Detonator Driver Setting Information Thread

[KyJelly]

under the power user tab i noticed a few other settings that caught my eye (42.86):
videotextureenable
zcompressenable
zcullenable

wouldn't it make sense to have these set to true? there are no values in them now. could be that RT doesn't have a 42.86 database tho.
what are your settings for those?

Originally posted by KyJelly
under the power user tab i noticed a few other settings that caught my eye (42.86):
videotextureenable
zcompressenable
zcullenable

wouldn't it make sense to have these set to true? there are no values in them now. could be that RT doesn't have a 42.86 database tho.
what are your settings for those?

z culling and z compression should be enabled already, aren't they features present in gf3/gf4 under the Lightspeed Memory Architecture?

i could be horribly wrong about this of course

*This post will be updated as new information is discovered*

This post is meant merely to summarize my findings and make for easier reading.

First of all let me talk about some recent developments. The results of this thread are only valid for cards up to the GeForce4Ti series. The GeForceFX series behave differently according to how the driver is configured. Quality and speed are both drastically different between the 3 settings on a GeForceFX card! The naming scheme Application/Balanced/Aggressive has changed to Application/Quality/Performance in driver 43.45. It was changed to Quality/Balanced/Performance in driver 43.51. It has further been changed to Quality/Performance/High Performance in driver 44.03.

As always, things can change in future drivers. There is no way of knowing whether or not things will continue to change, or in what ways they will change. You can find Detonator drivers at the following places.


Important points of interest for pre-GeForceFX cards(mainly GeForce3/4):
1) The "Balanced" setting in Detonator 40(ie, the 4x.xx drivers) gives the same raw results as previous drivers.

2) The "Application" setting seems to give lower benchmark results in 3Dmark2001, although no quality is gained/lost from "Balanced." "Application" does not degrade performance in the OpenGL tests I ran such as the Quake series. UT2003 Demo ran slower with "Application" when using D3D or OpenGL. Performance in 3Dmark2001 with "Application" is now equal to "Balanced" with driver 44.03.

3) The "Aggressive" setting is marginally faster than "Balanced" on the magnitude of 0-1%.

4) Enabling "Texture Sharpening" generally increases the level of Anisotopic Filtering by one level, up to the maximum of 8x.

There are some exceptions though. Using 2x FSAA with no AF and TS gives better performance than using 2x FSAA and 2x AF, although the quality is not as good. Also using 4x FSAA with 2x AF and TS gives better performance than using 4x FSAA and 4x AF, and quality is the same.

5) The alledged FSAA booster as described in this thread does nothing when using the system described above, an AthlonXP 1800+, GeForce4Ti4200, with 512MB RAM.

6) Application/Balanced/Aggressive does not force trilinear in raw benchmark situations or with AF enabled. If the software is set to use bilinear, bilinear will be used. If the software is set to use trilinear, trilinear will be used.

7) Application uses 'quality optimization' Rivatuner AF, and Balanced/Aggressive uses 'performance optimization' Rivatuner AF in OpenGL. I cannot discern any quality differences between the two. Performance of anisotropic filtering with Application and Balanced/Aggressive is equal in driver 44.03, leading me to believe that Application may be using 'performance optimization' now(RivaTuner doesn't support 44.03 yet, so it is impossible to check).

8) I find no reason not to recommend using "Application" mode at all times now, since the performance quirks seem to have been worked out.


Facts about GeForceFX cards/drivers:
1) Application has the same quality you may be familiar with from previous nvidia cards. Balanced forces a mix between trilinear and bilinear. Aggressive forces bilinear. This applies only to drivers previous to 43.51.

In 44.03 Application uses trilinear, and both Balanced and Aggressive use bilinear. 43.51 should also follow the same behavior, since the changes to AF described below first occurred in 43.51.

2) Different patterns of AF depending on what degree of AF is selected and what the driver is set to(Balanced or Aggressive).

The AF sampling pattern for Balanced AF was improved in driver 43.51, so that it is very close to Application's quality, without true trilinear being used, of course. You can compare the old AF methods to the new AF methods, which were first implemented for GeForceFX cards in driver 43.51.

3) A word of warning, you might not always be getting trilinear filtering even if Application is selected in the driver control panel, depending on the game and the driver revision. As far as has been determined, this pertains only to UT2003.

[Deathlike2]

Application provides trilinear filtering (possibly bilinear depending on the application) and the slower anisotropic filtering (quality aniso which is supposedly indistinguishable from the performance anisotropic as stated in Rivatuner)

Quality/Balanced (used in prior 40.xx Series Dets) provides supposedly semi-tri/bilinear filtering and the faster anisotropic filtering

Aggressive is the worst of the settings.. providing something closer to bilinear filtering (using the same performance aniso).

