News and informations

Lets begin with the old ones =;-) Somewhere into 1996, a Amiga software Picasso96, was born from ashes of the unsucesfull Picasso try.
This is important, since this software allow us freely to change the - according to one of its autors, Alexander Kneer: "bit 7 in the MaximumRowAddress register (index 9) of the CRTC controller
[0x3d4] = 0x9
[0x3d5] = [0x3d5] | 0x80 ...or...
[0x3d5] = [0x3d5] & 0x7f
This works quite well on old Cirrus, S3 and NCR chips. Keep in mind though, that most of the modern chips have those registers as well, but they only work as long as the chip is in "compatibility mode (VGA)" (which is used on the PC to ensure a display at POST time). As soon as a dedicated driver takes over the chip, the legacy registers are usually disabled." ...witch means that nVidia must have done something with DubleScan already, because they simply cant leave the chip into VGA compatibility mode, when i can play Q3 into 512x384 (tought at this point, i prefer 1024x768 =;-)))
But take a look, how easy enabling DoubleScan is on Amiga - Picasso96 screenshoot.

Sometime into summer 2002 i start searching for the solution for the DoubleScan problem i experiencing on my PC, what i bught late into 2001 as my first PC computer. IMHO Amiga is still much better machine. No offence, dudes...
After looking trought search engines and tweakers of GFX cards, talking with Ray Adams, autor of nVidia BIOS tweaker and such, i started from DALnet, where i asking some programers to help me. They mostly have no clue what i talking about. So, i went trought old friend and Amiga coder, Petri Antero Hakkinen, to the nVidia, asking for why DoubleScan is not enabled yet and if i can get docs or tool, to enable it.
At start, they have no clue, what i talking about! Later i realized, that they obivously never ever give anyone docs for register acess, and since their API have ATM no function for enabling DoubleScan, after 3/4 year of taking with ATM there nVidia guys, i launched this page...

10. 1. 2003 - this page was born =;-) Well, nothing earthshaking. Just the starting point of collection emails and infos into one place =:-)

11. 1. 2003 - discovered interesting bug - on the latest ATI drivers, a resolution 512x384 doesnot (surprisingly) have enabled DubleScan and looking surprisingly ugly even on brother Radeon 9000 and only 15" monitor! What a shame for ATI!
Also is added this News page, with two programs to check your 512x384 resolutions - intro Heaven7 (64k) and Razor 1911 cracktro for Starcraft (1,1MB).
Just to anyone can quickly DL something other that Qauke 3 to test this resolution. Some improperly configured machines - or machines suffering from bug on nVidia cant display these examples, same as Q3 into 512x384 resolution, on fullscreen. The bug happen, when you set the smaller (DoubleScaned) resolutions to higger refresh that 75Hz - then they are not fullscreen anymore!
Juan Guardado from nVidia told me, that this bug is already fixed, so, maybe when you try the latest beta Detonators 42.x + RefreshForce 1.1, you get lucky...

16. 1. 2003 - Juan G. from nVidia confirmed that "We (nVidia) do not support coolbites.reg or overclocking.", when i complaind that they no-longer seems working, whats bad, into the new drivers =8-/ But good news is, that he passed the DoubleScan thing to "I have submitted a bug report, we'll see what the driver team can do." driver team, witch means partly succes! =;-) OTOH, nVidia seems been uninformaed about the problem, that into the low, DoubleScaned already resolutions are overlay shrinked to about 1/3 of their height...

21. 1. 2003 - Juan G. from nVidia reported that driver team recently tried enable the doublescan "The driver team has enabled double scan for 640x480 and 800x600. It looks nice :) It will be released in a future driver." and since results are good, it will be relased into future driver - a major sucess! =:-))) Now lets pray, that we get this as option and soon =;-) And without any aditional quirks... =:-7

27. 1. 2003 - me, now as registred nVidia developer, filing a bug to nVidia trought webform. The bug is all about that into every DoubleScaned resolution is overlay aproximately half of their regular height. No dubt about, its crearly because the overlay is not aware of DoubleScan, and therefore get verticaly halved. Fixing this bug is important, because W/O this, we cant watch the movies - watching 1/2 of it, tought unbeliably sharp and nice, is not desired, i believe =:-))) (This bug happen on ATI cards too, someone should inform them also...)

14. 3. 2003 - after very long wait, nVidia finaly show a betaversion of new Detonatros, supporting GeForceFX cards. Unfortunately, this is the only one "positive" change. There is not a single bug fixed, nothing.
Well, the drivers allow now the digital vibrance controling by default, thats good, but nothing else get fixed or changed - except a DX9 stuff, well... They go after ATI and prioritize 3D, while 2D should probably die, or what...
To put it short, i was going to ask nVidia, if they arent shiting me, with this relase =:-(
Im VERY disapointed!

