Detonator 5 out for you nVidia users

[isochar]

Only 2k/XP (See a trend here? )

Anyways, they are claiming a 25% increase in performance!

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=winxp-2k_40.41

[Greebe]

With all thier hype about speed increases either they'd be hittin 10k fps by now or found a new cheat in 3DFarq2k1 SE

[isochar]

I'm sure we'll find out soon enough. Initial reports indictate that the 25% applies only to the GF4 series...

[ZokesPro]

They seem pretty good at optimizing their drivers though.

[Drizzt]

25% more in hardware should be a 40% more clock speed...
How they obtain the same result into the driver, dunno. (even if I have a suspect)

[isochar]

They have a dedicated linux server farm to just developing detonators. (There was a brief excerpt about this in an Anandtech article, but I can't find it right now)

Here's a pretty cool walk-through of their server farm used in designing their hardware: (high-bandwidth)

http://cgi.techtv.com/mediamodule?action=view_video&seen_ad=true&video_src=/thescreensavers/2002/ss020130t&vidsection=3200042&video_speed=165&video_format=asf&version=20020206115201

[DosFreak]

Hmmm haven't tried 'em myself but results so far from what I've heard:

Boost in 3dmark by a significant amount. (3dmark Nature Test shows 20fps jump) Blah.
Ogl v1.4
NV30 emulator
Some GUI enhancements.
Still works with all previous Nvidia cards.

[Ryu Connor]

The new control panel is pretty slick.

[Technoid]

and ofcoarse:
It runs 3dfake2001 (not se) faster on my GF2

[Pace]

Detonator 5? And driver version 40? So, how many driver builds have we had since Detonator 3?

P.

[Ribbit]

From the front page at Ace's:

Thanks to Kelmerp for posting about the latest revision of NVIDIA's beta Detonator drivers (40.41), which claim to offer up to a 25% increase in performance. According to various reports around the web, much of this performance increase appears to be limited to 3DMark 2001, and does not extend to many actual game benchmarks tested so far.

Why am I not surprised...

[DosFreak]

I experienced a 2-4fps increase in Q3. 1600 & 2048.. Haven't benchmarked in awhile tho but this was compared to my 30.82 benchmarks.

The nature test froze when I tested with the 40 drivers.

[mmp121]

Gee what a surprise!

Heh, go figure, looks like Nvidia just "fixed" the 40 drivers so that their 3DMark Scores increase.

Preliminary "testing" according to VR-Zone shows minimal (2-3) FPS increases in games.

http://www.vr-zone.com/#2624

The exception to the rule is 3DMark2001SE which shows an increase of over 1000!!!!

[PeTe]

Re: Gee what a surprise!

Originally posted by mmp121
Heh, go figure, looks like Nvidia just "fixed" the 40 drivers so that their 3DMark Scores increase.

Preliminary "testing" according to VR-Zone shows minimal (2-3) FPS increases in games.

http://www.vr-zone.com/#2624

The exception to the rule is 3DMark2001SE which shows an increase of over 1000!!!!

Just a point.. 3Dmark scores up 1200 in that test.. but the ONLY D3D game in that comparison -1fps. All the other games are OpenGL that showed couple fps improvement, like Q3 271-277fps.. whoopie, you sure need the extra fps in that game.

Sounds pretty odd.

Pe-Te

[DosFreak]

Just did a clean insteall of 2K SP3. Nature test still freezes.