SW: KOTOR, Endar Spire, 1024 x 768, 32 bit
Catalyst
4.12
4.12
Catalyst
5.7
5.7
Forceware
66.81
66.81
Forceware
77.72
77.72
SW: KOTOR, Endar Spire, 1280 x 1024, 32 bit
Catalyst
4.12
4.12
Catalyst
5.7
5.7
Forceware
66.81
66.81
Forceware
77.72
77.72
SW: KOTOR, Endar Spire, 1600 x 1200, 32 bit
Catalyst
4.12
4.12
Catalyst
5.7
5.7
Forceware
66.81
66.81
Forceware
77.72
77.72
Catalyst 4.12 and 5.7
We can see that performance in Brothers in Arms are practically identical between both drivers. The difference between can be attributed to the variance between runs (2 to 3 fps). Homeworld 2 performance is also very much the same, with and without AA and AF. In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic we see some gains in various resolutions, but the most significant gains are with 1024 x 768, 32 bit, AA and AF (8 fps).
Forceware 66.81 and 77.72
Forceware 77.72 fixed a nasty bug with Brothers in Arms so it's not surprising performance is also better. The most significant gain is in 1024 x 768, 32 bit with 4x AA and 16x AF. Unfortunately, Homeworld 2 runs significantly slower with AA and AF if you're using Forceware 77.72. A performance drop also occurs in Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic with AA and AF enabled. So for these two games (and F1 Career Challenge, its best to scale down some detail or run without AA and AF for the time being.
Catalyst 5.7 and 66.81/77.72
Unlike the previous article, Image quality is relatively constant for both Forceware and Catalyst. The only exceptions are the light glow difference in SW: KOTOR that's present in Catalyst 5.7, but not really noticeable in gameplay.
So, how does thing fare for NVIDIA this time around? As we noted earlier, Forceware 66.81 will crash the whole system every time we want to switch to the Windows desktop in Brothers in Arms. This bug is fixed and no longer present in Forceware 77.72. In Brothers in Arms, the GeForce 6600GT is definitely the faster card, offering significantly faster frame rates for both minimum and average fps. So, not only did they fix the crash bug, but they also harvest some performance increase as well. In all, this is not surprising since this game is quite new.
Unfortunately, this increase and bug fix are apparently limited to newer games. In Homeworld 2, even with AA and AF, aliasing artifacts are still very much noticeable in motion with both Forceware versions. They become more obvious in motion. With Forceware 77.72, Homeworld 2 performance levels drops to levels below that of the Radeon X700 Pro when AA and AF are enabled. Considering they're not really very effective in removing aliasing, this is very disappointing indeed. Both Forceware versions runs slower with AA and AF at 1024 x 768, 32 bit in SW: KOTOR compared to Catalyst 5.7. It regains the lead at higher resolution (1280 x 960 and 1600 x 1200, 32 bit) with AA and AF, but trust me, you don't want to play at those resolutions: the average frame rates goes to 25 fps and below on both cards.
Conclusion:
So, it looks like we've proved our point yet once again. For newer games, users and gamers with the GeForce 6600GT must absolutely use the newer drivers. Newer drivers adds patches and bug fixes that makes them compatible with newer games. Not only do they (may) offer performance improvements, but what's more important is that they fix compatibilities with some games (even those that can cause system crashes). Unfortunately, the current official, final driver is still Forceware 77.72, with bugs that causes performance slow downs and graphical artifacts in some games. Most distressing is the fact that some of these bugs goes back to version 71.22 and there's still no fix for them.[Previous Page]
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