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

Testbed

Games are checked on a PC on Pentium 4 2.4GHz (533MHz FSB), ASUS P4GE-V (i845GE) and 512MB PC2700.

The checking is performed only under Windows XP Service Pack 1 (+ tens of Windows Updates from Service Pack 2) and DirectX 9b.

The following cards were used in making of this material:

• ATI Radeon 9000 Pro
• ATI Radeon 9600
• ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
• ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
• NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 Ultra
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900

Attention! Some bugs that we noticed might occur only in our test configuration. If you do not have some of the mentioned bugs or, vice versa, you have one that we don't write us providing maximum details on your configuration (CPU, chipset, graphics card and drivers, OS, DirectX version, game version). Besides, you can send in a screenshot, but not more than 100Kb in size - we pay for our traffic :-)

News

• From this issue changes will be posted in the light-red background.

• From this issue I don't trace GeForce4 MX and GeForce FX 5800 bugs as they are archived in our 3Digest. Earlier bugs are in the quality section of the previous 3Digest.

• From this issue games are checked only on the latest reference drivers (45.23 for NVIDIA and 3.7 for ATI) with the latest patches. If I find a bug, U also check it on betas of the next reference drivers.

• Speaking of beta versions, I can't miss the September drivers novelties:
  ATI:
  • Catalyst 3.7 (6.14.10.6378), official reference drivers.

  • 6.14.10.6387, dated 03.09.2003. Recognized by ATI Control Panel as Catalyst 3.6, though its version is higher than Catalyst 3.7 (6.14.10.6378).

    Rather unstable beta that even misses some resolutions in the inf file.

  NVIDIA:
  • Detonator 45.33, dated 05.09.2003.

    "Official" beta from NVIDIA PR. Fixes flickering on NV35 (GeForce FX 5900) cards that occurs under heavy load (e.g. pixel shaders). A side result is 5-15 degree higher GPU temperature.

    "Bug features" are the same as 45.23 has.

  • Detonator 51.75, dated 28.08.2003.

    The first leaked beta of Detonator 50 that is called to raise GeForce FX pixel shader performance. Offers considerably improved Control Panel.

    This is very raw and extremely buggy. Don't use it.

• In September the following updates were released for games in the gallery:
  • Patch v1.32 for Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide.
  • Patch v52 for Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
  • Patch v1.11 for "IL-2 Shturmovik: Forgotten battles"

Games

1. AquaNox 2 Revelation v2.159
2. Battle Engine Aquila
3. BloodRayne
4. Colin McRae Rally 3 v1.1
5. Delta Force: Black Hawk Down v1.2.1
6. Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind v1.6
7. Enclave
8. Enter the Matrix v1.52
9. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City v1.0
10. Mafia v1.1
11. MotoGP 2
12. Need for Speed Hot Pusuit 2 v242
13. Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide v1.32
14. No One Lives Forever 2 v1.3
15. Return to Castle Wolfenstein v1.41
16. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter v1.07
17. Silent Hill 2
18. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell v1.2.087
19. Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness v52
20. Unreal 2 v2001
21. Unreal Tournament 2003 v2225
22. "IL-2 Shturmovik: Forgotten Battles v1.11R1.11
23. "Operation Silent Storm"
24. "Pirates of the Caribbean"

AquaNox 2 Revelation v2.159

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	45.23 45.33	Submarine cockpits aren't textured.
		Partially fixed in 51.75. Partially - because the bug still occurs sometimes.

Battle Engine Aquila

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	45.23 45.33 51.75	Disabled "Advanced graphical features" item responsible for water shaders.	-
		The same as with Radeons below: the game doesn't recognize GPU. Might occur on any GeForce FX card, except 5800 and 5900 Ultra. To fix it add DeviceIDs of absent GPUs to the Vendor:10DE nVidia section in cardid.txt file. DeviceIDs are provided in the drivers INF file or can be seen in the RivaTuner. If you are not for it, download (2.6Kb) the fixed file from us and replace the original (don't forget to back it up though).
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9600 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.5 3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	Ground textures are not drawn by new Radeons. This is especially strange, as Radeon 9700 Pro textures ground all right.
		The game doesn't recognize new ATI GPUs. Edit the "Vendor:1002 ATI" section in cardid.txt located in the game folder. Add DeviceIDs for Radeon 9600 and Radeon 9800 similar to existing DeviceID for Radeon 9700. You can find DeviceID for your card in the drivers INF file or in RivaTuner, for example. E.g. for Radeon 9600 you must add: Device:4150 Radeon9600 Device:4170 Radeon9600 You can also download (2.6Kb) the fixed file from us, just don't forget to back the original up.
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9600 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.7 3.6b6387	Tree textures are surrounded by some snow if anisotropic filtering has been forced.
		For now the only solution is to disable anisotropic filtering.

