Zenoth
Diamond Member
Hi.
Many of you here, if not everyone actually, certainly at least heard about programs / tools such as Rage 3D Tweak and Rad Linker (both of these are for ATi GPU's). I personally never heard about similar programs for nVidia GPU's, since the only nVidia GPU I ever owned was an XFX MX-440 SE, and I had it for three months.
Well, those drivers features tweaking tools, are of course very nice, but I keep telling to myself why did such programs were needed to do the changes they allow us to do.
Let me explain...
I'll take for example both tweaks I mentioned, that is Rage 3D Tweak and Rad Linker.
Both of them allow us to Enable or Disable, or allow us to modify / change the setting of very specific features supported or included into drivers / GPU's.
People who know about these tools surely know about the features they can affect. But I'm curious, and I'll ask a question here for Mr Joe everyone (generally speaking).
Did you know you could affect and / or activate Alpha Dither Method ? Did you know you could Alternate the Pixel Center ? That you could activate Geometry Instancing, Hierarchical Z, Table Fog, and TLC ?
Did you know you could Accelerare Alpha Blending, Block Writes and StretchBlts ? That you could activate / disable SSE / SSE 2 ?
Did some of you actually never even heard about some or all of these usual drivers features ? That your GPU surely support most of them ?
Did any of you knew that the majority of these features, and even more not mentioned here are actually DISABLED by default, UNLESS you download such a program to use them ?
And, most importantly, did you know some of these features, once Enabled, have the potential to affect performance with positive results ?
You know what, hehe, sometimes I'm pushing this far when talking to my friends about this, and I'm telling them major GPU producers, ATi and nVidia don't want us to know about these features in an official way. They Disable useful features on purpose, so that the products we buy can sometimes even surprisingly disappoint us in terms of performance in specific gaming situations, despite the price we sometimes sacrificed ourselves to pay for.
Some sort of an Industrial-sized plot so that we are forced to a certain point to follow the trend and at least forces us to THINK ABOUT changing our current GPU much sooner than we thought we would have had to.
Keep in mind guys, of course I'm mainly just making fun of the situation, I mean, I don't really care what ATi or nVidia does, what they think, etc.
But it doesn't change the fact that...well, this situation is a fact.
In my humble opinion, we, the consumers, should not HAVE TO download third party programs to tweak or play around with those features that are officially supported by the creators of the products.
I'm NOT saying such programs are "bad", or "dangerous" or that they can destroy your GPU's and that we should not download them. No.
I'm saying such tools ARE good, and that we SHOULD use them.
But we should not HAVE TO...do you guys see what I mean ?
Companies should create offcial programs, included in the download of their Control Panels along with the driver, that allows us to tweak the features. Therefore making use of the GPU we bought the way we want to. To adjust the settings to the kind of quality / performance / stability ratio we personally like.
We should not be forced to stick with the default settings. That's, shortly, the main point of this thread.
I mean, can you guys imagine how a person, a gamer, let's presume that. The guy don't know about those programs, and of course don't know about the features his GPU actually supports, about how the driver he installed could activate them or disable others.
That guy doesn't know, and let's say his GPU could make his game run at least smoother if he activated the features. But he just don't know about that. Because of many reasons. He probably has a job, or go to school, or do both. Have a life, do outside activities, etc.
It's not the kind of person surfing, searching the web with something in his mind that goes like "Hmmmm, I think my GPU hold some performance secrets, I think my GPU has more juice to provide, so I think a program somewhere should allow me to adjust things that I'm not even sure are present and actually existent".
As consumers we should ALL know about that. ATi or nVidia should inform us about such things.
And the point of all this is NOT "How Useful Are Those Disabled Features Once They're Enabled". No.
The point is "Those features are present, the consumers should have an official way to alternate, disable or enable the features as they please".
But I think I know why ATi or nVidia do not support the features officially.
Because if some of those features are not used properly, they have the potential to directly affect the stability of the GPU, and therefore the GPU producer would have to support the consumers if something wrong happens.
I mean, right now, if someone play around with Rad Linker or Rage 3D Tweak, and does something wrong, and pretty much dooms his GPU, the GPU producer does not hold any responsabilities for what happened. It's entirely the consumer's fault. He took the risk. So he pays for it.
I know....I know.
But still....
So, any comments, facts, opinions about all this would be appreciated.
