Date	: Sept 24th, 2000
		Category	: Video Cards
		Manufacturer	: nVidia
		Author	: Jin-Wei Tioh

nVidia has the habit of releasing a major driver revision whenever it announces/launches a new product. Take the 5.xx drivers, which were released upon the announcement of the GeForce2 GTS. The 5.xx drivers offered some new features (eg. S3TC support) while significantly improving performance over the older 3.xx drivers.

Now, with the announcement of the GeForce2 Ultra, nVidia has locked and loaded the Detonator 3. For those of us that are acquainted with version numbers, the 1st version of the Detonator 3 drivers are the 6.16 drivers. The drivers utilized in this review are the 5.30 and 6.18 drivers.

Unified Driver Architecture

nVidia is one of the companies that uses a unified driver architechture. Basically, this means that a single set of drivers are able to function for the entire line of nVidia products, from the TNT right until the GeForce2 Ultra. Small wonder that nVidia is able to stick to its 6-month product cycle, since much less time has to be spent developing drivers. Of course, optimizations for the individual products still have to be made, but at least their new products will function reliably.

What does this mean for the end user? When you upgrade from say, a TNT2 to a GeForce2, your new card should be able to be automatically installed with the existing drivers on your system. Needless to say, this cuts down on reviewing hassles since all we have to do is plug in the new card, reboot once, and presto!

What's New

The Detonator 3 drivers offer mainly 3 new features. Firstly, the driver gives nVidia cards the Digital Vibrance Control (DVC) feature, which was previously only available with the GeForce2 MX and Quadro2 MX. According to nVidia :

“Digital Vibrance Control (DVC) was designed to make all PC visuals crisp, bright and clean. This patent pending technology is built into the GeForce2 MX graphics subsystem and allows the user to manage the digital bitstream between the graphics pipeline and the display subsystem. Through a simple user interface the user can control color separation and intensity resulting in bold, dynamic visuals with sharp, balanced color. Since DVC digitally accesses data before it reaches the display subsystem, its benefits apply to all forms of output including TV, digital flat panels, monitors, and LCD projectors.”

The next main feature is really a fix. Up until now, the TwinView feature on the GeForce2 MX had not been able to be utilized, as nVidia had not been able to get it working in the reference. The TwinView feature is now fully functional, and it is one of the more important features of the Detonator 3 drivers.

Lastly, the FSAA control panels for Direct3D and OpenGL have been much improved. Under OpenGL, you can now adjust the FSAA method utilized without spelunking around the registry. Under Direct3D, the anti-aliasing method being used at each slider point is actually listed.

• Takes advantage of advanced CPU instruction sets, such as AMD's 3DNOW! and Intel's SSE and SSE2
• Enhanced for the full range of Intel chipsets, including the i815, i820 and i840
• Highly efficient blending modes implemented in both Direct3D and OpenGL Reduced OpenGL driver call overhead over previous driver revisions
• Improved Direct3D texture management
• Improved OpenGL asynchronous command processing
• Advanced vertex buffer support in Direct3D
• Advanced vertex array support in OpenGL

According to benchmarks done by other hardware sites, the GeForce SDR, DDR, GeForce2 MX, GTS and Ultra all received a significant performance boost. However, what about TNT2 users? Afterall, the drivers section on nVidia's web site does have the headline "Unleash the Power of Your NVIDIA GPU". Is there a difference in stability, visual quality, or performance with these new drivers? Let's find out.

Test Setup

TNT2 Ultra

Under 3DMark 2000 (a Direct3D-centric benchmark), with the TNT2 Ultra, performance is similar across the board. The only exceptions are 1024x768x16, 1024x768x32 and 1280x1024x16, where there are noticeable performance drops with the Detonator 3 drivers (an average of roughly 15%).

Our OpenGL benchmark (Quake III Arena) also gives rise to similar results, with noticeable performance drops at 1024x768x16, 1024x768x32 and 1280x1024x16 using the Detonator 3 drivers.

TNT2

The TNT2 exhibits similar performance characteristics to the TNT2 Ultra under Direct3D. At the 3 above mentioned resolutions, the TNT2 takes a performance hit when using the Detonator 3 drivers.

Again, we see the same trend under OpenGL as the TNT2 Ultra, whereby there is a decrease in performance using the Detonator 3 drivers at 1024x768x16, 1024x768x32 and 1280x1024x16, though the performance delta is smaller.

Here is a brief recap of the article. nVidia's new Detonator 3 drivers offers Digital Vibrance Control and fixes the TwinView feature. Improvements were also made to the driver interface, eg. the FSAA control panel. The GeForce SDR, DDR, GeForce2 MX, GTS and Ultra all received a significant performance boost, according to other hardware sites. While we were unable to verify this first-hand, those information sources are considered by many to be reliable. However, we did manage to test the the Detonator 3 drivers with a TNT2 Ultra and TNT2. As seen earlier, it wasn't exactly a pretty picture, with especially noticeable performance drops at 1024x768x16, 1024x768x32 and 1280x1024x16 for both cards. In the stability department, no appreciable difference was noticed during the benchmarking process (both Detonators were rock-solid).

So, if you own a nVidia product with the word "GeForce" in its name, then by all means, download the Detonator 3 drivers (available in our "Downloads" section). Nevertheless, if you have a TNT2 based product (ie. TNT2 M64, TNT2, TNT2 Ultra) or a TNT, stay clear away from the Detonator 3 drivers. If you need the 5.30 drivers, they are available here.

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