GPL & Geforce DDR at 1600x1200 - Wahhh!

Running the geforce DDR at 1600x1200 I'm getting a constant 36fps in practice and the detail and speed seem to give me significantly better control (than voodoo2). I bested my best previous laptime at Kyalami by almost a second in just a couple laps even after a several month layoff. You can see where the *** bumps are like the one on the exit of the S turn at Brands Hatch. All is not totally glorious since I set mirrors every = 100 - they are very messed up, and I need to F2 and then escape back in to get rid of massive flashing. I hope this game stays playable for a long long time. Thanks Papy! Peter Ashley Boston, MA, USA

Even better ... Following a previous newsgroup tip, I loaded up the 353 drivers, set my opengl flipping method to block synch, and now the mirrors and flashing are gone. With mirrors set at every 3, I'm getting drops into the 30's instead of pinned at 36, but it feels very fast. Car catchability is much higher just because you can see and judge angles better. Best of all, I took off another 7/10th's by lap 4/5 at Kyalami. This is like cheating. > Running the geforce DDR at 1600x1200 I'm getting a constant 36fps in > practice and the detail and speed seem to give me significantly better > control (than voodoo2). I bested my best previous laptime at Kyalami by > almost a second in just a couple laps even after a several month layoff. > You can see where the *** bumps are like the one on the exit of the S turn > at Brands Hatch. > All is not totally glorious since I set mirrors every = 100 - they are very

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> messed up, and I need to F2 and then escape back in to get rid of massive > flashing. > I hope this game stays playable for a long long time. Thanks Papy! > Peter Ashley > Boston, MA, USA

One more update... at 1600x1200 you can see which curbs are flat and can be cut across in a gross manner. mirrors = 4 puts fps back at 36fps with .353, not using block transfer means the mirrors are 'banded', but flashing is still gone. mipmap = 2 seems the best, 3 and 4 gave me funny colored bands. Dropped another 5/10ths to 1:25.5 (hope for me yet maybe) > Even better ... > Following a previous newsgroup tip, I loaded up the 353 drivers, set my > opengl flipping method to block synch, and now the mirrors and flashing are > gone. With mirrors set at every 3, I'm getting drops into the 30's instead

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> of pinned at 36, but it feels very fast. Car catchability is much higher > just because you can see and judge angles better. > Best of all, I took off another 7/10th's by lap 4/5 at Kyalami. This is > like cheating. > > Running the geforce DDR at 1600x1200 I'm getting a constant 36fps in > > practice and the detail and speed seem to give me significantly better > > control (than voodoo2). I bested my best previous laptime at Kyalami by > > almost a second in just a couple laps even after a several month layoff. > > You can see where the *** bumps are like the one on the exit of the S > turn > > at Brands Hatch. > > All is not totally glorious since I set mirrors every = 100 - they are > very > > messed up, and I need to F2 and then escape back in to get rid of

massive > > flashing. > > I hope this game stays playable for a long long time. Thanks Papy! > > Peter Ashley > > Boston, MA, USA

I ran at 1600 x 1200 with my tnt2 U at almost the same frame rates (36 in practice), but the overall stability of the drivers was poor and the system would lock up after an hour or two. The 3.53 drivers were more stable in GPL, but the frame rates in all games is a lot slower than with the 2.08 drivers. Also, I didn't notice any difference in the drivabiltiy of the game at that resolution, only that the chat messages were too small to read, and I have a 21" monitor. I ended up running the game at 1280x 1024 and it seemed just as good. Now I've just installed a V3 3000, overclocked the hell out of it (from 166Mhz to 195Mhz, and the frame rates are still the same and picture quality is better, probably because the game was written for Glide and OpenGL has to run through a patch. I hated to spend the money for another video card, but for this game it was worth it. I hope you have better luck than I did with the Nvidia chip on GPL. I hate when they lock up in a race, its embarassing :) Slot

