Monday, October 02, 2000

The drivers

At this point, we might be content with the many new optimizations that Nvidia has performed on its hardware. Fortunately for us though, Nvidia didn't stop there, but actually went an extra mile by silently crafting a surprise gift behind the scenes: the Detonnator 3 drivers. These drivers are supposedly not only more efficient than their predecessors, but they also bring a number of new functions to the table. Among these is Digital Vibrance Control, which provides a greater degree of realism to images.

Elsewhere, the GeForce 2 GTS seems to have borrowed from the GeForce2 MX, by adopting the TwinView technology that allows the latter to output to two seperate monitors, each with its own image.

The Detonnator 3 drivers also provide a list of anti-aliasing methods through DirectX - something that was not possible with the older drivers. Its also possible to perform the same feat through OpenGL, though now there is no need to manually edit settings in the Windows registery keys.

At the time of this writing, only the v6.18 drivers were available. Unfortunately, these are afflicted with a well-known bug which causes instability when used in conjunction with systems based on the VIA KX133, or KT133 chipset. Shortly after this was discovered, v6.27 made a very brief appearance on the scene, but was quickly retired. Still, we noted a net difference in stability between the two. To put it all in one sentance then, the drivers are still in development, and a newer, more stable, and more efficient version of the Detonnator3 drivers should make an appearance within a few days (or weeks) of this article.

Overclocking

Chaintech's R191 graphics card comes with 64MB of DDR SDRAM memory, which operates at an effective rate of 333MHz (166MHz, doubled). The GPU itself is clocked at 200MHz. According to reports from several sources, it should be possible to push the memory up to 400MHz, and the GPU to 250MHz. That said, when using either v2.72, 2.74, or 2.75 of PowerStrip, we found it impossible to effectivly Overclock anything. From the moment we turned it on, PowerStrip plagued us with continual crashes under all three of our test systems - an Intel system, an Athlon "Classic", and an Athlon "Thunderbird" machine. We suspect nothing else than the 6.18 drivers to be the cause of these crashes.

The software bundle

The software pack that arrives with the Chaintech R191 includes video drivers, DirectX 7, and a program for flashing the card's BIOS. Since we recieved the OEM package, however, it may very well be that the retail version will include games, and applications that we weren't privy to.

Next: The test setup.