Most of you might have noticed my lack of posts for a while now. I am moving to a new site. It’s at: http://imbacore.blogspot.com/.  Blogsome is a very good blog site provider but there really are some personal preferences that I need to be met in my site.

The darkhorse that turned out to be a darksword… 

‘Sucked my magic right out. Joram must be proud. Where’s the damned catalyst?!! 

I got infected by the Imgkulot virus months back and all my freeware ICEs (read: anti-malware) couldn’t detect it. (Sorry, Net Runner fan haha!) Finally I went to this site that touted a list of some of the best freeware in the Internet and downloaded what it recommended. It worked — a bit. It detected the Imgkulot virus but unfortunately, wasn’t able to delete it. Still the detection was something so I kept the thing.

Just some nights ago, I checked my process manager (accessible by pressing ctrl-alt-del, pressing the Task Manager button and choosing the "Processes" tab in the resulting interface) and WHOA! a process was gobbling up 40-60Mb of my memory! Effer, I thought. I Googled the filename and gretchins and flayers, it led me back to the forums of that self-same anti-malware thingamagig I DL’d!

It seems that there is a bug with their software and killing its real-time protection won’t kill the process.

So much for on-demand scanning.

I tried killing it and true to what users were complaining about, the thing is immortal:

As you can see 62,548K. WOOOT?!! 0_0

I am uninstalling the software this very night. I mean c’mon, 60Mb?!! (By comparison, the AVG processes do not even amount to 4Mb in my system.) 

There’s a lesson to all this:

Monitor your Processes every once in a while. If you see something gobbling up huge numbers, Google the damn thing. If you are SURE — VERY SURE — it’s not a vital system file and it’s something you can make without, kill it. (I take no responsibility if something adverse happens to your system though so do research and quadruple-check what you have learned.) If you can’t kill it (like the above) and the program is so much dead weight to you (or if it’s redundant in function — ie you have got several programs like it already), uninstall it.

I don’t need to tell you how precious a commodity RAM is to your system do I?

(And no, it didn’t make an appearance in my "Best Free Anti-virus Anti-spyware I Use" article if you are asking.)

What are sandwiches?  

Apologies for the unexpected hiatus but it just hit me that I may be looking for a new site to transfer this blog to. Certainly blogsome offers good support — it’s free after all — but the time has come to search for broader horizons. I will still keep this blog, will still make articles for my friends but sometime in the near future I will have to make a Fragfests and Imbas V2.

And yes, I am currently hooked to Oryx and Crake; it’s one of those novels that suck you into its world, never mind the absence of frenetic gun fights or huge, asteroid-swallowing capital ships. Thanks to Martin and Lia for letting me borrow this book.

"It’s a strand of protein" SnowPimps replies disdainfully, vehemently waving the children away.  

"There’s a glitch in the Matrix." 

Whoa! I got home last night filled to the brim with gin, applied in an invite-only forum (for privacy purposes, I won’t be saying which)  and when I woke up — NO HANGOVER!! — I got in! I was expecting maybe two weeks but it took only HOURS! I am in! And I wrote my application while drunk!

To the people of that forum THANK YOU. 

Soren’s gretchin-ness, Martin’s Peter Parker Syndrome, Joseph’s homicidal tendencies,  and my Jiraiya Dance last night must have tugged at the very fabric of reality. (That was a good party last night guys!)

This article has been updated and transferred to http://imbacore.blogspot.com/2008/02/realtek-ac97-audio-update.html.  

Update: Forceware 163.75 is now out. It has already passed WHQL testing. Download the Windows XP/200 32-bit version HERE. It supports GeForce FX, 6, 7, and 8 series GPUs. 

All those months of being driver-starved checking Nvidia’s site again and again and coming up with nothing; now that I am so busy, they deluge me with driver after driver after driver…..

The irony. 

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At 5am in the morning I whooped and did a quick jig. (No, you would not have wanted to see that.) I stopped, grimaced, gazed at my unit’s ceiling, and hoped the hardwood flooring above muffled my triumphant outburst. The neighbors continued to doze on, oblivious of the implications this piece of information will do for my PC’s performance.

News from my favorite site, Koroush Ghazi’s Tweakguides.com:

Forceware v162.18 is now out! 

For someone who has been stuck with v93.71 for some months now (and wasn’t even able to install v94 because of the rigors of work), this is, to say the least, wonderful, wonderful, news. I feel like Noah when the first drops fell. That ATI Catalyst sun has been shining for much too long.