I've seen some quality and application settings used in reviews related to the quality of the trilinear filtering (and I'd like to see more of those as well). Balanced/Quality seems to be worse in that area than performance.

There have been some reports of AA not working. I would like to see some of these screenshots. Performance obviously goes down. The real question if it is truly done in the balanced/quality setting. Reports show that using the application setting fixes this problem (if this is the case, that's a huge problem).

Originally posted by Deathlike2
Application provides trilinear filtering (possibly bilinear depending on the application) and the slower anisotropic filtering (quality aniso which is supposedly indistinguishable from the performance anisotropic as stated in Rivatuner)

Quality/Balanced (used in prior 40.xx Series Dets) provides supposedly semi-tri/bilinear filtering and the faster anisotropic filtering

Aggressive is the worst of the settings.. providing something closer to bilinear filtering (using the same performance aniso).

this is only true of the GeForceFX! when using any other card Application/Quality/Performance will use true trilinear if it is supposed to(ie, the game/benchmark/demo whatever) is set to trilinear.

I've seen some quality and application settings used in reviews related to the quality of the trilinear filtering (and I'd like to see more of those as well). Balanced/Quality seems to be worse in that area than performance.

I for one don't have access to a GeForceFX. MikeC is still working on the NV31/34 review, he should have lots of screenshots from multiple games when it's published. I will definitely link to it if that is the case.

There have been some reports of AA not working. I would like to see some of these screenshots. Performance obviously goes down. The real question if it is truly done in the balanced/quality setting. Reports show that using the application setting fixes this problem (if this is the case, that's a huge problem).

it seems to be a mixed bag. some people have problems, some people don't. it's not a global problem.


dammit! I accidently deleted part of your post. yet another edit/quote mix up. that's twice today, and twice ever..........sorry!

[Deathlike2]

lol :P

Well.. someone needs to do some thorough testing with other cards.. and see if its consistant to some extent...

I did mention about quality and performance setting in Rivatuner (which it looks like you have deleted).. and frankly I'd use performance judging by the performance associated with it.

I also said something about the slider.. the further left would decrease performance.. though, I didn't say was that it in theory, it should improve IQ

I'll never use aggessive mode though...

I'm still wondering what are the best setttings for my GF3... application-2x aniso (performance aniso via rivatuner) or quality-2x aniso... I'm not really one to pay attention to jaggies too much (unless its rather obvious)

Originally posted by Deathlike2
I did mention about quality and performance setting in Rivatuner (which it looks like you have deleted).. and frankly I'd use performance judging by the performance associated with it.

right, and I think it has been substantiated here(and by comments others have made) that performance aniso looks exactly the same as quality aniso- use it!

I also said something about the slider.. the further left would decrease performance.. though, I didn't say was that it in theory, it should improve IQ

I'll never use aggessive mode though...

Aggressive/Performance is no faster than Balanced/Quality- as shown.

Balanced/Quality looks no different from Aggressive/Performance, and the fact that scores are virtually the same between the modes further corroborates that.

some further testing needs to be done with Application, though. I'll take some screenshots in different D3D games to prove this, but right now i'm more interested in getting benchmarks, to see if Application decreases scores in other D3D titles. not too easy a task, unfortunately.

I'm still wondering what are the best setttings for my GF3... application-2x aniso (performance aniso via rivatuner) or quality-2x aniso... I'm not really one to pay attention to jaggies too much (unless its rather obvious)

they look exactly the same, use performance! BTW, aniso has nothing to do with jaggies.

[Deathlike2]

I know aniso has nothing to do with jaggies..

I don't use the AA feature.. except letting it set to application... see how that works out (I don't care for AA too much anyhow, hehe)

I just wanted better IQ without the significant performance hit... thus 2x aniso+performance aniso

Oh yeah, I just thought I would say I tried out the UT2003 demo on my gf3 with the 43.45 drivers awhile back, and Application was slower than Balanced in both D3D and OGL.

So what nvidia says about there being debug code in Application may actually be true. Otherwise, I really can't figure out why Application would be slower on a GeForce3 with AF turned off in both D3D and OGL.

Updated for driver 44.03. Both the main post, and the summary post.

[Shamrock]

I have several games that have no AA setting at all, if I set it to Application, what will happen? can I force it to have AA? (The games are Starseige Tribes, and AOE2: Age of Kings, both are old...pre-2000)

Originally posted by Shamrock
I have several games that have no AA setting at all, if I set it to Application, what will happen? can I force it to have AA? (The games are Starseige Tribes, and AOE2: Age of Kings, both are old...pre-2000)

You should be able to force FSAA in most games. Some games don't work with multi-sample FSAA(used by GeForce3 and up).

AOE2 is not a 3d game, FSAA will not work. It should work in Tribes though, unless there is an issue that I am unaware of. The only suggestion that I can give is for you to try setting FSAA in the driver control panel and see if it works or not.