Please send all questions and comments related to this gallery to Danil Gridasov.

Testbed

Games are tested on Pentium 4 3.4 GHz (800 MHz FSB) PC with ASUS P4C800-E (i875P) motherboard and 1024 MB PC3200 3200.

The test is run only under Windows XP Service Pack 2 and DirectX 9c.

The following cards were used in making of this material:

• ATI RADEON 9200
• ATI Radeon 9600
• ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
• ATI Radeon X800 Pro
• NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra

The latest changes are marked light-red.

Games are tested with the latest reference drivers (61.77 for NVIDIA GPUs, 4.7 for ATI GPUs) coupled with the latest patches. When a bug is found, it's tested on the next reference betas. Exceptions prove the rule :-)

Some bugs may occur in our testbed only. So if you don't witness them, or witness bugs previously unwitnessed :), please email us providing most details about your PC configuration (processor, chipset, graphics card and drivers, OS, DirectX version, game version). Besides, you can send us a screenshot not more than 200KB in size ('cause we have to pay for traffic :-)

News

• GeForce FX 5600 Ultra graphics card is removed from test list as it gets obsolete.

• Replaced Radeon 9000 Pro with Radeon 9200, so a number of Radeon 9000 Pro bugs were removed as well.

• Removed a number of bug descriptions fixed in June issue.

• Removed a number of irrepairable bugs.

• The following drivers were released in August:

  ATI:

  • Catalyst 4.8 (6.14.10.6467), new reference drivers.

  NVIDIA:

  • ForceWare 65.62, 66.00 P¸ P¿C€., reference beta from NVIDIA with higher version number than that of the latest reference drivers.

• No updates were made to games list in August.

Games

1. Beyond Good & Evil v1.01
2. Command & Conquer Generals v1.7 / Zero Hour v1.02
3. Delta Force Black Hawk Dawn Team Sabre v1.50
4. Deus Ex Invisible War v1.2
5. Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind v1.6
6. Far Cry v1.2 b1325
7. Halo: Combat Evolved v1.04
8. Mafia v1.2
9. Need for Speed Underground v1.4
10. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time v1.81
11. Thief Deadly Shadows v1.1
12. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell v1.2b
13. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow v110035.1
14. Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness v52
15. Tron 2.0 v1.042
16. "IL2-Shturmovik: Aces" v2.04
17. "IL2-Shturmovik: Forgotten Battles" v1.22

Beyond Good & Evil v1.01

Command & Conquer Generals v1.7 / Zero Hour v1.02

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce 6800 Ultra	61.77 66.00	Incorrect water shader rendering.
		None solutions so far. (GFFX5900 screenshot is to the right.)

Delta Force Black Hawk Dawn Team Sabre v1.50

Deus Ex Invisible War v1.2

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9800 Pro Radeon X800 Pro	4.5 4.6 4.7	Lighting and shadows problems.
		Fixed in Catalyst 4.8.	-

Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind v1.6
(with Tribunal and Bloodmoon)

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5200	56.64 56.72 61.77	Exteremely transparent water comparing to that produced by other GPUs.
		Fixed in ForceWare 66.00.	-

Far Cry v1.2 b1325

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce4 Ti4600	61.34	Incorrect water rendering at Ultra High and High detail levels.
		Fixed in 1.2, but it's hard to find, as the patch is recalled.
GeForce FX 5200 GeForce FX 5900	56.64 56.82	Problems with distant sprite fogging.
		Fixed in 1.2 b1325 + ForceWare 61.77.
GeForce FX 5200 GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	61.76 61.77	Clear banding on light source reflections.
		Either ForceWare drivers cheats, or excessive game optimization for some ForceWare versions. 66.00 beta + patch 1.2 produces good quality. (GF6800U screenshot is to the right.)
Radeon 9200	4.7 4.8	Older problems were fixed, while new were introduced: water and ground texturing.
		Water bugs disappear by lowering detail to medium. Radeon 9200 doesn't have ground bug.	-