Why am I so excited? "Why You Should Change Your Video Drivers" (for John, Anthony, and my cousin Scott) coming out in the early days of August! The reasons will be explained there.

For now work, work, work.  

END OF MAIN ARTICLE 

OLD UPDATE (about Forceware v162.18):  For now, do not change your video drivers to this version. I just installed it and even though it is a WHQL version, it has a bug. I cannot play any videos. I could play games just fine but my Animatrix CD gave only blacks, blues, and reds.

There’s a temporary fix here, if some readers have installed this version.  No FPS gains from this one but it delivered the most vibrant ingame colors I have ever seen so far. Still, with the video playback bug in it, it’s not worth installing.

First time this happened. What happened there at Nvidia?

UPDATE: Benchmarked the Nvidia 163.71 WHQL drivers and the Framerate Drivers 3.0 XP32. The stock Nvidia drivers churned out some of the better scores I have seen in weeks, but due to their nature, lags behind severely in image quality. The Framerate 3.0 surprised me; to date it offers image quality that is second to only, if not equals, the Xtreme-G 163.67 SEs but falls behind in —- ironically — framerates. I guess the programmers were pushing for image quality this time.

See the benchmark results at the end of the main article.  

PAST UPDATES:

1.Benchmarked Xtreme-G 163.69. IQ is not as good as the 163.67 SEs but it offers better framerates; +1FPS in T:V and +3 in Nexuiz. Updated results are shown at the end of the original article.

2. I finally found the time to benchmark Framerate Drivers 2.0 163.69.  Some noticeable improvement in FPS and the colors seem cooler (ie leaning more on the blue end of the color spectrum). Also, my monitor seems to be brighter; staying at previous settings will produce glaring, washed-out results. Nothing that a gamma and brightness fix can’t solve though. See the FPS results at the end of the main article. More benchmarks to come in the next few days.

Benchmarked the NGO 1.16369. Observations: right off the bat, without messing with the Display Optimization Wizard, I can tell these drivers were levels above the stock Nvidia ones; IQ improved. However, I still find the IQ of the Xtreme-G 163.67 SE drivers to be better. If I were to make an analogy of the last three drivers I benchmarked, I’d say that the 163.67 SEs were the High Quality ones with a corresponding drop in performance relative to the other two, the Framerate Drivers 2.0 are the High Performance drivers (but it has washed-out colors if compared to the other two) and the NGO 1.16369 falls in the middle.

The Image Quality ratings are pretty much subjective though but in my opinion the Xtreme-Gs tend to make the colors "leap out" of the screen. The NGOs still deliver in terms of IQ but I find that some greens are washed out.  

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Once more into the breach dear friends…..

Weeks ago, I installed the (then) latest driver from Nvidia, Forceware v162.18. Image quality (IQ) improved greatly (relative to 93.71) but DVD and VCD playback functions were shot. I rolled back to 94.24, but longed for the vastly sharpened IQ that the 162 driver offered.

What to do?

I killed Mace Windu and turned my back on Konoha.

I dove into the dangerous depths of beta and third-party drivers.

I tried 163.44 and much to my chagrin, it lowered my PC’s performance in rendering 3D games and apps. I then went to Guru3D and looked up the latest tweaked Forceware version they had. I opted for the DNA-Force 3.7.16316, a driver based on Nvidia’s (you guessed it) Forceware v163.16 (or did you? Lol!).

I measured the three drivers’ performances and the results are a mixed up bunch:

(format is:

GAME TITLE
MINIMUM FPS AVERAGE FPS MAXIMUM FPS 

Games used: Nexuiz (built in timedemo) and Tribes: Vengeance (I recorded FPSs of a demo using FRAPS) )

94.24
Nexuiz
8 58 80
Tribes: Vengeance
20 28 40

163.44 (Nvidia Beta)
Nexuiz
1 50 60
Tribes:Vengeance
20 28 40

DNA-Force 3.7.16316 (Quality Settings)
Nexuiz
29 52 59
Tribes: Vengeance
23 31 41

What is "Frames per Second" (FPS)? I’ll discuss that later. For now, suffice to say, it’s a measure of how your system can effectively render a whole slew of "images" in a single second; the higher the number the better. (Higher numbers mean smoother gameplay)

As I have said, the results are a mixed bunch. Throwing away the 163.44, which garnered a rock-bottom result in Nexuiz, we are left with the 94.24 and the DNA-Force drivers.  The 94.24 does deliver higher maximum FPS but falls short in the minimum FPS department. For me, the minimum mark is important as performance below the 27-FPS mark hurts my eyes if I play for more than 40 minutes. 