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> One more update... > at 1600x1200 you can see which curbs are flat and can be cut across in a > gross manner. > mirrors = 4 puts fps back at 36fps > with .353, not using block transfer means the mirrors are 'banded', but > flashing is still gone. > mipmap = 2 seems the best, 3 and 4 gave me funny colored bands. > Dropped another 5/10ths to 1:25.5 (hope for me yet maybe) > > Even better ... > > Following a previous newsgroup tip, I loaded up the 353 drivers, set my > > opengl flipping method to block synch, and now the mirrors and flashing > are > > gone. With mirrors set at every 3, I'm getting drops into the 30's > instead > > of pinned at 36, but it feels very fast. Car catchability is much

higher

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> > just because you can see and judge angles better. > > Best of all, I took off another 7/10th's by lap 4/5 at Kyalami. This is > > like cheating. > > > Running the geforce DDR at 1600x1200 I'm getting a constant 36fps in > > > practice and the detail and speed seem to give me significantly better > > > control (than voodoo2). I bested my best previous laptime at Kyalami

by > > > almost a second in just a couple laps even after a several month layoff. > > > You can see where the *** bumps are like the one on the exit of the S

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> > turn > > > at Brands Hatch. > > > All is not totally glorious since I set mirrors every = 100 - they are > > very > > > messed up, and I need to F2 and then escape back in to get rid of > massive > > > flashing. > > > I hope this game stays playable for a long long time. Thanks Papy! > > > Peter Ashley > > > Boston, MA, USA

I skipped the voodoo3 generation, so I'm sure your performance is fine, but for me coming from voodoo2 it's pretty impressive. Actually I had *** voodoo2 lockup issues which would come and go - never sure why - only this game. Hopefully the geforce will be stable, has been so far. Mirrors suck, but maybe I'll need 'em less ;-) > I ran at 1600 x 1200 with my tnt2 U at almost the same frame rates (36 in > practice), but the overall stability of the drivers was poor and the system > would lock up after an hour or two. The 3.53 drivers were more stable in > GPL, but the frame rates in all games is a lot slower than with the 2.08 > drivers. Also, I didn't notice any difference in the drivabiltiy of the game > at that resolution, only that the chat messages were too small to read, and > I have a 21" monitor. I ended up running the game at 1280x 1024 and it > seemed just as good. Now I've just installed a V3 3000, overclocked the hell > out of it (from 166Mhz to 195Mhz, and the frame rates are still the same and > picture quality is better, probably because the game was written for Glide > and OpenGL has to run through a patch. I hated to spend the money for > another video card, but for this game it was worth it. I hope you have > better luck than I did with the Nvidia chip on GPL. I hate when they lock up

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> in a race, its embarassing :) > Slot > > One more update... > > at 1600x1200 you can see which curbs are flat and can be cut across in a > > gross manner. > > mirrors = 4 puts fps back at 36fps > > with .353, not using block transfer means the mirrors are 'banded', but > > flashing is still gone. > > mipmap = 2 seems the best, 3 and 4 gave me funny colored bands. > > Dropped another 5/10ths to 1:25.5 (hope for me yet maybe) > > > Even better ... > > > Following a previous newsgroup tip, I loaded up the 353 drivers, set

my > > > opengl flipping method to block synch, and now the mirrors and flashing

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> > are > > > gone. With mirrors set at every 3, I'm getting drops into the 30's > > instead > > > of pinned at 36, but it feels very fast. Car catchability is much > higher > > > just because you can see and judge angles better. > > > Best of all, I took off another 7/10th's by lap 4/5 at Kyalami. This

is

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> > > like cheating. > > > > Running the geforce DDR at 1600x1200 I'm getting a constant 36fps in > > > > practice and the detail and speed seem to give me significantly

better > > > > control (than voodoo2). I bested my best previous laptime at Kyalami > by > > > > almost a second in just a couple laps even after a several month > layoff. > > > > You can see where the *** bumps are like the one on the exit of the > S > > > turn > > > > at Brands Hatch. > > > > All is not totally glorious since I set mirrors every = 100 - they are