BloodRayne

Colin McRae Rally 3 v1.1

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce4 Ti4600	44.03 44.65 44.71 44.90 45.23 51.75	Impossible to enable FSAA ingame, as the menu lists only "None". It seems it's more of a feature than a bug. Developers might be thinking that	-
		FSAA can be easily forced in drivers.
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.5 3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	The same thing as with GF4MX/Ti - FSAA can't be enabled from the menu.	-
		If you remember, FSAA can be easily forced in drivers.
All cards	All versions	"Phantom" shadow appears on some road-close vertical surfaces. Seems like a game engine bug.
		Patch v1.1 doesn't help.	-

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down v1.2.1

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	44.03 44.65 44.71 44.90 45.23 45.33	Messed up lighting of player's weapon that doesn't correspond to the environment and flicks on some levels.
		"Fixed" in 51.75, but as these drivers spoil pixel shaders anyway (see below), I can't recommend them (see the Radeon 9800 Pro screenshot to the right).
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	51.75	Pixel shaders are corrupted (or Somalia has acid rivers.)
		Rollback to 45.23 or 45.33.	-
Radeon 9000 Pro Radeon 9600 Radeon 9700 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.5 3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	Impossible to enable FSAA ingame, as the menu item is diesabled. It seems the developers enabled FSAA only for cards they tested personally. I.e. GF4Ti and GFFX.	-
		AA is easily forced in drivers and works perfectly.

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

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce4 Ti 4600 GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	44.03	Impossible to force FSAA in the drivers.	-
		Install other drivers like 44.65, 44.71, 44.90 or 45.23.
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	51.75	Water shader bug.
		Rollback to 45.23 or 45.33.
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.5 3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	Messed up water shader (see screenshots).
		None solutions so far. Each graphics card actually draws this long-suffering shader in its own way :-) But if the error isn't so noticeable on some cards, it immediately draws the attention on R9000Pro. (R9800Pro screenshots to the right).
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.6b6387	Either Morrowind is flooded, or this beta periodically hides parts of the landscape on Radeon 9000 Pro.
		Rollback to the latest official reference drivers (3.7).	-

Enclave

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	51.75	Corrupted fog (seems like a feature of this beta).
		Rollback to 45.23 or 45.33.
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	51.75	Corrupted main menu. A previously played movie frame drawn instead of the Enclave world map.
		Rollback to 45.23 or 45.33.
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.5 3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	Shader problems. The bug occasionally disappears to appear again next run. The source of it is unknown.
		Even when this doesn't occur, it seems the water shader is "overpixelated". Hard to say whose fault it is...

Enter The Matrix v1.52

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce4 Ti 4600 GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	44.03	The image "stereorizes" in the Focus mode at FSAA enabled in the launcher or forced in the drivers.
		Fixed in 44.65, 44.71, 44.90, 45.23, 45.33, 51.75.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City v1.0

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	44.03	In some time the game turns into a mess of triangles.
		Install patch GTAVC v1.1. Or install 44.65+ drivers where this bug seems to be fixed.

Mafia v1.1

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	51.75	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.
		The only way to get normal anisotropic filtering on GeForce FX for now is to use the previous 45.23 or 45.33.
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9700 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.7 3.6b6387	Trilinear filtering is disabled when any anisotropic filtering level is forced (be it Perfomance, or Quality). Such a trait or ATI drivers coupled with Mafia texturing peculiarities. When Quality anisotropy is forced, Catalyst enables trilinear filtering for the first level only to perform main texturing. But in Mafia primary textures are processed on the next levels disabling trilinear filtering.
		No solutions for now.	-

MotoGP 2

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	51.75	Either it's a solar eclipse, or this Detonator 50 beta has gamma problems in MotoGP2.
		Rollback to 45.23 or 45.33.	-

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 v242

Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide v1.32

An FSAA ingame "feature": the slider is designed for NVIDIA offering the maximum of "Nice 4 Sample Antialiasing". On GeForce 3+ this means FSAA 4x 9 tap. As there's no such FSAA mode on Radeon 9500+, FSAA just disables. "4 Sample Antialiasing" setting provides usual 4x FSAA on Radeon.

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.5 3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	Impossible to enable FSAA ingame.	-
		Force it in the drivers.
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9700 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	Catalyst 3.6 provides awful banding on the background fog. Catalyst 3.7 doesn't fixes it. Moreover, some people say that some textures become 16-bit with Catalyst 3.6 and higher
		Roll back to 3.5 drivers.
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9700 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.5	Some wall flicker.
		Install Catalyst 3.6 or higher.	-

No One Lives Forever 2:
A Spy in a H.A.R.M.'s Way v1.3

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9700 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.5 3.6	Some triangles partially off-screen lack textures, but lightmap.
		Fixed in Catalyst 3.7. Still you won't be able to load about 75% of previously saved games.	-

Return to Castle Wolfenstein v1.41

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	51.75	All the level is light-struck. Seems to be a lightmap bug.
		Rollback to 45.23 or 45.33.

