First of all, let me say that if you encounter any problems while using this guide, IT'S NOT MY FAULT! But you are welcome to email/PM/IM me to complain. Just don't call me in the middle of the night.
First off, back up your current drivers, as you may need them later on. Now
remove the old drivers. They can be found at Start>Control Panel>Add and Remove Programs>Your Video Card Drivers. They will be named something like "(nVidia/ATI) display drivers". Delete these and anything else pertaining to your old
video card. Even if you are only getting rid of a dead card and replacing it with the same thing, it's a good idea to start fresh. Slight variations could lead to glitches. If your system asks to restart,
then go ahead. Upon rebooting, if Windows says "new hardware detected", go ahead and kill that
screen. Power off your computer; it's time to put in the new card.
Disconnect any cables connected to the video card. If you are worried about
ESD (electrostatic discharge), remove the power cable and push the power button a few times. This will even out any stored electricity. Take the side panel off your computer. Your video card is probably screwed in at the back end of the computer, so get a screwdriver unless you feel like using your hands. Look to make sure
that no cables are attached from the card to the motherboard or another component.
If you have a beefy card, it will have a card lock at the end.
This lock keeps the card more secure, and can be a pain when
removing and installing cards if you have a small case. Push down on the lock
(toward the bottom of the motherboard), and pull the card straight out at the
same time. Yes, it can be a little tight, don't be afraid to use some force.
Now it is time to put in that new card. Many new cards have more
transistors than a Pentium 4. This produces a lot of heat and needs a lot of
juice. To this end, a 300 watt power supply (or better) is recommended. Getting
power through the AGP slot isn't enough anymore, so they have additional power
cords. If you forget to plug this in, the card will be very unstable. Most
manuals will say to plug the other end into the hard drive's power cable, but it
doesn't make a difference. Actually, you may want to plug it in to a separate
cable all together if you already have 2 or 3 components on that one.
Slide the new card into the slot. Again, don't be afraid to use
a little force. AGP cards are different from PCI cards. When you plug in a PCI
card, you can feel it pop down. AGP cards "pop" twice. If it's not in
all the way, your computer may not boot, and/or the card will not function
correctly. When it's in correctly, none of the leads can be seen. Screw it in,
make sure everything looks tight and snug, and close up the case. Re-attach all
the cables and boot up the system.
When Windows starts up, it will again say "New Hardware
Detected" and ask you to insert an installation CD. If your card came with
one of these, kill this screen. The manufacturer's installation works easier
than Windows. Pop the CD into the drive and let it go to work. After driver
installation and reboot, your computer should properly recognize your new card.
The drivers that come with your card are usually outdated, so head out and pick
up the latest and greatest. Newer drivers will increase performance, usually to
the tune of 1000 3D marks from the ones on the CD to the latest. Your card may
require specialized drivers (if it has VIVO for instance). Head to the
manufacturer's site first. If their site relays you to nVidia or ATI, then your
card uses reference drivers that can be downloaded straight from there in the
future.
To help you, I have included some major video card makers web
addresses:
Now that you have the latest drivers so that card can run like
it's meant to, let's optimize those options in the mysterious advanced settings!
I must warn you, I recommend settings as to insure maximum quality at playable
framerates. If you have an older card, or prefer speed over quality (what is
wrong with you?!), you might want to set things lower than I recommend.
Primary nVidia Control Panels
A big thank you to Uncle_Jimbo for the nVidia control panel
screenshots!
1) This area tells all about your
video card, BIOS revision and
IRQ.
2) This lets you know how much memory your video card has, and what your AGP
speed is.
3) For some strange reason if you don't know who made your CPU or what version
of DirectX you are using, check here.
4) This tells you what driver versions you are using. You can match these with
nVidia's download page to see if there are new drivers out.
1) Image Settings-Performance. A confusing slider, it does not
tell what it manipulates. Here is the lowdown. Setting it to
"Application" will use the Anistropic and trilinear filtering settings
use define within the game you play. "Quality" uses trilinear
filtering and adaptive texture filtering to improve performance, at the sake of
quality. "Performance is all about speed rather than quality. I would
recommend using either the Application or Quality settings.
2) Antialiasing-Quincunx. This slider allows you to set AA. The first (farthest
left) is application preference, next is off, the rest are gradually higher. I
would recommend using 2x or 4x. Any higher and you may see too large of a
performance hit. "Application Preference" should also be avoided; most
games don't know how to utilize this, so AA would be turned off.
3) Anisotropic Filtering. 8x gives maximum image quality, off give maximum
performance. Set it as you will.
4) Texture Sharpening. Supposedly, turning this on will sharpen textures when AA
is on.
1) Fog Table Emulation. An old way of preventing your game from
drawing more than your card is capable of. It creates a wall of fog between the
camera and the horizon. Turning this on will help insure maximum compatibility
with older games.
2) D3D Logo. Don't turn this on unless you want a little D3D avatar embossed in
the lower right hand corner of the screen.
3) Mipmap Detail Level. I recommend you set this to "best image
quality". You can significantly boost benchmark scores by setting this to a
lower level.
4) PCI Texture Size. This does absolutely jack unless you are one of the poor,
pitiful type running a PCI videocard. If you are one of those poor, pitiful
types; this setting will determine how much system memory your card uses for
textures.
5) Custom Settings. Save profiles based on the settings you make on this screen.
1) Disable Support for CPU Instruction Sets. IMO, this is one of
those options that is like having a nuclear self-destruct button armed with a
slightly psychotic individual who has a fetish about red blinking things sitting
in the room. If checked, it disables SSE2 and 3DNow! for your card.
2) Enable Texture Clamp. If you notice misaligned textures running off their
polygons, this setting may fix that.
