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GeForce FX 5700 Ultra Driver Control Panels
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NVIDIA's ForceWare 52.16 Drivers |
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Since we
were going to test two new cards for today, we figured that
we would give users a quick look at the latest release of
NVIDIA's drivers, version 52.16, now dubbed ForceWare.
With each revision, NVIDIA attempts to simply the
configuration options, while increasing quality and
performance. While others may say otherwise, we find
that NVIDIA's take on the control panels is more
straightforward than those found with ATi's
Catalyst drivers. Rather than flip through tab after
tab, and trying to remember which ones have been clicked on
as they shift position, NVIDIA's drivers have a submenu
pop-up that one can use from top to bottom to alter all
of the settings for the GeForce FX. NVIDIA's drivers
are also well known for their UDA, or Unified Driver
Architecture, meaning that only one driver is needed for all
NVIDIA GPU's.
Change Resolutions
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Color Correction
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Temperature
Settings
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NView
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2D Standard Clock
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3D Performance Clock
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The
Change Resolutions tab is just that; it allows the user to
set the screen resolution, color quality, and refresh rate
all from one tab. While this doesn't offer any major
benefit than setting them directly from Display
Properties, one can set custom display configurations in
the lower half of the screen and only choose from amongst
those that have been added. Color and gamma levels
are modified in the next tab, Color Correction, and the
Digital Vibrance Controls allow the user to adjust the
color digitally to compensate for ambient lighting
conditions. The latest drivers also read the
temperature from a thermal diode in the GPU, which can be seen in the
Temperature Settings. Should a defined temperature
threshold be met, a warning can alert the user to possible
danger.
One new
addition to the ForceWare 52.16 drivers is the new and
improved NView multi-display wizard. Users can also
divide the monitor into separate regions and quickly
reposition and resize application windows. Also, more robust
profiles let you customize the driver settings for
specific gaming environments. Also noteworthy was
the two speeds that the graphic core was clocked at, which
we were able to see by applying the Coolbits registry
hack. At 2D (sitting at the desktop), the
5700 Ultra clocks in at 300MHz, thus running cooler and
putting less wear and tear on the GPU. Start up a 3D
based application
and the 5700 ramps up to 475MHz. The memory stays
clocked at 906MHz, however. We could also use these
"unlocked" tabs for overclocking the GPU and memory by
moving the slider to higher frequencies.
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Quality & Performance
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Direct3D
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OpenGL
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Unlike
ATi's Catalyst drivers, which require that anti-aliasing
and anisotropic filtering be done on a one-on-one basis
for Direct3D and OpenGL, a single slider on the Quality
and Performance controls both with NVIDIA's cards. Each device can be
left at application-controlled, or set to as high as 8
samples for each. Gone from past driver versions was
the checkbox for texture sharpening. Further
optimizations for Direct3D and OpenGL games can be made on
the individual tabs for each, such as defining the mipmap
detail in Direct3D and disabling Vertical Sync in OpenGL.
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Screenshots With The GeForce 5700 Ultra |
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Sure it can put up the numbers, but what about
the quality? |
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Before we
get to the benchmarks, we wanted to compare
screenshots from the Radeon 9600 XT and a GeForce FX 5700
Ultra,
two video cards geared toward mainstream users.
In this day and age, it doesn't make much sense to invest
into a high-power graphics card unless you plan on playing
your games at higher resolutions and optimizing the
display by enabling AA or Anisotropic Filtering.
Faster frame rates are great, especially during
multiplayer romps online, but image quality should never
be sacrificed in order to obtain them. We took two
new games that hit the retail shelves recently to see how
the two cards compared when viewing identical locations.
As we mentioned in the 9600
XT review, TRON
2.0 is one of the games that comes with the tagline,
"NVIDIA, the way it's meant to be played".
Started in 2002, it has picked up some steam with NVIDIA
expecting over 100 titles by the end of 2003 to carry this
line including some big names like Electronic Arts,
Microsoft Game Studios, and Activision.
Understandably, this has caused a minor uproar, since gamers
claim the way a game looks should be the same for all players
regardless of what video card they own. One only needs
to look back a few years to see that this is actually
nothing new, as games used to carry tags that touted "3dfx
optimized", "3DNOW! ready", and the like. Getting back
to the present, we checked out screenshots from TRON 2.0
from both cards. We said it before, and we will say it
again, as far as we are concerned the tron-like glow looks
the same on both cards, so we don't know what all the fuss
is about. What we did notice, however, is how the
quality has improved from our last look at this title.
At 4XAA and 6XAA, the GeForce card has definitely tightened
up the edges, coming darn close to the Radeon 9600 XT, which
we feel still has the slight edge.
The Test System, AquaMark3 & Halo
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