[fellix]

Windows Vista/7/8:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...glish-beta.exe
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...glish-beta.exe

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...ease-notes.pdf


Windows XP:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...glish-beta.exe
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...glish-beta.exe

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...ease-notes.pdf

New in 304.79 Drivers:

Adds support for NVIDIA TXAA
NVIDIA TXAA is new film-style anti-aliasing technique designed specifically to reduce temporal aliasing (crawling and flickering in motion) through a combination of hardware AA, custom CG film style AA resolve, and a temporal filter.
The Secret World is the first game to support TXAA (support will be enabled in an upcoming patch)..
TXAA is supported on GeForce GTX 600-series Kepler-based GPUs.

[Malo]

Nice, I was wondering when TXAA would be enabled in TSW. I had to get a new GPU so I just grabbed a 560. I wonder if it will be enough for TXAA at 1680.

[Davros]

So txaa has to be supported in the game?
do nv support any postprocess aa in the driver cp like amd's mlaa ?

[fellix]

Originally Posted by Davros

do nv support any postprocess aa in the driver cp like amd's mlaa ?

Yes - FXAA.

[pcchen]

Originally Posted by Malo

Nice, I was wondering when TXAA would be enabled in TSW. I had to get a new GPU so I just grabbed a 560. I wonder if it will be enough for TXAA at 1680.

Unfortunately it seems that TXAA is only supported by Kepler.

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by pcchen

Unfortunately it seems that TXAA is only supported by Kepler.

Is there a chance that this is a legit hardware limitation?

[pcchen]

Originally Posted by swaaye

Is there a chance that this is a legit hardware limitation?

Could be, but I don't know any detail. According to Timothy Lottes, TXAA in its current form is "specially for GTX 6XX" so it's possible that some hardware features are used. Of course, in theory current GPUs are (almost) Turing complete so if there's any real reason why earlier GPU can't do TXAA it has to be with performance reasons (i.e. some required operations in TXAA may be extremely slow on earlier GPU).

[UniversalTruth]

BTW, do you hear anything about NV having intentions to work on the control panel design. Some changes, some modern versions, like removing the white everywhere and putting black or something nicer? They are extremely conservative.
As far as I can see both AMD Catalyst and latest Intel's control panels look much better...

[Bludd]

Who cares how they look? Spend less time in the control panel and do something fun with the graphics card instead.

[UniversalTruth]

Originally Posted by Bludd

Who cares how they look?

That's a terrible underestimation of all the good work done by AMD and Intel designers to have up-and-running something with visual value and higher quality.

Originally Posted by Bludd

Spend less time in the control panel and do something fun with the graphics card instead.

I have the right to spend my time in whatever way I prefer and you don't have the right to blame me. You know that the customer is always right. Now, this NV control panel look tells me that no one over there cares how customers accept and see their product. The control panel is the first thing you see when you install your card. If it doesn't leave you a good impression, then f**k everything else.

[kache]

Originally Posted by Bludd

Who cares how they look? Spend less time in the control panel and do something fun with the graphics card instead.

Agree.
I like the clean design.
I'd just like the cpanel to be more complete, though.

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by UniversalTruth

I have the right to spend my time in whatever way I prefer and you don't have the right to blame me.

But the staff here does enjoy the right of culling noise / pollution, and you're nearing becoming a source of those. So time to step back, reconsider the oozing love for one IHV or another, and seek to move back to higher quality contributions.

[I.S.T.]

Originally Posted by kache

Agree.
I like the clean design.
I'd just like the cpanel to be more complete, though.

Being able to set SSAA from the Control Panel would rock.

[homerdog]

^Yes please.

[swaaye]

For some reason they don't seem to want to go down the SSAA road.

[Blazkowicz]

I liked it better when the control panel was "nHancer". Well, you had the nvidia control panel, but using this freeware was ton times better. Sadly, with this kind of software one day the author is tired of constanty updating it for years and moves on something else.

It had the classic supersampling or partial supersampling modes, that you can find on pretty much every card (be it geforce 4ti, geforce gt 240 or other).
8xS, 8xS but with 4x supersampling not 2x (great mode), 16xS, 2x2, 3x3 (great, if you can actually use it)

Now the current thing, or what it was last time I used it (over a year ago) is nVidia Inspector, basically the same thing but a lot uglier, slower and raw looking.
The new feature was RG SSAA, but no setting for it you were supposed to turn on transparency AA, change whatever setting and pray it works.. it didn't

[swaaye]

Full screen SGSSAA is connected to the TAA modes for some reason. It was originally a bug in TAA, where instead of just SSAA on alpha test, it would apply SSAA to the whole scene. It was fixed in a later driver but a mini fanboy uprising inspired NVIDIA to keep the bug as a hidden option (they released a utility to enable it). Blame quirks on NVIDIA for not just officially supporting full scene SGSSAA.

I don't understand the dislike of NVIDIA Inspector. It works fine for tweaking driver settings that aren't normally exposed. It presents a simple, effective interface. And it has some nice monitoring and overclocking too.

