I test ran a LOT of Nvidia drivers last night, alongside the PowerVR Revolution drivers. Here are some of my results, mainly looking at the "problem child" games Moon Racer and Revolte, but noting that Ultim@te Race 1 track starts to go wrong the higher the driver (as well as frame rates feeling less fluid). As mentioned above, also running DX7.0a as it fixes D3D on the MX440 8X card.
I found that freezes in gameplay in Moon Racer and Revolte can be fixed (sometimes only for a moment though) by pressing P, to pause/unpause the game.
40.72 + 41.09 = Moon Racer freezes during racing
43.45 = Moon Racer less freezes but can still happen
45.23 = Moon Racer still can freeze
53.04 = menus not flickery in Moon Racer (they are in previous drivers). Froze on last lap briefly (came back without using P key), then CTD when race over
56.64 = Moon Racer flickery unplayable mess, same issue I had on Radeon 9600
61.76 = Moon Racer flickery unplayable mess, same issue I had on Radeon 9600
66.94 = Revolte now works but freezes (P to unfreeze). However Ultim@te Race 1 track now has black screen in-game.
71.84 = Revolte flickery strobe light now. This was the driver that also made menus slow in Ultim@te Race 1 track, but the game did work before (not tried this time).
So, in short, it seems to be:
- Ultim@te Race 1 track = needs older drivers to be happy
- Purevex = works on any drivers fine
- Virtual On for PowerVR = works on any drivers fine
- Moon Racer = smoother on older drivers but freezes up more
- Revolte = seems to only like a very particular driver; isn't this one a PCX1 era game? Might not even be that happy on PCX2, unless anyone knows different.
I might try newer drivers/tweaking NV driver settings/M3D or PowerVR generic drivers instead of PowerVR Revolution. Could try DX8+, could try installing GeForce 7800GS+ with hacked drivers again perhaps... plenty of options, but I'm starting to lose the will to live 😁
My PC spec: Win10 64bit, i7-4970K (not overclocked), KFA2 GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Creative Soundblaster ZXr, 16GB RAM, Asus Z97-A motherboard, NZXT 410 case, ROG Swift GSYNC monitor