nVidia goes WHQL for Vista, drivers still suck

I saw today that nVidia released their 100.65 drivers. These hotly anticipated drivers are no longer the Beta versions we've been subjected to, but WHQL drivers. First, I am surprised that nVidia pulled it off and finished the drivers. Unfortunately though, I am positively not surprised that being WHQL does little to add to the value of the drivers.

I've used nVidia Beta drivers in the past with no troubles. At one point I actually went back to Beta drivers after a subsequent WHQL release caused problems for me. But nVidia's Vista drivers have been a total mess, with inconsistent game support, subpar performance, and a total absence of the feature set that makes nVidia drivers rock from an enthusiast standpoint.

I'm sure that being WHQL means that various system compatibility issues with Vista are resolved. It does not mean, however, that it's resolved any of the other problems with regards to features, game support or game performance. In fact, a quick look at the release notes reveals that the drivers are still feature-anemic compared to their XP cousins:

http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/100.65...

This underscores the fact that Vista is still not ready to be a viable gaming platform. Vista has a lot to offer and in time will be a fantastic operating system, but for gamers, now is not the time to upgrade.

Back to XP

I'm officially back to XP, and it's a breath of fresh air. Sure, I miss a number of Vista's features, but functionality and performance are the most important things. It's nice to be gaming at high settings again.

Although, I wouldn't say I've totally abandoned Vista... Thanks to Windowblinds, I can have the looks of Vista with none of the driver hassles. How 'bout them apples!

(click for a full-size pic)

Hasta La Vista, Baby

Harhar I'm so clever. Anyway, last night I just got fed up with the reboots and the games not working and everything else. nVidia is promising WHQL drivers by the end of the month, but not only am I very skeptical they can pull that off given how absolutely awful the current Betas are, but even if the drivers work, game support could still be sucktacular. Therefore last night I popped in my WindowsXP CD, reformatted my hard drive and re-installed Windows XP. Clean. From scratch.

Now I'm going through the pain in the ass process of reinstalling all my favorite programs and games. Sigh. Oh well. It's nice to have video drivers that work for a change, though I do miss Vista's slick UI.

I've bought a few games via Steam and Direct2Drive, and while I very much enjoy those services, I gotta tell ya that waiting for these game files to download is no fun at all. Sigh.... And to think that if my PC sells I'll have to do it all over again! Oh well.

Special thanks

I just wanted to take a post to say "thanks for reading" to everyone who's commented, complimented, criticized, or in any other way helped make my blog interesting. I appreciate the feedback tremendously, and a big thanks to everyone who's reading. I hope you'll keep reading, and keep giving feedback. And if you haven't given feedback... well, no time like the present!

News of the day is that my PC is back on eBay. I've tried to sell it sporadically over the last few months, and either it didn't sell or I changed my mind and pulled it. I think what's gotten to me is not that I feel any big urge to upgrade – I really don't need to. But I simply love the process of building, modding, tweaking and optimizing a system. I've got a great configuration planned, and I've even talked with a local body shop artist about getting my case painted – he primarily does bikes (Harleys and such), but he does just about anything else, and his prices are quite reasonable.

If by some chance you or anyone you know is interested in my current rig, you can click the link to the eBay auction here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Custom-Built-Liquid-Cooled-Gaming-PC

And yes, I can install WindowsXP instead of Vista if you prefer.

Back to XP... maybe

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Windows Vista itself, as an operating system, is great. It's much nicer than XP, and in terms of features and security is far better than XP. But the reality is that my PC is a gaming rig. I built it for gaming, and all the mods I've done are solely for the purpose of gaming.

I installed the nVidia 100.64 drivers tonight, and despite being released two weeks since the last Beta drivers, they're still totally feature-anemic. Display settings don't save; there is no display optimization wizard; worst of all, Forceware settings don't save. So even though I went through the trouble of flashing my card's BIOS to restore my previous overclocks, it's pointless because none of the Forceware image quality settings (texture filtering, AA, AF, etc.) actually save. What's the point of having a card powerful enough to do 8xQ + transparency supersampling in literally every game, yet you can't force any antialiasing because the drivers don't work? On top of that, some of my games don't even work, and the ones that do don't perform quite as well.

I'm shuddering at backing up my files, re-installing XP, re-installing all my games, re-editing the configuration files of games, re-installing mods, and especially waiting 20 years for Steam and Direct2Drive's slow ass servers to download my game files, but at this point it's looking like, as a gamer, Vista just doesn't have the functionality to make it a viable platform. With no DirectX 10 games in the pipe for a few months, I think it might be better to just go back to XP so I can enjoy my games without all the hassle.

Too bad. I really like Vista!

Looks like you can overclock in Vista after all!

Well, sorta. I just did a BIOS flash with NiBiTor. It didn't work last time, and I'm not sure why. This time I kept the fan on 100%, unchecked the "use 6800 temp monitoring trick" or whatever it said in there, and I upped the shader clock to 1300.

