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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: aldo_14 on March 15, 2004, 01:59:07 pm

Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: aldo_14 on March 15, 2004, 01:59:07 pm
(didn;t these use to have a different name)

Anyways, thought it may be of interest;
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Kazan on March 15, 2004, 02:14:13 pm
when i hear "forceware" i think of the spywatre that gets forced onto yuor ststem by things like Kazaa and AIM

(and the thing force on by AIM is unremovable if you want to run AIM - if it's not there AIM silently reinstalls it)
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: aldo_14 on March 15, 2004, 02:16:57 pm
...don't ask me where they get these names from :nod: - I'm just amazed it isn't a stupid anacronym.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Thorn on March 15, 2004, 02:24:03 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Kazan
when i hear "forceware" i think of the spywatre that gets forced onto yuor ststem by things like Kazaa and AIM

(and the thing force on by AIM is unremovable if you want to run AIM - if it's not there AIM silently reinstalls it)

I call that stuff Underware :nervous:
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Flipside on March 15, 2004, 02:25:24 pm
:lol:

It is a silly name, makes you think of doing stuff against your will.

Weren't they called Detonator drivers or something?
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: aldo_14 on March 15, 2004, 02:26:29 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Flipside
:lol:

It is a silly name, makes you think of doing stuff against your will.

Weren't they called Detonator drivers or something?


Yes.... I was getting confused between the ATI drivers. :) :o
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: ZylonBane on March 15, 2004, 02:31:50 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Flipside
Weren't they called Detonator drivers or something?
No.

Forceware is the name of their nForce motherboard chipset drivers.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: aldo_14 on March 15, 2004, 02:34:18 pm
Quote
Originally posted by ZylonBane
No.

Forceware is the name of their nForce motherboard chipset drivers.


http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_11793.html

Gives Forceware as name of the GPU drivers.... maybe they've unified the names just to doubly confuse people?
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: diamondgeezer on March 15, 2004, 02:47:21 pm
Something like that. Since the nForce driver pack contains graphics stuff for integrated NV chips, and those chips use the unified graphics driver, what used to be called Detonators (ie. the stand-alone graphics driver) is basically just the graphics portion of the Forceware pack.

I've just formatted and reinstalled, divn'tche knar? Still can't get the 3.13 drivers to work :(
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: vyper on March 15, 2004, 03:01:10 pm
Does anyone remember when drivers were 6MB at most? :(
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Kazan on March 15, 2004, 05:28:30 pm
vyper: and then it was more than just the driver
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: vyper on March 15, 2004, 06:19:32 pm
Yeh indeed. My modem misses those days.

This is the problem with unified drivers - it's easier on the server side and it means less chance of some numpty downloading the wrong ones but it makes 'em huge. grr.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Liberator on March 15, 2004, 06:21:00 pm
Is there any talk of performance improvement?
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Taristin on March 15, 2004, 10:19:59 pm
Quote
Advanced Microsoft® Internet Explorer® popup blocker


:wtf:  Why would I want my video card to do this?
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Kazan on March 15, 2004, 10:26:31 pm
$5 says that popup blocker is spyware
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Bobboau on March 15, 2004, 10:29:14 pm
forceware... sounds like microsoft got involved
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Kazan on March 15, 2004, 11:16:59 pm
rotfl

