81.26 beta driver shadow question

[wrangler]

Hey guys,

I was one of the ones having problems with the NF3/6800GT 77.xx series drivers stuttering problems. So after much experimentation and searching, I found on Guru3d some beta nForce drivers 6.37 I think (nic drivers didn't work but everything else seems better especially ide) and some modified 81.26 drivers by NGO (NGO??) that had something they called "extras" that seemed to include a pci latency tool and something called nHancer etc etc.

Anyway, I got brave and installed all of this stuff and whalla, no more stuttering and 200 more points in 3dmark05 and the only artifacting I saw was during the cpu test part of 3dmark05 where you get 2 or 3 frames per sec, you guys know what I mean but other than that no artifacting in any games I tried, HL2 CS:S BF2 FarCry. D3 never stuttered but I tried it anyway and it's still good with no artifacting.

So, now I'm traveling around the forums and I see people poopooing these 81.26 drivers saying the reason their faster is there are no shadows or the shadows are fked up or comments to that regard. Well me being the anal-retentive computer user that I am I fire em all back up again and start looking around to see if there are indeed shadows and if they behave correctly in relation to the object that should be casting the shadows and you know what? I didn't see any example of this shadow problem. I then consider that maybe people are confusing the term shadows with shaders and even though I wouldn't know a shader if it slapped me in the head and said "hey, I'm a shader" the games looked great and just like they always have at least to my subjective ability to detect graphical goodness.

Am I missing something. Did I cure my stuttering only to be missing something I should have. (although don't know why I'm searching for problem I can't detect) I guess I want to be excited about getting rid of the stuttering without thinking I lost something else.

Thanks for reading my book

 

[pain.angel]

they work fine for me as well, shadows and everything and about a 20% fps increase in bf2 and css. I do see some bugs in it tho, for instance in bf2 the sandbags sometimes look like liquid metal type stuff and earlier it was doing some funky business i cant really explain that i think may be related but i think ill use thsee until the officials come out, the only problem game is bf2 which is bugs galore on its own so. My videocard is also overclocked, 6600 vanilla at 450/600.

 

[wrangler]

I'll have to take a look at those sandbags when I get home but when I played it last night I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary at all. BF2 was actually the game that seemed to get the best use out of it. Great game btw for the 3 people who haven't bought it yet and other than crashing to desktop on occasion with the old drivers the game hasn't given me any trouble at all. I say "bugs, what bugs".

Anybody want to wade in on the 81.26 shadow rumors. I bet theres some ATI guys who know why these drivers are supposed to be bad.

 

[pain.angel]

I'll have to take a look at those sandbags when I get home.

it didnt do it all the time just every now and then it would keep the shape of the sandbags but the texture would seem like flowing metal instead..