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter v1.07

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce4 Ti4600	44.03 44.65 44.71 44.90 45.23 45.33 51.75	The oldest bug of Z buffer initialization: by default SSTSE asks for 32-bit Z-Buffer and sets the minimum of 16-bit. Meanwhile the game runs in 32-bit color mode.
		Fixed manually. In the console type: gap_iDepthBits=24; ApplyVideoMode()

Silent Hill 2

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce4 Ti 4600 GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	44.03 44.65 44.71 44.90 45.23 45.33 51.75	Banding naturally squares the fog. As there's much fog, it becomes annoying very fast.
		None solutions so far. Radeon 9600 Pro screenshots are to the right.
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.5 3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	About the same, as GeForce produces, but even worse.
		None solutions so far. Radeon 9600 Pro screenshots are to the right.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell v1.2b

You should remember that for NVIDIA GF3+ the game utilizes shadow mapping for increased shadow details. On GF4 MX and all RADEON cards it utilizes projected textures of considerably lower resolution. The difference is clearly seen on screenshots. But what's most interesting, SC's shadow mapping causes GF3+ cards to increase ingame "light amount". On the same screenshots you can see the different light meter values.

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce4 Ti 4600 GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	44.03 44.65 44.71 44.90 45.23 45.33 51.75	FSAA can't be forced. According to NVIDIA, this what game developers asked for to avoid rendering errors (see below about Radeon).	-
		Not a bug, but a feature. This feature can be bypassed by renaming SplinterCell.exe into, say, SplinterCel.exe. This enabled FSAA, but might also produce bugs similar to those observed on Radeons. For the sake of justice we must say we haven't seen any errors (just the deepest fps drop).
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	44.03	Messed up water shader in the bulk-oil platform.
		Bug fixed in 44.65+ drivers.
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	51.75	Some lighting/gamma bugs. Some surfaces are lighted differently depending on camera position.
		For now just rollback to 45.23 or 45.33. Screenshots from Radeon 9800 Pro to the right.
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.5 3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	FSAA forcing problems again.
		Just don't force AA.
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9700 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.5 3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	Forced FSAA causes overbrighting when enabling/disabling nightvision.
		Just don't force AA.

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness v52

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce4 Ti4600	45.23 45.33 51.75	Enabling Haze produces only coloured smoke.
		The only solution so far is to disable Haze in the launcher.
GeForce4 Ti4600	45.23 45.33 51.75	Some Louvre guards lack textures.
		No sources of this have been found so far.	-
GeForce4 Ti4600	45.23 45.33	nVidia Shadows turn into strange grids in some minutes.
		Seems to be fixed in 51.75.	-
GeForce FX 5900	45.23 45.33 51.75	DOF (Depth-of-Field) operation: the entire frame or its parts are dithered instead of the back.
		A game bug. Fixed in v52.
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.7 3.6b6387	Some Louvre guards lack textures.
		No sources of this have been found so far.	-
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9700 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.5 3.6	TR:TAoD v42 lacks textures on partially offscreen triangles nearly perpendicular to the screen plane.
		Fixed in Patch v49.	-

Unreal 2 v2001

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	51.75	Some objects are drawn through the fog.
		Rollback to 45.23 or 45.33.

Unreal Tournament 2003 v2225

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	44.03 44.65 44.71 44.90 45.23 45.33 51.75	High-level anisotropy is disabled on some textures.
		UT2003-specific aniso optimizations. None solutions so far. GeForce4 Ti4600 screenshot is to the right.

"IL-2 Shturmovik: Forgotten Battles v1.11R1.11

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.5	Water shaders lock the system up.	-
		Update drivers to 3.6, 3.7 or rollback to 3.4. Disable water shaders by reducing landscape detalization.
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9700 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.5	Game locks up at 100% environment load.	-
		Update drivers to 3.6, 3.7 or rollback to 3.4.
Radeon 9000 Pro Radeon 9600 Radeon 9700 Pro Radeon 9800 Pro	3.4 3.6 3.7 3.6b6387	Water shaders occasionally turn acid green. These used to turn sky blue in 1.0r version. Isn't it the progress? :-)
		Disable water shaders by reducing landscape detalization. The bug doesn't show up there's any text onscreen (e.g. fps or timer).

"Operation Silent Storm"

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9000 Pro	3.7 3.6b6387	Big texturing problems
		None so far. To the right - screenshots from GeForce4 MX.

"Pirates of the Caribbean"

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForceFX 5600 Ultra GeForceFX 5900	44.03 44.65 44.71 44.90 45.23 45.33 51.75	Messed up water shader.
		Fixed by patch v1.01 or higher (to the right - screenshots from GeForce FX 5900 from Pirates v1.02r).

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