So currently my 8800GTS is clocked at 660/1300/2000 (core/shader/memory). So far looks fine. nVidia released a new Beta driver today. It's still feature-depleted, but hopefully the game support will be improved. I'll mess around with it and see.

How to get top-end performance on a budget

As promised, today I thought I'd finally getting around to writing a buyer's guide of sorts. Are you envious of people with high-end uber-systems? Do you wish you could buy a PC that gives you high-end performance, but you don't have unusually high amounts of disposable income? Well then this guide is for you. I'm going to show you how you can build a system that really rocks without paying through the nose.

Now most buyers' guides have parts included, and I will show you what, as of the time of this writing, I believe to be the best value. However, since the PC market changes so quickly, I also want to impart some common-sense lessons that will be applicable in the future as well.

So without further ado, here's how to do it.

Base System Platform

The Base System Platform is the motherboard, processor and memory. It's also where most people go wrong. The wrong decisions can cost you hundreds of dollars in useless features and non-existent performance increases.

The Motherboard

When buying a motherboard, ask yourself the obvious: what do I need? The nVidia 680i is an awesome board – it overclocks great, has three "true" PCI-E x16 slots (meaning that they stay x16 slots with multiple cards). So the question is... do you need that? First of all, consider the disadvantages of SLI – inconsistent performance, no triple buffering, and extreme cost. For our system, we'll be wisely sticking with a single-card setup. So screw three PCI-E slots. Who the hell needs that?

The nVidia 650i is a ridiculously good value: It costs just $150, nearly $100 less than the 680i; it features 16x bandwidth (on a single card setup; SLI is reduced to 8x) and it can hit 500mhz FSB no problem, just like the 680i. That's all the power you need for overclocking your processor without wasting money on features you don't need.

Now, say for the sake of argument that you might be entertaining the idea of eventually going SLI. First of all, you shouldn't. I've done it and it's not as good as people assume it will be. But if you do, consider this: there is zero real-world performance difference between 8x PCI-E and and 16x PCI-E. Think about that when PCI-I 2.0 comes around. Don't believe the hype, kids.

On the downside, this board only allows for "only" four SATA Hard Drives. If you plan on using more than four hard drives, in which case you really don't have "value" in mind, buy the more expensive version of the 650i, which rings in at around $200 and allows six Hard Drives.

Motherboard pick: ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel





Processor

Gaming is not bottlenecked by the processor in all but the most extreme cases. [H]ard OCP found a very small bottleneck with two 8800GTX cards in SLI. Even with that being the case, current Intel processors overclock like crazy. Don't waste money on a 2.9ghz x6800 ($970); it's not uncommon for a lowly E6300 ($180) to clock well past 3.0ghz. I've seen reports of clocks as high as 3.5ghz on the 1.8ghz E6300. That's all the processing power you will need for quite some time. Some alert readers may note that the E6300 features half the L2 cache of some of the pricier Core 2 Duos. The extra L2 cache may increase performance slightly in some office applications. Is that what you're spending money for? You want frame rates, dude! The E6300 is an insane value thanks to its obscene overclockability.

Processor pick: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300



CPU Cooling

Fact is, you can't get optimal overclocks on stock cooling. But who says you need water cooling or some other exotic solution? OverdrivePC, who overclocks their chips very far, uses humble factory copper coolers.

For low noise and great cooling, you can't go wrong with Zalman, so I recommend their CNPS9500, which is under $50. You can get the larger 9700 version, but it may not fit in your case and it will only make a minor difference over the 9500.





Memory

Memory is perhaps the single most overrated aspect of PC performance. There's just no reason to waste money on super-fast memory. Latencies do affect frame rates somewhat (though only slightly), so I do suggest getting quality memory and not Corsair Value or something like that. But do not blow your cash on pricey memory.

G.Skill is fast becoming popular among gamers for making top notch memory that doesn't cost a bundle. To go with our 650i motherboard which uses DDR2-800 standard, we'll use G.Skill's PC2 6400, which dials in at impressive latencies of 4-4-4-12 and costs a mere $200 for 2GB. Similar performance from Corsair or Crucial can easily exceed $300.




Hard Drive

You've probably seen and drooled over the Western Digital Raptor high-speed hard drives. Falcon Northwest and Voodoo commonly stick two 150GB Raptors in RAID 0 for super-fast drive speed. However, consider for a moment the value. With high-speed drives, your load times will be reduced and applications will load faster. The question here is simply whether this is worth the cash for you. In my experience, load times on a 7200rpm drive are barely worth mentioning. A 320GB Seagate 7200rpm drive costs around $90. A 150GB Raptor costs around $225. Is the premium worth it? Well, for a kick-ass PC with the best possible value, hell no it's not.

Hard Drive Pick:

Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200 RPM drive




Disk Drive

This one's easy. Screw the Plextor drives that cost over $100. Panasonic makes great 18x DVD+-R/W drives that feature Lightscribe technology (label making) for around $30.




Graphics card

Yes, the 8800GTX is awesome. It's insane. And Big. But you know what? If you overclock an 8800GTS, you can get about the same performance as a stock 8800GTX for roughly $150-$200 less. And you don't need as big a power supply, meaning you save even more money.

