Gearing Up For 64bit: Beta Graphics Driver Comparison
by Derek Wilson on June 16, 2004 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Driver Overview
One thing that needs to be mentioned right off the bat is OpenGL support. While we could run most of the OpenGL based games that we had on NVIDIA hardware, ATI's drivers couldn't load up a single OpenGL based game that we tested. While just about everything here is pre-release beta software, the fact that Warcraft III (which ran fine under DirectX) couldn't start up in OpenGL mode seems to indicate that it isn't a game support issue, but an API support issue.Both NVIDIA and ATI have their strong and weak points (as we will see from the tests), but they are both continually refining these drivers in preparation for the final version of the 64bit edition of Windows XP. Having played around with the first versions of the OS to make it onto the street, and the first versions of drivers for everything, we can honestly say that we are seeing some promising improvements. It's not quite time to migrate over, but the time is coming when it won't make sense for Athlon 64 users to be running a 32bit operating system.
The other major issue that we had was with hardware support. ATI claims in the release notes for their first 64bit beta driver that the X800 series of cards are supported. We tried multiple platforms including VIA and NVIDIA chipsets and multiple software configurations, but we could not ever get an X800 based card to load ATI's 64bit Catalyst driver. The install would not find the card, and when we specifically selected the ATI driver for use with our card via the hardware manager, the system would crash before the install could complete. If we, instead, attempted the install from safe mode, we could avoid the crash, but immediately we entered into an infinite loop of rebooting, which could only be fixed by going back into safe mode and uninstalling the driver.
This is beta software, to be sure. But we had at least hoped for a little more luck knowing that ATI had listed it as supported hardware.
Of course, the beta driver with which we have to work from NVIDIA came out earlier than the 6800, so there is no support for NV40 under 64bit Windows yet, but we have been speaking with them about the possibility of grabbing a beta with NV40 support for testing. If there is any demand for it, we are considering a follow up article when we get our hands on 64bit drivers that support both R420 and NV40.
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kcbaltz - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
Pardon my ignorance, but what's "WoW"?Pumpkinierre - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
I wonder if the nVidia architecture with its 16bit/32bit FPU lends itself better to 64bit computation than ATI's 24bit FP. The nVidias certainly show the sort of performance improvements we were expecting.ZobarStyl - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
Beta or not the point is seeing if actual current hardware will benefit from the increased efficiency of a 64 bit OS...I think it's a perfectly reasonable article and I liked it, if WoW emulation can post any benefits and not hinder any programs then it will be a godsend to A64 owners.araczynski - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
#6: I think only the fanboi community is interested in data that is mostly based on Beta sources. The geek community would be interested in actual release data, not this stuff. You might as well start comparing the 5.0ghz offerings from AMD and Intel at this point.Pjotr - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
BTW, UT2004 64 bit:http://www.fileshack.com/browse.x?cat=2226
RyanVM - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
RE: NV40. "If there's demand" - HAH! Like you even have to say that :-)I think the entire geek community is interested in seeing how well the latest and greatest hardware performs in a 64bit environment. Do it up!
Stuke - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
On your test platform, under dxdiag, did it show that it had AGP support? Whenever I install the via 4in1 on my system and the video drivers, I get no AGP texture acceleration. Maybe thats a cause for lower performance too.DerekWilson - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
I appologize for messing up the graphs. It really should be the 5950 in the graphs.The latest versions of the drivers when the tests were performed didn't support X800 and 6800 yet.
I'll correct the error ASAP. Sorry for any confusion.
Illissius - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
You put 6800 Ultra instead of 5959 Ultra on all the graphs :/OTOH it's odd that the 5950U is faster at Halo, which is DX9. Is it using a special codepath (one sans any actual DX9 stuff :) ) or something?
And yeah, NV40 vs. R420 would be nice, but other things are prob. more important. (Such as the Far Cry SM 3.0 patch and whether or not NV40 gets a performance boost on nForce3 as nVidia says it does.)
Pjotr - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 - link
UT2004 is available in 64 bit server and client versions now, although beta. Any chance of adding these to the test?