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
nHancer
nHancer is another specialized application which only handles profiles. As we mentioned previously with the NVIDIA profile system, profiles go beyond controlling 3D settings by also being tied to SLI, but NVIDIA's utility set does a poor job configuring all of this. nHancer in turn can access the profile system and make the additional modifications to it that can't otherwise be done.
Since NVIDIA offers pretty good control over 3D settings, the main use for nHancer is for those problematic SLI features when configuring a game for which there's no profile. The SLI rendering mode can be set (split or alternating) along with using any additional SLI compatibility flags that may be in NVIDIA's drivers for handling all the unusual cases that can break SLI. A load balancing graph is also provided for helping to determine if SLI is working or not.
nHancer can also be used as an alternative to the NVIDIA utility set for general profile modification, because as we previously noted that the NVIDIA utility set has some UI issues. This allows for easier profile modification and addition, and access to a few extra minor features such as antialiasing compatibility that may be needed in rare cases. For non-SLI users, nHancer can also delete all the pre-supplied NVIDIA profiles that only contain SLI settings, so that those unused profiles don't clutter up the list.
Overall, SLI users will likely find this a must-have critical utility, while non-SLI users who make serious use of profiles will also find a lot of use in it.
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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!