DH Editorial: A look at nVida's new Forceware

The_Neon_Cowboy · May 24, 2006, 11:51 AM

Looks like a big improvement for the NV CP. I haven't loaded them yet I'm
Grabbing them now and will tote them over to my parents house later, to play
with them.

Seems Nvidia has scrapped their .Net CP? No wonder it took them a year+ to
come out with thier soultion. They started all over again from being not that
far from release-ability. seems they listened to the NV & ATI user gripes and
changed their plans wich is some how supriseing.

Judas · May 24, 2006, 12:12 PM

Don't forget to bash NVidia on the next tables turn.

I don't deny ATI has some SERIOUS freaking shit to straighten out before they really start screwing themselves with no return... And i don't deny that Nvidia has atm, some DAMN good offerings.

I also find the CCC not useless, but slugish and sloppy feeling, also very limiting in it's design. But it mostly does the trick, lacking features is an understatement of how we'd like to manage it. As Advanced mode appears more like a decent "basic/beginners" mode and basic mode is for total newbs which is all and good, but theres gotta be a more "advanced" mode then there is atm.

I orginally figured that the CCC was slow loading due to running an older system at the time, not true, if anything its slower on this newer rig. Why? not completely sure. Reguardless there are issues to be resolved, and soon. People are actually asking me questions on how i figure crossfire is doing, i say 90% of it is a complete failure to launch lol, Go buy nvidia's SLI solution, you'll be much happier, and have a fair bit more hair on your head when it's all done.

BWX · May 24, 2006, 01:13 PM

ATI need to just start listening to what the customers want.. use common sense. They could turn it all around in a matter of months. It's all software problems, the hardware is still awesome (AFAIK).

germanjulian · May 24, 2006, 02:04 PM

1. Multi display wizard didnt detect my 2nd monitor first time round
2. Multi display wizard does different things then windows normal multi display configuration which works... nvidias doesnt work it seems.
3. Where can you create custom game colour profiles? You can edit the colour but I did not see the options to create a profile
4. Refresh rate overwrite still needs to be enabled manually with coolbits hack

Overall I think the new way of changing your 3d settings etc. is worse then the old way which was perfectly fine. Thank god you can revert to the old style

mkk · May 24, 2006, 03:14 PM

Curious if anyone have seen this issue with the application profiling tab in the new control panel. I've installed clean an extra time and am still not being able to see any profiles nor set any new ones, as the field stays blanked. While profiles show up just fine with the old panel. Using a single 7900GTX on WinXP-SP2. Maybe this question fits better in a separate thread, but I'm wondering since the article shows no such issue and the driver is all new.

germanjulian · May 24, 2006, 03:30 PM

as i said its buggy!

mkk · May 24, 2006, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanjulian

as i said its buggy!

Did you get the same specific problem on your system?

***Zardon*** · May 24, 2006, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by germanjulian

as i said its buggy!

Well I certainly didnt find it buggy on three systems I tested. but hey if you say you have problems with it then this is the space to say you do ! I can only report on what I find, and it worked well for me in my testing, especially for a beta.

***Zardon*** · May 24, 2006, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mkk

Did you get the same specific problem on your system?

are you using any windows skinning apps? just curious...

mkk · May 24, 2006, 04:20 PM

No skinning apps and no related third party tools either this time. Usually using nHancer but I thought of trying without having it installed when reinstalling the drivers fresh an extra time.

***Zardon*** · May 24, 2006, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mkk

No skinning apps and no related third party tools either this time. Usually using nHancer but I thought of trying without having it installed when reinstalling the drivers fresh an extra time.

most strange, can you email me a DXlog file? id like to see the exact setup you have to see if I can reproduce it.

[hobo]eclipse · May 24, 2006, 09:47 PM

is there a trick to enabling the new CP?, cause still got the old one, fresh reformat , MB drivers, automatic updates , DX 9c April, then these new beta's in the x64 flavor, in that order, is there something im doin wrong?

btw...this card i got from BWX is a BEAST! 500 core 1500 memory

BWX · May 24, 2006, 11:25 PM

WOW.. awesome! Not sure about x64 version... hmmm...

bug77 · May 25, 2006, 03:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

I got that. What I was trying to say is that everyone writing a registry editing UI gets it better than ATI. Remeber the days when a guy wrote a better driver for Rage3D cards (I think) than ATI and he didn't even have the specs? It's deja-vu for me.

Anyway, after trying the new forceware, I can say I'm not impressed with the new UI. It's nice that you can preview the 3D changes' effect, but it's annoying that you have to go through two separate windows to do it. Also the nTune integration is nice (for whoever uses it). But since I never liked Windows Explorer style navigation, I'm not a big fan of this UI either. Like somebody has already said, more actions to achieve the same thing; not a good thing for a UI.
Overall it's a nice UI, maybe perfect for those who like this style.

mkk · May 25, 2006, 03:57 AM

For what I've read the x64 edition does not have the new control panel. The package also seems way too small for it to be included.

LeanWolf · May 25, 2006, 10:19 AM

Excellent editorial. Will definately be in my thoughts concerning that new rig...

[hobo]eclipse · May 25, 2006, 10:19 AM

i see, i pluggeg around a bit to see about the x64 version(not to much as its been really nice out side here) but didnt see much, should have just compared the sizes, wander if i can import it from the 32 bit unpacK? prolly not though, thanks

swimtech · May 27, 2006, 02:02 AM

Awesome editorial Allan, thank you, and very informative.

Man, this Control Panel App is great - it allows someone like myself who is looking for the utmost in accuracy from his or her display to be led through adjustments that would easily allow even a novice with two good eyes to set up their monitor to near professional results - which normally requires additional and/or crippled software at present.

One problem though, I don't use Nvidia graphics cards...

C'mon ATI - you could do this too, please?

pr0digal jenius · May 28, 2006, 12:01 AM

looks much nicer then the old .NET version

And the CCC always struck me as a concetrated scope type CP...if you didn't use the machine strictly for gaming...it was useless...and even for gaming it was goofy at best. The "Voodoo PC" of control panels: huge, over priced [resource wise], glorious in it's decorativeness, and yet no more functional then anything else. THis though is something gamers, graphic artists, and daily users alike can get something out of