Made the switch, been a long time!

GAB

I have made the switch back to NVIDIA after "years" with ATI. I am going from an ATI xt1950 Pro to a EVGA e-GeForce 8800GT Superclocked 512MB PCI-E 2.0 Video Card. It has been so long I have no clue what settings to use or recommended settings or tweaks, nor what program to use. My intent is to use the latest NVIDIA drivers, but I just really need help with settings. With the ATI, I always tweaked to max. graphics and then worked within the games to get the fps right. Any help would be MUCH appreciated.

SFOSOK

Awesome choice on the card man, I have the gts version of the G92 512 series. I absolutely love it.


For drivers (since there aren't many options out there right now but its still hella good)
http://www.driverheaven.net/windows-...splay-drivers/

For tweaking individual programs
http://www.nhancer.com/

For Overclocking
NVIDIA nTune

You can get a decent overclock out of the core but I really wouldn't recommend it because there really isn't a good performance increase. Also, make sure you turn the fan up too. Also, Rivatuner doesn't support those drivers.

Here is a good guide to overclocking the card.
Tech ARP - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB Overclocking Guide

Even though its for the GTS you can use it for your GT, but you probably won't be able to OC it very much because of the single slot cooler.


Also, for indvidual game tweaking, I use this:
TweakGuides.com

GAB

Good stuff. I appreciate it. I am glad to hear that you think I got a good card. I got it at buy.com for $245 and will be putting it in tonight. I have to get all my ATI history off and am planning on doing that beginning with the control panel and ending with Driver Cleaner. I play a lot of COD4 and Nascar 2003 online, so I am looking forward to the difference in cards. I am wondering if any of the NVIDIA stuff should be left running in the background like I always did with the ATI Catilyst Suite, but I guess I will find out as I go. Thanks again.

SFOSOK

Its not too big of a deal, I usually have Nvidia's cp and Nhancer running in the background.

slickric21

Welcome back to Nvidia !! Good choice now you can lose all that CCC background process rubbish aswell (I used to be ATi untill last yr)

Note:I've not used ATi CC for nearly a yr so it may have changed, but the main difference was in CCC you had to make several different profiles then switch between them depending on what game you play. With nvidia each game has its own profile (written into the registry) so you set up your profiles and thats it, you never have to manually change anything, settings get applied when you start the relevant game automatically.

As for drivers, there is just so many of them around right now. The latest offical ones are unfortunatley broken in that AA dosen't work from the profiles page (within the control panel) so you will have to change the global profile each time if you are forcing AA in games.
I'm using 169.61, which work perfect for me, however the lastest ones are 171.17 & 171.23 which have good feedback.
The NVIDIA Control Panel can handle all the graphics tweaking you like, and if you don't want to overclock then you probably won't need anything else.
If you want tweaks such as "pre render settings" (flip queue in ATI) or to manually change fan speeds, overclock or do a whole load of extras there is really only 1 tool to rule them all RIVATUNER.
I strongly advise you not to use NTUNE it is the buggiest, most bloated piece of crap I have ever encountered (try a google search its not just my opinion you'll see what I mean).
NHANCER is another popular tool, but it offers no overclocking or fan speed tweaking, its just offers a few more things extra than the Nvidia control panel (such as more AA settings, pre render setting [as of 171.xx this is in nvida cp] and some compabilty stuff - mostly unused)

slickric21

I forgot to mention
1)that the Nvidia Cp doesn't have to be left running, its much more subtle that the ATI CCC. It makes its changes to the registry.

2)You can turn off all your Nvidia start up process apart from "NvCpl" (if you are inclined, or know how to do it) and also disable the "nvidia driver helper service.

3)Rivatuner if used doesn't need to be left running

4)nhancer if used does need to be left running and also its process will always run in the background

5)ntune if anybody is unfortunate enough to use it will add a startup process, that will always run in the backgound.

Maybe have a read of the nvidia control panel guide on tweakguides.com, its always a good start. TweakGuides.com - Nvidia Forceware Tweak Guide

Good luck

GAB

slickric21 Thats some good advice. I am running XP, so on drivers, I will use the latest off EVGA's site, 169.28. Not sure how good those will be. On your note 2, do I need to leave startup process "NvCpl" running or not? I have'nt got the card installed yet, but will this weekend while I watch Nascar. Thanks a lot.

slickric21

Yes leave that one running at start up, that will apply any non-3d settings you have changed. Such as colour, digital vibrance, scaling options etc etc.

You can disable all others safely as they aren't needed at all really.

BlueMak

Why would you want to disable any of them unless you are running benchmarks and want to gain like 1 frame per second is beyond my understanding. If you have 2GB of memory and a dual core cpu, you shouldn't worry about an extra process or two from nvidia.

MicahSJ

I also say that you made a very good choice indeed. I first started using Nvidia, but then switched to ATI for a few years, and now I am back to using Nvidia, starting just a few months ago. I must say it is good to be back with Nvidia. I now use an MSI NX8600GT PCI-Express with 256MBDDR3 memory.
I can't believe the graphics and the fps....it's incredible.

Concerning the settings it all depends on what the game can handle, whether it be anti-aliasing or anistropic filtering or both. When games have their own adjustment I usually set it on application preference. For games that don't have those options, I will usually use the following settings as they give me good graphics with high fps at 1280x1024 and 1280x960 at 85Hz.

I use 4x anti-aliasing and/or 8x anistropic filtering depending on the game, and I always use the high image quality setting.

These are just my preferences. Everybody has their own.