v5.xx driver comparsion (2/2)

FSAA Performance

So can we conclude that nothing much has changed? As far as peak performance is concerned, that's probably true. However, AntiAliasing is a different story altogether, and it looks like NVIDIA is taking this very seriously. Since the v5.16 reference drivers had some major problems with AA under Direct3D, we decided to limit testing to versions 5.22 and 5.30. Let's start off with OpenGL:

No appreciable differences here. If anything, the v5.30 seems to be marginally faster with 16bit color depth. But the really exciting changes take place in Direct3D. To get 2X AA, set the slider to the first setting, while 4X AA (4 SHM) would be the third from the right (best quality/performance rating - see below).

AA-quality settings for D3D

We see some real performance gains here! You can get a better picture of where v5.30 really shines in the following table:

The fillrate is much higher with the v5.30 driverset! All results profit from this, not just the game benchmarks. Here we have a real reason to upgrade to v5.30!

Conclusion

You'll only see a real difference between these releases when you turn on AntiAliasing under Direct3D. So if you're into AA, v5.30 is the way to go for you. Otherwise performance remains unchanged under OpenGL as well as Direct3D. Game compatibility does seem to have improved with maturing drivers. For example, Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed had a tendency to crash in certain places with v5.16 and v5.22, but behaved normally under v5.30.

The lower polygon throughput of the newer releases puzzles me, however. I can't quite explain why v.5.16 would show better performance in this area than v5.22 or v5.30.

A word on TNT2 Ultra and GeForce cards: Those cards are still very fine cards. But the only performance difference I´ve found was in AntiAliasing performance. And AA does not at acceptable framerates with these cards.

By the way, if you want to experiment with any of these drivers, feel free to pick them up in our driver-downloads section. You'll find it in our navbar under "Files->Drivers". Enjoy!

Lars "Borsti" Weinand

Translated by Benjamin Kraft.. ThanXXXX Ben!

Copyright: 29.06.2000 -   RIVA Station 2000 - Lars Weinand
No Copy without Permission!

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