FSAA supported in NV 5.08 Drivers!

[RobRich]

I personally don't like the new 5.08 release because of DirectX performance issues with several, but their openGL driver is seriously improving. Not only did they give us s3 texture compression, but now beta full screen anti-alaising can be enabled. It will take a MAJOR performance hit, so I would recommend this only for experimentation on GF256 DDR cards. Also, FSAA is only available in openGL based programs at this time. First get the 5.08 drivers:

www.reactorcritical.com (http://www.reactorcritical.com)

While your their, make sure to get a tweak app to enable coolbits and other required registry entries. All available in the download section.

Now using the following files, you can enable or disable FSAA:

www.angelfire.com/tn/PlanetMinako/fsaaoff.reg (http://www.angelfire.com/tn/PlanetMinako/fsaaoff.reg)
www.angelfire.com/tn/PlanetMinako/fsaaon.reg (http://www.angelfire.com/tn/PlanetMinako/fsaaon.reg)
(Hosted by personal site)

Remember FSAA is a low res option. I would try it at 640*480 or 800*600 since even a severely overclocked GF256 DDR would have a hard time providing enough fill-rate at higher resolutions. It is reported that Quake1+2 both look great and perform decently with FSAA. Most are reporting, however, that Q3 is basically unplayable (<20fps, even with 800+ mhz P3) with FSAA. People with TNT-x's should probably aviod this, since they do not have anywhere enough fill rate or memory bandwidth to try this.

As for 5.08 in general, its OGL driver is outstanding, but D3D seems to be lacking any optmization. I will keep my 3.77 drivers, since they offer me the best performance and stability of any nVidia drivers, yet.

[seti]

That's great news! That's for the heads up! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Well, I tried to get FSAA working on my tnt2U....just to take screenshots and compare. I havn't got it working yet.

It also froze up in some of my D3D games so I'm back to my old drivers.

[This message has been edited by seti (edited 03-08-2000).]

[OuTpaTienT]

cut'n'pasted from another bbs...just some FSAA benchmarks...FYI.
_______________________________
Hey, Jim. I just finished testing the 5.08 OpenGL with and without FSAA. I am also including 3.77 scores for comparasion. Note that the OpenGL included with 5.08 is OpenGL 1.2.0 (3.77 has OpenGL 1.1.4).

Quake2 demo1.dm2: (sound off, no tweaks)
---------------- Res
Driver 640x480 / 800x600 / 1024x768
3.77 219.8 / 207.5 / 156.0
5.08 225.5 / 179.9 / 139.2
5.08 w/FSAA 92.0 / 62.6 / 40.2

Quake2 demo2.dm2: (sound off, no tweaks)
------------------ Res
Driver 640x480 / 800x600 / 1024x768
3.77 209.7 206.7 160.4
5.08 216.7 186.3 148.0
5.08 w/FSAA 98.0 66.2 42.4

Quake2 crusher.dm2: (sound off, no tweaks)
------------------ Res
Driver 640x480 / 800x600 / 1024x768
3.77 103.8 102.3 100.0
5.08 105.1 103.6 96.1
5.08 w/FSAA 75.1 52.6 34.4

Quake3 Demo demo001.dm3: (sound off, no tweaks)
------------------ Res
Driver Fast Normal High Quality
3.77 103.0 103.0 94.2
5.08 112.6 110.9 92.6
5.08 w/FSAA 90.3 59.9 26.5

Quake3 Demo demo002.dm3: (sound off, no tweaks)
------------------ Res
Driver Fast Normal High Quality
3.77 101.6 100.8 96.8
5.08 110.9 108.9 95.1
5.08 w/FSAA 90.1 61.2 28.7

System:
Athlon 750, K7M, 128MB PC100 SDRAM
Software:
Win98SE (w/ DX7.1a installed if that matters to anyone), AGP miniport 4.61, AGP2X enabled, 3.77 and 5.08 NVIDIA drivers, Quake2 3.20 *with AMD 3DNow! Patch*
FSAA was enabled and disabled via this registry key (it is not created by the 5.08 drivers):
HKM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Displa y\0000\NVIDIA\OpenGL\EnableFSAA 1 = on, 0 = off



[This message has been edited by OuTpaTienT (edited 03-08-2000).]

[rock19]

I don't know if anyone else has had this problem.....but with the 5.08's, if I click on the "Output Device" in the "NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Display properties", I get a freeze. Or more acurately, my monitor is told to go to sleep. Anyone else?

Travis

[Bonehead]

Robrich,

Are you sure FSAA works on any system. Not mine it seems. Benchmarks are untouched in any resolution. Nore any difference in image quality. And why is the tripplebuffering setting = 0 ? Setting this to 1 doesn't make any difference either. Videocard: CL TNT2U.

[RobRich]

As far I know, FSAA is only directly supported with GF256 based cards. While there was some speculation about using it with TNT-2 cards, it appears many people can not. I personally haven't tried it with my CL TNT-2 (150/175), since my k6-2 @ 523 barely pushes enough raw data to approach acceptable performance as it is. I could imagine it with FSAA, a slide show!!

Cool benckmarks!! I guess the Athlon has found it's role. I know guys with Coppermines that are suffering with FSAA in Q3. It could just be isolated incidents, but those are some impressive scores.

[This message has been edited by RobRich (edited 03-09-2000).]

[oblivion]

Hey bonehead,I have read that the 5.08 drivers are made for the geforce,and better tnt2 support has to be added still........some tnt2s will not even work with the 5.08 drivers.

[Bonehead]

Only UT in D3D won't work now with these new drivers but UT in OpenGL still works. All my other games or programs have no problems with 5.08. But It's still annoying that I have to set al resolutions refreshrates manually in Windows after installing the NVIDIA/CL drivers.

Note: UT in D3d does it afterall. It was something not driver related. Sorry.

[This message has been edited by Bonehead (edited 03-11-2000).]

[sns]

Hey Rock19

My monitor doesnt lock up but I have noticed that under the 'device settings' the hand that normally moves the screen has no effect and the screen is off centre. I can fix it manually but its just something I've noticed with the new driver. My old 333 cel and v550 got quite a boost though with the driver which was quite a bit more than I would have expected.

[rock19]

Here is a good review of the new drivers.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/detonator508/default.asp

Sounds like they are optimized for the GeForce.

Travis