Driver comparsion: NVIDIA v6.50 vs. v12.41 (1/5) |
Last week, NVIDIA made the latest release of its reference drivers (v12.41) available for download on its server. Interestingly, these still belong to the Detonator3 series of drivers according to NVIDIA, although many sources are mistakenly referring to them as Detonator4. At any rate, the internal designation for the v12.xx driver family is Release 10! This new driver has been eagerly awaited and, many say, is long overdue. It’s predecessor, v6.50, dates back to the beginning of February. As a result it is ignorant of the younger members of the ever-growing NVIDIA family like the MX200/400 and the GeForce 3. Before now, if you wanted a newer version, you either had to wait for your card manufacturer to release a newer set of drivers or download one of the unofficial (leaked) versions that make their way from NVIDIA’s software development labs to certain web sites with amazing regularity. Although these leaked drivers are considered BETA versions, they will normally run fine or with only minor glitches. Since these files usually pass through many hands, it pays to be careful when using them. In the past, there have been incidents ranging from viru-carrying dlls to inf files that reset your browser’s startup page to some obscure web site.
At the moment, v12.41 is only available as a WHQL version. The WHQL certification is given out by the "Windows Hardware Quality Labs" and is meant to guarantee the driver’s compatibility to other certified hardware and software as well as its support for certain 2D/3D features. In 3D image tests, for example, the images rendered using the driver need to match the reference image to a certain degree.
While this sounds great in theory and is definitely important for many OEMs, it does pose a couple of small problems for the power user. Specifically, WHQL drivers do not (and aren’t allowed to) include any options for V-Sync, let alone overclocking menus. Luckily, tools like Powerstrip are an easy solution. The more adventurous could also try replacing the option menus (nvcpl.dll) with older versions, perhaps from the leaked v12.40 drivers. What’s more, this release no longer recognizes the RIVA TNT family. This feels like a political decision, perhaps to imply to users of these "older" cards that it’s getting time to upgrade... Marketing at its best – or worst, depending on viewpoint... What’s really irritating though is the absence of any filtering settings in this driver release. The GeForce 3 is capable of several levels of anisotropic filtering (see our RIVA Station GeForce 3 Shootout for more information), a feature which greatly increase image quality. Since NVIDIA has failed to include any means to adjust the filtering options, those who want to enable filtering are forced to use freeware tools like RIVA Tuner or change the settings manually in the registry. Of course, the most important question is: Are the new drivers faster? Should I upgrade or am I fine? I tested both driver versions head to head with a GeForce 2 MX, a GTS, a PRO, and an ULTRA on my Pentium 4 system. My benchmarks of choice were Giants, Quake 3 and 3D Mark 2001.
Testcards:
Since all tests were run in Windows 98SE, they cab e considered representative of all Win9x versions (95, ME) – not of Windows 2000, though! |
||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright: 17.06.2001 - RIVA Station 2001 - Lars "Borsti" Weinand - Translation: Ben "Iggy" Kraft URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/v650_v1241-drivers_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-) |
