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Print 36 comment(s) - last by Tuanies.. on Jun 29 at 12:45 AM

A new NVIDIA card is mentioned in the most recent driver INF

NVIDIA Control Panel
GPU drivers for all

ATI and NVIDIA have released new driver packages for its products. ATI’s latest Catalyst 6.6 driver supports ATI based graphics cards, motherboards and TV tuners. With the new Catalyst 6.6 driver ATI has included support for the Theater 650 based TV tuner cards. Older DirectX 8 based graphics cards such as the Radeon 9250, 8500, 7500 are not supported with this Catalyst release. The latest driver also introduces a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 extension for ATI’s AVIVO Converter. This allows users to convert recorded content to the various supported formats such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4 SP, AVC and Windows Media. Performance improvements have been made in Far Cry, F.E.A.R., and the original Splinter Cell. Over two dozen issues have been fixed with the new Catalyst 6.6 release too.

•  Far Cry performance improves 4-5%. Larger gains of up to 18.3% can be seen when using anisotropic filtering.
•  Fear performance improves as much as 8.5% on X1800 and X1900 Single card systems and as much as 14% on X1800 and X1900 Crossfire systems.
•  Splinter Cell (original) performance improves as much a 7% on X1300 and X1600 Crossfire systems.

NVIDIA has released a new WHQL certified ForceWare driver too. The new ForceWare Release 90 drivers have been available as a public beta for a few months but have been WHQL certified now. ForceWare 90 adds support for the GeForce 7950 GX2 and a yet to be released "7500 LE." Not much information is available on the 7500 LE; however we expect it to be an overclocked 7300-series based or a slower variant of the 7600-series graphics cores.

A new NVIDIA Control Panel is also introduced with Release 90. The new control panel sports a new clean interface that is quick and intuitive. Unlike ATI’s Catalyst Control Center the new NVIDIA Control Panel doesn’t hog up as many resources and loads quickly. It will also find its way in upcoming Windows Vista drivers too.

ATI has been dominating HQV DVD benchmarks with its AVIVO video processing engine since December. NVIDIA has added a few new video quality improvements to PureVideo to take on ATI. The new features include improved post processing and de-interlacing algorithms.

New NVIDIA PureVideo features and enhancements. Please visit the NVIDIA PureVideo website for more information on PureVideo technology and system requirements.
•    Adds noise reduction post processing
•    Adds image sharpening post processing
•    Improved Inverse telecine algorithm
•    Improved de-interlacing algorithm
•    Improved compatibility with third party MPEG-2 decoders

Both drivers are available from ATI and NVIDIA websites.

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Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By z3R0C00L on 6/26/2006 9:05:47 PM , Rating: 2
This thing he claims that the new nVIDIA control panel doesn't bog down system resources like the Catalyst Control Centre is BS. Both take up the same amount of memory.

If he means the startup time it's about 1-2 seconds difference.

This coming from a user of a 7900GTX and x1900XTX.

As far as Purevideo ebing able to take on AVIVO. Post proof before you make such a claim. I'll believe it when I see it.

Man this is the opposite of what I say on HardOCP... where is was ATi fanboyism being shown. It's like news posters are posting editorials instead of news.




By PT2006 on 6/26/2006 9:21:00 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
ATI has been dominating HQV DVD benchmarks with its AVIVO video processing engine since December.

Do you read only what you want to read?


By Anemone on 6/26/2006 9:25:34 PM , Rating: 2
Actually I agree with him, there are numerous things about the ATI drivers that just plain stink. The big "updates once a month and we'll fix flaws fast" promise of a year ago seems to have vanished for ATI.

I'm not in any way saying Nvidia is all peaches and cream, but if you don't like the current interface you can switch back to the old way as I did. The stuff works with half the issues and glitches that I get on my ATI board. Now if Nvidia would address some of the quality issues and up the speed another grade, we'd be happy. And SLI (good smart, damn smart ATI) doesn't work on Intel chipsets. That is IDIOTIC and blindly stupid. But oh well, guess they don't really want to sell me a second card lol.

H gave their opinion. I've not done their level of testing but I've used both and overall I agree with most of the points made.


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By toyota on 6/26/2006 9:25:40 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
This thing he claims that the new nVIDIA control panel doesn't bog down system resources like the Catalyst Control Centre is BS. Both take up the same amount of memory.
no they dont. while on the desktop my computer is right at 180mb in the task manager with either nvidia control panel. with ati ccc i am at 275mb just sitting on the destop.


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By dhei on 6/26/2006 10:19:00 PM , Rating: 2
Huh? ATI control panel is taking a whole 18megs on mine.


