No Performance gain with new Nvidia drivers

[Guest gasebah]

The default setting for this driver is pointsampling instead of bilinear trilinear filtering. You can easily check that. The standard reg key is:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesClassDisplay0000NVidiaDirect3DD3D_74095213Value for all Nvidia drivers was:"01 00 00 00" (1)Now suddenly the new value is:"00 00 00 00" (0) And that means point sampling. And that is from the old ages.Setting 1 however is bilinear/trilinear filtering and not AF 2 etc.As pointsampling has almost no performance gain over bilinear/trilinear this can be considered a bug more than cheating.But do not be fooled here. A German 3D Site made a lot of game testing already and found out that there was zip performance gain in any other application than 3D Mark. So if you do not play 3DMark a lot :-)there won't be much of a performance gain. I guess I will dump 3DMark as a benchmarking tool because this is getting more and more ridiculous. :-erksI like the new driver because of its features though. Rgds,Alex

[Guest JonP01]

It is interesting that there is no Win9x version and so far as I can see no mention that a Win9x version is in the works. I just wonder whether Nvidia will release one, or whether they are phasing out support for the Win9x platform. Actually one of the reasons I went out and bought a Geforce 4 a couple of weeks ago is that I wasn't willing to bet the NV30 was going to have the same level of Win9x support as it will get with XP. That is, I suspect sooner or later if you want your Nvidia graphics cards to run at it's optimum (or run at all), you will have to be running at least XP.

[Guest]

Today flew with the new drivers and there's indeed no significant improvement. A few fps or so.Indeed 3DMark gives me a 2000(!!) improvement, but that's it.Also I'm now experiencing sound problems (clicks) that I didn't have before the upgrade.Weird, there's something fishy about these drivers and don't know what it is...-Gideon

[JimmiG]

Yup I posted about the point-sample thing in the other thread about the new drivers.I gained 8 FPS in the Nature test alone in 3DMark, but I didn't notice any improvement in FS or any other game...

[Guest gasebah]

Yep, sorry only after releasing this thread I saw that it is double posted.Alex

[Guest Lizardo]

Ya, there's a WIN9x in there..that's what loads when you click win 95/98/ME. (or at least it says so in the download).

[Guest JonP01]

Lizardo,Sorry to be a pain, but you have a specific link to the Detonator 4 Win9x driver please? I had another look at Nvidia's site but still can't find it. The last Win9x driver I can find is the 30.82. Unless you mean the Win 2000 / XP detonator 4 driver also works with Win9x??

[Guest Edam]

I think that it's high time that people stopped depending on 3DMark as an indication of how good certain drivers are. And this is a perfect example. What does it matter if you get 80,000 (hyperbole) more "3DMarks," but your favorite game shows no difference? The ultimate benchmark is your favorite game, not a "benchmark" that has nothing to do with it. Sure, many people have increased their 3DMark score, but it had no effect, or worse, in FS2K2.

[Guest JonP01]

I tend to agree with that, even though I haven't tried these particular new drivers. I never put too much emphasis on 3D Mark, but I had always felt it was useful in comparing a machine against itself. For example, if you try a new BIOS setting, driver, add more memory, registry tweaks - things like that. But the consensus that this new driver is a mere 3D Mark point scorer is now being shared by a number of people who I believe know what they are talking about. From what I've read on some technical forums, most of the increase is in the nature test, and indeed some people are getting "25% better" on that particular test. There is a lot of speculation that this driver set is an attempt to wrestle sales away from ATi, perhaps pressured by delays with the new NV30. otoh, some sites are reporting improvements in actual games, so I might sit on this one before formulating an opinion. At least the 29.42 drivers work perfectly well and I have no issues with them. So anything that was ever going to go beyond those drivers would have just been a bonus anyway.