Need helping with basic driver settings

[Josh7289]

Okay, so here's the deal. Normally, I never change anything in the drivers except for how they scale images for my LCD monitor. So, after downloading the Halo 1 trial, and since it didn't have an option for anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering built-in, I went to my Nvidia Control Panel, 3D Settings -> Manage 3D Settings, and then Program Settings and played around with the Halo entry in there for a while until I had AF at 16X and AA at None (since it said Halo wasn't compatible with the AA modes I selected before None whenever I tried to start it). Then I decided to go to the Global Settings thing and I started messing around with settings in there.

Needless to say, games don't run anymore as they did before, and I don't like the changes I made. For example, right now I have AF set to 8X global and AA at 4X global, and it seems they may be applied even though in-game settings say they aren't. I went back to the 3D Settings main page and went to Adjust image settings with preview, but it's still set to "Let the 3D application decide". If it was set to this, why would games seem like their "listening" to the overrides and global settings in the drivers? Additionally, the Nvidia logo preview is now shown basically with maxed out settings, while it never looked like that before while it was set to "Let the 3D application decide"...

Basically, I just want to get EVERYTHING back to default, except my little "Do not scale" changed, so that all settings like AA, AF, etc. are determined in-game, and not overridden by the drivers.

Please help me! Thank you very much!

 

[Woofmeister]

I think once you go into "advanced image settings" Forceware applies those settings regardless of what is set in adjust image settings. I also don't know of a way to restore the default settings in advanced settings once they've been monkeyed with.

Check out this link for practical advice on tweaking Nvidia Forceware.

If worse comes to worse, you could always just reinstall Forceware which will load the defaults. Then you can just go in and make your changes to the flat panel scaling and leave everything else alone.

 

[Josh7289]

Yeah, and this version just came out, right? That means I can't just leave it like this for a few days or something until the next one comes out and install that to get defaults back. sigh...This is teh suck

 

[TheRyuu]

Lets get some better drivers first. Those are XTreme-G drivers, normally better then the stock drivers. (make sure to use Driver Cleaner Pro when you install them)

Now, any settings you apply in the CP will OVERRIDE the settings that you set in game. So if your CP is set to 4xAA, and the game is set to none, you can bet your ass it's gonna force 4xAA. EXCEPT in games were using the CP settings just doesn't work (i.e. Dark Messiah, I think because of the HDR)

With a 6600GT I don't think you'll be using too much eyecandy (AA/AF) so you might want to just leave that to app control for both. (in older games you might get 8xAF with 2xAA or even 4xAA).

Now, I assume your using the new CP. You might want to go to the old CP because I think it's just plain better. Less clutter, easier to use.

Good settings might be (and anything I don't say, just leave at default):
-App control AA
-App control AF
-Vert. Sync. Off
-High Quality (it's really a must to have acceptable image quality, set to Quality if you want extra performance at lack of IQ, and turn on all opt. then too)
-Texture Clamp On (default)
-All opt. off (this is automatic with HQ)
-Transparent AA, Multi-Samp in older games, off in newer (and in really old games, you might get TRSS)
-Neg LOD Bias Allow
-Muti-Threading Disabled (you got single core right?)
-Open GL Error report On (I don't think you can turn it off)

Thats just an example. Mine is difference because I have a more powerful GPU.
Here's mine for comparison :
4xAA/16xAF
Vert. Sync. Off
Texture Clamp On
High Quality
All Opt. off
Transparent SS
SLI set to Auto-Select
Allow Negative LOD bias
Multi-Threading On
Open GL on

Have fun