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By toyota on 6/26/2006 10:22:21 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
ATI control panel is taking a whole 18megs on mine
i said ccc not control panel. ccc uses almost 100mb if you look at pf usage monitor in task manager.


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By Goty on 6/27/2006 12:13:50 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
...ccc uses almost 100mb if you look at pf usage monitor in task manager.


Ummm... or maybe not. I'm only seeing 24mb usage from the control center process sitting on my desktop right now. My PF is sitting at right about 500mb, but less than a twentieth of that is from the Catalyst Control Center.


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By toyota on 6/27/2006 7:15:54 AM , Rating: 2
it does use around 100mb more in the pf usage. i have installed the thing on at least 25 comps. all the comps that had ccc installed were around 280mb pf usage on the desktop. those same comps without ccc were around 185mb. do i need to make a freakin video of this or what?


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By Boxster17 on 6/27/2006 10:17:54 AM , Rating: 2
I'm sitting here looking at my process under task manager and CCC only takes up about 20mb at most when I have it running, I don't know how you're getting 100mb.


By Trisped on 6/27/2006 12:14:14 PM , Rating: 2
It is probably card dependent. Mine is also about 20MB from when I do a fresh install and after I install the latest CCC drivers, but I run a AIW 9800, so it won't have all the bells and whistles of the new cards.

You can still access the old interface, just opened desktop properties, go to display, and click on advanced. Sure it is a bit convoluted and may not have all the options that the newest CCC does, but if you don't want to use CCC you are probably not an enthusiast

I believe the actual drain on system resources referred to in the article is a reference to the increase in system load time. If I install the CCC and drivers first after an install, there is no change to load time. If I install it after all the other drivers and Norton has been installed it adds a good 5 seconds to the load time. Those that have a lot of bloat ware starting with their computer should expect to see larger performance drops then those that only have the bare minimum.

There is also the time it takes to load CCC, which can be a prohibitive 1-5 seconds longer then expected.


By Nelsieus on 6/26/2006 10:02:48 PM , Rating: 2
"It's like news posters are posting editorials instead of news."

But isn't that what your post is? So are you saying it's ok, as long as it's in compliance with what resignates with you? Or perhaps I'm missing the point...Oh well, the news article seems to go along with most other sources I'm reading, as well, so I'm inclined to believe it.


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By wuZheng on 6/26/2006 11:10:31 PM , Rating: 2
Yea dude, read the article thoroughly before making such rash comments, I'm sure the guy didn't mean to be biased, its just that ATI's CCC DOES feel clunky to use, especially during its start up, however the memory footprint it leaves when active is being overexagerated, my own CCC tops out at 30 mb of memory in both Mem Usage AND VM Size in my Task Manager, so if you have a greater footprint, its time to do a cache clean of some sort or a defrag....

Another point I should bring up, my other computer uses a 6800 GT, and I installed the latest (this article's) drivers and guess what the new nVidia control panel look alike thing isn't cool with me, I find it pretty hard to navigate around and set all the options I wish to set... a bit clunkier than nVidia's last driver implementation which I thought was superb, looks like they tried to copy ATI's CCC, but leave less of a footprint but be more user-unfriendly....

As for PureVideo, PUREVIDEO IS A PAID COMMERCIAL PRODUCT SEPERATE FROM YOUR GPU PURCHASE, NVIDIA DOES NOT INCLUDE THIS, IT NEEDS TO BE PAID FOR. ATI's Avivo is free as long as you have an ATI card, you can obviously see which ones better in terms of value.


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By Tuanies on 6/26/2006 11:40:02 PM , Rating: 2
PureVideo is NVIDIA's video processing engine integrated into its GPU's. The PureVideo Decoder is what it charges for which is essentialy an MPEG2/DVD decoder. Other video playback applications that support hardware acceleration can take advantage of PureVideo features.


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By wuZheng on 6/27/2006 2:18:16 AM , Rating: 2
Do tell me why I should pay for a simple video decoder which I could probably get from open source anyways thats higher quality, because its specially coded for GPU acceleration? I still don't see why it can't be free, now my other comps 6800GT is not taking any of the load of video decoding -.-', bigass bummer for me...


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By Tuanies on 6/27/2006 2:58:42 AM , Rating: 2
Because it costs money to license an MPEG2 decoding license. Its not like you can't take advantage of hardware acceleration with other decoders. And PureVideo is a universal decoder, it doesn't work with just NVIDIA cards, it'll work with ATI, S3 and other cards too, hardware acceleration et al.


