nVidia Releases 310.70 WHQL

WARNING: Update – I can’t say for sure, but this version seems to be having problems with SL Shadows.

nVidia has a new driver out. (Downloads) They released it December 17. This is version 310.70 or 9.18.13.1070, depending on how you write version numbers.

nVidia 310.70 WHQL

nVidia 310.70 WHQL

This version promises speed ups in a number of games. Second Life™ is not one of them. Plus there are a number of bug fixes too. I don’t know that any of them affect SL.

I’ve tried it, barely. But, it seems to work OK. I’m using the nVidia settings to override a number of the viewer settings. Turning off the viewers Anti-Aliasing (AA) and using the video card’s CSAA gives me a good performance boost, which just means I turn on more stuff and slow it back down…

WARNING: If you are doing photography with the viewer, you should probably leave the viewer’s AA turned on. The image here shows the difference between the snapshot with no AA and a screen capture using the video card’s CSAA.

Differences between Viewer and Video Card AA - Click to Enlarge

Differences between Viewer and Video Card AA – Click to Enlarge

If you are not doing photography, you can get better performance and a nicer on-screen image using the video card’s AA.

6 thoughts on “nVidia Releases 310.70 WHQL

  1. When I’ve used my nVidias AA rather than the SL AA I’ve found everything – including the user interface – AAed. The resulting UI looked unpleasantly fuzzy. Am I missing something?

    • I haven’t noticed my UI being fuzzy. I’ll pay more attention.

      Am noticing a lot of stutter with 310.70 and shadows.

    • yes and its to expect.
      Why?
      Well. As Nal’s snap/capture show, Nvidias AA smooth the on-screen display of the world. So also the for e.g. text of the interface as well.
      Nvidia can not know what is interface and what is the ‘window to world’ (WoW)
      The application (the viewer) itself can know this difference and so just do AA on the WoW and can avoid the interface fuzziness.

      • Looking I have noticed the difference. The UI does get anti-aliased using the video card AA.

  2. sorry Nal i shorted my comment maybe a bit much.
    Yes you are absolute right, video cards AA should AA the hole screen. The UI as well.
    The viewers own AA is doing AA only on the world, but not on the UI of the viewer. So here (on in viewer AA, without video-cards AA) the fonts do not look fuzzy.

  3. I downloaded these drivers just when they were released. I noticed a really big boost on performance, which is kinda odd because nothing about OpenGL is updated, but maybe they fixed small bugs enought to make SL faster.

    As for the AA, some AA type does that. If you enable FXAA it happens the same, isnt recorded even on screencapture software like Fraps or Action!. Also depends on how you are using the viewer. Most of time doesnt matter what settings you use on nvidia settings because SL override them when you enable shadows unless you have tweaked manually the SL profile to be able to change or enance AA ( I dont meant edited on nvidia panel, but ussing a different software which name I dont remember right now). For me as I said, doesnt matter what I choose, it always uses the same AA (when using deferred) which is kinda ugly but fast enought.

    BTW I didnt get any problem with shadows. SL seems to work perfectly with this new drivers. I just have enabled alpha antialising x4 and maximum performance on the power settings. The rest is just default values.

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