Driver 42.30

Shadows work, but light beams are missing and shiny texture bug.

43.45

After reboot the display shuts off > No signal.

44.03 forced as Ti 4200 AGP 8x > Exact same behaviour as before (shadows ok, no car light beam, texture glitch)

44.03 forced as FX 5800 Ultra > Exact same behaviour as before (shadows ok, no car light beam, texture glitch)

44.03 forced as FX 5900 Ultra > Exact same behaviour as before (shadows ok, no car light beam, texture glitch)

45.23

45.23 forced as Ti 4200 AGP 8x > Exact same behaviour as before (shadows ok, no car light beam, texture glitch)

45.23 forced as FX 5800 Ultra > Exact same behaviour as before (shadows ok, no car light beam, texture glitch)

45.23 forced as FX 5900 Ultra > Exact same behaviour as before (shadows ok, no car light beam, texture glitch)

That's it for today.

Hopefully I will have some time tomorrow to continue with 52.14 😀

45.23 release notes say 5900 is supported. You have a 5950 though right? It is pretty similar to 5900.

swaaye wrote:

45.23 release notes say 5900 is supported. You have a 5950 though right? It is pretty similar to 5900.

Yes it supports the FX 5900. Still needs to be forced on a 5950 though.

My main concern is.... are stock clock speeds altered with mismatched DeviceIDs?

leileilol wrote:

My main concern is.... are stock clock speeds altered with mismatched DeviceIDs?

Didn't notice any slower performance so far...

My guesses are that either the 45.23 driver has some beta code for NV38 or it is running NV35 code and it doesn't work properly for NV38. It's too bad that the driver doesn't log initialization anywhere.

With some INF file additions you could make the installer recognize your card and name it properly.

Clock speeds are stored in the BIOS. Don't think device id impacts them. I think the driver only controls power management states (2D vs 3D).

Ok continuing on with 52.14. This driver supports the FX 5950 Ultra directly.

52.14 normal installation > shadows don't work anymore, no car light beam, texture glitch

So it appears that starting with this driver the shadows stop working correctly.

52.14 forced Ti 4200 > shadows don't work anymore, no car light beam, texture glitch

These drivers are from October 2003.

52.16 > Same behaviour. All bugs are present.

Sounds like nVidia (or Ubi) gave up troubleshooting this issue and just blocked it after a certain point; if you run the game with Shadow Projector enabled does everything at least appear, or are there still texture glitches?

obobskivich wrote:

Sounds like nVidia (or Ubi) gave up troubleshooting this issue and just blocked it after a certain point; if you run the game with Shadow Projector enabled does everything at least appear, or are there still texture glitches?

Yea definitely a driver issue that likely could have been fixed. But I guess the game wasn't that popular and because it has a fallback (shadow projectors) people didn't care too much.

I'm not going to look into Shadow Projector compatibility. Already lost so much time over this instead of just moving on and playing it on a GF4 🤣

But I have a question: What about GF4 based Quadro cards? The workstation cards.

Can you just force the GeFore drivers for games or do you need to flash the BIOS?

Also looking at the PCIe version of the FX cards and Pandora Tomorrow. That could be quite interesting as it would open a lot more options.

Quadro should/will run DirectX all by itself - no hacks required; it doesn't have anything "locked out" it just has firmware/PCB/driver changes to improve image quality, OpenGL support, and stability (and on some models to add more I/O or RAM). If you're going to flash them, no point in buying one imho. 😢

Now as far as whether or not the Quadro drivers would display the issue - impossible to say without more testing. If you're going for a GF4 card the 980XGL is the top dog (based on the Ti 4800; 900XGL is based on the Ti 4600). If you want to go with an FX, the FX 3000 is based on the FX 5900, and the FX 2000 on the FX 5800.

Great info 😀

I've compared the specifications for these Quadro cards and will give it a go.

I found two 980XGL locally in Australia and grabbed them. And I found FX 2000 cards in the US. I signed up for this ShipTo mail forwarding service and this will be my fist test purchase.

We will see how it all turns out 😀

Rather than flashing the card, I can always just force the GeForce drivers like I did so far. But we will see...

Some of these Quadro cards look a bit more robust / solid as well and I found that they are easier to find compared to GeForce cards.

As far as the boards being robust, Quadro cards will be more standardized - if I remember right there's only two or three AIBs that build them to spec for nVidia (PNY, Elsa, and Leadtek are all that I'm aware of, and I don't know if Leadtek still makes boards). Basically nVidia defines a spec and that's how the board looks. Their goal is compatibility and consistency for end-users, versus the kind of "do as you will" approach that GeForce cards get (where you can have manufacturer overclocked or tweaked boards, with different frame buffer sizes, coolers, output options, etc). I'm actually curious how that will work out with a game that seems to have a broken interaction with drivers, because while Quadro is supposed to be this "model citizen" of graphics cards, it also isn't designed for gaming (at least overtly) so certain fixes or optimizations may have never existed in the driver packages. Most of nVidia's efforts for their drivers is to make sure things like CAD work flawlessly. I wouldn't be surprised if the DirectX support is more or less "ripped" from the GeForce cards to provide compatibility, but doesn't see the same level of intensive optimization/bugfixing.

