Getting the Most Out Of Your Hardware: Video Card Utility Roundup
by Ryan Smith on July 5, 2007 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
RivaTuner
RivaTuner is to the NVIDIA utility set what ATI Tray Tools is to the Catalyst Control Center: a more features, less bloat option. It should be noted that in spite of the name RivaTuner works on ATI's cards too, but this is a later development and said support is not as substantial as it is for NVIDIA's cards.
As the NVIDIA utility set isn't as feature-deprived as the Catalyst Control Center, RivaTuner doesn't have as much to set itself apart from other utilities. As expected, it features enhanced overclocking controls for both the memory and core, and fan controls. However it doesn't feature any voltage controls so serious overclocking will require either BIOS modifications or using another tool such as ATITool. Hardware monitoring is also present, but only for the video card and a small number of motherboards.
In spite of NVIDIA's drivers already offering profile support, RivaTuner also offers profile support through its own system. This bypasses the two-profile problem with NVIDIA's utilities and allows one profile to control both 3D settings and overclocking settings sans fan control. RivaTuner's UI keeps profile support from being as easy as it could be though.
Other features include in-depth 3D settings control, with controls for obscure features such as overriding pixel shader versioning and enabling/disabling Z-buffer compression. Refresh rate control is also in, as is a separate program that offers an on-screen display. Overall it's a strong third-party utility that can easily replace the NVIDIA utility set with much less bloat.
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Wwhat - Saturday, July 7, 2007 - link
Unfortunately MS forced people to get obscure updates you had to search for, that installed lots of DRM(-updates) for DXVA to work and have 'purevideo' enabled in many common utilities like WMP.And vista has its share of such pain too I understand due to it being thick with DRM, if anything is not 100% in line with MS's demands (or should I say sony/WB's?) it will simply not work right, often without much notification.
xsilver - Thursday, July 5, 2007 - link
i know ati tool works for both nvidia and ati but what about the rest?also
"and individual cards cost up to $900, what is another half-million spent on making a new utility to go with said GPUs?"
this comment was particularly funny - i doubt these 3rd party tools were made with anywhere near that $$$
gigahertz20 - Thursday, July 5, 2007 - link
*Takes out bat and hits xsilver in head**THONK!!!!*
Duh, he was talking about the companies you idiot. None of these 3rd party applications have a budget of anything!!!. They are completely free.
xsilver - Thursday, July 5, 2007 - link
yes exactly -you misunderstood what I wrote
what it takes 3rd party makers a few thousand dollars (ok maybe more)
it takes nvidia and ati half a million.
thats funny no?
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 5, 2007 - link
It's just a really simple estimate, don't think too hard on it. I'm figuring NV would need 3 full time people (2 programmers, 1 QA), and various fractions of management and engineering resources to get the job done. By the virtue of being a company, NV immediately encounters costs that a single guy working in his spare time doesn't have, but it also means that NV could build a better utility since they know the hardware inside and out(at the cost of making the whole thing slightly more expensive to develop).kmmatney - Friday, July 6, 2007 - link
They probably need more resources than that, especially just to get drivers signed off by Microsoft...gigahertz20 - Thursday, July 5, 2007 - link
Enjoyed this article, it's amazing to think these big companies cannot produce utilites for their very own video cards that can beat out 3rd-party applications. They create these complex million line code drivers, but yet that can't create an application that will let you overclock your video card and test it out like ATITool does? It would be nice to have one driver by each company (AMD and Nvidia) that let's you perform all tweaks 3rd party apps let you do and don't consume lots of hard drive space and memory....and it should have an easy to use intuitive iPhone like interface....The perfect AMD or Nvidia driver, small size, lots of features, consumes little system resources, intuitive interface = perfect
That's why uTorrent is one of the most popular torrent clients, the programmers for these large corportations need to get with it!