Anyone tested Nvidia Detonators 40.41 drivers yet?

[Lanceloc]

They were released yesterday and suggest they provide up to 25% frame rate improvement.

If you have installed and used these drivers please say if they are any good and your system info.

 

[Cerverloc]

Experienced no problems and noticed a speedincrease on the UT2003 beta demo.

 

[[PS]Venom]

Where from?

I don't seemt o be able to find them on the Nvidia site..

 

[[PS]Venom]

Nevermind, found them.

 

[Stonebits]

Its made DAOC go a bit weird for me.....

At night time, in the distance, where the edge of the drawing zone is (or whatever you call it) it seems to flicker like lightning.....

Or it could actually be lightning

 

[Jupitus]

Been using them a couple of days now:

2Ghz Intel P4
512 Mb Ram
GeForce 3 ti200 64 Mb GFX card
Win 2k Pro

Game runs ok, haven't noticed faster frame rate though. No crashes since installation (in fact I used to get some reboot problems - _possibly_ fixed, we'll see) though I do see some odd rendering ... was riding south toards the twin bridge, and the wood beams of the towers were drawn way before the actual walls of the towers, which didn't happen before.

Seems ok to me...

Oh, one note - I get an application error, not in DAoC, but in the screen/properties/advanced when trying to use the Nvidia tab. If someone else tries this in win2k would be nice to know if they have the same problem

Cheers,
Jup.

 

[old.dittytwo]

Frame rate increase

hello all just thought that i would pop on a quick note on here

That it does not matter what type of GFX card, memory, cpu, os, internet connection or anything else (well within reason) that you have got.

DAoC will not get faster until the new expansion pack comes out

The reason the graphics engine in DAoC does not do graphics at all well (ok it looks good but it sucks and blows at the same time)

It is not upto scratch, the version is something like 0.8 of the engine and the expansion pack is going to upgrade it to 4.X a hell of a big jump which inturn will make it work a hell of a lot better. (i hope anyway) with increased everything......
we shall see in november

 

[Lanceloc]

Dittytwo,

I bet if you had the fastest PC available it would still get faster.

I believe this because the engine draws hidden objects and the detail is high, therefore 100 avatars on screen would result in the drawing of every single avatar being fully drawn even if half of them were 90% hidden. A fast CPU like an Athlon XP 2200, DDR 333 MHZ memory and a Geforce 4 Ti4600 would draw each frame faster.

Of course, with the memory leak, this is all irrelevant after 30 minutes of gaming.

 

[old.Pempula]

Very true, Lanceloc, but as the game engine is so old, the only advantage you get from using a GF4Ti card is the probably the a little bit higher fill rate it has, as the game is only based on dx 7 (or 6.1...) specs, so none of the goodies on the card are actually put to any good use. The difference between six and seven fps is quite trivial anyway, both suck.

 

[old.dittytwo]

Originally posted by Lanceloc
Dittytwo,

I bet if you had the fastest PC available it would still get faster.

I believe this because the engine draws hidden objects and the detail is high, therefore 100 avatars on screen would result in the drawing of every single avatar being fully drawn even if half of them were 90% hidden. A fast CPU like an Athlon XP 2200, DDR 333 MHZ memory and a Geforce 4 Ti4600 would draw each frame faster.

Of course, with the memory leak, this is all irrelevant after 30 minutes of gaming.

the engine redraws everything on the screen not just the avatar it redraws the back/foreground each time too. So having a better pc would still not make up for it as it is still the engine that is controling the Graphics card and the pc, and then telling it how to draw the screen.

therefore you could have the fastes PC avialable, the hardware would have a great frame rate it would put the frames up on the screen at a rate of 150 screens a second (for instance) but the graphics engine is still only supplying about 7 screens per second (RVR situttions).. so you see that the graphics engine is pants and it is the graphical software engine that is limiting the framerate and not the hardware.

the new engine will change all that.

 

[Lanceloc]

Ah right, I thought it was a problem with excessive number of polygons to draw. But, even if you say it is the engine being slow and not the clients hardware, where is your proof? Or is this just an educated guess?

 

[Stonebits]

Originally posted by Jupitus

Oh, one note - I get an application error, not in DAoC, but in the screen/properties/advanced when trying to use the Nvidia tab. If someone else tries this in win2k would be nice to know if they have the same problem

Cheers,
Jup.