3) Multi-Display Acceleration. Choosing Multi-Display mode will let you run
OpenGL programs on either screen in a dual monitor rig.
4) Color Depth. I would recommend setting this to 32-bit. 16-bit can improve
performance, but will cause "banding" in 32-bit games.
5) Buffer Mode. Sets the method used to swap rendered scenes from the frame
buffer. Auto-select gives maximum compatibility.
6) Vertical Sync. Disabling Vsync can cause tearing and artifacts. I recommend
leaving it on unless you are running benchmarks.
7) Custom Settings. Like in the D3D page, this allows you to save the settings
you created if you want to make multiple profiles.
Other nVidia Control Panels
nView is only useful if you are running a multi-monitor system.
It includes different nView modes. Standard (2 separate, independent monitors),
Clone (secondary monitor displays replica of primary, both must run same
resolution, refresh rate, and bit depth), Horizontal Span (monitors are combined
to form a wider single display. Monitors must run same resolution and refresh
rate), and Vertical Span (same as horizontal span, but tall instead of wide).
Desktop Utilities enable advanced nView functions, plus they can
disable the system tray icon. Overlay Controls adjust image quality for DVD and
TV tuners. Temperature Properties show VPU and ambient temps, as well as core
slowdown threshold (the temp at which your VPU throttles down to ovoid
overheating) and a heat indicator warning (useful when overclocking).
An nVidia overclocking utility can also be enabled. That's right
folks, nVidia has their own hidden OC program. Enable it by adding a registry
DWORD named "Coolbits" to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA
Corporation\Global\NvTweak" and set the value to 3. For you folks that
don't know how to get there, Start>Run>regedit.
Primary ATI Control Panels
D3D and OGL can be configured the same, so I will explain both
at once. Click the 3D tab and it will bring up the main screen displaying the
performance slider, compatibility, and profile creation buttons. Check the
"Use custom settings" box and then click "Custom".
1) Anti-Aliasing. Set it to 2x or 4x. 6x is too much of a
performance hit and application preference is not supported by most games (which
means it turns it off).
2) Anisostropic Filtering. Set it to application preference so that games only
apply it to needed textures. Otherwise it will use it on all textures, resulting
in wasted memory bandwidth.
3) Texture Preference. Global texture compression settings. High Quality will do
you the best.
4) MipMap Detail. Mipmaps minimize distortion of textures stretched from
foreground to background. "High Quality" is the way to go, but setting
it to a lower level can improve framerates and juice your benchmark scores.
5) Vertical Sync. Off gives you better framerates at the expense of possible
texture artifacts. Always On is the best bet.
6) Truform. An ATI specific feature that improves quality by increasing polygons
on certain curves. Or so they say. It can be unpredictable at times, so leave it
off for the least hassle.
7) Smartshader. This feature allows you to throw down some weird stuff. By
choosing the different effects, you can radically alter the way your games look.
Check out the quasi-matrix effect of "Green ASCII".
That is the Jedi Knight 2 main menu in case you couldn't figure it
out. Other effects are Black and White, RGB Cycle, Classic (old movie brown),
Inverse Color, Porthole (black fade that allows viewing only through the center
part of the monitor), Stylized Black and White (B&W with faded color on
animated items and characters), Sketch (luminous white and black), White ASCII,
Green ASCII, and Stylized Color (faded colors with full color on animated items
and characters). The last four are only available in Open GL.
1) Version Information. This here tells you all about your
current driver versions. That packaging number is the part of the drivers real
filename. Hit the details button to get even more in-depth info.
2) Reactivate Messages. Ever clicked "don't ever tell me about this
again" and then wished you hadn't? Me neither, but you can do that here
just in case. This applies to ATI apps only.
3) Taskbar Icon. Uncheck this to get rid of the ATI systray icon.
4) Quick Resolution. Check this, and you must reboot every time you switch
resolutions or color depths in your 2D desktop.
5) DVI Frequency. If you have a DVI flat panel that runs a high resolution and
are experiencing problems, checking this box may solve that.
6) Alternate DVI mode. Another option you can check if you are having problems
with your DVI monitor. This one applies more to older DVI panels.
This stuff is only useful to multi-monitor users. When multiple
monitors are connected, the icons light up. You can turn the monitors on and off
by clicking the little power button in the corner(1). Also, there will be little
blue numbered buttons(2) that allow you to choose which monitor is primary and
which is secondary. Flat panels will usually show up at a 60hz refresh rate
since they don't have one.
Other ATI Control Panels
Smartgart is ATI's program that tests your motherboard's AGP
compatibility. If it finds something it doesn't like, it may set your AGP speed
down, disable fastwrites, etc. You can turn those options back on here. VPU
Recover is a new ATI program that can restart the card when it stops responding
to display commands. It is potentially groundbreaking in that you shouldn't have
to restart your computer when the video card freezes.
Overlay controls appearance of video overlays. Here, you can
manually change brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation. Color allows you
to manually adjust brightness and the color curve. And whether your monitor
is upside down or on its side, Rotation can make it look right using this panel.
Conclusion
Now that you have your video card installed and properly
tweaked, let's see how it performs. Grab a copy of 3DMark2001
and 3DMark2003
to test your new card's performance. And if you are ready to delve into the dark
arts, download Powerstrip
or Rage3D Tweak for
fast and reliable overclocking. If you ever have any problems, just start a
thread in TechIMO's Graphic
Cards and Displays Forum. We'll help you out! Now get out of here and go
frag somebody!
This is Anthony Monteleone's second article for TechIMO.
Playing BF1942 for an hour before bed can cure insomnia. ;)
12-18-2003 9:00am