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> > > very > > > > messed up, and I need to F2 and then escape back in to get rid of > > massive > > > > flashing. > > > > I hope this game stays playable for a long long time. Thanks Papy! > > > > Peter Ashley > > > > Boston, MA, USA

Are you sure you weren't overclocking something in your system beyond the specs at the time? Before the V3 which I'm currently using for *** purposes I've gone from Riva128 to TNT to TNT2 and also gone through almost every version of nVIDIA's reference drivers, including the leaked ones, and never had any stability problems - EXCEPT when I tried to overclock the original TNT's memory beyond 125 MHz. That resulted in a single lockup in about every two hours. This was not my experience at all using the 3.53's. At the time I was playing GPL, SCGT and NFSHS. In GPL there was no change, but in D3D at default settings I noticed something in NFSHS (which I've also found to be the best benchmark in overclocking GPUs; for some reason NFSHS is the first game to exhibit visual anomalies when the chip is clocked beyond its capabilities, and I've used it find the sweet point for my TNTs as well as the V3) - the image quality had improved (earlier, at some angles, the textures seemed to get excessively blurred, other times there were ugly jaggies around the edges of textures - now this was cured). With the improved image quality there may indeed have been a slight drop in frame rates, but this again is subjective, the differences were miniscule. However, in my experience, the 3.53 introduced some radical changes to how the D3D mipmap settings affected frame rates & image quality. F.ex in some games I ended up choosing 0 mipmap levels for optimum performance & visuals, yet in others totally different settings were in order. Luckily there was the option to save different settings for different games and activate them from the system tray. Also, the 3.53's overclocking option, and Vblank + render ahead settings were a nice plus for a tweaker, although you had to enable them from the registry. When it comes to GPL and V3, I'm primarily happy about the frame rate improvement at the start of the races and generally at all times when there are a lot of cars around me - that's when the extra FPS really count. But image quality, I'm not too sure about that. With TNTs there were several filtering options in GPL's OpenGL settings (core.ini) and I found the trilinear one to be the most pleasing. When I switched to V3 I was surprised at the lack of filtering and to this date I haven't found a suitable setting from V3's quite limited Glide options that would rectify the situation. Unlike with TNT's trilinear approximation, the textures aren't blurred in the distance (while being crisp near by) and this makes the hills look unrealistically tiled. For a demonstration, point your browser here: [link lost in import: /~midpro/TiledRing.jpg] I welcome any solution as long as it doesn't include getting a new video card. Are there any filtering options for Glide that could be enabled in core.ini? --- Antti Markus Peteri 15 miles. your dim light shines from so far away - Soul Asylum, Promises Broken

Isn't it a shame to have a video card (TNT2 Ultra) with such screwed up drivers that we anxiously wait for any new version we can get our hands on, including unreleased alphas, just to try to make things better. Unlike the TNT2s, I've always found the TNTs quite stable. Most gamers I know agree that the 2.08 drivers are faster than the 3.53. In fact I recently found a TNT driver shootout from vers. 1.08 to 3.66 and the 1.76 slightly edged out the 2.08 in D3D and OpenGL, but not in 2D. Try running Midtown Madness with the 3.53s. In traffic they'll drop down to 1/2 My computer was run with a clean install of Win98 and only the video and sound cards installed. Make you Glide changes in your registry of get the V3 overclocking utility which has all the adjustments you need. All games (all graphics, period) exhibit visual anomolies when overclocked too high, usually sparkles first, then tearing, then lockup. I find it hard to believe that people are getting all kinds of graphics details from a (almost 2 yr. old) game that were never even programmed into it. (hmmm, was that from this ng?) Slot

