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Full Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic with 41.09 Detonators


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Originally posted by Terrapin:

If anyone is using an Nvidia card, the new 41.09 detonator drivers allow full Anti-Aliasing with Anisotropic filtering with the game. Makes the game looks absolutely fantastic.

The key (for me) is that you have to set the AA to 4XS (Direct3D only) as the Quincunx doesn't work right.

Dear Terrapin,

That is really good news - the 4X.XX series of GeForce drivers are very fast.

1) Which OS are you using?

2) You say 4XS work, what about plain 4X?

Best regards

Mr. Die Easy

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I am still running on 29.42. (GF4 Ti4600; 2.5GHz; Win XP Pro)

Are the 4 series drivers really faster in games like CMBO or did NVidia just goose the 3DMark benchmark? I remember when the 4 series came out, people were seeing big jumps mainly in the benchmark and not in games.

Also, I find that on large scenarios and zoomed out that CMBO is primarily CPU bound. I say that because when I turn things on and off like 4XS and anisotropic filtering there is no change in FPS. (If I turn off various CMBO graphic effects, then I can see a difference in frame rate.) However, if I zoom in, then you can see the FPS change by as much as 50-75% on a small scenario. On a huge, scenario even zoomed in selecting card driver options will still have no impact on frame rate.

Well, so is it really worth considering a driver upgrade? I've always been cautious of driver upgrades when things seem to be working.

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Dear markshot,

You got a very good point. I think the speed increase from using the 4X.XX drivers in CM will be very very small, probably unoticable. Nevertheless I believe the 4X.XX drivers do provide speed gains (and compatibility) in some other games than CM (especially for GeForce4 owners). Therefore if the 41.09 drivers supports AA at 4X without any problems, I would change my good old 30.82 for them.

Best regards

Mr. Die Easy

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True, the game is CPU bound, and if you have a 2.5 ghz, you won't notice much improvement. I noticed a significant improvement on some maps (1.33 Athlon).

I don't know if you can use regular 4X, I didn't try it, but my experience with anything but that 4xS wasn't good. Quincunx wouldn't do it for example.

The new color correction stuff in the new drivers is the most useful thing about it other than the AA adaption. You can make the colors in CMBB really pop out at you, or not, depending on your taste.

I am using Win98, 256 PC-2100 Ram, GF4 Ti 4200 128MB, 1.33 Athlon.

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Another data point: I just upgraded from a GeForce 2 to a ti4200 and am running 31.40 drivers now. It made no difference to CM subjective framerates as far as I can tell (which did disappoint me a little bit). UT2003 Fly benchmark scores tripled at 2XFSAA though! This is all at 1024x768.

When I try 2xFSAA I get a blank screen, and no ammount of escaping etc. gets me the real thing back. This used to work with the 12.something drivers I used with the GF2. No FSAA looks aweful, 4x isn't all that much better as far as the sparkly terrain textures is concerned, but 4xS FSAA looks really nice - almost no texture shimmer at all. I do get some spurious pixels next to the movement path lines etc. on zooming out; they are of the same colour as the paths themselves.

Now onto a faster CPU (which means a new MB) it seems...

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I've been using 41.09 since they were released by Nvidia and I've been able to use 4xS AA and anisotropic filtering via the ALT-TAB key.

Today I get a blank screen when I get to the game screen. ALT-TAB doesn't appear to do the trick anymore. If I turn off AA I can play.

Anyone else have this issue? It's kinda strange that AA works one day and not the next day. :mad:

I'm running on an Athlon T-Bird 1.4, FIC AD11 Mobo, latest Via drivers 4.43, Geforce 4, Audigy soundcard, XP Pro,latest version DX 8.

[ December 12, 2002, 08:30 PM: Message edited by: MRoadster ]

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Originally posted by MRoadster:

I'm running on an Athlon T-Bird 1.4, FIC AD11 Mobo, latest Via drivers 4.43, Geforce 4, Audigy soundcard, XP Pro,latest version DX 8.

You have nearly the EXACT configuration I have, and I don't have a problem with the 4XS at all, and in fact, use it with 2x Anisotropic. Did you make sure to apply and save the graphics settings?

I don't know what to tell you.

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Originally posted by murpes:

Anyone know what the "texture sharpening" option does under the anti aliasing page - outside of what the little "?" help icons explains?

I tried it on and off. I can't tell the difference. I think it might do something on games that don't have filtered textures or something. It doesn't do anything in CMBB. I leave it off in case it has a performance hit.
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Originally posted by murpes:

Anyone know what the "texture sharpening" option does under the anti aliasing page - outside of what the little "?" help icons explains?

Hi murpes,

According to the creator of RivaTuner, it doubles the amount of anisotropic filtering when anti aliasing is used in order to avoid "blured" textures. In other words 4X AF will be 8X AF when anti aliasing is on.

Best regards

Mr. Die Easy

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Yep, it really was strange to have AA go out on me altogether. I couldn't figure out what went wrong so I've decided to go back to 30.87 until the next Detonator release. I can't stand not being able to use 4xAA or 4xS. I've been graphically spoiled... ;)

Originally posted by Terrapin:

You have nearly the EXACT configuration I have, and I don't have a problem with the 4XS at all, and in fact, use it with 2x Anisotropic. Did you make sure to apply and save the graphics settings?

I don't know what to tell you

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Ok, I wasn't happy going back to the 30 series drivers so I cleared out my video card settings and reinstalled 41.09, hoping that a complete driver re-install would solve my video problems.

No dice. Still have an issue with AA. If I do not Alt-Tab and w/o text manage to get to a game screen then I can play with full AA. However, if I Alt-Tab and pull up the text, then I get a blank game screen (with sounds in the background). Also, if I manage to get a game screen with full AA on and minimize and then maximize, I get the same problem as when I Alt-Tab in order to see the text (a blank screen).

Very frustrating. :mad: I still don't know why one day I could Alt-Tab and play games with full AA and readable text and now I can't. I just hope Battlefront and Nvidia will work together to solve this issue before the next driver release.

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Uh... how did you 'clear out' your video settings ? From what I can gather there are some problelms with going back and forth between 30 series and 40 series drivers.

I suggest uninstalling all of your video drivers. Depending on which Windows version you're running you can either install 'PCI SVGA' or your card may be detected as a 'GeForce' or possibly 'VGASave' (XP). With that done download the Detonator 30.xx to 40.xx fix (Videocard drivers > NVIDIA detonator drivers > ...). After this then decide on which driver you want (30.xx or 40.xx series) and install that.

I don't know if this will solve any of your video problems, but hopefully it should clean up some of your video related files.

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I thoroughly cleaned out my video card drivers and still couldn't get the 40 series to work like they used to. I then tried a 31 series (31.40 WHQL) from the "Guru of 3D" site. I didn't know about these drivers before and so far all is well. No crashes and no Alt-Tab for AA. If things stay stable I'll use the 31's for a while until the 40 series kinks are worked out.

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