reason why I need the tweaker (except the coolbit O/C entry, and some other stuff for pther games).I well believe that GTU and Hardpage support the cards and I guess there are some messed up settings in the registry that make them miss. On the other hand I deleted every Nvidia, NVmax and other related entries I could find durig driver reinstall. What else could I do? I do not want to reinstall my OS only for that reason.I also did not mess whith all the cryptic settings in GTU I have no idea about.By the way: there is clear difference between LOD 0 and LOD -3 in the NVmax settings. This is not just imagination. Also the entry "highest quality" dissapears in the Nvidia driver settings when enabling LOD -3. I might post a screenshot one of those days.Regarding the rest of your answer I believe every word you said, but bottom line: It did not help my specific situation. Any idea which reg settings I should delete and at what stage during driver reinstall (OS: WinXP)?What also seems odd that I do not seem to be the only person that has those problems (c above posts).By the way excuse my bad English, it is not exactly easy to have this kind of converstaion in a foreign language.Rgds,Alex

[Guest PaulL01]

>Hi Paul, >>thx fr the answer. Honestly I hoped you would answer to my >post as I am following this forum quite closely and found >that you are one of the more experienced guys when it comes >to tweaking (I apllied all your cfg changes for picture >quality, great expalantions too instead of just posting >settings nobody understands). >First of all I made a mistake explaining my setup: I am >running on aniso 32-tap of course. That is basically the >reason why I need the tweaker (except the coolbit O/C entry, >and some other stuff for pther games). >I well believe that GTU and Hardpage support the cards and I >guess there are some messed up settings in the registry that >make them miss. On the other hand I deleted every Nvidia, >NVmax and other related entries I could find durig driver >reinstall. What else could I do? I do not want to reinstall >my OS only for that reason. >I also did not mess whith all the cryptic settings in GTU I >have no idea about. >By the way: there is clear difference between LOD 0 and LOD >-3 in the NVmax settings. This is not just imagination. Also >the entry "highest quality" dissapears in the Nvidia driver >settings when enabling LOD -3. I might post a screenshot one >of those days. >Regarding the rest of your answer I believe every word you >said, but bottom line: It did not help my specific >situation. Any idea which reg settings I should delete and >at what stage during driver reinstall (OS: WinXP)? >What also seems odd that I do not seem to be the only person >that has those problems (c above posts). >>By the way excuse my bad English, it is not exactly easy to >have this kind of converstaion in a foreign language. >>Rgds, >AlexI Alex,thanks for the detailed reply. :)Even though you think "best image quality" is gone, it is not, I know that the window is emty but if you avtivate or click on it all of the original setting should make themselve available to you and you can simply pick what you want, anyway it sounds as though you might have some other driver install issues you may want to try removing all of the tweak programs, re-installing your drivers and then reload what driver tweaking software you choose, I would recommend HardPage with the 29.42s as it does (after testing last night)...it does support all of the anistropic settings But I dont have a clear answer for you about LOD settings, aniso to me is much more important than the as I usualy use settings of -0.1 . Your doing fine with your english. :)Take Care,