New WHQL Voodoo3 1.07 drivers available

Soccerman

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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mother of.. SHWEET! I gotta try these out! see what kind of features they have!

maybe us lowly V3's get another boost in performance?

the Geforce 2 and the ATi Radeon are looking less and less useful to me right about now...
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
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Well you can say a lot of things about 3dfx but you can't say they have poor driver support. I'm downloading them now and I'll run some benchies when I install them.
 

RoboTECH

Platinum Member
Jun 16, 2000
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BFG, no kidding.

Peeps can praise nvidia for their "support", yet it seems that everyone forgets that with each driver release (they're on a monthly cycle now), the 5500 and 3000 make nice gains.

they were also the first to release WHQL DX8-certified/compliant drivers.

Nearly a month later, and not a word has been heard from nvidia or ATi.
Yet people (madthumbs????) want to bitch about their support.

WTF?

Give them some credit. EVERY voodoo owners knows that they can, with confidence, upgrade to the latest version of the drivers and get better compatibility and speed, without having to worry about losing the ability to play ALL their games, or worry about getting strange 2d or 3d issues.

Each driver release is undoubtedly better than the first. nvidia can't say that (or even come close)
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
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Well I found no real change in games, except Quake 3 is slightly faster (~0.5 FPS). Those of you who play Quake 3 at 640 x 480 like I do, I found that if you turn off Depth Precision under Glide/OpenGL the framerate goes up a bit. By default it's set to "fast".
 

Remnant2

Senior member
Dec 31, 1999
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I just installed the new drivers, and I'm running into big probs :

Everything works, but my refresh rate is now forced to 75hz at all resolutions! With the older driver set, I could use up to my monitor max (100hz @ 1024, 85hz @ 1280, etc). With the new drivers, I'm stuck using 75hz even at 640 (when I should be at 160hz). I'm one of those people who can VERY easily notice flicker -- anything less than 85hz grates on me. I don't want to go back to the old drivers, but it looks like I might have to .

Any ideas?
 

CalebTG

Senior member
Mar 29, 2000
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remnant:

in win9x/ME, set your windows refresh to "Optimal" and not what you know your max is, then games usually look for optimal too.
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
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Remnant2, is your monitor still correctly setup under Windows? Try re-installing the drivers for it.

Soccerman, what did Dave say about the drivers?
 

Soccerman

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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AFAIK, he said that setting the depth precision to fastest would be faster..

he also said that there wouldn't be extra noticeable artifacts either (I concur, on my V3 2K AGP overclocked to 183mhz, I don't see any artifacts), though the little help thing that u get when you right click on an option and go to 'what's this?' says that quality goes down.

also, it has been seemingly reported with all those insane V5 + HSR beta driver tests, WITH HSR enabled, depth precision settings DO change the quality..

the speed that they get out of those drivers though, seems to be artificial, because it seems to me that because of the buggy nature of these drivers, and the fact that it shows up some frames aren't rendered at all, means that perhaps the card isn't doing ANYTHING during those frames.

I'll be skeptical till I see WHQL's showing similar improvements without those artifacts.
 

Remnant2

Senior member
Dec 31, 1999
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The refresh setting is set to optimal. It was set to that beforehand. In the list of choices, it used to list 60 thru 160 for 640x480, now it just goes to 75. same for other res's. My monitor's status display states that it's now at 75hz (used to be 100-160hz)

I've tried re-installing the PlugNPlay drivers for the monitor several times, and the driver several times also.

I just don't get it.
 

LXi

Diamond Member
Apr 18, 2000
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Im so behind, I just downloaded the 1.06s last week, and now the 1.07s...
 

Soccerman

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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don't try to understand! it's most likely a windows glitch!

there are always little things like that that a reformat will fix! hehe.. Windows is so complex, which is why I suspect it alot of the time for little glitches like this...
 

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
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Soccerman:

AFAIK, he said that setting the depth precision to fastest would be faster

It will be faster at high resolutions because it saves memory bandwidth. I just pointed out that I play at 640 x 480. Maybe using the depth precision involves extra CPU work and hence it shows up in CPU limited situations.

though the little help thing that u get when you right click on an option and go to 'what's this?' says that quality goes down.

The quality will go down because I think the Z-Buffer starts using 16 bit precision instead of 24 bit precision. At long distances you will be able to see visual artifacts. The reason why V3 owners possibly can't see them is because it only supports a 16 bits to begin with.

(Although I think I have seen some artifacts in certain large Quake 3 levels regardless of whether it is turned on or off).
 

RoboTECH

Platinum Member
Jun 16, 2000
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It will be faster at high resolutions because it saves memory bandwidth. I just pointed out that I play at 640 x 480. Maybe using the depth precision involves extra CPU work and hence it shows up in CPU limited situations.

yep. higher resoltuions/color depths are better suited for the "faster" setting


The quality will go down because I think the Z-Buffer starts using 16 bit precision instead of 24 bit precision

I don't think so. I still get a massive framerate jump when I"m in 16/16 for depth/textures in q3
 

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
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I installed them, and now, NBA Live 2000 runs smoother. I make some benchies in Q3a tonight...
 

kombatmud

Senior member
Dec 3, 1999
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BFG10K: 640x480 is CPU limited, that's probably why you've only seen a 0.5 FPS frame rate increase. If you played at a higher res, you'd probably see much bigger frame rate boosts with the newer drivers.
 

Compton

Platinum Member
Feb 18, 2000
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I don't have any 3dfx card but I'm curious... has anyone tried that HSR hack on the V3??
 

Dufusyte

Senior member
Jul 7, 2000
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Remnant, are you running Win2000 or something?

If you are running Win9x then you should not have problems, but if you do, then as a last resort you could use somehting like hztool which will allow you to specify exactly what refresh rate you want to run at each resolution. Be sure to put in the refresh rates that you know your monitor will support.

I am also sensitive to flicker, but fortunately I was able to still select high refresh rates in Win95 with the new V3 drivers. 3dfx is defaulting to lower refresh rates in their new drivers because it may give a few extra fps in some games, but I think they should leave it at high hz for that great flicker-free look. High hz, rules; forget about benchmarks.