Halo: Combat Evolved v1.04

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5200 GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900 GeForce 6800 Ultra	All versions	Thermal camouflage effect with GeForce FX cards becomes like that on Radeons, if you make Halo think it runs on Radeon 9600 (with 3DAnalyser). It's interesting that frame rate doesn't reduce after that at all. (Screenshots obtained with GFFX5900 with Radeon 9800 Pro DeviceID are to the right.)
		It seems like very aggressive optimization for GeForce FX. We doubt it will be fixed, even despite the arrival of Geforce 6800. (Screenshots obtained with GFFX5900 with native DeviceID are to the right.)
GeForce FX 5200 GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	61.12	Lighting and texturing problems when trying to force anisotropic filtering.
		Fixed in ForceWare 61.77.	-

Mafia v1.2

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5200 GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	52.16 53.03 56.64 56.72	Only 4x or even 2x are forced when trying to force 8x anisotropic filtering. New Detonator 50 "optimizations" coupled with Mafia rendering traits. New NVIDIA drivers clearly reduce the anisotropic filtering on all levels, except the first and Mafia performs main rendering on levels higher than the first, so the primary textures are filtered less then it should be.
		New filtering optimization algorithms of ForceWare 61.77 allow disabling optimizations for full anisotropy and trilinear filtering in Mafia on GeForce FX.

Need for Speed: Underground v1.4

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	53.03 56.64 56.72	Headlights give "discrete" light switching from darker to lighter (on fencing and houses). This doesn't occur on other maps.
		Fixed in ForceWare 61.77.	-
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.10 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5	Headlights don't work.
		Fixed in Catalyst 4.7. Screenshots from Radeon 9800 Pro to the right.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time v1.81

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9000 Pro	4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5	When forced, AA causes artefacts, including black rectangle in the upper left corner and garbaged water. Besides, instead of AA you get a dithered whole image.
		Antialiasing stopped forcing with Catalyst 4.7. Bugs naturally vanished alongside.	-
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9800 Pro Radeon X800 Pro	4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5	Forced AA smears, and water starts to shine through walls.
		Antialiasing can't be forced in Catalyst 4.7. (GeForce FX 5900 screenshots with FSAA forced are to the right.)

Thief Deadly Shadows v1.1

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9800 Pro Radeon X800 Pro	4.5 4.6 4.7	Lighting and shadows problems.
		Fixed in Catalyst 4.8.	-

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell v1.2b

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5200 GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	53.03 56.72	NV3x GPUs introduce changes in shadow buffers mechanism with various drivers. Some shadows and effects are not seen with newer drivers.
		Effects are correct in the Projected Shadows mode. Uncomment "ForceShadowMode=0" line in Splinter Cell\system\SplinterCell.ini to enable. Projected Shadows mode decreases shadow quality, but restores quantity and adds some effects absent in shadow buffers for some reasons (see screenshots). ForceWare 61.77 seems to have no problems with shadows and effects on GeForce FX in the shadow buffers mode (see screenshots).
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	56.64 56.72 61.77 66.00	Water shader bugs seen as frozen still areas.
		Use ForceWare 53.03.	-
GeForce 6800 Ultra	61.77	No shadows in shadow buffers mode.
		Mentioned in release notes of ForceWare 61.77. According to NVIDIA, it's an application bug. (GeForce FX 5900 screenshot is to the right.)

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow v1.31

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9000 Pro	4.4	Some game objects sometimes either go black or disappear.
		Fixed in Catalyst 4.7.	-

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness v52

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5200 GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	61.12	PS2.0 Shadows setting worked for the first time with GeForce FX family. Not without artefacts though: the shadow had a pixel-wide border.
		Fixed in ForceWare 61.77.	-

Tron 2.0 v1.042

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce 6800 Ultra	61.34	Levels have no textures at all.
		Fixed in ForceWare 61.77.	-

"IL2-Shturmovik: Aces" v2.04

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce 6800 Ultra	61.34 61.71	Incorrect water shader rendering.
		Fixed in Patch v2.04.	-

"IL2-Shturmovik: Forgotten Battles" v1.22