The NFS: Porsche readme has a section describing text corruption when using a TNT2 card:

1nVidia TNT/TNT2
2On the TNT and TNT2 class cards if you are having trouble with unreadable or scrambled fonts, try changing the Addressing Mode switches in the TNT/TNT2 video card control panel to (you may need to play with these settings):
3- Non-Filtered Texel Origin: Upper left corner; 
4- Filtered Texel Origin: x=0.00 texels, y=0.00 texels.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any of these settings in the later Nvidia driver versions. There also doesn't seem to be anything like this in RivaTuner, unless I missed something.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-09-29, 13:26:

The NFS: Porsche readme has a section describing text corruption when using a TNT2 card: […]
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The NFS: Porsche readme has a section describing text corruption when using a TNT2 card:

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1nVidia TNT/TNT2
2On the TNT and TNT2 class cards if you are having trouble with unreadable or scrambled fonts, try changing the Addressing Mode switches in the TNT/TNT2 video card control panel to (you may need to play with these settings):
3- Non-Filtered Texel Origin: Upper left corner; 
4- Filtered Texel Origin: x=0.00 texels, y=0.00 texels.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any of these settings in the later Nvidia driver versions. There also doesn't seem to be anything like this in RivaTuner, unless I missed something.

Check if you have it in this tab..

Tom.. wrote on 2022-09-29, 13:53:

Check if you have it in this tab..

Thanks, I must have overlooked that Compatibility tab. I do have the slider but on my card it's grayed out and cannot be moved. I checked the help file and it seems that this is indeed the setting that would fix the issue. However, the help file also states that it doesn't work on GeForce 3 cards and up:

I guess this might still be helpful if someone encounters this issue on a GeForce 2 or below (and possibly also GeForce 4 MX440 and such).

From my experience, that setting is unavailable in Geforce FX and later cards. But I can confirm that Texel Origin Adjustment setting is necessary to fix the blurry text/UI in some games on NV cards, and I was able to use it on GF4 and earlier.

Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed - you checked the unofficial patches for this game?
Fix for low res textures - https://dl.old-games.su/get/UIFSA74kRk0FtzQ66 … texture_fix.rar
Patches not only to run, but also to run flawlessly on modern systems - https://dl.old-games.su/get/h6ey79QVXBAsEjW8a … _Essentials.rar

pixel_workbench wrote on 2022-09-29, 15:15:

From my experience, that setting is unavailable in Geforce FX and later cards. But I can confirm that Texel Origin Adjustment setting is necessary to fix the blurry text/UI in some games on NV cards, and I was able to use it on GF4 and earlier.

Thanks for confirming this.

The issue itself is not a huge deal, but it does make the FX cards slightly less compatible than the GeForce 4 line. I've only noticed it in two games so far, but I suppose there could be more.

Tom.. wrote on 2022-09-29, 15:26:

Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed - you checked the unofficial patches for this game?
Fix for low res textures - https://dl.old-games.su/get/UIFSA74kRk0FtzQ66 … texture_fix.rar
Patches not only to run, but also to run flawlessly on modern systems - https://dl.old-games.su/get/h6ey79QVXBAsEjW8a … _Essentials.rar

Yup, I'm aware of those. I wanted to see if the game would run on my somewhat overpowered Win9x system, but it seems that this issue is unavoidable on that hardware.

I do have a slightly older rig with a Voodoo 3 where both NFS: Porsche and SW: EP1 run flawlessly though.

So I took my GeForce 4 Ti4200 out of storage and did some testing using Win98SE, DirectX 9.0c and Nvidia drivers 45.23. The texel adjustment options in RivaTuner are grayed out and unusable on this card as well:

However, even so, the GeForce 4 Ti4200 perfectly renders the text in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

With Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, the situation is a bit better compared to the GeForce FX 5900XT, but still not quite perfect. The text is slightly blurry, though nowhere near as corrupted as it was on the FX card:

On a possibly related note, the GeForce FX 5900XT also suffers from inventory graphics corruption in Gothic, while the GeForce 4 Ti4200 does not.