And don't even think about SLI. It's expensive, performance is unreliable, and you lose the ability to use triple buffering programs like Direct3D Overrider – meaning you get either V-Sync or great frame rates, but not both. Also, a single GTX-level card will easily play any current game at better-than-max settings. As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm playing all my games with 8xQAA, 16xAF and High Quality Texture Filtering with an overclocked 8800GTS. And that includes Oblivion.

Graphics card pick: nVidia 8800GTS and a download of Rivatuner 2.0 (free).




Power Supply

Yes, 1000w PSUs are all the rage. Why? Because savvy marketers have convinced gamers that they need them. Would you believe that an 8800GTX SLI system with an overclocked quad-core QX6700 can run just fine on a 500w supply? It's been done. Not that I'd necessarily recommend running on a such a slim margin of error. But for this system, a 600w will be plenty.

OCZ makes some of the best PSUs around, which is why I recommend their GameXStream 600w PSU.




The Case

Okay, so what should we stick this whole thing in? We want quality, but not super-expensive quality. Again, don't pay for features that you don't need. Are you going to use 6 DVD drives? Then why are you getting a case with 6 or 8 or 20 drive bays? Are you going to use more than four hard drives? No? Then you do not need a full-tower case. Stick with a mid-tower.

There is no better manufacturer of mid towers than Lian-Li. I use their PC-6070 Plus II, which has been used by Overdrive PC and Maingear to name a couple of boutiques. It's still a great case – brushed aluminum chassis, great temperatures, easy access, thumbscrews, plenty of room (even for an 8800GTX), four 5" drive bays and three 3.5" bays, and sound-insulating foam on the interior making it one of the more quiet cases around. At just $130, it's a far better value than the full-towers that often push $300 and are chock full of useless features and excessive space. And I still love its sleek, curved, classy look.




Total Cost for this system = $1,381.92

If you were to buy a system with this level of performance from, say, Falcon Northwest, you'd pay for a much pricier case, a motherboard filled with features you'd never use, more expensive memory, an excessively powerful PSU, uselessly fast memory, and of course labor and a brand name. I configured a nearly identical system at Falcon NW's site, and it cost over $3,000! That's more than double the price, and with a little overclocking your system will be much faster than Falcon's.

In the end, if you play it smart and buy what you need instead of what sounds cool, and you use overclocking to create a tremendous value for midrange parts, you can build an amazing system without breaking the bank.

This is getting retarded

Okay, I love my 8800GTS, which is a big but managably sized card; the GTX is an excessively long card as it is, but if the pictures are any indication, it looks like AMD is breaking the bank with a card that doubles as a diving board for smurfs:




Get real, folks! Early reports of power requirements put it at just shy of an obscene 300w. The card will require an 8-pin and a six-pin connector.

nVidia is rumored to be striking back with a GDDR4-equipped, overclocked version of the G80, known as the G81.

Now, let's think about this for a moment. I have an overclocked 8800GTS. I can play all of my games (yes, that includes card-crunchers like Oblivion) at the following settings in Forceware:

- High Quality Texture Filtering
- 16x Anisotropic Filtering
- 8xQ Anti-Aliasing with transparency multisampling

Those are my default settings, and I don't even have the highest-end card! A high-end Crossfire or SLI setup is still obscenely powerful, and the new generation of cards make those setups look pitiful. Now it seems like a race to find who can build the biggest uber-card. The upside is that as gamers, we're seeing absolutely unprecedented leaps in performance over the previous generation of cards, and we haven't even seen what DirectX 10 will bring to the table. The downside is that the cost of a top-end PC is soaring.

Falcon Northwest's flagship Mach V is in many respects the industry flagship system. While a $5,000 system used to be extremely rare and undoubtedly at the peak of performance, nowadays a pimped-out Mach V can cost well over $8,000. While graphics cards used to cost $300 at the high end, now you can buy an overclocked, water-cooling ready 8800GTX for $900. The size and power of these new and upcoming cards is going to require larger power supplies, larger cases, faster processors, and better motherboards.

So, how can you build a first-rate PC without breaking the bank? Well, in my next blog, I'm going to tell you. Also, I've been using Windows Vista for a while. Stay tuned for a complete review of Microsoft's new OS.

8800GTS Firmware update = no dice

With my previous cards, I saved myself the trouble of having to reset the overclocks and fan speeds every time I updated my drivers by simply copying the overclocked settings to the BIOS using NiBiTor to modify and save the BIOS, and NVFlash to flash the BIOS.

I tried just now to do the same thing with the 8800GTS, and it didn't work. With the new BIOS, my computer froze in the middle of operation and gave me a loud beep. I restarted and flashed the stock BIOS (of course I made a backup!) and all is well again.

I suspect the problem has to do with the shader clock. You can actually set the shader clock manually in NiBiTor; normally, when you overclock at the driver level, the shader clock increases automatically as the core clock increases. I suspect that the problem had to do with the shader clock not being raised with the core clock. I dunno. Anyway, it looks like I'll be sticking with Rivatuner.