DH Editorial: A look at nVida's new Forceware

Zardon · May 24, 2006, 12:51 AM

Read the editorial here
_________________

It can be safely said that when ATI released Catalyst Control Centre it received less than a stellar reception by many of the companies core enthusiast gamers. Load times were slow, memory overheads were high and many felt it was perhaps a step in the wrong direction. Currently while ATI still back this .net based driver interface as the way forward many enthusiast users feel the memory overhead is still high and it is slower in operation that the older standard style Control Panel. There has been heated debate on our forums since the inception of CCC with .net framework and if you visit any active tech based forum there will still be debate on the matter. "Are nVidia going to go down the same road" was a question often asked?

PoopyTheJ · May 24, 2006, 12:58 AM

Very good review and I must agree that nvidia's soultion is preferable to ATI's for the Control Panel interface.

mkk · May 24, 2006, 01:05 AM

A nice look at it. I'm pleased to see a few things in the new control panel working better there than it did here for the minutes I tried it, so I'll have to give it another go later. It's certainly moving in the right direction for control panels.

[hobo]eclipse · May 24, 2006, 04:56 AM

sweet just wrestled with a bad file system after an install while OC'ed (bad me!) thought was all a loss, had to reformat, but then i see this.......SWEET! installing now!

*EDIT*

OK am i missing something here? i still get the old CP? downloaded the x64 edition from hereand it is here on the regular nvidia site?? also in the slide out menu in the old CP i now have a tab that says SLI multi-GPU, no option in it just info?

looks nice and i enjoyed the pics you put up, kinda bummed im not seein it, it is BETA though

BWX · May 24, 2006, 05:30 AM

Nvidia 1 - Ati 0

ViRuS2k · May 24, 2006, 06:39 AM

If only ati would get a clue.

Erroneus · May 24, 2006, 06:53 AM

But you got to wonder why they havn't gone over to .net yet, isn't it going to be a requirment in Vista?

Kombatant · May 24, 2006, 07:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erroneus

But you got to wonder why they havn't gone over to .net yet, isn't it going to be a requirment in Vista?

No, it's not going to be a requirement for Vista. I like the new nV control panel, it certainly resembles the way I'd design a control panel if asked to.

Good editorial Allan, I agree totally with your pov.

BWX · May 24, 2006, 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ViRuS2k

If only ati would get a clue.

One of the reasons why I voted Nvidia with my wallet.. ATI needs to get clue before I invest in another one of their video cards.

Between the slow, ram hungry .net CCC, the dysfunctional vivo software, and the absent control panel features- I wonder why they don't wake up and start including some of the features customers have been begging for.

mike2h · May 24, 2006, 09:09 AM

thx for the work Z. give them a couple of releases to get the whole pkg fine tuned, then get the zp guys working on it & we should have an awsome driver set!

Erroneus · May 24, 2006, 10:28 AM

What the he... Why are ATI then using .net, if it's not a requirment for Vista. It's bloody slow, come on ATi, create a proper controlpanel then

IamLakota · May 24, 2006, 10:41 AM

Nice article Z,..I hope Ati reads it and learns from it and makes some changes to the way their driver/CCC works.

~~Alien1~~ · May 24, 2006, 10:53 AM

The new NV panel is not so fancy as the ATI CCC of course

But the menus are stylish and simple without confussing drag menu options and that will please a lot of ppl
and the second is that it is not a resource hog like CCC

Nvidia is taking the right direction

Also the new enhancements in Purevideo is making it very competive to Avivo

bug77 · May 24, 2006, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erroneus

What the he... Why are ATI then using .net, if it's not a requirment for Vista. It's bloody slow, come on ATi, create a proper controlpanel then

They did. They just decided we need a 'better' one instead.

I wonder if you can use Coolbits to get overclocking options in the new panel though...

BWX · May 24, 2006, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bug77

I wonder if you can use Coolbits to get overclocking options in the new panel though...

Was wondering the same.. or do you need to switch back to old CP to do that? If so, that would suck.. I use the auto OC feature in NV CP as it is..

bug77 · May 24, 2006, 01:34 PM

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

Sandok · May 24, 2006, 01:35 PM

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 · May 24, 2006, 01:58 PM

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.

bananaman · May 24, 2006, 02:10 PM

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

Zoolook · May 24, 2006, 02:36 PM

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 · May 24, 2006, 02:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

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

Zardon · May 24, 2006, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.

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

BWX · May 24, 2006, 03:03 PM

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.

Zardon · May 24, 2006, 03:07 PM

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 · May 24, 2006, 03:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zardon

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

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

BWX · May 24, 2006, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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 ?

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.

dipstick · May 24, 2006, 03:55 PM

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 · May 24, 2006, 04:53 PM

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.

Zardon · May 24, 2006, 05:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bug77

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

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 · May 24, 2006, 05:38 PM

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.

May 24, 2006, 12:51 AM	#1
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 179	DH Editorial: A look at nVidia's new Forceware Read the editorial here _________________ It can be safely said that when ATI released Catalyst Control Centre it received less than a stellar reception by many of the companies core enthusiast gamers. Load times were slow, memory overheads were high and many felt it was perhaps a step in the wrong direction. Currently while ATI still back this .net based driver interface as the way forward many enthusiast users feel the memory overhead is still high and it is slower in operation that the older standard style Control Panel. There has been heated debate on our forums since the inception of CCC with .net framework and if you visit any active tech based forum there will still be debate on the matter. "Are nVidia going to go down the same road" was a question often asked?

