GTX970 & Nvidia Inspector issues - don't use Q antialiasing

tpw · Nov 16, 2015

Like a lot of people I tend to use NV INspector's AA settings which appear to generally be more optimised and give better results than the built in ones.

Today I replaced my long suffering GTX660 with a shiny new GTX970. After installing the driver I of course immediately fired up my driving sims. Imagine my disappointment when GSC booted to a black screen with the menu music! I'd seen reports of that GSC/970 behaviour in threads on RD, many of which suggested DDU or similar to remove and replace the driver. Before I went that far though I thought I'd just revert NV Inspector to defaults for GSC, and sure enough the game fired up perfectly. After a bit of experimenting I tracked the issue down to the type of antialiasing in NV Inspector: I was using 8xQ, and it seems that any of the AA settings with a Q in them don't work. Switching to 8xS worked perfectly, and with 8xS, 2xSGSS and FXAA the game looks beautiful and runs rock solid at 1080p 60fps (apart from those annoying occasional microstutters on certain tracks).

Hopefully this might help any of you who may be experiencing black screens after upgrading to a GTX970. The problem is not game specific, any games for which I was using Q AA were affected.

Bjarne Hansen · Nov 22, 2015

While I am sure there are many ways to get good results Here is my settingsfor a i5./ GTX970
Since you changed from Amd to Nvidia GPU You need to get rid of the old Amd drivers. This is a must! I went through the same change.
Use DDU!
http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html
Then reinstall Nvidia driver. If you are on Win 7 go with 353.62 or lower. Some have had issues with newer driver on dx9 games. I have not tried newer drivers still on 347.xx
Turn off all AA in config.ini
Use 3 or 4 times DSR
In game turn all video settings on High/ Max.
Shadows will depend on your CPU. I have over clocked my i5 to 4.2Ghz so have no issues running shadows on Max and race time on.
Turn of trackmap in 1.50 it gives stuttering on my system
I limited the fps in the .plr to 90 (-90) setting. Not sure it makes the display looking better but I have no screen tearing and no point in heating up the GPU just to have +2000 fps in the menu.
Guess you could use Inspector for that too but I am using .plr.
Now fire up Nvidia inspector
Set Negative LOD bias to Clamp
Set Max prerendered frames to 1

You will now need to find the Nvidia driver patcher.
http://www.racedepartment.com/downl...idia-drivers-patcher-tools-x86-x64-guzz.7083/
You can find it many other places too
Copy the patched nvd3dum.dll to the root of each GSE install you have.
It makes a huge difference special on converted/ modded tracks.
If you upgrade the Nvidia driver you need to make new Nvd3dum.dll's !

You should still have a little headroom to play with SweetFx/ SSAA/ MSAA to fit you eye
Some tracks do not like Shadows on Max so ether lower shadows to Med or find a better version of the track.
Hope this will be a good starting point.

Alex Sawczuk · Nov 22, 2015

Hmm yeah appologies, AA forcing works fine for me regardless or the setting in GSC Config. That said I'm using the latest drivers with no problems, and the negative lod bias clamping thing is only necessary for (poor?) conversions.

Gringo · Nov 23, 2015

From the NV driver release notes...

One thing about forcing LOD clamp that I have noticed is that it is not a universal fix, in many cases it will make your image very soft (blurry) at distance and result in less than optimal visuals. I recommend using the force LOD clamp only when you find an issue with a specific track. I have a copy of the patch driver dll in my GSC folder but I rename the dll file to disable it except for special cases.

Code:

Limitations in This Release

<snip>

Negative LOD Bias Clamp
Negative LOD bias clamp for DirectX applications is not supported on Fermi-based
GPUs and later.

<snip>

Zaphod Christiani · Nov 23, 2015

THANKS @Alex Sawczuk and @Bjarne Hansen for your time you invested in guiding me the right direction to get the best possible graphic's on my screen!
I'll follow your inputs and try fiddling around to improve my settings ...!!! (hopefully without messing up stuff ; )