You might want to try older drivers for the Geforce 4. I tested it with something like 40.72 driver. Also, I used the coolbits registry patch to make the setting visible in the Nvidia control panel, instead of RivaTuner.

pixel_workbench wrote on 2022-10-01, 05:03:

You might want to try older drivers for the Geforce 4. I tested it with something like 40.72 driver. Also, I used the coolbits registry patch to make the setting visible in the Nvidia control panel, instead of RivaTuner.

I just tried the 40.72 driver and the texel adjustment slider does indeed show up under "More Direct3D" after the Coolbits registry tweak has been applied:

It's usable from here and I did try a few different values (including the suggested 7 and 0) but it made no difference in NFS: Porsche. The text is still slightly distorted (though much less than on the FX card):

For comparison, here's how it looks on my Voodoo 3:

Interestingly, RivaTuner still has that slider grayed out, even with 40.72 drivers:

This leads me to believe that the slider doesn't actually do anything on GeForce 4 Ti cards, as suggested by the RivaTuner documentation, despite it being available in the Nvidia driver control panel.

Interesting. I did notice that the GF3 and GF4 are less likely to have blurry text compared to earlier cards I tested.

Another game that often has blurry text is Populous The Beginning (even the demo version), and because it runs at low resolution, the problem becomes glaringly obvious.

I also encountered the problem of fuzzy fonts in many Direct3D games on my GeForce FX 5950 Ultra (And earlier on FX 5800 Ultra) and the main (Universal) solution was to set anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to 8x in the driver settings or in RivaTuner ( AA\AF 8x). I used these graphics cards together with the fastest driver for old Direct3D games (ForceWare 56.56 for Win9x) found on Guru3D.com. At the moment I'm already using a GeForce 7800, in combination with the ForceWare 77.72 for Win9x driver, and I'm experiencing the same problems. To solve them, I also used the driver settings (AA \ AF 16x):

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-10-01, 10:08:

Interestingly, RivaTuner still has that slider grayed out, even with 40.72 drivers:

You can use an older card that supports changing this setting to find out what value is ACTUALLY added to the Windows Registry (Or it could be done by someone else who has the right hardware at hand). This can be done, for example, using the RegShot program (taking snapshots of the registry "before" and "after" applying this setting and comparing them, shows the difference, what has changed). This way you can force this setting to bypass the NVIDIA control panel and RivaTuner. You can then apply this setting in combination with different driver versions. However, this does not guarantee success (This option may not be supported by hardware or by the drivers used).

I use this method on Windows XP..

Texel_origin_2

Texel_origin_3

The identifier in my case (D0DC5417-6F62-42F4-B5B1-E469038A1484) changes after each update of the graphics driver and the monitor..
So this is not a method for everyone..

What value of this setting solves the problem (Applied to NFS)?

Texel origin "2" fixes the Tomb Raider 3 , nfs will have a different value for this setting

Default setting, displays the image yes..

DoZator wrote on 2022-10-04, 14:25:

I also encountered the problem of fuzzy fonts in many Direct3D games on my GeForce FX 5950 Ultra (And earlier on FX 5800 Ultra) and the main (Universal) solution was to set anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to 8x in the driver settings or in RivaTuner ( AA\AF

While this helps with NFS: Porsche, it doesn't work for SW: Episode 1. Even with AA and AF fully maxed out, the menu text is still distorted in that game.

There is no way to check GeForce FX right now, but I tried it on an existing video card (GeForce 7800), in combination with the ForceWare 77.72 for Win9x driver.

No AA\AF (Fonts are crisp):

With AA\AF 16x (Anti-Aliased):

It's pretty weird if it doesn't work on the FX series with the same driver version, since older GPUs are usually even better compatible with older games, and not vice versa. But a fact is a fact. If this problem still persists for the FX5900XT, despite entering the correct Texel Origin value in the registry as suggested above, as well as using a different driver version, there are no other ideas how to deal with this problem yet.

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire is another game affected by the text corruption issue on my GeForce FX 5900XT:

It's not as severe as with Episode 1, but still noticeable.