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AOpen
GeForce FX5600 Driver Control Panels
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NVIDIA Detonator 52.13 Drivers |
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When
DirectX 9 games originally hit the market, the performance
of NVIDIA hardware was less than acceptable. In fact
it was downright frightening to think NVIDIA didn't have an
answer. Not only were their cards slower compared to
its competitor ATi, but image quality left a lot to be
desired as well. Since then, NVIDIA promised fixes in
its 5X.XX Forceware driver series and they have delivered.
To go along with the AOpen Aeolus graphics card we have
NVIDIA's 52.13 Detonator drivers. This driver set is
quite robust, allowing the user to tweak just about
everything any power user could ask for.
Adapter Info
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Color
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Refresh Rates
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Displays
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The Adapter tab identifies
the card and gives some low-level detail on the BIOS
revision and other features of the card. The Color tab
allows the user to adjust many settings including Gamma,
Contrast, Brightness, and Image Sharpening. The best
part of this driver series is the ability to save your
profile when you are done tweaking. This makes it very
easy to toggle between settings when in gaming environments
or desktop environments. The Displays tab allows the
user to change the desktop settings such as resolution and
refresh rates. Finally the Refresh Rates tab allows
the user to set specific refresh rates at certain
resolutions. This is a nice feature to have, since
most users out there play their games at different
resolutions than their desktop setting but would still like
to keep a high refresh rate with each resolution setting.
The more exciting screens
are shown here above. The 3D settings of this card
are located on the tab labeled "GeForce FX 5600".
This is where Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering are
set for 3D environments. The default settings of the
card have Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering
controlled by the application. Most serious gamers
will find this unacceptable and will want to bump up both
settings here to get rid of the jaggies and sharpen
textures when playing games. There is also a
separate screen for Direct3D and OpenGL settings.
These tabs allow the specific settings of each mode to be
adjusted to your liking. All in all, we have to say
that NVIDIA delivers a robust driver set. The big
test of any driver set, however, is image quality.
Let's take a look at some in game screenshots from Halo
and Call of Duty.
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In-Game Screenshots |
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Much Improved Picture Quality from the Latest
Detonators |
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The first two screens we
have for you are from Halo and compare the AOpen Aeolus FX
5600S with an ATi Radeon 9600 XT. The best way to
compare these screenshots is to have both of them open and
then quickly toggle back and forth between the two.
The differences are obvious of course, but the final
decision ultimately lies with you. While we have
always liked ATi's image quality a little better here at
HH but comes down to personal preference. The good
news is that both cards have excellent image quality and
it's nice to see that NVIDIA has kept up their end of the
bargain, with their latest drivers keeping the IQ
competition neck and neck.
Halo Screenshots 1280x1024 - 32 bit
Color
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AOpen GeForce FX 5600 |
ATi Radeon 9600 XT |
Below we don't have a
comparison, but rather a series of screenshots depicting
the performance of Antialiasing (AA) and Anisotropic
Filtering (AF) of the AOpen FX 5600 graphics card with
some in game screenshots from Call of Duty. Again, a
good way to see the differences in the way the images are
rendered is to quickly toggle between a couple of
different screenshots.
Call Of Duty
Screenshots 1024X768 - 32 bit Color
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NO AA / NO AF
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2X AA
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2X AA / 4X AF
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4X AA
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4X AA / 4X AF
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8X AA
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8X AA / 8X AF
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One specific part of the
image to keep your eye on, when comparing AA image quality
in these shots, is the talll silo structure and the barn
behind the vehicle. Notice how with each bump up of
the AA setting there are less jagged edges in the images.
The feature to keep your eyes on when comparing the AF
performance is the grass and the detail of the trees
especially the trees located behind the halo off in the
distance. Notice the detail of the grass and in the
trees increases as the AF setting increases. Although
the 8X AA plus 8X AF setting is the most visually
attractive, game play was a bit too slow to be considered
"playable". We found the 2X AA with 4X AF to be the
best quality to performance sweet spot this card has to
offer, at this resolution. It's safe to say that most
gamers would be happy playing a game at this level of
detail. We definitely were. Now, let's get some
numbers from this card, shall we.
The Test System, AquaMark3 & Halo
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