"Forceware", n, any software forced upon you that either infringes your privacy,  includes masses of useless content, etc that cannot be removed
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Bobboau on March 15, 2004, 11:30:27 pm
that sounds like paaraciteware, I'd thing forceware would be something along the lines of;
software you have on alternatave but to install,
sort of like what MS did with office XP, "you have one month to install office XP or were dropping suport for your asses"
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Admiral LSD on March 16, 2004, 09:53:15 am
Does it make any difference that a lot of people have taken to calling these 'Fa[rceware' drivers? ;)
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Grey Wolf on March 16, 2004, 05:51:16 pm
They're causing my screen to blink randomly. It's really quite annoying. Well, back to 53.03....
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Fineus on March 16, 2004, 06:03:36 pm
I can't get them to run either - so I'm using the older Detonater drivers. Rather irritating really. Driver unification is fine so long as they work and the download size doesnt get stupidly large. Otherwise I couldn't care less if the drivers I download also support a TNT2.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Flipside on March 16, 2004, 06:05:56 pm
Mine worked fine, I thought they were crashing my comp, then I found out it was 24k of bad sectors on my hard drive, I'll miss that jpg :( LOL
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Carl on March 16, 2004, 06:54:39 pm
interesting related sidenote: Sony Imageworks is using a new Nvidia gfx chip to render more realistic skin for the CGI stunt doubles in Spider-Man 2.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Grey Wolf on March 16, 2004, 07:04:51 pm
Probably some odd version of a Quadro, I suppose.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: karajorma on March 16, 2004, 07:16:58 pm
It's called forceware cause the crap it probably installs forces you to get an ATI card :D
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: kasperl on March 17, 2004, 03:10:02 am
* is happy for traiding is TNT2 for a Radeon 7000. *
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Fineus on March 17, 2004, 03:55:10 am
Mmm, I am beginning to get a desire for a Radeon of some kind. I just wish I had more money :rolleyes: Ah well...
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: vyper on March 17, 2004, 06:36:26 am
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: 01010 on March 17, 2004, 11:57:52 am
Pff, I don't know why people always upgrade as soon as new drivers are released, IMO and from experience a new driver release is only worth downloading if you're having problems with the current revision.

Like they say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: aldo_14 on March 17, 2004, 02:36:48 pm
Quote
Originally posted by 01010
Pff, I don't know why people always upgrade as soon as new drivers are released, IMO and from experience a new driver release is only worth downloading if you're having problems with the current revision.

Like they say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".


Problem is, nVidia cards (FX) are broke - they've resorted to building in game specific optimisations into the drivers.......
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: 01010 on March 17, 2004, 03:06:40 pm
I thought ATI were just as bad for the optimizations? I remember reading a lot about this when the HL2 DX9 (acronym hell) benchmarks were first out.

Content with my Ti4200 for now though it's getting a little long in the tooth, I'm holding on upgrading though, I generally tend to try to upgrade once every two generations or so, but I may be tempted to pick a 9800 pro when the newest cards come out and the inevitable price drop occurs.

Kinda dodgy about getting an ATI though because I still hear people who have ****loads of problems with the drivers and stuff, more so than I'm comfortable with at the moment.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Grey Wolf on March 17, 2004, 03:08:32 pm
ATI tends to have the best hardware, Nvidia the best drivers. The NV40 is looking like it is a bit more advanced than the R420, though.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: 01010 on March 17, 2004, 03:15:38 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
ATI tends to have the best hardware, Nvidia the best drivers. The NV40 is looking like it is a bit more advanced than the R420, though.


Which is exactly why I'm holding out, to my mind the NV30 was a stopgap, just getting something out the door to get at least a few sales before the real tech comes along, I've not been too quick to judge nVidia on their current iteration of cards quite simply because to me, they seem to be beefed up old tech, like 3Dfx were churning out with the Voodoo 5.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Grey Wolf on March 17, 2004, 03:20:07 pm
Nvidia seems to better with even numbers, too. GF2 was superior to GF, but GF3 lacked any real innovation over GF2. GF4 was superior to GF3, but the FX line lacked any real innovation over GF4.

The advantage of the NV40 over the R420 is mainly in the number of pipelines that it has. The NV40 has 16, as opposed to the R420's 12.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: 01010 on March 17, 2004, 03:30:39 pm
Has there been any kind of information on release dates for either of the chipsets?
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Grey Wolf on March 17, 2004, 03:31:55 pm
They were both rumoured to launch later this month at CeBit, but I read an article recently that seemed to suggest that NV40 may take a bit longer than that.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: 01010 on March 17, 2004, 03:44:34 pm
What a suprise. :)

The sooner the better, I got plenty of cash available to buy a mid range card right now but I figure if I wait like three months theres gonna be a big price drop.
Title: New nVidia 'Forceware' drivers
Post by: Deathstorm V2 on March 18, 2004, 03:57:42 am
All I can say is they worked for me.

All of a sudden, Chrome and X2 run beautifully on my GF4 MX440.  Before, they were both buggy as hell.

Wohoo.