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, 4.9 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

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

• The following drivers were released in October:

  ATI:

  • Catalyst 4.10 (8.062), another official reference from ATI. Catalyst 4.10 brings Catalyst A.I. optimization management into Catalyst Control Center.

  NVIDIA:

  • ForceWare 66.77 and 66.81, beta version of NVIDIA reference driver. This month, instead of leakages, betas were published by NVIDIA at its website and FTP, so we decided to examine ForceWare 66.81 with all our cards.

• The following patches were released in October for games in our list:

  • Patch v1.3 for Far Cry.

Games

1. Beyond Good & Evil v1.01
2. Chaser v1.50
3. Command & Conquer Generals v1.7 / Zero Hour v1.02
4. Delta Force Black Hawk Dawn Team Sabre v1.50
5. Far Cry v1.3
6. Ground Control 2 v1.007
7. Halo: Combat Evolved v1.04
8. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time v1.81
9. Richard Burns Rally v1.01
10. Rome - Total War v1.1
11. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell v1.2b

Beyond Good & Evil v1.01

Chaser v1.50

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9800 Pro Radeon X800 Pro	4.10	When anisotropy is enabled, a visible line of noisy textures appears in front of the camera.
		This is either a driver bug, or result of texture filtering optimization. This doesn't occur when Anisotropy is forced from driver.

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

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5200 GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900 GeForce 6800 Ultra	66.81	Again we could see onscreen garbage when AA was forced from driver and postprocessing was on screen.
		Use older drivers like 61.77.	-
GeForce 6800 Ultra	61.77 66.81	Incorrect water shader rendering.
		None solutions so far. (GFFX5900 screenshot is to the right.)

Delta Force Black Hawk Dawn Team Sabre v1.50

Far Cry v1.3

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce4 Ti4600	61.34	Incorrect water rendering at Ultra High and High detail levels.
		Fixed in Patch 1.3.
GeForce FX 5200	66.81	After Patch 1.3 GFFX5200 introduced lots of shaders 2.0+ bugs.
		For now just disable all shaders 2.0 effects.	-
GeForce FX 5200 GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	61.76 61.77	Clear banding on light source reflections.
		A result of extensive game optimizations for a number of ForceWare versions. 66.xx + patch 1.2 produced normal quality. (GF6800U screenshot is to the right.)
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	66.81	Patch 1.3 made GFFX draw CryVision invisibility shader in another way.
		Might not be a bug, but an official GFFX optimization. (GF6800U screenshot is to the right.)
Radeon 9200	4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10	Old problems were fixed, but new arised (with water).
		Reduce water quality to medium.	-

Ground Control v1.007

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9600 Radeon 9800 Pro Radeon X800 Pro	4.10	When anisotropy is enabled, a visible line of noisy textures appears in front of the camera.
		This is either a driver bug, or result of texture filtering optimization. This doesn't occur when Anisotropy is forced from driver.

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.)

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. Enabled Catalyst A.I. from Catalyst 4.10 now forbids to force AA like it was in all Catalyst versions since 4.7. However, disabling A.I. doesn't result in any rendering bugs when AA is forced. (GeForce FX 5900 screenshots with FSAA forced are to the right.)

Richard Burns Rally v1.01

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9200	4.10	Blinking flora along roadsides.
		None solutions so far.	-

Rome - Total War v1.1

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
Radeon 9200	4.10	Incorrect ground texturing outside map.
		None solutions so far.	-

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell v1.2b

Graphics card	Drivers	Bug description and solutions	Screenshots
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GeForce FX 5900	56.64 56.72 61.77 66.81	Water shader bugs seen as frozen still areas.
		Use ForceWare 53.03.	-
GeForce 6800 Ultra	61.77 66.81	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.)