Detonator FX Drivers 44.03 released

Julio Franco · May 14, 2003

NVIDIA has released a new set of Detonator drivers, now carrying the 'FX' brand name on them and claiming an impressive 30% performance boost across the whole GeForceFX family. We have already put them up in our drivers section, available in both Windows 98/ME and XP/2k flavors, like most Detonators, these support all cards ranging from TNT to GeForce FX series.

For more information on the drivers visit the links above, I've tested them myself already on a GeForceFX 5200 board I'm testing and they improved performance considerably, Tech-Report guys have posted a drivers performance comparison today, too, it's a shame they only test on FX boards though I've heard that they don't do much on older cards, performance wise, that is.

Speaking of NVIDIA, today they introduced a dedicated Web site for gamers and 3D graphics enthusiasts called the 'nZone', I believe they had a Doom 3 video for download earlier today but I couldn't find it at the time of posting.

olefarte · May 14, 2003

Here's something interesting. For whatever it's worth. It's just a benchmark.

We believe that we've uncovered real proof that nVidia is unfairly optimizing benchmark performance, to increase its score on 3DMark2003. nVidia, as we've stated above, is attributing what we found to a bug in their driver. You can decide for yourself.

Read it all here

MrGaribaldi · May 15, 2003

olefarte, you beat me to it...

TS staff, maybe add a new story about what Extreme Tech found? (the link olefarte posted)

ET will update as soon as they hear anything new from nvidia

We discussed our findings with nVidia before we published this article, and the company's Direct3D driver team is currently investigating the problem. At press time, the company's engineers believe that the anomalies we're seeing are the result of a driver bug.
...
Over the coming days, nVidia will be exploring the issues we raised. We will post nVidia's findings as soon as it makes them available to us, along with any additional testing details if the company releases an updated driver.

The story is also being "verified" here by Beyond3d...

And here are som other interesting speculations... (Still at B3D)

Maybe if someone here at TS has access to the Beta Build of 3dmark and a GF FX, they could do the same test?

olefarte · May 15, 2003

True or not, it's posted at almost every site I looked at this morning. It seems to be causing quite a stir. However one reads all this the 5900 Ultra is still probably a pretty good card.

MrGaribaldi · May 15, 2003

Another thing with the DetFX, is that there seems to be a problem with GTA:VC...

Ante P from Nordic Hardware posted a screenie taken on a GF FX 5800 using the DetFX 44.03 here..

From his post here

Actually that's the damned thing about it. It's supposed to be an open bridge (no roof/cieling etc., just a plain bridge, not even supporting towers or anything)
Also check the car facing me, it's a polygon wreck and I haven't even been close to it.

Also sometimes the game just halts and when it does that the whole screen gets garbled.

And if I don't use AF the textures look like they were only filtrering with point sampling

AND it appears as if the game doesn't detect that the NV3X series support compressed textures. so now it stops every now and then to load up textures with a message saying "Loading..." on screen
it doesn't do that on other cards

DigitAlex · May 16, 2003

well a little out of topic but still...

is gta:vc out for a long time yet ?

i was waiting for it but then I just had too much work hehehe

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Detonator FX Drivers 44.03 released

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