18. 3. 2003 - its confirmed, that the Detonators v43.03 are "current 43.03 developer release for GeForce primary feature is support for GeForce FX and DX9.", what makes sense and explain, why there is nothing serious changed =8-(

19. 3. 2003 - another Detonators relase, now v43.40. Changes? Dont ask me, nothing is diferent. Anyway, discovered serious bug about DVD playback on Detonators v41.09+. So, DON'T use them, if you are ever planing to do something with a DVD... Seems that activating TVout now broke "Macrovision requirment" to play a DVD. A bit mystical bug, is not it? My way to reproduce it is even more tricky =:-))) So, maybe you got lucky and things work for ya? For me not and i dont even use the TVout and i cant use the registry hack to make it working again, simply because there is not key about TVout, as mentioned, into my registers.

28. 3. 2003 - Detonators relase v43.45 - nothing new, not even the DVD problem fixed, recommended stay back with v40.72 - these work, at least. Funny thing - nVidia claim, that the SW (read, Detonators) are fine, its the old TV encoders, what cause the problem... =:-DDDDD ...nice joke, is not it? So, why then things working beautifully up to the v41.09?!?! As usually, no answer except this BS from nVidia. I beginning to lose faith to these ...ehm... guys.

10. 6. - a looong wait, well? Okay, im now "powered by ATI", eh... I exchanged my oldie GF2Ti to R9100 128MB Pro from Sapphire and run into terrible problems...

Anyone want buy a ATI card? Consider this!
----------------------------------------------------------------
Radeon 9100 product is NOT listed into product selection on ATI.com site.

Using latest Catalyst 3.4 packaging 7.88 on Win2000 SP3 stable system.

Is not possible define custom resolutions using PowerStrip 3.4, witch works well on nVidia cards for ages.

Need For Speed 5 (NFS5) - text is trashed, like it gets into watter filter or something like that. On my Sapphire R9100 its all the time, even into menu, on brother R9000 it only sometime flick to the trashed form during game.
http://doublescan.wz.cz/nfs5_on_ati.jpg
http://doublescan.wz.cz/nfs5_r9100.jpg - with new Catalyst 3.8 things getting even worser, the menu is converted to flicking polygon...

Soldier of Fortune 2 - show graphic trashing into marks on walls after rounds (flicking!) or even window on buildings get trashed when playing on ATI based card. Happens for my friends too.
http://doublescan.wz.cz/sof2_on_ati1.jpg
http://doublescan.wz.cz/sof2_on_ati2.jpg - it's enought to move for fix - result? Flicking shells on walls as you pass them...
http://doublescan.wz.cz/sof2_on_ati3.jpg

MaxPayne - its dead-slow loading is realy disapointing, compared to my old GF2Ti its about 6-8x slower - loading the first level took a whooping 2min 34sec on my 1Ghz P3 machine with 80G disk and 512MB ram Where is speed-up? Not to mention the fact that after finishing first level, during VERY SLOW loading (updating to DirectX 9a make the crash come very quickly, hmmm), the game silently quit, trashing desktop screen with some black color on botton.
http://doublescan.wz.cz/maxpayne_on_ati.jpg
One can repeat this using this savegame - just go to the doors, that it is, crash come at your machine too:
http://doublescan.wz.cz/maxpayne_savegame_ati_crash.zip
Problems repeated on R9000 and AthlonXP 1700 cpu, tought the loading is usably slow there - still 2x slower that with nVidia GF2 card, but its not shockingly slow at least.

CounterStrike - is terribly slow on ATI Radeon. It's because of the trueform, no dubt about it. But using the ATI patched hw.dll (1 175 552) over the orginal one resulting only with silent quit when i try start the game! I have into the curently used config these lines:
ati_npatch "1.0"
ati_subdiv "2.0"
...but the damn trueform is still enabled and performace is horrible with it.
Conclusion - the card is into this driver state usedless also for CS play.

Not to mention, that i have no idea why my Sapphire Atlantis 9100 is not certified by ATI, but the worser thing is - it cant handle overclocking core and memory separetely, like its defaultly set (250/200)... Well, oldie GF2 cards (hell, even RivaTNT cards!) can have set core/memory clocks independetly, but my card obivously dont like that.
What a limitation!

27. 6. 2003 - Cytalyst 3.5 are out. ATI support center, aware of the problems above i report, told me to give them a try. I did. No OpenGL game run anymore. I even revert back to entirely clean Win2k SP3 install, but no luck. Even Quake 3 always hangs. (same SoF2, CounterStrike...) It looks like to me as the last thing, that piss me with ATI so called "drivers". Time to get back to nVidia card. Anyone want ATI card, after reading this?
Well, at least, new BSplay, build 500 is out. Autor hear me and added a video option "No Scale On Fullscreen", what working. Hoooray! God bless BST! Now only DoubleScan and nothing can stop us (on nVidia cards, tought) from showing movies at their full quality.
I can't wait for this! (and to get rid of ATI forever...)

