Author Topic: New Detonator 3 drivers out today ! 14-08-00 (Read 802 times)

214thCavalier · « **on:** August 14, 2000, 01:19:00 PM »

NVIDIA's Detonator 3 (D3) instantly increases the processing power of your NVIDIA-based graphics accelerators by up to 50%. You'll be amazed at how much faster and better your games, multimedia, and other 3D applications will run. In addition to significant performance increases, D3's feature set includes: improved DVD and HDTV playback, an advanced Digital Vibrance Control (DVC) user interface (for products that support DVC), a robust TwinView multimonitor feature set (for products with TwinView enabled), an easy-to-use anti-aliasing control user interface, and optimizations for Intel i815 and Pentium 4 processors and AMD Duron and Athlon processors.

Sounds good anyway

DL as i type will post later if they do as claimed.

Mickey1992 · « **Reply #1 on:** August 18, 2000, 08:21:00 AM »

I wanted to point out that these new drivers look to be even newer than the ones released the first week in Aug. The old ones were W9x-616.zip and these are W9x-618.zip
http://www.nvidia.com/products.nsf/htmlmedia/detonator3.html

bloom25 · « **Reply #2 on:** August 21, 2000, 02:54:00 AM »

Has anybody tried these on a TNT2 Ultra versus the old Diamond 4.01 or .02s? So far the 4.01s are still the fastest for DX. PLEASE say these new drivers are faster.

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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

Mickey1992 · « **Reply #3 on:** August 21, 2000, 10:24:00 AM »

Bloom,

What card do you have that is a TNT2 "Ultra"?

kbman · « **Reply #4 on:** August 21, 2000, 01:29:00 PM »

http://anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1297

Hi Bloom,
Check this link for an in depth look at the Det 3 6.18 drivers. In short, if you have a GEForce card they are great, but for us guys hanging on to our "old faithful" TNT 2s, they actually give less performance than the Det 2 5.22s and significantly less than the Diamond 4.01s or .02s. I have done extensive testing and benchmarking and this is born out consistently, despite the same increases in 3DMark 2000 scores in single and multi-texture fillrates that the 5.22s showed over the Diamond builds. The result is still approx. 20% lower FPS in AH and WB.

WRT Mickey's question, almost all companies produced an Ultra and Standard version TNT2s, the difference being that the Ultra has a higher core clock and memory speed and better RAM.

kbman

bloom25 · « **Reply #5 on:** August 22, 2000, 02:49:00 AM »

First answer: Diamond Viper V770 Ultra

I've had the same experiences myself Kbman. I've tried a few different driver versions and I've found Diamonds 4.02's to be my favorite. There is one thing that concerns me though. After looking at my registry after doing what I thought was a clean install of the Dets, I found that the subfolder they are placed in is different from the Diamond drivers. Not only that, but some of the old Diamond stuff was still lingering. I'm wondering if somehow AH gets "confused" and this accounts for the drop in performance, because according to benchmarks there is a substantial boost to DX performance using the Det 5.22s. (Newest I tried.) If I had the time (and will

) I would probably try a clean reinstall of Windows with the new Det3s and see how AH performs then. Kbman, I'd try looking around in your registry and see if anything looks funny to you after installing the dets. I can't really put my finger on it, but something doesn't seem quite right.

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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

Mickey1992 · « **Reply #6 on:** August 22, 2000, 08:34:00 AM »

Thanks for the post, guys. I have a V550 and was not certain as to the "Ultra" specification. I thought that I had noticed a drop in FR ever since I switch from the Diamond drivers and I think now you have convinced me.

So for someone like me that does not do this frequently, what procedures would you suggest to uninstall the det drivers and reinstall the Diamond drivers?

kbman · « **Reply #7 on:** August 22, 2000, 12:04:00 PM »

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/Forum10/HTML/000268.html

Hi Mickey,
Check this post I made a while back about performance. Scroll down and see my response to Bash about how to change drivers. Follow these instructions carefully and you'll have no problems. Its a pain but worth the effort to insure a clean and trouble free installation.

Bloom,
yes there is something very mysterious going on with the new Nvidia drivers. I have been aware of this for some time and posted about it on AGW. Ndrtkr is "undertaking" a research project to get to the bottom of it and we may soon have some answers. As it turns out, AH, or WB for that matter, dont look at the registry for their performance parameters, DX does. So it's not the game getting "confused". There is not a simple answer and Ndrtkr has asked the developers at Ien to look into it and I sent e-mail to HT about it. Ndrtkr is building a test bed machine to do a study of the different driver builds and hopefully something will come of it to provide a definitive answer.
http://lists.imagiconline.com/ubb/Forum6/HTML/000294.html

Here's a link to a post he made that includes links to a post I made that started the whole thing about 2 months ago or so. Lots of interesting stuff here.

I do NOT think that it's the VMM32.vxd as is suggested in one response and neither does Ndrtkr. Have fun banging your head against this one, its a toughie...

kbman