NVIDIA Detonator

[icedog42]

What is the difference between the NVIDIA Detonator and regular NVIDIA drivers? On the NVIDIA website I see Windows XP /2000 drivers with version 30.82 and Windows XP / 2000 Detonator drivers. I have an ASUS 770 Ti card and is supported by both drivers. I see a lot of talk about the Detonator drivers but I don't really see any difference.

Also, when using the NVIDIA drivers, should I reinstall DirectX after any NVIDIA driver update?

Thanks for any input that you may have.

[Schrullenhaft]

Detonator is just the name of the universal driver family for NVidia. ATI currently calls their universal drivers Catalyst.

There's probably little to no difference between the drivers that NVidia offers and those of the OEMs such as ASUS (at their heart they are exactly the same comparing the same versions). In the past there used to be some unique control settings or something to that effect. Usually the OEM drivers are a couple of versions behind the officials (or betas). Using the latest NVidia drivers is usually a good idea since most of the time fixes are involved. However the latest beta drivers, which were geared towards improving performance and adding features, have bugs in them that effect CM and many other games.

It's recommended that if you install a new driver that you uninstall your current video drivers first. With the driver set to VGA or whatever equivalent, then you can install the latest drivers.

When it comes to NVidia's latest drivers you need DirectX 8.1. If you don't have that, then you need to install it before you install the latest video drivers. It isn't necessary to reinstall DirectX every time you change video drivers.

[ September 01, 2002, 06:35 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]