30. 6. 2003 - Cytalyst 3.5 hotfix for Radeon 9100 cards are out and installed there. Changes? NONE. Not a glitch are fixed. Terrible.

24. 8. - well, so much for being ATI powered. Not anymore! Using low-end GF FX 5200 now. It can be overclocked with passive cooling at 290/410 (from 250/333 default) and have 128MB of ram into four chips. Impressive. Drivers are of course much better, nVidia quality, but there are still some glitches. Good news - using recent 45.23 Detonators it apears that the double-scan related bug, what stretching the overlay size to its half vertically are gone. Hoooray! However, when a blit is performed over the overlay (it happens into absolutely standard 800x600 mode too) - just try press l into bsplayer to get a filelist and load next movie, while still being into fullscreen overlay - and as soon, you you load the next movie, you will see the ugly white lines on left and top... Anyway, that's not all. Like on the ATI crap, Max Payne did not work well too. It show display trashing when you start it and just want exit it. The game have poor performance, and what's worser, the loading level times are insane. First level took to load 1 minute and 37 seconds on a 1300 MHz Tualatin CPU, 512MB ram and 120G Maxtor drive with 8MB cache!!! And same crash, as on ATI, when tring to load next level from game - for example you finished level and then... crash. Terrible. At least there are, unlike on ATI, no more problems with SoF2 and CounterStrike games. However, GLMark from Vulpine crash, when you try run it. It works on ATI fine, so... a nVidia bug. The display trashing i experienced with a ATI card into NFS5 are there very much the same - maybe a little bit smaller into the first menu, but into the game menu - hell, they are almost unreadable!
http://doublescan.wz.cz/nfs5_on_nvidia.jpg

And another glitch - the maximum refresh 75Hz for the small resolutions like 512x384 bug are still there... =:-(

17. 9. 2003 - I installed Detonators 52.10. Well, a big version jump, is not it? But as big version jump this is, that small are the changes. Into one word - NONE. Not a glitch fixed, at least from what i reported, like GlMark from Vulpine crashing, MaxPayne crashing and distorted text into NFS... 75Hz limit also not fixed, terrible. What that big version jump for? To show that this version will play HalfLife2 DX game game well? Everyone knows that nVidia is weak, when come to fillrates, and especialy when one add DX9 shaders, then things get wrong... So, so much for numbers. Nothing gained.

18. 10. 2003 - a very interesting Detonators v52.16 i tested todays. Well, not a single bugfix, but, still, there is a DAMN great improve - first at all, OpenGL refreshrate fixes are no longer need - drivers do this automatically using the force refresh - hoooray! And second - it allow now user define many new things, but mainly - a new resolutions can one create! Just say 856 x 642 pixels, 32bit and 100Hz - and you got it! Amazing! And it works, too! Really good. Sadly, resolutions bellow 640 x 480 pixels are limited to 75Hz refresh (known DoubleScan related problem, well...) - but still, a great jump forward!

6. 11. 2003 - Detonators v52.71 tested. Well, not big changes from previous version. The glitch of 52.16 reporting wrongly my AGP speed as 4x is fixed, and for the first time, NFS5 texts apears a little bit better sometimes. Ugh... Rest is unchanged - there is still very ugly bug into SoF2 multiplayer as well, as still crashing Max Payne, not talking about Vulpine GL Mark what don't run at all. And sadly even more, nothing get improved into the creating/removing resolutions. Still 75Hz limit for resolutions bellow 640 pixels, still impossible to delete the stupid 720 and 840 pixels resolutions... eh, well... And from the 52.16 - the closer nVidia shadow are still there present. A very big limitation and problem for SoF2 player =:-( It could be better!

27. 11. 2003 - i finally got the balls to test Detonators v53.03... Well, to put it short, no single improve except fixed the SoF2 MP bug (the trashed walking soldier and later crash, when trying to create server on own machine...). All other problems remaining from previous Detonators. I found mainly limiting the impossibility to delete the resolution i want to delete as well, as still lack of possibility to enable DoubleScan...

