Date:
Monday , March 01, 2004
Author:
Brent Justice
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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ForceWare 56.56 Review

NVIDIA's new Forceware drivers pack in new features worth review and while doing that we compare it to previous generations.

Introduction:

NVIDIA has released a new driver, well, kind of. Actually you will not yet find this driver available from NVIDIA's website.

The driver we are talking about is Forceware version 56.56. NVIDIA’s original plans with this driver were to release it on February 18th. However, a performance bug was discovered in Unreal Tournament 2004 which halted their release plans. It is important to note that Forceware 56.56 has passed Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) testing.

The known UT2004 performance bug did not stop NVIDIA from giving permission to their add-in-board partners to go ahead and package that version up with their shipping video cards. Here is exactly what NVIDIA had to say:

“After talking with Epic, we have decided not to post Rel 55 on NVIDIA.com. We are working the UT 2004 issue with them and will post a WHQL driver with the UT fix in a couple of weeks. In the meantime all our add-in card partners and system integrators will be shipping with the WHQL 56.56 graphics driver.”

As explained, NVIDIA is working on the UT2K4 issue and will release a fixed driver on their site soon. Currently, this driver version is available from two (and possibly more as of publication) of their board partners, eVGA, and ABIT. Therefore since this driver is publicly available and a driver that is shipping with retail boards we can go ahead and spend some time on it to take a look at the new features being offered.

NVIDIA's focus for this revision of Forceware includes adding more useable desktop features and enhancing 3D gaming performance. Here is the official update list from NVIDIA on this new driver:

The NVIDIA(r) ForceWare(tm) Release 55 graphics driver includes many features, enhancements, and bug fixes and gives users a broad range of productivity-enhancing tools.

Highlights of the NVIDIA ForceWare Release 55 include:

* Application/game profiles-image quality and performance settings can be defined and saved for each application. Profiles launch automatically when the program is initiated. Adjustments can be made easily to any existing profile.

* Mouse-over pop-up help for all graphics control panels-an integrated help function provides pop-up explanations of all graphics-related settings.

* Drop-down menu for NVIDIA settings-a new menu item on the right-click drop-down menu takes users directly to a control panel for NVIDIA graphics settings.

* The latest NVIDIA nView(tm) 3.5 software-a new nView multi-display wizard speeds the set up for multi-display modes. nView 3.5 also provides numerous enhancements for more efficiently using a single display including an improved pop-up blocker and enhanced display grid technology for organizing windows on your desktop.

* Easy output of video files to television-when selecting a video file for output, a simple right-click on the mouse pops up a menu to speed start up and simplify the selection of video output options.

* Introduction of PCI Express- support for the latest PC bus enabled through NVIDIA UDA.

We will cover all points above in the following sections making comparisons to the previous ForceWare 53.03 driver.