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NVIDIA FORCEWARE v66.93 REVIEW

"In this review we test the Nvidia Forceware driver 66.93 to 61.77 and 56.72 using 3dmark 2001 SE, 3dmark 2003, 3dmark 2005, Doom3, Tribes Vengeance, Xpand Rally, Colin Mcrae 2005, Painkiller, Prince of Persia, Rally Trophy, Scrapland and Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War."

In this article we compare the recently released 66.93 drivers to the previous 61.77 and 56.72 drivers using software such as 3dmark 2005, Doom3, Tribes Vengeance, Xpand Rally, Colin Mcrae 2005, Painkiller, Prince of Persia - Warrior Within, Rally Trophy, Scrapland and Warhammer 40K - Dawn of War.

GENERAL SYSTEM INFORMATION

PROCESSOR	AMD ATHLON XP 3200
VIDEO CARD	MSI GEFORCE 5900 XT
NVIDIA DRIVER	FORCEWARE v66.93
	FORCEWARE v61.77
	FORCEWARE v56.72
MOTHERBOARD	ASROCK K7S8XE+
MEMORY	2x 512MB OCZ GOLD XTC PC3200 DDR
OPERATING SYSTEM	WINDOWS XP SERVICE PACK 2
DIRECTX VERSION	v9.0c

3DMARK BENCHMARKS

3DMARK 2001 SE

	13782
	13458
	13909

3DMARK 2003

	5050
	4956
	5014

3DMARK 2005

	966
	957
	1001

v56.72 v61.77 v66.93

COMMENT - "The 66.93 driver performs the best in two out of the three 3dmark benchmarks. The 66.93 driver delivers a performance increase of 4% with 3dmark 2001 SE and 5% with 3dmark 2005. Using 3dmark 2003 the 66.93 driver lost out to the 56.72 driver which delivered a performance increase over the 61.77 driver of only 2%."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
3DMARK 2001 SE
1024x768 Resolution
32Bit color
D3D Hardware T&L
Antialiasing Disabled
Double Frame Buffer
Compressed Texture Format
24Bit Z-Buffer Depth

3DMARK 2003
1024x768 Resolution
No Pixel Processing
Optimal Texture Filtering
4x Max Anisotropy
Optimal Vertex Shaders
No Repeat Tests
No Fixed Framerate

3DMARK 2005
1024x768 Resolution
No Anti-Aliasing
Optimal Filtering
HLSL VS Target 2_0
HLSL PS Target 2_0
No Fixed Framerate

GEFORCE 6600 GT SPECIFIC
HLSL VS Target 3_0
HLSL PS Target 3_0

DOOM 3

ADVANCED OPTIONS DISABLED

	36
	63
	63

ADVANCED OPTIONS ENABLED

	29
	43
	43

v56.72 v61.77 v66.93

COMMENT - "The best drivers for use with Doom3 are the 61.77 and 66.93 drivers which delivered identical performance. The 56.72 drivers are a very different story and they resulted in a 43% performance drop with advanced options are disabled and a 33% performance drop with advanced options enabled."

BENCHMARK SETTINGS
1024x768 Screen Size
Fullscreen Enabled
Vertical Sync Disabled
Demo1 Benchmark

OPTIONS DISABLED
Bump Maps Disabled
Shadows Disabled
Special Effects Disabled
Specular Disabled
Antialiasing Disabled

OPTIONS ENABLED
Bump Maps Enabled
Shadows Disabled
Special Effects Enabled
Specular Enabled
Antialiasing Disabled

NVIDIA FORCEWARE v66.93 REVIEW INDEX

PAGE 1 - NVIDIA FORCEWARE v66.93 INTRODUCTION

PAGE 2 - TRIBES VENGEANCE AND UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2004

PAGE 3 - OTHER GAME BENCHMARKS

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