THE EVIL MESSAGEBOARD

EvilEngine · GODMODE Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 153

Well incase folks don't know how to use RIVATUNER I'm posting some pointers here for any newcomers to NVIDIA vgas.

Upon installation all the power user and reg settings should be autoconfigured, if not read below.
First of all click the POWERUSER tab , then at the bottom of that panel click the second icon at the left to load a database. This will force this collection of registry controls to load into rivatuner so you can dynamically change video settings for opengl and directx tweaks. Go here

Now after doing that , you will need to first set your refresh rate fix, so click here then reboot.

Just clicking the 60 hz fix and following the prompts will easily fix this bug for you Windows2000/XP users. Anyone using 9x can skip this part.
Now comes the tweaking. We will start with Directx settings. By default leave everything as is, and only adjust what I show you in these next screenshots. I also reccomend disabling VSYNC if you can, thats in the "VSYNC" tab, but for now I'll skip that part since its self-explanatory.
Well as you can see the mipmapping tab allows you to tweak D3D's lodbias. The lower the number the sharper the textures become.

Remember before doing this you have to know some facts. DirectX negative lodbias is disabled in the current DET drivers, why? I dont know. You make your own conclusions. But to fix that you need to run a patch on your drivers before you install the drivers then start again. How?
Well simply download the drivers .EXE from nvidias website or a zip from any website with leaked betas. The exe is an archive so you can use any WINZIP-type archiver to unzip/extract the contents to anywhere on your hard drives. After you have done this, open up rivatuner, and navigate to this section:

Simply click the third folder icon to the left and choose a patch file from this path: patchscripts-lodbiasfix-
Now within this directory should be two files with a *.rts extension. From experience these files work fine, for 9x at least, but the w2k file seems bugged so use this one instead: http://evilengine.apokalyptik.com/downloads/lodbiasfix-new.rts
and click the continue button and navigate to the folder where you drivers you unzipped are located, and your nv4_disp.dll will be patched. Don't worry this is perfectly safe, no virus will be installed. It simply unlocks the use of negative lodbias within that dll.

Now after that reboot,and loading your database again and running your 60hz fix and rebooting again,
go here:

And click the little X for directx. After setting you negative lodbias like shown above(experimenting is needed to manage the amount of texture aliasing) you also have the AA panel.

Remember a higher setting means you will have lower fps so remember this carefully. The 4xs setting is nice , but brings a big hit so use it with games that can handle the percentage in fps loss.
You may have heard of anisotropic filtering, well this section allows you to control that easily too. Like lodbias, aniso helps increase texture quality at far distances, increasing image quality.

As with AA this does bring a performance hit, but not as hard. I use the 8x-4x settings depending on games. Usually the 4x is plenty for the performance/quality ratio with a -1.0 lodbias.
Pretty easy eh?
Well now for OPENGL:

You dont need to patch to get ogl working since its opensource, so adjust the lodbias as low as you like, too high and textures become blurry.

AA modes are similar to DX but dont get 4xs(yet). For example for a QUAKE game I use 2x AA, 4x aniso, and -1.0 lodbias, runs pretty steady for a GF3 based game. Adjust per liking, especially you GF4 and future NV30 users with speed to spare

Now for some other tweaks that have little to do with gaming but do improve 2D. These settings are the color and overlay settings.

For the desktop colors I usually leave it default and adjust through my built in monitor settings as best as possible. But for some of you, you might want a pinch more color saturation, so thats why we have DIGITAL VIBRANCE:

I personally dont use since it makes color too rich for my liking, but some of you may enjoy the boost since monitors and our eyes differ from person to person.
Finnally for tweaking overlays like for watching DVDS and other media, this panel will easily allow you to set easily the brightness, color saturation and contrast without a prob.

*edit*
As of July-2-2002
Those of you just reading this: I have since making this post have successfully patched the drivers negative lodbias for Direct3d with the same *.rts file, since the new Rivatuner does work with the 29.80 drivers.
Most of what you see below in the next posts are older so don't take them too seriously when I mention some issues I noticed. Future posts will include more tweaks , starting July-3-2002.

Ailuros · Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 49

Hello to everyone.....aaaah I see my favourite smilie being present too

Now to the topic:

EE,

Damn and I was wondering why Rivatuner wasn't working so far (well I noticed the missing library for 29.42 drivers). With such a detailed explanation as above someone must be really dumb NOT to manage to set it up. But...

The Leadtek A250TD comes with Leadtek's WinFox Utility which accomodates Digital Vibrance, overclocking settings and the likes. It works fine and I haven't anything to complain about it so far.

Strange thing is: 29.42 whql clean install (cleaned out registry strings even manually for everything what NV drivers and leadtek/winfox utilities concerns) the drivers itself w/o Winfox will not show any gamma adjustment tab under the display properties whatsoever. Unless there are a couple of registry strings that I wasn't able to detect so far that keep some Winfox settings enabled (most likely).