As far as them being easy to find - I remember reading something a while ago that NV30 (the GPU behind the FX 2000 and FX 1000, and GeForce 5800) was fairly limited production, like 100,000 pcs or so, and the majority of those ended up in the lower-clocked Quadro boards instead of the GeForce FX (that is to say, my understanding is there are more Quadro FX NV30 boards in existence than GeForce FX 5800s). There's also probably some aspect of these devices behind better "held onto" because they cost so much money when new, and tend to be purchased by professionals as opposed to gamers. But I don't know if that's actually a factor. 😊

"Forcing" the drivers would be interesting to see (at least beyond a registry value change; the Quadro line-up is designed to be primarily deliniated by firmware and drivers, so nVidia understandably sets the drivers up to be "keyed" to some extent - Quadro ODE and ForceWare aren't exactly the same thing, and generally will not (that is, are not supposed to) work on the "opposing" card - softmodding a GeForce into a Quadro can usually get the drivers to work, but performance is usually a bit lower than a "legitimate" Quadro and nVidia is pretty quiet as to what other differences actually exist (which I think is mostly to keep modders away); in recent generations they've come up with independent PCB designs (for example Quadro FX 5600 vs GeForce 8800GTX/Ultra). In general I'd say start with the Quadro drivers and see what that gets you, and then try tweaking things - if you can get it to work correctly with the "other" drivers that'd be very interesting indeed! 😀

Personally I'm more interested in what the FX 2000 will do for you - it's based on the same chip (NV30) as the FX 5800 Ultra, but with "upgrades" for professional users; I'm wondering if any of that will make a difference in terms of how things play out. I'm expecting the 980XGLs will work as well as the Ti 4800SE (they may be faster too - since they're based on the "full" 4800). Oh it's also worth noting that the FX 2000 supports dual link DVI on one of its outputs - one of the earliest cards that does that as far as I'm aware, and one of the few that's a true universal AGP card. 😀

At least with Splinter Cell I will close the chapter. The GeForce Ti 4600 AGP 8x (or 4800 in Europe, but not the SE) is the top dog for this game. It should be around 10% faster than my 4800 SE. Doesn't sound like a lot, but this game has low FPS already, so even a little boost helps 😀

FX support is just bugged, with later drivers having even more bugs. The FX cards I will play with once I've done all the Splinter Cell walk-through videos and to play Pandora Tomorrow. That game is similar, however no fallback path for incompatible cards. So it's more or less unplayable on modern PCs. I've never played it so it will be a first for me and I can't wait.

The other options are playing it on the original XBox, on a 360 or the HD version on the PS3.

I find these games very hard. Many things I've seen others do on the PS3 the PC version will not tolerate and the enemies spot you much earlier. Quite frustrating compared to today's games. At least the PC version has Quicksave 😊

What resolution are you running this at? Think with 1024x768 it shouldn't have low FPS on a GF4 Ti since that was the current thing when the game came out...

Just uploading the 6th mission! They are getting quite a bit longer and harder.

Yes, resolution is at 1024 x 768. This game is very demanding. Don't let old benchmark results fool you, most tested in shadow projector mode, which is faster. The Radeon does quite well in old benchmarks. The game is smooth most of the time, but sometimes can go quite low. But it's not a bid deal as the game isn't twitchy.

Here a very quick overview of a few cards:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

At least with Splinter Cell I will close the chapter. The GeForce Ti 4600 AGP 8x (or 4800 in Europe, but not the SE) is the top […]
Show full quote

At least with Splinter Cell I will close the chapter. The GeForce Ti 4600 AGP 8x (or 4800 in Europe, but not the SE) is the top dog for this game. It should be around 10% faster than my 4800 SE. Doesn't sound like a lot, but this game has low FPS already, so even a little boost helps 😀

FX support is just bugged, with later drivers having even more bugs. The FX cards I will play with once I've done all the Splinter Cell walk-through videos and to play Pandora Tomorrow. That game is similar, however no fallback path for incompatible cards. So it's more or less unplayable on modern PCs. I've never played it so it will be a first for me and I can't wait.

The other options are playing it on the original XBox, on a 360 or the HD version on the PS3.

I find these games very hard. Many things I've seen others do on the PS3 the PC version will not tolerate and the enemies spot you much earlier. Quite frustrating compared to today's games. At least the PC version has Quicksave 😊

It's funny to me that Pandora Tomorrow would be so broken; I remember receiving it as a freebie with a GeForce 6800 to "showcase the abilities of your new card" - never played it beyond the noob dungeon because I never really took to the game series (it just doesn't do much for me). 🤣

d1stortion wrote:

What resolution are you running this at? Think with 1024x768 it shouldn't have low FPS on a GF4 Ti since that was the current thing when the game came out...

FWIW the game defaults itself to 640x480 even on a 5800 Ultra - not sure if it's trying to tell me something there or not. At 1024x768 with everything on "High" I didn't notice any lagginess on the same, but I haven't actually played around in the game - I just walked around in the "test saves" to look at the shadows. 🤣

I would guess that at 800x600 or with lower settings, the GeForce 4 would run just dandy.