I get the same thing as well??
grrrrrr
Hmm I might try a roll back see of that cures it...
Im running
Athlon 1.33
512k 2100DDR ram
Geforce 3 64mb
Asus mb (i think )
Oh and windows XP professional editkion.....

 

[old.dittytwo]

Originally posted by Lanceloc
Ah right, I thought it was a problem with excessive number of polygons to draw. But, even if you say it is the engine being slow and not the clients hardware, where is your proof? Or is this just an educated guess?

Proof is easy
play daoc and go into RVR
then play somthing like everquest (with all the expansion packs) and there you go works fine

or play DAoC then play neverwinternights (new imerse engine) you will notice the difference.

or play DAoC then play SOFII with a map of 60 other players.

you will see the proof
that your PC is fine (if you have the machine that you have mentioned above) and that it is really slow when rvring in DAoC due to the ammount it has to draw, but the other games will be fine simple test...
also there is mention from the mythic that it is crap but i can not remember the post.

 

[Lanceloc]

I got the error when going to Advanced properties too.

I rolled back to 30.xx whatever they are. But now I cant clone my screen to see DAOC on my TV now.

Cant wait for SI.

 

[Jupitus]

Well other than the advanced properties tab, it all seems to function as it should -I have no plans to vary the settings much, so I'll stick with the new drivers and hopefully next release will fix the advanced tab issues...

Jup.

 

[Stonebits]

But its a pain in the @ss for me, as my other post says, my gpx card is making Daoc too dark, so I wanted to have a tweak with the option to see if I could rectify it... oh well.....

 

[VidX]

Ah... dittytwo... what are you talking about?

According to you the game will run the same on a super athlon 2000+, gf4 as it would on my athlon 1.1 gf2mx looking at the same scene?

Err... no

My system:

Athlon 1.1GHz
512Mb PC133
GF2mx400 64Mb
Windows XP Professional
DirectX 8.1
Detonator 30.xx drivers
Running DAOC 800x600

Looking at a teleport pad in Ligen with 30 people on it I get red FPS monitor on a res of 800x600.

Now... you are saying no matter what system I have, this will not improve?

Ok, so I look at my other monitor... running on my new PC...

Athlon XP 2000+
512Mb DDR PC2700
GF4Ti4200
Windows XP Professional
DirectX 8.1
Detonator 40.41 drivers
Running DAOC 1280x1024

Standing on top of my other character, lookin gthe same direction, I get green FPS monitor...

So, what was that you were saying?

Yes, the DAOC engine sucks when it comes to rendering alot on screen. And your comparison between DAOC and SOFII really isn't valid due to the fact that SOFII isn't dealing with thousands of people on the server, filtering all the communications channels, and dealing with one hell of a memory leak.

SOFII doesn't draw everything within clipping range of you, only visible objects, unlike DAOC which draws everything, even if it is behind a wall (keep raids are the best example, 30 defenders, only a few in sight, but you still get slowdown when looking at the keep).

 

[old.dittytwo]

And your comparison between DAOC and SOFII really isn't valid due to the fact that SOFII isn't dealing with thousands of people on the server, filtering all the communications channels, and dealing with one hell of a memory leak. <-- what has this got to do with the graphics??? (well apart from the memory leak)

SOFII doesn't draw everything within clipping range of you, only visible objects, unlike DAOC which draws everything, even if it is behind a wall (keep raids are the best example, 30 defenders, only a few in sight, but you still get slowdown when looking at the keep).<-- erm my point exactly ???

yes ok you get improvement with a faster machine and another 40 people and your uber machine would have got a red FPS..

what basically i was saying to the bloke at the top was to wait before spending all his hard earned cash until the new engine is out so that he can see what he needs to upgrade

but we are both agreed that the DAoC GFx engine is crap so i am happy

 

[VidX]

The new engine is reported to fully support DX8.2 features, and alot of the features implemented since the GF3 series of cards were released.

By the time SI comes out you should be able to pick up a GF4 Ti4200 64Mb for around £100 or so, and, if Mythic are to be believed in regards to the fps increases in the SI engine, it will give a very nice improvement to the game and the way it performs on current systems.

Not sure how it will run on the older cards as there are a few rendering features missing on them, but it should be an overall improvement.

I haven't tried the 40.41 drivers on my older system, basically because it's only used when I'm powerlevelling my alt, and the new system is only a week old, so I have had the 40.41's on it since I got it.

 

[frogster]

Picked my GF4 Ti 4200 128DDR yesterday for 110 notes.
So y w8 till SI?