Prior to installing Rivatuner I uninstalled everything that I knew winfox would hook up, followed the guide above and turned out to a success (well LOD offsets in D3D were working). Until of course the first reboot. (By the way of course I didn't touch the refresh rate fix).

Monitor goes constistantly out of range and I can't access either Rivatuner or display properties. I reboot and it only throws me consistantly into safe mode, while after a couple of retries to enter win normally it only randomly rebooted w/o entering safe mode anymore.

Evil before you crank out the "assistance" tools hear me out.....

I reinstalled the drivers from scratch, after I got rid of Rivatuner. I can access anisotropy and quite a few other settings for D3D via hardpage or the registry, what I am actually missing from Rivatuner are the d3d/LOD adjustments. Quite frankly (and no it's not an excuse) LOD at "0" is perfectly balanced for my taste with any form of AA enabled. Without AA there are occassions where I even pick a more positive LOD offset to escape the aliasing and noise. Anisotropic by itself does a fine job combined with 2 or 4xRGMS, or 4xS by itself.

The card is operating flawless at 300/325mhz, no BSOD's, no lock- or hickups not a glitch. I don't care what others say Leadtek's 2D is excellent, bar none. What I don't like is the necessity to have to result to 3rd party tweaking utilities constantly, which is a trend ATI has taken over too for the past years.

Sidenote: there isn't a single string from former PowerVR drivers present; those used to have a file checking utility where the drivers would locate and report all the driver files and where they are installed and I made sure that not even one inch of those was left inside the system.

Concerning winfox I will however contact leadtek to ask for more detailed information, because I have good reason to believe that it has hooked up on my system and I can't effectively clean it out.

What I'll be needing soon is a new monitor, the current one after 3 years of extensive operation and gaming abuse seems to slowly "quincunx" my sight ROFL. I haven't yet decided if I'll jump to 19" this time, because the refresh rates I want a monitor to reach in 1600 with 19" monitors makes them too expensive, plus I refuse to purchase any monitor that has less than a 3 year warranty. Could be I'll just get another high quality branded 17", as an FSAA freak I won't even need higher resolutions than 1280x1024 after all.

Enough of the endless rant. EE thanks for the help so far I really appreciate it.

(*yuck yuck* hehehehe)

EvilEngine · GODMODE Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 153

Im glad I could help at least a little. It is common for some Nvidia venders to use special drivers(asus,leadtek) that enable features only thier cards have, such as special overclocking presets and even temperature monitors. I always try to use reference drivers since they usually include reg entries that nvidia wants enabled at that time, improving performance and image quality. I'm really glad you like your purchase, I'll be waiting for some reviews of games and drivers from you(posting here of course).
The 30.20 drivers were just released to beta testers, I'm trying my darndest to find them so I'll keep you guys up to date. I heard these suckers will easily add 500pts to your 3dmark and aniso speed in games.
We will see

Anyways, any more help please just ask Ill do my best to answer or get someone who knows to add thier share too.
Talk to you soon!

Ailuros · Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 49

EE,

The card came with 28.32 (I think, it's been a couple of weeks now), yet those drivers I was mentioning above are the 29.42 WHQL drivers d/l str8 from NVIDIA's homesite.

I'll get behind it eventually once Leadtek answers back and I will be able to kill the strings their utility leaves inside. Right now I've just the reference drivers installed and on top of that the winfox utility.

Games? I bought the damn thing for UT2003, where the heck is it hm? *tap tap tap*

Blighter · Joined: 23 Jun 2002 Posts: 57 Location: Helsinki, Finland

Thanks for that guide EE, that helped a lot. I wasn't aware of that the d3d lod bias adjustment doesn't work without the fix.. Hehe, I was beginning to wonder why the -3.0 looked same as 0.0

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Blighter

EvilEngine · GODMODE Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 153

Blighter · Joined: 23 Jun 2002 Posts: 57 Location: Helsinki, Finland

I tried the OpenGL LOD adjustement just out of curiosity.. I set it to -1.5 and launched up UT.. It really does A LOT for the texture sharpness, but the performance loss was a lot bigger than I thought it would be.. At -1.5 I lost around 20-30 fps and with -0.7 around 10-20, and from the "highs" I lost nearly 50.. Pretty steep huh. -3.0 looked incredible but it ran in the mid thirties or so

Is the performance hit so big in all opengl games? UT is pretty much the only opengl fps game I know how to benchmark with and stuff, since I don't own Q3A.

How much lod bias do you use for playing with your Gf2 machine?

I've got Athlon XP 1700+, Soltek KT333 mobo, 256mb PC2700 and a gf2 pro.

