LaptopBlog2Go

Been fiddling with my drivers again. I’ve decided to drop the 3 driver settings (quality/balance/performance). Instead the default settings for my drivers will be the same as nvidia in the the control panel, but the hidden stuff should make your games run better with no hit in IQ.

However I’ve decided that in the drop down menu, for laptop owners only, you can select your manufacturer and it will install the drivers to their specific settings. So far only the major ones are supported, but we’ll see.

Futuremark the guys who gave us the “marmite” 3D mark software has releases Peackeeper.
A Browser Benchmark tool to tell you which one will be fastest on your system.

Check it out

Remember my blog post here?
Will according to this the new chip will not be based on die shrink of GT200 but G92b (die shrink of G92 from 65nm to 55 nm). I don’t like this at all. This is seriously misleading consumers in thinking they are buying “new” architecture.

Intrestingly the chip device id was listed as a GTX180M whilst some of the newer ones listed the same device id as GTX280M. Sounds to me like nvidia balls up the GT200M chip and this was their solution?

Preety much finalised the code for it and ironed all bug (I hope).
All I need to do now is add the multiple languages and its good to go.
I’m planning to have more desktop support in the future with improved display modes than previous releases. Driver tweaks will remain the same for both mobile and desktop cards. However mobile and desktop will get different driver .dll. Something which takes full advantage of the new installer.

Some benchmarks for Vista SP1 vs SP 2 RC. You can find it by clicking HERE, all courtesy of tweaktown. I wasn’t expecting anything major but I am disappointed.

We can all dream, and I dream of the Asus W90. Its a laptop with a Mobility Radeon HD4870 x2, up to T9600, up to 6GB ram, upto 1TB gb HD, upto Bluray disk drive. All in all this makes me drool. No pricing announced or dates of when it will be released. Click onthis to gawp at it for yourself.

I’ve just noticed this on gta4.net. Easy to do yet cool to look at.
Give it a go.

I get emails and I know some people are wondering what the difference is in those settings? My drivers offer 3 pre-sets to choose from:

Quality: settings offer sharper more detailed images slightly
Performance: the detail is reduces slightly
Balance: is slap bang some where between the two.

Benchmarks

These test do no reflect actual gameplay but are good enough to compare the difference in the driver settings.

3D mark 2006

Qual- 9365
Bal- 9399
Perf- 9458

GTA IV

Qual- 31.34
Bal- 31.20
Perf- 29.00

Counter Strike Source

Qual- 199.85
Bal -203.62
Perf- 241.12

Image Quality Comparison

For this comparison Crysis will be used.

Quality:

Balance:

Performance:

The images here do not do the differences justice due to it being .jpg file and small size. For a much better and clearer comparison download the original 1920×1200 .bmp Here.

Note

The comparison was done with the default 3D settings I set in the nvidia control panel. For example in Quality setting I turned off trilinear optimisation etc. However, you can turn this on in the Nvidia control panel and set the Texture Filtering to High performance. What you will get is a hybrid mish mash of performance optimisation and my higher image quality tweaks. This will not affect the tweaks I do that sets Quality apart from the other two settings.

Conclusion

As the benchmarks show some games benifit from the performance settings, whilst others its slower such as in GTA IV where the Quality settings has the highest FPS. Do not be put off by this, its not always in the numbers but how it actually plays as well.

In all cases the performance setting will always play smoother with less fps spikes compared to the other settings, even if it does not always have the highest max fps, this I believe is true performance.

The image quality should be compared by downloading the .bmp file for a much clearer visual comparison, it is then up to you to decide which you prefer and compare it to the performance it has. I personally go Quality setting, for mid range card you should go for Balance, whilst low end cards should use Performance. But at the end of the day they are there as a choice and I feel its up to you to pick the ones you feel is right for yourself personally.

I’ve been here for almost a year now and alot has happened and this site has changed. Theres been some amazing people members here and the site has gotten busier I feel with much more active regular members than when I first joined. Heres my thoughts on the team that make this place happen:

Mobilenvidia: One of the nicest guy ever, strives to help me out in the forums more than you can imagine. Has a big interest in wireless cards as well, also seems like a family man

Snowl: I dont know much about snowl, seems he comes and go but has written very useful guides in the FAQ forum and does pop by to post some useful tools and sites.

RRR: He’s recently resurfaced from the world and things seems to be going “cushty” for him, makes some cool posts and he loves to make them look cool. Remember that massive news post/news letter? That almost made me cry.

Darmdorf: This guy makes THE most useful and educated post EVER out of anyone here, he doesnt post much but when he does I feel so small in comparison.

Michael Marley: I like mike I think he’s a good guy, although I think he works as PR manager for Intel secretly. He once threatened me because I had “ATI Fanboy” as a custom title. Be afraid, be very afraid….

Bill: I think he knows it, I know it, we all know it, Bill is the nerdiest out of us? (Not in a bad way). He probs got more technology in his pants/trousers than I do in my house. But he’s cool.

Wook: All I know about this guy is he’s preparing for world domination, other than that he appears to be another family guy but still young at heart.

Teraphy: Apart from working for interpol he also makes the server super fit, efficient and fast, one of the reason the site is so fast, all hail him you mortals

Zipper: I like Zipper, he helps an awful lot in the forums and he lives in frozen Finland other than that he’s an old fart

And the rest…. I’ll post more once my “insider” digs deeper >:]