28. 1. 2004 - Detonators 56.54 - a very promising release :) First thing i noticed that the stupid and useless 60Hz only resolutions 720x480 and 720x540 are gone - hooray - and second big thing is, that it now allow user to select custom driver behaviour for many applications - mainly games like SoF2, COD, Jedi... and so on =;-) That is very promising step into the future, because there settings are normaly not possible modify by user, just the drivermaker... However teh SoF2 crash bug are back again - just when one try create own, nondedicated server =:-( So i can't test the Finca map, if the mimpap bug are still there =:-/ Other changes in one word - none =:-(((

11. 2. 2004 - Detonators 56.56 - a pretty disapointing release. Nothing get fixed, not even the crash bug of SoF2, not to mention that there is still the lack of control over nVidia distance shadow, witch i would like - and for witch i still using Detonators 45.48, as the differences on gameplay are HUGE - see there. Another problem is, that the stupid, 720 pixels wide resolutions are back again - and still can't be deleted by user. Sad. I writed to nVidia dudes i know leter, basicaly asking if they don't miss lead programmer, because this release is terrible =:-((( Meanwhile is worth note, that ATI already almost fixed the text trashing into NFS5 - it now happen just ocassionaly, especially into levels like Autobahn, where is rain... Well, of course the other quirks, like crashing MaxPayne or SoF2 and it's polygon/texture problems are unchanged. Well, so much for ATI... BTW, when I moved on AMD from Intel, teh Vulpine GLMark started working like nothing ever happens?! =:-O Stunning fix - but I bet that when I test it back on P3 machine, there is not fix for this in drivers... :( I do test it later, when I can...

5. 3. 2004 - Detonators 57.10 - a release what added OpenGL debudging abilities :) However nothing is changed or - God forbid - fixed, as usual...

7. 5. 2004 - Detonators 60.85 - they basically supporting new GX FX6800 (NV40 chipset) line of cards, nothing much changed. On GF FX5700U they are couple frames slower that WHQ 56.72 ones on Q3 timedemo test, so I sticking with WHQ release anyway. At least the 56.72 fixed the quirk, where opening the nVidia display driver properties caused enabling small, but noticable sharpening level w/o chance of fixing this by any driver settings (sharpening is definitively enabled, but the drivers show not sharpening on). Nothing else seems fixed :( Again... At least I updated section about weird quirks on both ATI and nVidia cards: Interesting infos


16. 5. 2004 - todays I experimented a little with Catalysts 4.4 and PowerStrip 3.49 and I found that creating custom resolutions now partly working on ATI :) Great! Sadly, there are some limits. Finally we can create custom resolutions like 576x432, 720x540, 768x576 and 856x642 - but due to the used WinXP crap, we can't set anything bellow 800x600 into the display properties control pannel, so the only one resolution that we can sucesfully used is the 856x642 :-/ Tough, using PowerStrip we manage to change the resolutions better, all these mentioned working well, but what is this all for, when into the Fullscreen resolution selection box in BSplay 1.0 build 808 one CAN'T see these new resolutions! :((( Damn ATI, again only very small improve... On nVidia side of things, i saw 61.12 Detonators, probably with better NV40 support. I did not found the courage yet, to face he disapointing test to learn, that they again did not fix any important thing and just add another quirks... :-/

24. 5. 2004 - one curious petition person find, that in Detonators 56.72 are added the DoubleScan option!!! (shame on me, I did not spot it first...) Hoooray, sucess, one might think! Well, not fully. The option enable DoubleScan for ALL the lover resolutions, witch 1) your monitors mostly not handle in (640x480 in 100Hz DoubleScaned means Vsync 100.2Khz and my 17" EIZO F520 handle only 96Khz...) and therefore one have to set lover refresh - no better control over refreshrates is possible, too, just 100, 85, 75 and 72... :( 2) some resolutions bellow/including 800x600 what get DoubleScaned then, should not need to be, like 720x540, 768x576 and 800x600 - all these are useless with DoubleScan on normal monitors...
Well, at least things are moving now a little! Let's pray for more control over the DoubleScan and refreshrates being added soon... :(

13. 8. 2004 - I finally convinced myself to test the new Detonators 61.76 :-) There is no improves on how the Dotonators handle DoubleScan, one useless resolutions get added - 960x600 - (and still no-one can remove these resolutions that he did not want) and the SoF2 MP was finally again fixed - one can start the server in MP and walt trought the level. At least something. However these Detonators constantly losing the monitor driver! I did not like it, because I specified my max. resolution as 1024x768 so I did not have such chaos in the resolutions, however Detonators keep loosing these settings :( Damn. I definitively want unlock the Advanced Timing options and the Remove button for ALL resolutions. Mainly to setup the 640x480 to 95 or 96Hz (and not have just to choose between 85 and 100Hz!) and also get RID of the useless resolutions nVidia keep adding: 720x480, 720x540, 848x480 and 960x600 :-/

5. 9. 2004 - If someone think, that nVidia will fix something in the 61.77 public Detonators, it will be mistaken. I still losing the monitor driver, still not unlocked the delete button and the Advanced Timings are only for fixing what they broke recently - too wide custom resolutions... :-( Well, so much for this release. Probably this is just aimed to improve the performance and support the FX6800 HW.


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