Hey folks,
A couple of points to make here.
ALL driver builds, no matter the company, are based on the chipset manufacturers reference drivers. It depends on what build or version they are based on and what optimizations or features or even limitations
are written in by the card manufacturer for their specific hardware configuration.
WRT the V770 Ultra, the best drivers for AH,WB and ALL D3D apps are the 4.01s from Diamond. This has been extensively tested by weazel and myself and others using a variety of benchmarking utilities. The reason is that later builds and ALL Nvidia reference builds after 1.88 have been optimized for OpenGL performance and NOT D3D.
This is because Quake drives the market for video cards and is OpenGL.
Also, as Westy mentioned, the 4.01 and 4.02 Diamond builds include the InControl tools for changing settings like v-sync, anti-aliasing, SPMT,etc. and an overclocking utility. You need to make registry changes to access these features using reference drivers and a 3rd party utility to overclock the card. In short, there is no reason to use reference drivers if you are using your box primarily for AH or any D3D app.
Another note about drivers. You need to follow careful procedures when changing drivers to avoid "driver residue" left in the registry which can degrade performance or even cause conflicts which can result in the need to do a format and clean install of Windoze!!! For complete instuctions on changing drivers and BIOS optimizations for the TNTII, check weazel response to RAM's post: HELP!!! in the general discussion forum. It's a pain in the rear,but well worth the effort, to gain performance and avoid permanently crapping up your registry
BTW, I was the 1st person in WB to get a V770 Ultra and have had mine for a year now this month. It is a great card and you should be very happy with it. Depending on your system, you will see little benefit from overclocking the card until you get over 600mhz as its CPU limited NOT fillrate limited up to that speed.
Good luck and sorry for the long,didactic response but there is alot of confusion about drivers and a broad misconception that the "latest" drivers are always the best
kbman
