Nvidia ForceWare 66.93 and GeForce 6800

[XavierHyde]

I'm getting a new rig soonish, with a GeForce 6800 PCI-E included. Now, I've heard lots of horror stories about how video playback (especially HDTV WMV) brings the CPU up to 100% load, but supposedly the 6x00 series GeForce chips have a video processor unit which is designed to offload the CPU during these operations as well as during encoding. Now, Nvidia said that the VPU in the 6800 (at least in the AGP versions) was borken, but that it would be enabled to some extent (minus HDTV WMV decoding) in a driver release in November. You'd also need to download their DVD Decoder (so I suppose it's free now that Nvidia says it's required for proper operation of their cards?). Some hardware sites have reported that the 6800 PCI-E series had a fully working VPU (including HDTV WMV decoding) but even this required newer drivers to be enabled.

My question is, does anyone have any experience with the 66.93 WHQL drivers... is the VPU now enabled, and how does it perform on PCI-E cards when playing back HDTV content? Appreciate any info...

[ReAnimation]

The VP is still not enabled on the 6800 using the 66.93's. We are all still waiting for a driver to appear that will finally enable it.

There's been a few threads running in the past on the VP, its also been brought up on nvidia's forums (http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=153&st=20 ), so hopefully we won't have to wait much longer.

[XavierHyde]

The VP seems to be running well on the 6800 PCI-E (NV45) in this test, even with older drivers.

NVidia promised an official driver to be released in late November that would enable the VP on all 6x00 cards. The 66.93 release notes claim to 'be the one', so to speak. Is this not the case, and does anyone know what's the deal with the difference between the VP on the NV40 (AGP 6800) and the NV45 (PCI-E 6800) chips? It seems no AGP user has been able to use the VP, while the PCI-E users get varying results on their tests depending on which driver is used. If PCI-E versions have a working VP, I guess I should count myself lucky to be getting one.

Edited December 8, 2004 by cappuchok

[Chode]

The VP is still not enabled on the 6800 using the 66.93's.  We are all still waiting for a driver to appear that will finally enable it.

There's been a few threads running in the past on the VP, its also been brought up on nvidia's forums (http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=153&st=20 ), so hopefully we won't have to wait much longer.

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NVIDIA have official forums :|

Wow....how could I miss that...

[XavierHyde]

ForceWare 66.93 drivers released on the 9th of November, 2004, correct certain bugs, are designed to improve performance in 3D applications and also enable NVIDIA?s programmable video processor.

True or not? I can't tell since I haven't recieved my new rig yet, but I seem to remember that the video processor was also mentioned on Nvidia's download page for the 66.93 driver, but that the blurb has been removed, so I guess that's a fair indication their driver didn't work as they expected "in the wild". Perhaps their own revised silicon didn't have these bugs that caused all the currently-on-the-market cards to fail:wacko:o:

[ReAnimation]

ForceWare 66.93 drivers released on the 9th of November, 2004, correct certain bugs, are designed to improve performance in 3D applications and also enable NVIDIA?s programmable video processor.

True or not? I can't tell since I haven't recieved my new rig yet, but I seem to remember that the video processor was also mentioned on Nvidia's download page for the 66.93 driver, but that the blurb has been removed, so I guess that's a fair indication their driver didn't work as they expected "in the wild". Perhaps their own revised silicon didn't have these bugs that caused all the currently-on-the-market cards to fail:wacko:o:

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I don't think it is enabled on the 66.93's because else it would have been mentioned in the release notes:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_66.93

Chode:

Nvidia's had its own forums up for about 3 weeks now - its about time!