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First post, by buckeye

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What version of nvidia drivers do you all use with DX7/7a and DX8? I figured some of you out there have this down to a "science" by now, I sure don't!

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Reply 1 of 9, by clueless1

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A recent video by Phil suggests the oldest driver for the video card model in question will be the fastest, and unless there are bugs that effect you, also the best. So the answer to your question will depend on what video card you're talking about.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRhm4aGNI3o

Last edited by clueless1 on 2018-03-26, 23:40. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 3 of 9, by shamino

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On a K6-3 with MVP3 chipset, DirectX 7.0a, Geforce2 MX, my opinion thus far is that I like 8.05. Drivers in the 20s and 45.23 were very slow - but how slow varied with the game. I didn't try to find the exact breaking point and I certainly didn't try every possible driver, just a selection of a few that seemed popular.

However, I'm guessing this has more to do with later drivers not liking the K6 CPU than anything else. I haven't experimented with this on any other system. Athlons, Pentium 2s and 3s might be very different.

Reply 4 of 9, by clueless1

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shamino wrote:

On a K6-3 with MVP3 chipset, DirectX 7.0a, Geforce2 MX, my opinion thus far is that I like 8.05. Drivers in the 20s and 45.23 were very slow - but how slow varied with the game. I didn't try to find the exact breaking point and I certainly didn't try every possible driver, just a selection of a few that seemed popular.

However, I'm guessing this has more to do with later drivers not liking the K6 CPU than anything else. I haven't experimented with this on any other system. Athlons, Pentium 2s and 3s might be very different.

Seems like the later drivers have more cpu overhead due to more bug fixing and new gpu features code, thus much more performance impact on slower cpus.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 5 of 9, by subhuman@xgtx

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buckeye wrote:

What version of nvidia drivers do you all use with DX7/7a and DX8? I figured some of you out there have this down to a "science" by now, I sure don't!

Detonator 6.32 if you got a Geforce2 are the way to go.

7fbns0.png

tbh9k2-6.png

Reply 6 of 9, by buckeye

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subhuman@xgtx wrote:
buckeye wrote:

What version of nvidia drivers do you all use with DX7/7a and DX8? I figured some of you out there have this down to a "science" by now, I sure don't!

Detonator 6.32 if you got a Geforce2 are the way to go.

Yeah GF2 is what I'm going to install but all the different numbering protocols for the drivers is confusing 28.xx, 43.xx and then the Detonator series 6.xx.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to START out with the original drivers for a particular card and work from there.

Asus P5N-E Intel Core 2 Duo 3.33ghz. 4GB DDR2 Geforce 470 1GB SB X-Fi Titanium 650W XP SP3
Intel SE440BX P3 450 256MB 80GB SSD Radeon 7200 64mb SB 32pnp 350W 98SE
MSI x570 Gaming Pro Carbon Ryzen 3700x 32GB DDR4 Zotac RTX 3070 8GB WD Black 1TB 850W

Reply 7 of 9, by subhuman@xgtx

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buckeye wrote:
subhuman@xgtx wrote:
buckeye wrote:

What version of nvidia drivers do you all use with DX7/7a and DX8? I figured some of you out there have this down to a "science" by now, I sure don't!

Detonator 6.32 if you got a Geforce2 are the way to go.

Yeah GF2 is what I'm going to install but all the different numbering protocols for the drivers is confusing 28.xx, 43.xx and then the Detonator series 6.xx.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to START out with the original drivers for a particular card and work from there.

Pretty confusing isn't it? but IIRC, 5.32 is from June-July 2000 and 6.32 from October that year(when the Ultra started becoming more available to the public).

Sounds like a good idea. 😀 Keep in mind if you use very, very early drivers you might get reduced performance or rendering errors in some games. You got to know which games you're likely to play and find a balance between performance and compatibility. For example, Serious Sam TFE performed the fastest on a system of mine with a GeForce3 (Pentium 3 1400S, Via 694x, slot-1, 256mb ram, W98SE) using the 12.41 driverset, whereas anything older or newer wouldn't really cut it.

7fbns0.png

tbh9k2-6.png

Reply 8 of 9, by clueless1

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I use this link and search for the graphics card to find the first few versions that supported the card. Then test.
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/nvidia-windo … er-archive.html
Looks like 5.32 is the first version to support GF2.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
OPL3 FM vs. Roland MT-32 vs. General MIDI DOS Game Comparison
Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
DOS PCI Graphics Card Benchmarks

Reply 9 of 9, by buckeye

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Thanks all for the feedback!

Asus P5N-E Intel Core 2 Duo 3.33ghz. 4GB DDR2 Geforce 470 1GB SB X-Fi Titanium 650W XP SP3
Intel SE440BX P3 450 256MB 80GB SSD Radeon 7200 64mb SB 32pnp 350W 98SE
MSI x570 Gaming Pro Carbon Ryzen 3700x 32GB DDR4 Zotac RTX 3070 8GB WD Black 1TB 850W