May 24, 2006, 12:58 AM	#2
PoopyTheJ DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Ohio Posts: 1,588 Rep Power: 66	Very good review and I must agree that nvidia's soultion is preferable to ATI's for the Control Panel interface. __________________ [COLOR=Blue]“Alright boys, let’s start her up and see why she doesn’t work.” - John Fritz "I aim to misbehave" Malcolm Reynolds ATI Catalyst Beta Tester[/COLOR]

May 24, 2006, 04:56 AM	#4
[hobo]eclipse ...just bummin 'round Join Date: Oct 2004 Posts: 2,907 Rep Power: 112 System Specs	sweet just wrestled with a bad file system after an install while OC'ed (bad me!) thought was all a loss, had to reformat, but then i see this.......SWEET! installing now! EDIT OK am i missing something here? i still get the old CP? downloaded the x64 edition from hereand it is here on the regular nvidia site?? also in the slide out menu in the old CP i now have a tab that says SLI multi-GPU, no option in it just info? looks nice and i enjoyed the pics you put up, kinda bummed im not seein it, it is BETA though Last edited by [hobo]eclipse; May 24, 2006 at 05:16 AM.

May 24, 2006, 05:30 AM	#5
BWX unplugged Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: USNY Posts: 19,669 Rep Power: 110 System Specs	Nvidia 1 - Ati 0 __________________

May 24, 2006, 06:53 AM	#7
Erroneus Get off my lawn! Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Denmark Posts: 13,417 Rep Power: 119 System Specs	But you got to wonder why they havn't gone over to .net yet, isn't it going to be a requirment in Vista? __________________

May 24, 2006, 01:05 AM	#3
mkk Cthulhu/Dagon 2012 Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Gefle, Sweden Posts: 4,490 Rep Power: 132 System Specs	A nice look at it. I'm pleased to see a few things in the new control panel working better there than it did here for the minutes I tried it, so I'll have to give it another go later. It's certainly moving in the right direction for control panels.

May 24, 2006, 06:39 AM	#6
ViRuS2k HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Uk Posts: 8,334 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	If only ati would get a clue.

May 24, 2006, 09:09 AM	#10
mike2h DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: norcal Posts: 6,483 Rep Power: 91 System Specs	thx for the work Z. give them a couple of releases to get the whole pkg fine tuned, then get the zp guys working on it & we should have an awsome driver set! __________________

May 24, 2006, 10:28 AM	#11
Erroneus Get off my lawn! Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Denmark Posts: 13,417 Rep Power: 119 System Specs	What the he... Why are ATI then using .net, if it's not a requirment for Vista. It's bloody slow, come on ATi, create a proper controlpanel then __________________

May 24, 2006, 10:41 AM	#12
IamLakota HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Viriginia Posts: 552 Rep Power: 0	Nice article Z,..I hope Ati reads it and learns from it and makes some changes to the way their driver/CCC works. __________________ Harley Davidson: If You Have To Ask You Wouldn't Understand!!! System Specs: Mobo:Asus P6T Deluxe V2,intel i7 920,2x BFG GTX 250 oc in SLI,Corsair 6gigs tri channel pc12800CL8 2xWD Velociraptor's 2x74gig WD Raptor , X-Fi Fatal1ty Titainium,HANNS-G HG281HD 1080p 28" monitor,Coolermaster HAF/922,PC-PWR&Cooling Sliencer 750,CoolerMaster V8 HSF

May 24, 2006, 10:53 AM	#13
~~Alien1~~ Banned Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Europe Posts: 365 Rep Power: 0	The new NV panel is not so fancy as the ATI CCC of course But the menus are stylish and simple without confussing drag menu options and that will please a lot of ppl and the second is that it is not a resource hog like CCC Nvidia is taking the right direction Also the new enhancements in Purevideo is making it very competive to Avivo Last edited by Alien1; May 24, 2006 at 11:03 AM.

May 24, 2006, 01:34 PM	#16
bug77 DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: around Posts: 792 Rep Power: 0	I don't o/c my video card at all (well, XFX did it for me), I was just wondering.

May 24, 2006, 01:35 PM	#17
Sandok DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 9,472 Rep Power: 0	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!

May 24, 2006, 01:58 PM	#18
BWX unplugged Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: USNY Posts: 19,669 Rep Power: 110 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. __________________

May 24, 2006, 02:10 PM	#19
bananaman banana muncher Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: London Posts: 1,254 Rep Power: 64	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 __________________

May 24, 2006, 02:36 PM	#20
Zoolook DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Sweden Posts: 9 Rep Power: 0	CCC replacement 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.

May 24, 2006, 03:03 PM	#23
BWX unplugged Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: USNY Posts: 19,669 Rep Power: 110 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. __________________

May 24, 2006, 03:07 PM	Thread Starter #24
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 179	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 ?

May 24, 2006, 03:55 PM	#27
dipstick HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: USA Posts: 3,609 Rep Power: 71 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

May 24, 2006, 04:53 PM	#28
BWX unplugged Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: USNY Posts: 19,669 Rep Power: 110 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. __________________

May 24, 2006, 05:38 PM	#30
ViRuS2k HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Uk Posts: 8,334 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	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.