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In the Forums... |
Posted: October 4, 2000 Written By: Keith "Farrel" McClellan Introduction So, you've just gotten yourself a new video card (or maybe even a whole new computer) - and you are looking for a few quick ways to speed up your video subsystem without taking the risk of breaking something. Maybe you have integrated video on your motherboard and have no idea how to tune it up, and can't find a guide on tweaking your specific video chipset - or perhaps you've got a brand new board (probably from a company not known by the names 3dfx or NVIDIA) that we just haven't gotten around to (or haven't received a review unit for...) tweaking out yet. No worries! This is the place to look for some general tweaks to help you out. The Driver Spiel I know, I know - at this point this is old news to anyone who's read any of my previous articles - I seem to mention this over and over, don't I? Point being though, this is the fastest, easiest, and safest way to optimize the performance of your video card. You think I'm kidding? Take a look at the difference in speed from the Detonator 2 drivers to the Detonator 3 drivers (by NVIDIA). We were so astounded by the 60+% increase of the Detonator 3's over the older Detonator 2's (on the same card, no less!) at high resolutions that we dedicated a decent portion of an article (which you can read here) to it. If you are having trouble finding drivers for your video card, check out the manufacturers web page or take a look at windrivers.com for more information. To get the optimum performance and stability out of your new drivers, there are a few extra steps you are going to want to go through to install the new drivers beyond what you might normally do when upgrading, say, a driver for a sound card. After you extract the drivers, go into the device manager and delete your video card (which actually deletes the video card drivers) and restart your computer. When the computer searches for the video card, finds it, and asks if you would like to point it towards the best drivers available, just point it at the directory where you extracted the new drivers and let it fly. Just FYI, if the drivers come with other, specific instructions on installing the drivers, they supercede any information I've given you here - hopefully, the manufacturer knows what it's talking about. |
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