I opted for the DNA-Force drivers and so far everything is stable. 

LATER NOTE: Most tweaked drivers are made to improve IQ. Drivers alter Image Quality in terms of how they render colors and levels of gamma; viewing them with another PC won’t show the viewer anything that his/her driver has not shown before. 

Case in point: the picture below shows two columns; the left one contains shots using the 94.24s, the right with the DNA-Force 3.7.16316s. The two columns show no difference as anyone viewing them will view the screenshots as they are being rendered with whatever current drivers the user is using in his/her computer.

The pictures below show no change in other users’ computers whenever I change drivers as needless to say, video drivers only affect how my system outputs colors.

Maybe in the future I’ll get an external video recorder (a cel or a digi cam) and finally show proper comparative screenshots.

END OF NOTE

I hope this article has shown readers that there are free means out there in improving your system. Drivers ARE free! I mean look at it this way: the moment your TV blurs up, you buy a new one. You shell out cash. Cash! These drivers are F. R. E. E. Why deprive yourself of updates?

However for beginners: 

I do not recommend changing to third-party drivers. Some users report problems and while they are very much reversible, some people forget — or do not know — to do restore points with ERUNT and/or how to clean their registries. If you are one of these, I would suggest the official Forceware drivers from Nvidia. You won’t get the oftentimes substantial FPS and/or IQ boost but at least you get guaranteed stability.  Just make sure your videocard is supported though.

Then again, you could change all this by learning. Visit forums. Use search engines. Never stop learning! Never be content. 

END OF MAIN ARTICLE

UPDATES: 

Benchmarks used: Cinebench R10, 3DMark 2001 SE, Nexuiz, and Tribes: Vengeance.

Settings for Nexuiz:

(Ingame) Resolution: 1024; Skins: Best; All settings off. (Nvidia Control Panel) AF: Application-controlled; AA: None; Force Mipmaps: Trilinear; Texture Filtering- Trilinear Optimization: On; Texture Filtering - Quality: High Performance; Texture Filtering - Anisotropic xx: all On.

Settings for Tribes: Vengeance:

(Ingame) Resolution: 1024; Bump Map Details: High; Textures: High; Terrain xx: all On; Fluid Surface Details: Medium; Fog: Ultra-high; Shadows: Off; Glow: Medium; World Details: Medium; 2.0 Shaders: On. (Nvidia Control Panel) AF: Off; AA: 2X; Force Mipmaps: Trilinear; Texture Filtering - Quality: High Quality.

Results (take note I am using old hardware; results here are only for comparative results among old and new driver versions):

Xtreme-G 163.44

3DMark 2001 SE: 11619 3D Marks

Cinebench R10: 2368

Nexuiz: Min: 29 Ave: 54 Max: 68

Tribes: Vengeance: Min: 20 Ave: 27.433 Max: 40 

————–

Nvidia Forceware 163.67 Beta

3DMark 2001 SE: 11703 3D Marks

Cinebench R10: 2367

Nexuiz: Min: 34 Ave: 48 Max: 61

Tribes: Vengeance: Min: 20 Ave: 27.633 Max: 40

————–

Xtreme-G 163.67 SE 

3DMark 2001 SE: 11487 3D Marks

Cinebench R10: 2366

Nexuiz: Min: 34 Ave: 49 Max: 60

Tribes: Vengeance: Min: 20 Ave: 27.617 Max: 40

————-

Framerate Drivers 2.0 163.69

3DMark 2001 SE: 11769

Cinebench R10: 2359

Nexuiz: Min: 34 Ave: 49 Max: 61

Tribes: Vengeance: Min: 20 Ave: 28.583 Max: 40

————-

NGO Driver 1.16369

3DMark 2001 SE: 11698

Cinebench R10: 2346

Nexuiz: Min: 11 Ave: 53 Max: 62

Tribes: Vengeance: Min: 20 Ave: 28.383 Max: 40

————

Xtreme-G 163.69 

3DMark 2001 SE: 11579

Cinebench R10: 2369

Nexuiz: Min: 34 Ave: 52 Max: 60

Tribes: Vengeance: Min: 20 Ave: 28.550 Max: 41

Nvidia 163.71 WHQL

3DMark 2001 SE: 11727

Cinebench R10: 2344

Nexuiz: Min: 34 Ave: 51 Max: 61

Tribes: Vengeance: Min: 20 Ave: 28.083 Max: 40

————

Framerate Drivers 3.0XP32