Ok, had two new possibilities to upgrade from the 61.76/61.77 drivers for those of us with older Nvidia stuff. I tested the 66.93 Omegas and the newest Nvidia release 71.89. I had previously tried the 66.93 Nvidia drivers, and the zer0point modded drivers, and found them incompatible with my FX 5900XT. I was more hopeful of Omega.
Omega usually includes in his "tweaks" a larger compatibility list than the standard Nvidia driver of the same version. And indeed, on his site he says he made the driver compatible with more cards, although he doesnt say which. Nvidia's latest release CLAIMS compatibility with ALL previous products, all the way back to the TNT and the old Rage and Rage Pro stuff. One member of the BBS here claimed it worked ok on his FX card, so I decided to test them out.
I first made sure my MOBO drivers were up to date, then I went through the standard uninstall/reinstall process for the video drivers, tested everything in Direct X, and then logged in offline. One complaint had been flames and smoke from burning planes causing severe drops in fps. So I took off in a FW 190A5 with the 4x20mm and the 2x7.9mm (lots of ammo, easy to control, fairly fast, could get flames and smoke with just a few rounds). I pulled up behind the first B24, and watched it blow up. Frame rates were good, zoom or not didnt seem to matter. I was running mid 70s and high 60s over the base without a plane in my forward view, and it didnt really drop until I got in under d600. Even then it was negligible. Until the explosion. Fps dropped to mid 30s until I was past the fireball. Pulled up behind the next B24, and set one of the starboard engines afire. Fps dropped into the 50s and 40s. Went by and pulled up behind the FW. Set it on fire, then circled far enough to get both in my view. Even at 2.5k out (how far I had to get to see both at once), the fps hit was noticeable. If you can see the flames, it hits your fps. I never noticed this with the old drivers, but then I didnt pay attention before either. I also noticed that for some reason the P38 causes a fps drop when it is in view, even at 3k away? Strange. Maybe an issue with the new skin forms? I didnt pay attention when the FW first came into view, only after it was flaming. I DID notice after trying it online that the FW forward view had 10fps lower than the side views, I'm assuming because of the cockpit guages. Went online and tried flying around, fps were lower than offline but that could just be the map. Clouds seemed to help alot with fps (maybe the tree haters have something with these newer drivers?), and although the trees did cause a small fps hit in the 61.xx drivers, I never noticed this much fluctuation from the terrain. Still, all fps were liveable, low 40s at takeoff, rising into the 50s at 5k, and up into the 60s and 70s by 13k where I levelled out. Sought out a furball, most of the fight with 4-8 planes in forward view, flames, smoke, tracers, etc. I was staying above 35fps. Only right down on the deck, weaving through trees and d200 off an enemy plane did I drop below 30 at all, to 29fps.
Result? Omega 66.93 passed, no lockups, no CTD, not even so much as a stutter. And just to note, this was on the QUALITY setting, the only change I made to Omega's tweaks was to turn on Vsync so I'd get realistic frame rates to report. Even he says his Performance drivers will give better fps.
Uninstalled the Omegas and installed the newest drivers directly off the Nvidia website. Did everything exactly the same as with the Omegas. Had a few artifact issues, but I think I overheated the card. I'm going to have to try again. Apparently the default on these drivers does not have the fan on all the time on the card, and the temp probe is set too high. I reset it to make the fan run all the time, but its getting late. I'll retest the new Nvidia drivers tomorrow and follow up on the results. Looked promising up to that point though.
Tested the theory regarding the skins issue, cant get it to repeat now. Either I was imagining things, or I kept getting some funky trees that dropped my fps every time the P38 was in my view. Go figure. Flying with lots of clouds around to mask the ground DID still provide a fps boost.