EDIT: I remember you helping me out with this lod thingie few months back at slacker's but I can't recall what were your recommendations back then

EDIT2: Oh and, I use 2xAF in every game I play

(I value IQ more than speed, can't afford to buy a new vid card yet so I'll try to get the most out of this "not-so-good-iq" card

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Blighter

EvilEngine · GODMODE Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 153

Blighter · Joined: 23 Jun 2002 Posts: 57 Location: Helsinki, Finland

Hmm.. Alright. I started a practise session on CTF-FACE with no bots, and the fps loss was what I said above.. I'll go try with no lod adjustment to verify it wasn't caused by the new via 4in1 lol.
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Blighter

Blighter · Joined: 23 Jun 2002 Posts: 57 Location: Helsinki, Finland

Yep, it wasn't the 4in1.. Oh well, I guess I'll stick with -0.7..
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Blighter

Ailuros · Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 49

Phewwwwwww after trying almost any 3rd party tweaking utility with any combination of 27.50 Det's and up, I finally have found my golden medium for now and Rivatuner 100% operational, combined with 28.32 reference drivers.

Please do not bother me with driver updates until Rivatuner will have added the according library for those drivers; after trying them all I refuse to use anything else than Rivatuner.

Dunno how far I've gone yet, but how am I doing so far?

I know the filesizes are a bit over the top, but I don't want into a combination of texture compression and jpeg compression inconveniences. Of course I am aware of the S3TC quality fix, but in realtime it's stupid to increase loading times while the card swaps internally from one compression algorithm to the other, when you rarely see a difference. Oh yeah q3a; screw that I don't play it anymore and there isn't a need for TC in that game.

You might think that I'm crazy using TC on a 128mb card; when you drive some settings to the extreme, texture compression can become useful even in a case like that.

Now to the ultra dumb question: Is the "Launcher" in Rivatuner meant for game presets? If not I'd appreciate an alternative I got kind spoiled with that little detail in the past. Adjusting LOD, aniso, AA etc etc per game basis every time you fire up a game is a pain in the ass.... So?

EvilEngine · GODMODE Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 153

Looks good Ail, I see your getting into the nitty gritty of Rivatuner to get the IQ you want. RT is an excellent tool , especially the POWER USER section that lets you delve into the registry without the fear a f00king up your pc. The launcher I never personally used since I leave everything the same for all my games, but from I just looked at it does seem to keep a per game setting. All I can say is play around with it and let us know, since I'm sure more NV users probably are needed this utility.

I'm gonna be honest and probably biased, but every tweaker out there now other than Rivatuner are so flawed its pathetic. Some add useless reg entries that do nothing more than screw up all the correct settings.
Example, nvhardpage used to, and still does, enable anisotropic wrong.
Geforce Tweak Utility after a couple years of being made, is still a alpha mess, and now is being discontinued.
You enable 8x and it turns out 4x in the registry, plus presets that get auto-added that do nothing but add old entries from old 24* series DETS.

RT rc 10.3 is supposed to be released any time now, but I have no way of viewing Unwinder's msgboard now, its all fubared. Maybe he knows something we don't and is just waiting for the DET5s to be released.

Ailuros · Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 49

NV's driver team seems too busy fixing quickly that splash screen crap to save face.

I wonder if they finally get behind the aniso/multitexturing bug. I have the weird feeling that in all drivers I've tried between 27.50 and 29.42 when anisotropic filtering is enabled (at least in openGL) multitexturing seems to get disabled. If that bug gets fixed it could mean far better looking and performing 64-tap aniso.

By the way the SS:SE shot was with 4xOGMS/9-tap, 64-tap aniso, LOD at -0.8 and my usual tuned down custom config. Fairly at the edge of playability, but I couldn't help it to play a couple of maps with as many possible settings enabled.

As I said with that guide above, it needs a dummy not to be able to find it's way through it. So thanks again.

EvilEngine · GODMODE Joined: 27 May 2002 Posts: 153

Well since the new RT was released today, expect my tutorial to get a update. Theres new features exposed in RT, even though they have been there in the registry. One of them is OGL_AnisoQuality which I brought up a few times at Slackers, but nobody seemed to know what it was. I've learned since the 26+ drivers that this key acts as a aniso "limiter" if that makes sense, becuase if enabled "1" benchmark scores will lower, but I couldnt tell any difference in the image quality. Maybe this is the reg key that has caused so many people at B3D and other places to whine about why NV's aniso has changed when using 4x and 8x. I'll be doing my own comparison of this key(since its now manually changable) and see what the end result may be. If you guys have some info or comments on this, lets hear it.
As for the multitexture issue, have you tried this:

Open RT and go to the power users tab. If you havent already done this, click the seond icon to open a matched database, and navigate to the opengl section in this window. Scroll down and you will see a force multitexture key. Right click it and choose the lit up light bulb icon( it sets it as "1", white light bulb mean "0", double lets you set your own value )

Blighter · Joined: 23 Jun 2002 Posts: 57 Location: Helsinki, Finland

Oh cool! I'm downloading it now

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Blighter