bug77

I don't o/c my video card at all (well, XFX did it for me), I was just wondering.

Sandok

ATI has really been losing support and I can't even fathom to defend them anymore... NV is become the ATI I loved back when the 9800 Pro and all were being released... The new ATI is going downhill from everything to driver presentation (not the drivers itself) to the cards (big bulky and loud).

Both companies still have their reasons to exist but ATI is starting to look less appealing, especially with the CCC. Great read Zardon!

BWX

System Specs

I think ATI cards still ROCK.. they are sweet.. but I can't afford one and I don't like the software.. If the software was better and they were priced a little more competitively, I would have had to get an ATI.

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rig

bananaman

very intersting piece Z. A well rounded article that makes me slightly concerned about ATI - although being a single card user I dont have the same issues

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Zoolook

There is a slick CCC replacement, it's called ATT - Ati tray tools, you don't need to have control panel or CCC installed, just driver and ATT, it's fast and supports most of the things you need coolbits for on Nvidia hardware.

bug77

Yes, everybody seems to get it right, except for ATI.

Zardon

Does ATT control crossfire, does it offer rendering modes for crossfire ?

BWX

System Specs

I actually always had problems with ATT.. my AA, AF, and other settings never "stuck"..

I actually had to quit using it altogether and use a combination of ATI TOOL, Omega's w/o installing ATT, and then refresh lock for my custom resolution that I NEEDED to use with my CRT.. (no other program worked right for that)..

Then when I started to mess round with my first Vivo card (X800XL), to my dismay the included ATI software was totally useless for me and I had to use third party tools such as media player classic to view my TV in- and get audio direct form sound card w/o lag It was a real mess. I spend countless hours trying to get it all to work with ATI software, never got rid of the audio lag.

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rig

Zardon

out of curiousity bwx how are you finding nvidia? I know you were with ATI for a long while there. Any transitional problems? have you tried the new beta forceware set ?

bug77

Probably not, but it's still a better UI.

BWX

System Specs

Nope have not tried the beta Forceware because i am sending this card out to EVGA for a step up to a 7900GTX very soon.. like this week. I should have done it yesterday..

But all in all I am happy with the ease of use of the NV driver control panel. Coolbits auto OC's... (when games start)... Game profile settings work great. No bulky .net control panel.. everything is almost instant. I can set the "max frames to render ahead" to 0 or 1 which really smooths things out and speeds things up for me in many games, especially race sims.

The only thing I miss is that in some games I need to tweak a little more to get the desired level of IQ, but it is possible.. there are many different settings to adjust. Force trilinear, Gamma correct AA, force high quality filtering, supersampling transparency AA (very nice and fast too), and clamping negative LOD bias.

It all just works and is totally intuitive to me even after not using Nvidia for about 4 years. Dual monitors work flawlessly.. Nothing really to complain about.

I haven't tested TV in and TV out extensively, but I am thinking it would probably work as well as the rest of the software.. pretty solid.

I think I will like the new style because the only small inconvenience now is that there isn't very much room in the CP for some of the adjustments like you showed in the review, but I don't adjust them often because they are in a profile that sticks for each game.. then I just save nvapps.xml in the system32 folder before a driver change, and put it back after the new driver is installed- and I have all my game settings profiles saved. Simple.

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rig

dipstick

System Specs

I am amazed by the turnaround nVidia has made. They seem to be listening to what users actually want and they don’t try to force feed you anything, with options to keep those who fear change at bay. The new CP looks light, fast, and the game profile system is second to none. It’s what the ccc should have been imho. Will be putting more thought into what drivers/cp come with my next purchase for sure

BWX

System Specs

What I really like... and I wonder if the coolbits options are integrated into the new CP after applying the hack or how that works? I wonder if there have to be a new coolbits hack?

very easy custom resolutions..


refresh rate over ride if needed (a HUGE pain with ATI)


Makes a big difference in a lot of games and not sure if you can even control this w/ ATI- works regardless of triple buffering and Vsync settings.



these profiles are the best.. ATI doesn't offer those either.

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rig

Zardon

You are missing the point of this article, we are dealing with the panels that both nvidia and ATI have released, not third party mods. If you read the full text you will see there are some quite serious issues right now with crossfire. ATT wont fix that, its up to ATI to fix it.

ViRuS2k

i have said this all along that nvidia know what the customers want and ati and just spoon feeding us everymonth and hopeing to get away with it, most of the time they have and they have loved all our money.

but as you can see Nvidia know what there doing and know what the customers want there moving in the right direction, and when nvidia`s dx10 card comes i will be moving in the right direction aswell.

i have lost nearly all faith in ati and i will bash them constently if something isnt right.
i guess everyone is wakeing up to ati`s shinanigans now.