RivaTuner 2.0 RC 16.2 Released

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Hello everyone, we just updated RivaTuner towards version 2.0 RC 16.2. Rivatuner is one of the (if not the) best Tweak Utilities available for NVIDIA GeForce and ATI Radeon based videocards. Obviously this release has GeForce 8800 written all over it. NExt to that we added support for ForceWare 97.xx and Catalyst 6.11.

RivaTuner is the most powerful tweaking utility for NVIDIA and ATI display adapters running under Windows 98 / Windows 98 SE / Windows ME / Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The purpose of this utility is to give you access to all the undocumented features of Detonator and Catalyst drivers. Drivers have a lot of undocumented registry entries. Some of them don?t affect anything, but there are some that are very useful. In general, they cannot give you big performance boost but they can improve image quality and solve some compatibility problems. RivaTuner will help you to change all undocumented registry entries. It supports all versions of Detonators (now called ForceWare) drivers under Windows 98 / Windows 98 SE / Windows ME (Detonator 5.08 or higher under Windows 2000 / Windows XP).

What's new: Added ForceWare 97.xx driver family support. Updated databases for Detonator and ForceWare drivers. Added databases for ForceWare 93.71 and 97.02 drivers. Added ForceWare 95 compatible transparency and gamma correction antialiasing control. Added Catalyst 6.11 drivers detection. Updated Catalyst 6.11 certified SoftR9x00 patch scripts. Updated PCI DeviceID database for both ATI and NVIDIA graphics processors. Improved driver-level overclocking module for NVIDIA display adapters: Considering that NVIDIA control panel's own overclocking tab is broken in the ForceWare 93.71 and totally removed in the ForceWare 95 and newer series, now RivaTuner forcibly enables and locks "Use alternate startup daemon" option when the ForceWare 93.xx and newer is detected. This ensures that RivaTuner will apply clock frequencies at Windows startup itself instead of allowing the control panel to do it. Now RivaTuner stores startup clocks in its own registry key instead of the control panel's one when enabling alternate startup daemon mode. This ensures that startup clock frequencies will not be erroneously halved and by the broken control panel of the ForceWare 93.71 drivers. Now RivaTuner uses its own routines instead of the control panel's exported functions for storing default clock frequencies in the registry when clicking "Detect now" button during enabling driver-level overclocking on display adapters with no separate 2D/3D clock frequency adjustment. Now "Allow separate 2D/3D clock frequency adjustment" option is displayed regardless of the registry settings on any GeForce FX and newer display adapters during enabling driver-level overclocking. Added experimental NV50/G80 GPU support. Thanks to Andrew Worobiew for testing RivaTuner with NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX and NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS display adapters. Added new CSAA modes for G80 bases display adapters. Improved low-level hardware diagnostic report module: Added G80 streaming processors detection support. Currently RivaTuner is the only low-level diagnostic tool able to detect and display the amount of active streaming processors on G80 based display adapters. Added G80 memory controller support. Currently RivaTuner is the only low-level diagnostic tool able to detect and display type of memory installed on G80 based board and amount of active ROP/MC units forming total memory bus width. Added G80 clock frequency generators support. Currently RivaTuner is the only low-level diagnostic tool able to monitor core ROP and Shader domain clocks and memory clocks. Added G80 specific performance tables v1.5 support for G80 VGA BIOS images. Now RivaTuner can display G80 specific core ROP domain and shader domain clocks defined in VGA BIOS in "NVIDIA VGA BIOS information" diagnostic report category. Added G80 specific voltage tables v2.0 support for G80 VGA BIOS images. Now RivaTuner can display G80 specific voltage tables defined in VGA BIOS in "NVIDIA VGA BIOS information" diagnostic report category. Added extended G80 I2C bus support. Now RivaTuner is able to access all 4 I2C buses available on G80 based bards. Please take a note that currently RivaTuner doesn't access G80 I2C controller directly and uses ForceWare's I2C access layer instead. Direct low-level access to G80 I2C buses will be implemented in future versions. Due to these limitations RivaTuner's I2C access code for G80 will not work under Vista, so low-level features depending on I2C (e.g. fan control, ambient temperature and fan speed monitoring) won't be available under this OS for G80. Added low-level fan control tab for G80 based boards with external I2C ADT7473 sensor and fan controller. Updated NVStrap driver v1.12: Added G80 support including streaming processors control support . Now the testers can disable G80 streaming units (block of 16 streaming processors) one by one to study G80 shader performance scaling and simulate not yet announced G80 based models' performance. Improved multiple display adapters support. Now RivaTuner can automatically switch currently selected display adapter via the command line. This allows SLI/Crossfire owners to create launch items and dynamically switch between two display adapters, e.g. with hotkeys directly when monitoring device temperature in On-Screen Display during playing the game. Please take a note that you can use previously introduced predefined applications list in regular launch item editor window for quick-creating launch items for selecting logical display device 0 and logical display device 1. Improved hardware monitoring module: RivaTuner no longer uses GPU family specific PWM controllers for monitoring reference fan duty cycle. Now the database contains per-display adapter model fan PWM controller usage info, defined via [FANPWM] section of RivaTuner.cfg file. This allows monitoring reference fan duty cycle on nonstandard display adapters using non-typical PWM controllers (e.g. G71 based 7800GS with G70 styled fan PWM controller). Improved multilanguage engine debugging features for third party localization pack creators: Localization logging system is no longer controlled by EnableLocalizationLog registry entry. Now this feature, as well as many others, are available via bitmask controlled by LocalizationDebugFlags registry entry. Please switch PowerUser tab to value analysis mode for controlling localization debugging bits visually. Localization log is more detailed now and level of detail can be customized by developer. By default the log includes previously available successful and failed requests to the translation database, as well as new database translation database initialization log. Initialization log allows you to see which translations are coming from each translation file, easily track the warnings from the localization engine (e.g. if you specify different transition for the same phrase in multiple files in the same translation database etc). You may optionally disable log categories you don't need to make a log less complex and easy for understanding (e.g. configure the system to log only failed requests to the translation database). Optional resized host highlighting mode. When this mode is enabled, RivaTuner highlights host controls resized by multilanguage engine by #dlu tokens in the translation database. This allows controlling new specified size of hosts visually. Optional host control info displaying mode. When this mode is enabled, you may use the context menu to select "Show host info" command for the required control. Host info includes host control class, ID and size in dialog units and simplifies the process of resizing the host or specifying custom translation for this host. Added new Easter eggs, updated the previously existing ones. FAQ updated. Minor UI changes and improvements Full ChangeLog

Download Rivatuner 2.0 RC 16.2