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>Are you sure you weren't overclocking something in your system beyond the >specs at the time? Before the V3 which I'm currently using for *** >purposes I've gone from Riva128 to TNT to TNT2 and also gone through >almost every version of nVIDIA's reference drivers, including the leaked >ones, and never had any stability problems - EXCEPT when I tried to >overclock the original TNT's memory beyond 125 MHz. That resulted in >a single lockup in about every two hours. >This was not my experience at all using the 3.53's. At the time I was >playing GPL, SCGT and NFSHS. In GPL there was no change, but in D3D at >default settings I noticed something in NFSHS (which I've also found to >be the best benchmark in overclocking GPUs; for some reason NFSHS is the >first game to exhibit visual anomalies when the chip is clocked beyond >its capabilities, and I've used it find the sweet point for my TNTs as >well as the V3) - the image quality had improved (earlier, at some >angles, the textures seemed to get excessively blurred, other times there >were ugly jaggies around the edges of textures - now this was cured). >With the improved image quality there may indeed have been a slight drop >in frame rates, but this again is subjective, the differences were >miniscule. However, in my experience, the 3.53 introduced some radical >changes to how the D3D mipmap settings affected frame rates & image >quality. F.ex in some games I ended up choosing 0 mipmap levels for >optimum performance & visuals, yet in others totally different settings >were in order. Luckily there was the option to save different settings >for different games and activate them from the system tray. Also, the >3.53's overclocking option, and Vblank + render ahead settings were a >nice plus for a tweaker, although you had to enable them from the >registry. >> When it comes to GPL and V3, I'm primarily happy about the frame rate >improvement at the start of the races and generally at all times when >there are a lot of cars around me - that's when the extra FPS really >count. But image quality, I'm not too sure about that. With TNTs there >were several filtering options in GPL's OpenGL settings (core.ini) and >I found the trilinear one to be the most pleasing. When I switched to V3 >I was surprised at the lack of filtering and to this date I haven't found >a suitable setting from V3's quite limited Glide options that would >rectify the situation. Unlike with TNT's trilinear approximation, the >textures aren't blurred in the distance (while being crisp near by) and >this makes the hills look unrealistically tiled. For a demonstration, >point your browser here: > [link lost in import: /~midpro/TiledRing.jpg] >I welcome any solution as long as it doesn't include getting a new video >card. Are there any filtering options for Glide that could be enabled in >core.ini? >--- >Antti Markus Peteri > 15 miles. your dim light shines from so far away > - Soul Asylum, Promises Broken

Luckily I haven't run into the problems you've obviously experienced but I'm still VERY anxious to try new drivers whenever they become available, be it a V3 or a TNT2 or any other card for that matter. It's truly a shame you've had to go through such an ordeal. I've had the fortune to find both quite stable with my setup. That goes for V3 as well. But I understand, not all have been so lucky. After moving from some ATI card to a V3 my friend couldn't overclock his Celery anymore using a non-standard FSB freq. But then, stranger things have happened. > Most gamers I know agree that the 2.08 drivers are faster than the 3.53. In > fact I recently found a TNT driver shootout from vers. 1.08 to 3.66 and the > 1.76 slightly edged out the 2.08 in D3D and OpenGL, but not in 2D. Try > running Midtown Madness with the 3.53s. In traffic they'll drop down to 1/2 Never tried MM, I'm afraid. And yes, there is some truth to what you're saying, it's a relatively common view that the latest drivers are not as efficient. Personally I can only say that in the games I've played the differences have been miniscule as I already mentioned, but the new drivers have always offered something that have made them a definite keeper. Erm, how does this relate to my message? I've been using Gary Peterson's OC Util for months and currently have my V3 2K oc'd to 180 MHz. At 184 I started getting some visual artifacts in NFSHS. Yes, eventually - and I didn't say anything else - but as has been noted by some people in this ng already, f.ex. GPL doesn't necessarily exhibit ANY anomalies when several other games already start suffering at a CERTAIN frequency. This is definitely my experience too. At 184 MHz I started getting sparkles in NFSHS while GPL, RC2K, and 3DMark2K ran flawlessly. Also with TNT, and TNT2 NFSHS was the first to exhibit any anomalies (black polygons) when I was searching their limits. In RC2K I could go as far as 192 with my V3 until some artifacts started appearing. Er... I guess not, but whatta hell are you talking about? Did you even read my message? Slowly starting to feel like I'm reading Kafka here... --- Antti Markus Peteri 15 miles. your dim light shines from so far away - Soul Asylum, Promises Broken