RE: Wow.. Poster is extremely biased.
By glynor on 6/27/2006 9:27:03 AM , Rating: 2
You're right. It costs money for nVidia to license the decoder patents. However, I paid money for my nVidia cards (which even though they didn't make the final card, they do get a large share of) and I don't get the decoder included in the purchase price.

With my ATI cards I did. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to use hardware MPEG2 acceleration, all nVidia cards cost $30 more than advertised (which certainly cuts into their cost advantage).

Now... In these days of Athlon 64 X2 processors, is hardware MPEG2 decode acceleration even relevant anymore? I don't know (though MPEG-4 acceleration certainly is). It would be better for both companies to open their hardware up to acceleration by third-party codecs and give us real choice (so it could be implemented in FFDSHOW for example).


By Tuanies on 6/29/2006 12:45:12 AM , Rating: 2
Its up to the manufacturer to include the decoder, IIRC eVGA and BFG bundle the Pure Video decoder.

Its not a matter of hardware acceleration anymore but now its about video processing such as de-interlacing, noise reduction and other algorithms to make the image look better.


test their 91.31 drivers?
By toyota on 6/26/2006 8:15:28 PM , Rating: 2
did nvidia even test their 91.31 drivers? in my control panel it says my card supports sli even though it doesnt. when i start my computer i get a long message saying "sli multi gpu rendering has been changed to independent because one of my sli cards has been removed."

WTF IS GOING ON BECAUSE I HAVE A 6600 AGP? i dont even have a pci-e slot.




RE: test their 91.31 drivers?
By secretanchitman on 6/26/2006 8:34:44 PM , Rating: 2
i have a 6600GT too. one guy in the video forums on AT who posted in the "new nvidia whql drivers" put a link directing to the sli balloon popup fix. i get the same message too, nothing to worry about...


RE: test their 91.31 drivers?
By toyota on 6/26/2006 8:39:46 PM , Rating: 2
why is my AGP card getting detected as an SLI capable card in the first place? i have already applied the fix to stop the ballon but i still cant believe the drivers are that stupid.


RE: test their 91.31 drivers?
By AstroCreep on 6/27/2006 9:40:13 AM , Rating: 2
I think it'sbeing detected as SLI compatible because I'm pretty sure that the 6600gt is based off of the PCIe GPU with the AGP bridge.


RE: test their 91.31 drivers?
By ryandmiller1 on 6/26/2006 11:55:07 PM , Rating: 2
I get the same message dude, with a single 7600gt


RE: test their 91.31 drivers?
By Chillin1248 on 6/27/2006 1:20:15 AM , Rating: 3
SLI Bug fix #1:

quote:
Save the Content below in a *.reg File and run in after Reboot it should be away.

Save the Content below in a *.reg File and run in after Reboot it should be away.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak]
"NvCplEnableMultiGPUConfigurationPage"=dword:0000 0 000


Nvidias solution:

http://www.box.net/public/k13z8b9jvd

Another solution floating around:

http://www.box.net/public/vd0km6yq5x

The first one if done correctly usually take care of the problem, if not then continue unto the next solution.


RE: test their 91.31 drivers?
By dvinnen on 6/27/2006 1:46:14 AM , Rating: 2
There is a bunch of problems with Counter-Strike using the new driver too. From the radar acting random, to sprites being really messed up. Dunno wtf they broke, but they broke it pretty bad.


ForceWare 90 needs tweaking...
By keitaro on 6/26/2006 11:32:56 PM , Rating: 2
I guess my system isn't exactly your standard-fare system. But I have tried to run the 90 series drivers and I think it's rather buggy for a release. There are a few peculiar bits that bugged me that I ended up rolling back to the 80 series drivers.

I run WindowBlinds 5.x on my system... whether or not that attributed to this is beyond me. However, trying to navigate around the new control panel often result in repeated redraws and flickering, to the extent that it doesn't feel snappy.

I also ended up with a blue-screen while playing Battlefield 2. I rarely get BSOD on anything. Perhaps it's one weird coincidence. But it's just something to at least post up.

Sometimes I forget to close a video file on MediaPlayerClassic... but if I tried to fire up multiple video windows, the entire thing hangs and eventually fails to recover from it. I have tried it a few times and all those times I had to force a hard reset. The 80 series drivers never exhibit such a problem when handling multiple video overlays.

Sadly I cannot say that the 90 series drivers are great... I'd like to try them more but I am a gamer. As such, I need the stability so that I don't spend too much time having to reboot, diagnose the problem, and/or figure out a work-around. The 80 series stay on my system until nvidia can fix it up. The sad part is that I do not know if I can send or submit a bug report for them to investigate.




