Archive for the 'Graphics' Category

DX10 effects in Crysis in Windows XP DirectX 9 platform

I came across this amazing piece of tweak for Crysis, solely for Windows XP gamers.

Here is one of the screenshot taken from here. Click the picture to enlarge.

Crysis - Sunbeam (DX 9)

Crysis - Sunbeam (DX 10)

The first screenshot is the DirectX 9 effect screenshot, while the second one is the DirectX 10 effect screenshot.

Crysis - Water Ripple (DX 9)

Crysis - Water Ripple (DX 10)

Crysis - Gun Dust (DX 9)

Crysis - Gun Dust (DX 10)

You can download the patch from FileFront.

Or you can just add this string of command to the end of the the game shortcut:

+r_sunshafts 1 +e_water_ocean_fft 1 +g_battleDust_enable 1 +r_WaterGodRays 1 +r_UsePOM 1

Go try it out and express your joy here!

ATI Catalyst™ 8.1 Display Driver

The Catalyst™ software suite 8.1 contains the following:

  • Radeon™ display driver 8.451
  • Multimedia Center™ 9.16 (Windows XP only
  • HydraVision™ (Windows XP only)
  • HydraVision™ Basic Edition (Windows XP only)
  • Remote Wonder 3.04 (Windows XP only)
  • WDM Driver Install Bundle
  • Southbridge/IXP Driver
  • Catalyst™ Control Center Version 8.1

Catalyst 8.1 introduces MultiView™ support:

  • Provides for hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering across multiple graphics adapters

Catalyst 8.1 also introduces Folding@Home:

Folding@Home is a distributed computing project designed by the Stanford University. The application performs intensive simulations of protein folding. This simulation will help researchers uncover how certain diseases develop. Folding@Home uses distributed computing to simulate protein folding, the workload is broken up into small work units and distributed across hundreds of thousands of computers over the internet.

This driver includes many fixes to issues regarding applications/games running under Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Windows XP (32-bit/64-bit), Media Center, Vista (32-bit/64-bit) Driver download

NVIDIA Forceware 162.18/22 WHQL Driver released

NVIDIA has released the latest driver for the graphics chipsets.

The latest Forceware 162.18 is for Windows XP and Forceware 162.22 is for Windows Vista (32bit). (Vista 64 bit)

The latest driver improves the compatibility for Lost Planet and has numerous fixes and compatibility fixes for games and application.

NVIDIA Control Panel

I have tested out the driver with my rather old system and there isn’t a significant improvement in 3DMark05 in the GeForce 7600GS.

My rig spec is as follows:

AMD64 Althon 64 3000+ @ 1.9 Ghz, 2GB DDR RAM, GeForce 7600GS.

Below is the 3DMark05 result (run at 1024×768, no AA/AF)

3DMark 05 v162 result 3DMark 05 v97 result

The improvement is a mere 34 points. But that’s only for my rig, the new drivers released these days improve the latest series of graphics card more than the older series.

Test out the new driver and leave your result here.

 

AMD (ATi) Catalyst 7.6 Driver released.

The latest release of Catalyst Software and driver for ATi product features bug fixes and performance improvement. This driver supports both Windows Vista and Windows XP. This Catalyst software contains the Radeon Driver, WDM Driver and Catalyst Control Center.

Performance Improvements

Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Dark Messiah Might and Magic performance improves on the ATI Radeon™ HD2900 XT Crossfire configurations. Improvements of 16% or more can be seen with HDR enabled.

Resolved Issues for the Windows Vista Operating System

Installing the display driver under the Windows Vista operating system no longer results in the display resolutions of 1680×1050, 1800×1440, 1920×1080 and 1920×1200 not being available when using an analog CRT display device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27464

IL2 Sturmovik->Forgotten Battles: Setting the in-game hardware options to custom and landscape detail to perfect no longer results in the water textures appearing corrupt when playing the game under the Windows Vista operating system. Further details can be found in topic number 737-26687

Quake 4: Playing the game with CrossFire enabled no longer result in corruption being noticed after a short time of game play. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28172

The Overdrive™ clocks no longer fails to revert back to the default settings and the Apply and Discard buttons no longer become enabled when changing the clock settings for both the primary and secondary display devices. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27619

Playing a DVD using either WinDVD or PowerDVD no longer results in corruption being noticed if the players is rotated to any position other than landscape. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27463

Connecting a secondary display device and enabling extended desktop mode no longer results in changes being made to the secondary display device being reflected on the primary display device. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27460

Setting UMA to 512MB and enabling AERO no longer results in screen corruption being noticed when booting up Windows Vista on systems containing an ATI Radeon X1200/1250 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28173

Enabling DXVA no longer results in a slow response time being noticed when playing a DVD on a system running Windows Vista and containing an ATI Radeon Xpress 1200/1250 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28175

An error message is no longer reported when attempting to enable CrossFire on a system containing the Intel Gen2 chipset. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28177

Playing an HD DVD and attempting to do a random seek or change to a different chapter of the movie no longer results in corruption being noticed. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28179

Resolved Issues for the Windows XP Operating System

Armed Assault: A handle count leak is no longer noticed during game play in Task Manager. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27467

The system no longer become unresponsive and require a reboot while randomly moving Video Player window from primary to extended desktop under certain hardware configurations where the second adapter is an ATI Radeon X1200/1250/1270 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-27092.

Connecting a secondary display device followed by enabling extended desktop mode no longer results in a VPU Recover occurring when playing a DVD on the secondary display device using WinDVD. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28184

The PAL-M and NTSC-J are no longer missing from TV-format list found in the ATI Catalyst Control Center. Further details can be found in topic number 737-28185

Download Catalyst for the following OS.

nVidia ForceWare 100 for Windows Vista

nVidia has released the ForceWare 100.54 for Windows Vista.

It is a beta driver for GeForce 8800 GPUs, it does supports GeForce 6/7 series.

Download the 32-bit driver.
Download the 64-bit driver.