NVIDIA GeForce 306.23 WHQL Download & Discussion

Does msaa still take a big hit?

 

Sorry, i have that disabled, i don't ever use any AA in games cause of eye strain.

 

Oh dear. I haven't played Diablo III in months but I've just loaded it up with these drivers and, yup, there's a weird gamma shift when you hover over any object. The game goes from looking washed out to having deep, vibrant colours then back to looking faded when you move the cursor away from the object. Nice. A new driver and a new bug for NVIDIA to fix. :3eyes:

P.S. I have AA forced through the driver so I'll try disabling it to see if that fixes it as forced AA and AO is somewhat broken in some games of late, e.g. Guild Wars, Darksiders 2, etc., etc.

*EDIT*
I had ambient occlusion, 16xAF, 8QxMSAA and 4x TrSSAA forced so I disabled them all and ran the game: the colours were fine. I re-enabled AO and 16xAF and ran the game again: colours are still fine. So it is the forcing of anti-aliasing and/or TrSSAA that caused the weird washed out look. Alas, it looks like NVIDIA do have another issue to fix and you can't blame the game engine for this one as the issue didn't exist with the 304.xx and 305.xx drivers.

 

is nvidia working on a proper sli&AO profile for Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition?

 

What is this in reference to? Surely not the previous driver.

 

It could be a Diablo 3 issue. since you said you havent played in a while and D3 got patched.

 

Nvidia usualy compares to the previous WHQL.

Anyway this driver boosts performance on my low-end laptop quite a bit and stuttering experienced with 306.02 is gone. Gonna try these out on my dektop tomorrow.

 

@ remicius - Considering Dark Souls runs at 30 fps and natively renders at 1024x720 then it is extremely doubtful that NVIDIA will ever release a SLI profile for this game.

As for ambient occlusion, you can already force it using various flags from other games such as Street Fighter IV etc. plus the DSFix mod, which adds support for higher resolutions and SMAA, also supprts AO. NVIDIA may release a profile for Dark Souls with an AO flag but my guess is that they'll force Single GPU mode.

 

I haven't played the game in a while but I do load it up and briefly test it to ensure my account and password are still OK. I don't recall seeing the issue with the v304.xx or v305.xx drivers and it has been a while since Diablo III was last updated. My guess is that NVIDIA have possibly broken the AA support in this release but I'd need to read more feedback first. Nevertheless I've reported it to NVIDIA here: http://nvidia-submit.custhelp.com/app/ask

 

yeah actually I just read on the geforce site it is compared to the previous WHQL for various titles no specifics.

 

vs 301.42 whql..

 

DSfix has AO.

 

After A clean install to the new WHQL 306.23 drivers there is now a heavy FPS loss in WoW after killing any mob in a dungeon. On average right when a mob dies my FPS went from a steady 60 FPS for to 35/43 FPS for 2-3 Seconds.

To fix this I had to revert with a clean install back to Beta build 306.02 drivers. The issue is repeatable by reinstalling the WHQL drivers and reentering a dungeon and killing a mob. Incase it helps the dungeons tested in with this issue were Halls of Lightning and The Oculus.

 

Battlefield3 - MP TDM Canals

I just noticed something with ingame triplebuffer (cfg file) i was testing it on/off and there is a noticeable difference in gameplay smoothness if enabled, that's with vsync off.

I went from 305.67 (triple buffer on) to 306.23 (triple buffer off)


I play at 1600x1200, 2xaa, no post aa, no blur, 70fps cap, vsync off, 2frames to render, rest maxed;

with triplebuffer off - there where 50-52fps drops and kinda jerky/stutter camera mouse movements.

With triplebuffer on - fps stabilized 62-70fps, especially at respawn, also by explosions, overall smoother gameplay.. Same smoothness like by 305.67.



I saw a lot saying keep triple buffer off with vsync off, "less mouse lag" but nope not really and i play with nvcpl 2 frames to render ahead + ingame force 2 frames to render ahead. If it feels to laggy i can set mouse dpi from 1600 >> 2000dpi there is 0 mouse lag, actually its almost to fast at 2000

 

With respect to Guild Wars 2, unfortunately I do not think we will see performance improvements any time soon from Nvidia driver releases.

The largest cause for performance loss in GW2 on Kepler hardware is related to an interaction between the Umbra 3 Middleware and the design of GPU Boost.

I filed a report on this with Nvidia, but it is doubtful to me that they will reconsider how GPU Boost is implemented. It's exceedingly frustrating that Fermi hardware nets more performance in this specific scenario due to the ability to set a static clock, unaffected by turbo boost.

As I wrote in the other thread, when Umbra 3 pegs the CPU due to calculating occlusion culling (many player meshes onscreen in wvwvw) GPU Boost detects low utilization and drops the ROP domain clock on the Kepler.

This change results in an -additional- FPS drop at a time when a higher ROP domain clockspeed is needed to maintain consistent FPS.

The only way I can see getting around this is to allow end users to override GPU Boost, which Nvidia said will never happen. Frustrating!

 

I also noticed that Metro2033 felt much smoother in gameplay (I'm forcing VSync + triple buffering) The triple buffering still fails however if you alt+tab out of the game or change settings.

 

^
But i play BF3 with vsync off, and yes its normal you will see smoother gamepley with vsync on + triple buffer

 

I thought the triple buffer in NVCP only affected OpenGL games.

 

Been playing Sleeping Dogs for about 2 hours after installing this driver.
Granted it still drops to 45ish in some instances, but now I'm able to move AA from normal to high while having everything else maxed out+16xAf forced along with TB in NVCP around 60fps mostly.
Gpu stays almost 99% during day, in night it drops a bit (probably due to SSAO+High AA).
It gets pretty hot (76c) with fans at 80%, +100/+200 with +12mv. Steady 1238mhz (power 122%).
Not hitching or stuttering, so definitely it's not a placebo effect, performance really improved on a certain extent.
Pretty happy of the results. Now it's time for me to ditch the stock cooler and get an aftermarket one lol

 

Yes, and in Direct3D buffering is normally controlled by the application itself (for example when you switch vsync on or off in the application).