RE: ForceWare 90 needs tweaking...
By Nekrik on 6/27/2006 1:31:49 AM , Rating: 2
not sure if it'll help you, but sometimes in the past re-installing DirectX after a display driver update corrected issues similar to what you reported. Just a thought if you feel like tryinhg it again.


RE: ForceWare 90 needs tweaking...
By derdon on 6/27/06, Rating: 0
By clementlim on 6/27/2006 3:48:49 AM , Rating: 2
Yes, I agree with you. The new drivers are indeed buggy. I uninstalled and resinstalled numerous of times but still I am faced with the same few problems.

Firstly, the nVidia system tray keeps appearing whenever I start the system although I had set it off. So does the desktop "right click menu".

Then in the "new nVidia control panel", I found out that some of the controls are not adjustable. Simple things like desktop vibrance, gamma and such could not be adjusted properly, and just like keitaro, navigating around the new control panels will often result in repeated redraws, buttons that are not resized properly, progress bar that vanishes...and I have WindowBlinds 5.0 as well. Maybe it's not compatible with the new drivers?

The only way I could adjust the "previously unadjustable" desktop stuffs is through the classic nVidia control panel. But the system tray logo and the "right click menu" keeps appearing, which annoys me even though it doesn't do anything other than being there.

Then, there are the applications. Usually, I could play games like Oblivion, Civilization IV, Rise of Legends, Empire at Wars and run applications such as Photoshop, AutoCAD, 3dsmax without a hitch with my overclocked settings. But with the new drivers, overclocking with Coolbit 2.0 will result in self-restarting. Even if I was just overclocking 5MHz more for the GPU and memory. I haven't try with Rivatuner and so on.

Overall, I think this new set of drivers are rushed out to support the new cards on the market. It should be tweaked to make sure othr cards can run without a hitch. BTW, my card is a XFX 6800GT 256MB AGP.


RE: ForceWare 90 needs tweaking...
By clementlim on 6/27/2006 3:56:47 AM , Rating: 2
Oh, btw, the first sign that this driver is not fully tweaked is the SLI balloon announcement that almost everyone is experiencing even though they don't have SLI or rather, they have but the balloon says they don't. I know I don't have SLI cause mine's an AGP version...and nVidia feels that they need to announce that I don't have the SLI or my other card is missing =P

BTW, some of my friends with 6800GT are experiencing a lot of problems similar to mine. Some with the FX n 7xxx series are not complaining as much though...could it be that the drivers are a scourge for 6800GT?


By Darkcobra007 on 6/27/2006 10:03:11 AM , Rating: 2
Well I wouldn't say just the 6800GT series as it appears to affect the 6800 Ultra series as well. I have the XFX 6800 Ultra AGP and I too receive the annoying popup about SLI being disabled or whatever it says down there. It's a minor annoyance but I feel it's one that should have been caught during testing. Not even the beta drivers for the 90 series has this flaw. I think an earlier post mentioned this already but there's a whole bunch of graphical glitches in Counter Strike that I didn't have before this driver. For some reason bullet shots that hit a person or wall/object turn into huge black pixels that eventually go away but you can only imagine how hard it is to see when someone all of sudden sprays the area with gun fire. I haven't tried any other games but that was enough to make me go back to a previous driver.


This is a nublet question, but...
By Josh7289 on 6/26/2006 8:16:22 PM , Rating: 2
Is PureVideo activated by default when playing video, or do I have to do something "special"?




By Anh Huynh on 6/26/2006 9:04:56 PM , Rating: 2
Depends on which video player/codec you use. Generally the NVIDIA PureVideo DVD decoder takes advantage of all hardware features. I believe Nero Showtime and other hardware acceleration capable programs should take advantage of PureVideo.


coolbits
By Aure on 6/26/2006 10:47:44 PM , Rating: 2
will I still be able to access coolbits-enabled frequency settings in this new control panel?

if not, I won't update my driver =/




RE: coolbits
By toyota on 6/26/2006 10:59:02 PM , Rating: 2
yes coolbits works.


Quad SLI Support?
By Visk on 6/26/2006 9:00:44 PM , Rating: 3
Anyone tested these drivers with dual 7950GX2s?




Purevideo issue
By Alphafox78 on 6/28/2006 8:30:43 AM , Rating: 2
FYI: im using purevideo with a 6150 equipped motherboard. when I use the new 90 driver, it doesnt let me adjust brightness or contrast in media center. I had to revert back to the 84 version and now it works again...




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