Thanks for your time.
Many of you here, if not everyone actually, certainly at least heard about programs / tools such as Rage 3D Tweak and Rad Linker (both of these are for ATi GPU's). I personally never heard about similar programs for nVidia GPU's, since the only nVidia GPU I ever owned was an XFX MX-440 SE, and I had it for three months.
Well, those drivers features tweaking tools, are of course very nice, but I keep telling to myself why did such programs were needed to do the changes they allow us to do.
Let me explain...
I'll take for example both tweaks I mentioned, that is Rage 3D Tweak and Rad Linker.
Both of them allow us to Enable or Disable, or allow us to modify / change the setting of very specific features supported or included into drivers / GPU's.
People who know about these tools surely know about the features they can affect. But I'm curious, and I'll ask a question here for Mr Joe everyone (generally speaking).
Did you know you could affect and / or activate Alpha Dither Method ? Did you know you could Alternate the Pixel Center ? That you could activate Geometry Instancing, Hierarchical Z, Table Fog, and TLC ?
Did you know you could Accelerare Alpha Blending, Block Writes and StretchBlts ? That you could activate / disable SSE / SSE 2 ?
Did some of you actually never even heard about some or all of these usual drivers features ? That your GPU surely support most of them ?
Did any of you knew that the majority of these features, and even more not mentioned here are actually DISABLED by default, UNLESS you download such a program to use them ?
And, most importantly, did you know some of these features, once Enabled, have the potential to affect performance with positive results ?
You know what, hehe, sometimes I'm pushing this far when talking to my friends about this, and I'm telling them major GPU producers, ATi and nVidia don't want us to know about these features in an official way. They Disable useful features on purpose, so that the products we buy can sometimes even surprisingly disappoint us in terms of performance in specific gaming situations, despite the price we sometimes sacrificed ourselves to pay for.
Some sort of an Industrial-sized plot so that we are forced to a certain point to follow the trend and at least forces us to THINK ABOUT changing our current GPU much sooner than we thought we would have had to.
Keep in mind guys, of course I'm mainly just making fun of the situation, I mean, I don't really care what ATi or nVidia does, what they think, etc.
But it doesn't change the fact that...well, this situation is a fact.
In my humble opinion, we, the consumers, should not HAVE TO download third party programs to tweak or play around with those features that are officially supported by the creators of the products.
I'm NOT saying such programs are "bad", or "dangerous" or that they can destroy your GPU's and that we should not download them. No.
I'm saying such tools ARE good, and that we SHOULD use them.
But we should not HAVE TO...do you guys see what I mean ?
Companies should create offcial programs, included in the download of their Control Panels along with the driver, that allows us to tweak the features. Therefore making use of the GPU we bought the way we want to. To adjust the settings to the kind of quality / performance / stability ratio we personally like.
We should not be forced to stick with the default settings. That's, shortly, the main point of this thread.
I mean, can you guys imagine how a person, a gamer, let's presume that. The guy don't know about those programs, and of course don't know about the features his GPU actually supports, about how the driver he installed could activate them or disable others.
That guy doesn't know, and let's say his GPU could make his game run at least smoother if he activated the features. But he just don't know about that. Because of many reasons. He probably has a job, or go to school, or do both. Have a life, do outside activities, etc.
It's not the kind of person surfing, searching the web with something in his mind that goes like "Hmmmm, I think my GPU hold some performance secrets, I think my GPU has more juice to provide, so I think a program somewhere should allow me to adjust things that I'm not even sure are present and actually existent".
As consumers we should ALL know about that. ATi or nVidia should inform us about such things.
And the point of all this is NOT "How Useful Are Those Disabled Features Once They're Enabled". No.
The point is "Those features are present, the consumers should have an official way to alternate, disable or enable the features as they please".
But I think I know why ATi or nVidia do not support the features officially.
Because if some of those features are not used properly, they have the potential to directly affect the stability of the GPU, and therefore the GPU producer would have to support the consumers if something wrong happens.
I mean, right now, if someone play around with Rad Linker or Rage 3D Tweak, and does something wrong, and pretty much dooms his GPU, the GPU producer does not hold any responsabilities for what happened. It's entirely the consumer's fault. He took the risk. So he pays for it.
I know....I know.
But still....
So, any comments, facts, opinions about all this would be appreciated.
Thanks for your time.
