Tweaked/Optimized Drivers

[tecgriff]

Hey everyone, I was wondering if someone could give me some information about some of the 3rd party drivers that are out there these days. It has been a while since i've really looked around and I was wondering if someone could provide a link or perhaps some info about how good these are, if they cause problems, and other things of that nature. I used to use Omega drivers a couple of years ago on my 9700pro and they worked quite well. I now have a 7800GTX and I am trying to get the most performance out of it that I can. Thanks for your help

 

[Zenoth]

IMHO such third party drivers are useless, or rather pointless.

What they offer exclusively are usually mere features that can be tweaked with a good third party drivers tweaking utility such as ATi Tray Tools, replacing Catalyst Control Center, or nVidia's equivalent that replaces the official control panels. Mr. Joe everyone usually won't bother looking for third party drivers tweaking tools and will often use official stuff, which is just decent for basic settings changes.

For example, Omega drivers will (pure example here) claim improvements/optimizations for Anisotropic-Filtering over the official Catalyst drivers. Well, the trick here is that the official drivers are already capable of that very optimization, the only thing that Omega does is to activate it either through file editing (the very dll files from the drivers, or other such files related to them) and/or tweak the registry to enable that optimization, which normally isn't adjustable at all in the official Catalyst Control Center. So with ATi Tray Tools you can just download the official drivers, only the "display" drivers, and then install ATT. And that tool will allow you to change/disable/enabled such features and optimizations freely through simple options that you have to select or unselect.

There might be some exceptions here and there but I never really saw any differences with such third party drivers. Anyone right in their mind about driver settings tweaking will just download the official ones (or beta ones from the GPU company) and instead download a nice tweaking tool, rather than an already modified driver that might just cause twice the problems you'd get from official beta drivers.

 

[tecgriff]

Thanks a bunch, you were most helpful

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
IMHO such third party drivers are useless, or rather pointless.

What they offer exclusively are usually mere features that can be tweaked with a good third party drivers tweaking utility such as ATi Tray Tools, replacing Catalyst Control Center, or nVidia's equivalent that replaces the official control panels. Mr. Joe everyone usually won't bother looking for third party drivers tweaking tools and will often use official stuff, which is just decent for basic settings changes.

For example, Omega drivers will (pure example here) claim improvements/optimizations for Anisotropic-Filtering over the official Catalyst drivers. Well, the trick here is that the official drivers are already capable of that very optimization, the only thing that Omega does is to activate it either through file editing (the very dll files from the drivers, or other such files related to them) and/or tweak the registry to enable that optimization, which normally isn't adjustable at all in the official Catalyst Control Center. So with ATi Tray Tools you can just download the official drivers, only the "display" drivers, and then install ATT. And that tool will allow you to change/disable/enabled such features and optimizations freely through simple options that you have to select or unselect.

There might be some exceptions here and there but I never really saw any differences with such third party drivers. Anyone right in their mind about driver settings tweaking will just download the official ones (or beta ones from the GPU company) and instead download a nice tweaking tool, rather than an already modified driver that might just cause twice the problems you'd get from official beta drivers.

I disagree.

I feel that the XTreme-G drivers which I believe to be of a higher quality then everyone else's, to really improve both the performance and the IQ. And the tweaks are NOT already there. Ever take a look at the tweaked nv4_disp.inf file?

http://www.tweaksrus.com/

 

[firewolfsm]

I have noticed increased frame rates in games and even benchmarks under Xtreme-G drivers. Colors are also more accurate and IQ is always improved. They put a lot of work into their tweaks and update all the time.

Plus...there's no reason not to use them, unless you want a newer release.

 

[Zenoth]

As I said: "There might be some exceptions here and there".

Those XTreme-G drivers might be part of such exceptions. I meant what I typed on a general view. The XTreme-G drivers are one of a dozen such third party drivers for both nVidia and ATi, and most of them are just simple tweaks mostly found in the drivers/windows registry that good tweaking tools will show on-screen for your to modify.

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
As I said: "There might be some exceptions here and there".

Those XTreme-G drivers might be part of such exceptions. I meant what I typed on a general view. The XTreme-G drivers are one of a dozen such third party drivers for both nVidia and ATi, and most of them are just simple tweaks mostly found in the drivers/windows registry that good tweaking tools will show on-screen for your to modify.

I'm not sure but I think that the Nvidia XTreme-G drivers use heavily tweaked nv4_disp.inf file with numerous tweaks and a few registry ones too but the mainstay would have to be the inf tweaks which are HARD.