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Date Posted: |
May 5th, 2005
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Last Updated: |
April 13th, 2006
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License: |
BSD/MIT |
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Downloads: |
17,687 total; 28 recently |
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Page Views: |
73,985 total |
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User Rating: |
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8.89 / 10, with 28 votes |
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Jump to the Downloads section |
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About nVidia TNT/GF 3D driver:
This unified driver supports all TNT and GeForce series cards upto and including GeForce 4MX (NV18). It's known to work on BeOS R5, Dano, Zeta and Max.
Note please:
This driver is still Alpha quality. Use with care.
Current nVidia driver features:
- Works on TNT1 (NV04) upto/including GeForce 4MX (NV18);
- Works with Mesa 3.4.2 (included);
- Supports basic openGL 3D acceleration;
- Supports forced screen retrace synchronisation.
Supported cards (as far as is known):
- TNT 1/2;
- TNT 2-M64;
- Vanta/Aladdin TNT2;
- GeForce 256;
- GeForce 2 MX/Ti/GTS/Go;
- GeForce 2 Integrated GPU (Nforce);
- GeForce 4 MX/Go;
- GeForce 4 Integrated GPU (Nforce 2);
- GeForce 4 MX4000;
- GeForce (4 MX) PCX 4300;
- Quadro (2/4/Go).
Known limitations:
- Only works in 16 and 32 bit color at the moment;
- Only works for one application at a time;
- There are other limitations: a more extensive list is included in the downloads.
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Latest Version |
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Details about this version:
This version should be considered a stable release. However, if you first try it, you'd better not run anything crucial as it might hang your screen and app_server..
Status since Alpha 3.5:
- Alpha 4.x versions use Mesa 3.4.2 again. Alpha 4.0 contains numerous bugfixes compared to all older versions. Alpha 4.1 is, on top of that, the fastest version upto now:
- on a P4@2.8Ghz with NV18, GeForce4-MX440 the teapot now spins at 800fps using default settings;
- on the same system Quake2 timedemo1 runs at 140fps in 640x480x16 fullscreen mode using default settings;
- on that same system using a NV15, GeForce2 Ti, Quake2 timedemo1 runs at 150fps: NV15 is currently the fastest supported card.
- The driver still only works on NV04 (TNT1) upto/including NV18 (GeForce 4 MX). Although I spent a lot of time to overcome this, that didn't happen yet.
- The driver is still slow compared to Windows and Linux closed-source drivers. This is partly because we're using such an old version of Mesa, and partly because of lacking info on enabling some nice features (like compressed Z-buffering and a higher level GPU interface).
- The driver still only supports one 3D app at a time, and only works 'completely' in 16- and 32bit desktops.
- Still, this driver outperforms the original UtahGLX driver a lot (both speed and quality wise), and gives us some interesting options on BeOS. So enjoy it if you can. :-)
- Added features (require reboots to take effect currently):
- Force retrace synced swapbuffer execution: enable this option via the driver's nv.settings file option: force_sync true. This option is nice to use, it improves output quality considerably (removes tearing), although it slows the fps down;
- Force GPU speed: enable and set this option via the driver's nv.settings file option: gpu_clk. The number is the clock frequency in Mhz. Personally, I wouldn't use this one though: it's dangerous if used incorrectly while currently not improving speed much;
- Force RAM speed: enable and set this option via the driver's nv.settings file option: ram_clk. The number is the clock frequency in Mhz. Although I recommend not using this option either, it potentially speeds up rendering some more, since currently RAM access is the biggest bottleneck in the hardware for us. Still: dangerous option.
- Note please: the 'primary' nv.setting is not compatible with the 3D add-on currently. Therefore you shouldn't enable it when you want to use accelerated 3D.
Fixes for Alpha 4.1:
- 3D speed is (much) higher now depending on the card you use (thanks to improvements in the 2D driver):
- TNT cards run at the same speed as Alpha 4.0 did;
- TNT2 style cards run at upto 104% of the previous release;
- Most supported GeForce style cards now run at upto 140%;
- GeForce2Ti cards now run at upto 200% speed compared to Alpha 4.0.
- Fixed lacking synchronisation between GPU and driver managing textures: this (at least) fixes texturing errors on setups that require texture deletion/loading on-the-fly during rendering because of (relative) low graphics memory;
- Driver now reports info about the graphicscard in use, along with the driver's own version number.
I want to thank BeOS Mr.X explicitly for his help and extensive testing during development of Alpha 4. Without him this release would have contained a lot less bug-fixes. So, thanks Mr.X!!
(Mr. X is a real 'BeOS-based' hardcore gamer I'd say! :-)
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Intel Version - requires Zeta (1.81 MB) |
4,167 downloads |
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[rating: 10] |
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Rudolf's site: Dano and Zeta binary |
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| Add Additional Location |
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Intel Version - requires R5 (1.71 MB) |
1,889 downloads |
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[rating: 10] |
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Rudolf's site: R5 and max binary |
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| Add Additional Location |
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Intel Version (2.55 MB) |
3,924 downloads |
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[rating: 10] |
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Rudolf's site: Full sources |
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| Add Additional Location |
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| Source Available |
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