What´s the best driver for Celestia?

[danielj]

I would like to know what is the best driver for Celestia.What I know is in Release 75,new shaders functions are available,but I don??t think we will use it soon.
Today,I am using Forceware 71.84.I tried the 77.77,but don??t like because my 3D Mark 2001 SE drop 3000 points,and this could be a signal of instability...
Or doesn??t the driver issue matter anyway?
I am with a XFX Geforce 6600 GT PCI-E 128 MB,Athlon 64 3000 939,1 GB RAM PC3200 Kingston Value Dual,Windows XP SP2.

[selden]

Daniel,

They did fix some 6600 bugs in 77.72. I don't think they affect Celestia, though.

Sometimes you have to decide if its better to run fast but get the wrong results or to run more slowly and have things work correctly.

[danielj]

I don??t know what you are talking about?Do you mean I should use the latest drivers?

Sometimes you have to decide if its better to run fast but get the wrong results or to run more slowly and have things work correctly.[/quote]

[selden]

Daniel,

I'm saying that it's a decision that only you can make. If the difference in performance bothers you, then don't upgrade. If the bugs cause you problems, then do upgrade.

[mindless]

Yes, I did the upgrade and it works fine for me.

[Fightspit]

The last driver for Windows 2000/XP is here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_78.01.html

[fsgregs]

Selden, I am very interested in this driver question. I don't know how to test my video card to read different speeds and points and such. I assume there is some free video graphics card performance software that you can download and run to see how your card works with different driver versions.

Could you or anyone tell me where I can get that testing software?

I have just installed driver 78.01. Has anyone formally "tested" its performance in Celestia, vs older drivers? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I have a new GigaByte GeForce 6600 GT with 128 MB video RAM.

Thanks in advance.

Frank

[selden]

Frank,

I asked Chris about this a long time ago, and he said that he wasn't aware of any publicly available programs that actually would test OpenGL functions to find out if a card was broken.

I started to write a script that tested some Celestia functions, but it never got finished. Sorry.

Some OpenGL speed measurement programs are described at http://www.opengl.org/resources/benchmarks.html

GLPerf is rather old (2000) but measurement procedures using it are available at http://www.spec.org/gpc/opc/glperf_publ ... arted.html

The download link on that page is broken, but GLPerf seems to be available at ftp://ftp.specbench.org/dist/gpc/opc/glperf/

A benchmark program used by many people is 3DMark05. Free and commercial versions are available at http://www.futuremark.com/download/?3dmark05.shtml. It only uses DirectX calls, though.

I hope this helps a little.

[cartrite]

hi,

i just installed the beta version 78.03 on my xp pro test system (just a xp pro that i use to test different things. it sits on a different partition) and the first thing i noticed was that when i cycle thru ctrl v on the cvs version while looking at the earth, the nightside lights sre still on in the daytime while in multitextured. in all other mode they dissapear. i put 78.01 on my main system and i'm going to check that out.

cartrite

[cartrite]

hi,

78.01 is the same. i was looking at n america. when the usa is completely in the light the night side lights dissapear in all modes.

anyhow the upgrade on the test sys was 71.something to 78.03 and on the main sys it was 77.72 to 78.01.

i noticed no real difference in how celestia runs.

cartrite

[cartrite]

oh yeah,

i also run celestia-kde on suse 9.2 with driver 61.11 and suse 9.3 with driver 71.67. it runs just fine.

it's a real pain to update the drivers with linux from nvidia, so i get all my updates from YOU (yast online update).

question? on linux, with the cvs version compiled for kde i see all files from the extras folder. but with the windows version of cvs no galaxies or nebula. is that normal for the cvs version?

cartrite

[selden]

I just now tested V1.3.2 final and V1.3.1 final. They have that same Multitexture night-light bug (night lights visible during the day), so it's been around for quite a while. I'm surprised nobody noticed it before now.

System:
512MB 2.4GHz P4, Win XP Pro SP2
128MB FX5200, ForceWare v66.81