BTW all of the old NV AA modes are still there. OGSSAA, Quincunx, Gaussian, hybrid MSAA+OGSSAA, etc. Maybe even the ugly OGMSAA. I dunno if they all work but OGSSAA sure does.

[Blazkowicz]

I found it very slow when I used it, which is not a deal breaker but was annoying when I was trying settings back and forth to try to get that AA enabled.

So, it is an accidental feature. This is how I got transparency AA (TAA) on 6800GT back then - got it used for quite cheap. Back then I thought I really, really needed a geforce 7 (but there were no PCI express socket A mobos, 7800GS was too expensive..) until they had a "driver accident", a very specific driver version made for quad SLI. This driver missed the check that says "if geforce 6, then it's crippled and has no TAA".

Geforce 2 GTS was another time nVidia brought "new features" (register combiners and ordered grid supersampling) that actually came from the drivers, but I believe they did not bother disabling them on geforce 1.

In the end Transparency AA was incompatible with OpenGL, even though I wanted it for the Half-Life and Quake 3 engines. I guess this means SGSSAA is not for OpenGL either, but for DirectX only. Which versions? it's a bit hard to keep up with these things. I don't remember.
The redeeming quality of Transparency AA is I played Far Cry 1 with it, at 1024x768 everything highest. Later I had a supposedly vastly better PC that couldn't pull it off with Crysis 1 (maybe a GTX 260 would have done the job).

[swaaye]

I forgot that GF6 lacked official TAA. It is curious, considering X800 supports it. With X800 you got 6x MSAA, gamma correction, adaptive AA (TAA) and temporal AA. Much nicer than NVIDIA had back then.

[I.S.T.]

Originally Posted by swaaye

I forgot that GF6 lacked official TAA. It is curious, considering X800 supports it. With X800 you got 6x MSAA, gamma correction, adaptive AA (TAA) and temporal AA. Much nicer than NVIDIA had back then.

I honestly don't understand why anyone back then with the proper knowledge would knowingly buy an Nvidia card from the GF FX to the GF7 gen unless they got a really good deal or an application/game they use wasn't very ATi friendly.

ATi's offerings were just so much superior at the time, there really was no contest. Faster or just as fast depending on the gen, much better image quality, the cards' performance held up over time so much better than anything Nvidia came up with, etc etc etc etc. The list goes on and on.

Nowadays, it's basically a toss up at price points above 150. At that point and below Nvidia tends to lag due to their arch not really being that good at scaling down to very small sizes(Driver improvements help of course, but can anyone here ever forget how the GTS 450 was the same fucking speed as the G92 powered GTS 250 at launch?). I went with Nvidia with my current card, a GTX 650, simply because right now I don't trust AMD and drivers very much. Not to say that Nvidia is some perfect glorious mistress of software stability(Hell I was gonna play a game recently and I found out the latest WHQL driver basically prevents it from working... After I replaced my card. OOPS)...

It's just that after the RAGE debacle and some other things, I just can't trust them. I hope with the apparently simpler to develop drivers for GCN arch and its descendants fix this, I really do. I'd rather have given AMD my money this go around, the hardware was flat out better. Plus, Nvidia's business practices tend to leave me a bit... cold. See the Batman: Arkham Aslyam MSAA debacle as the most recent shining example.

[swaaye]

The Shader Model 2.0b limit of R4xx did eventually catch up with those cards. Just 2 years after they came out this started to happen. Games were incompatible or would drop back to a fugly mode.

What I do is own one of each company's cards. I have a 6950 and a 560 Ti at home (desktop and a TV PC). This gets around driver debacles and proprietary feature nonsense. When the 6950 couldn't run RAGE worth a damn for a month, the 560 Ti was fine on day 1. Physx. CUDA effects. Etc.

[I.S.T.]

Well, the later X1800 and etc models fixed that and in general were fucking wonderful cards, unparalleled single GPU cards until the 8800 came around and Nvidia pulled its head out of its ass.

[swaaye]

I never did R520/580. I ran a 9700 Pro until 2005 when I got a X800 GTO2 (essentially X850XT). Then I bought 8800GTX when that came out because it was the most significant upgrade in many years. That upgrade was so mind blowing. So was going from 8800GTX to 6950 though!

[Blazkowicz]

I did Voodoo5, ti4200 128MB, 6800GT, 7600GT and errands after that.
the 6800GT was really powerful, and the 7600GT was identical (which was expected, this sidegrade came after blowing my fourth socket A mobo).

I was disappointed with the GT240 gddr5, I knew it wouldn't be that fast, a bit slower than a 8800GTX but still better than all I ever had.. but I was mad at the low framerates in Crysis.

[UniversalTruth]

Originally Posted by Blazkowicz

I was disappointed with the GT240 gddr5, I knew it wouldn't be that fast, a bit slower than a 8800GTX but still better than all I ever had.. but I was mad at the low framerates in Crysis.

WOW, given that for this you need heavily overclocked fast processor plus at least overclocked HD4890/ GTX 280 class of videocard, then you were quite optimistic.