Get more out of your Geforce 8

Either I’m getting old or is obtaining the most out of a typical performance desktop PC more complicated every year? If you feel the same way, I must apologize for what I am about to show you. There is a new way to achieve a potential double digit boost out of Geforce 8 video cards.

You may know that in Geforce 8 video cards, the stream processors (also referred to as shaders) run faster than the rest of the GPU by means of a multiplier not unlike the FSB multiplier used in CPUs since time immemorial. This is true for all Geforce 8 cards from the very top end, to the bottom of the barrel boards. This ratio has only been tweakable though BIOS editing and flashing until Nvidia gifted us with software control starting with forceware driver version 163.67. Note that you don’t really need to know about the multiplier, or what it is to overclock your video card as described below.

So you have a Geforce 8 card, are knowledgeable about updating drivers, and have experience with GPU overclocking. If not, get to work on that and come back. Still with me? Okay, I bet you’re wondering why you should care about this shader clock stuff. Just like anything to do with PCs it depends on your setup. If you ever find yourself GPU limited, increasing shader clock by modifying the multiplier will increase game performance in almost all circumstances. This is because the stream processors in Geforce 8 series cards do most of the important rendering work in modern PC games. So even in games that aren’t particularly shader heavy (shiny, bumpy, HDRy), you will see a benefit. Let’s look at some hard numbers.

My XFX 8500 GT has a shader multiplier of 2. Stock speeds are 459 ROP, 918 Shader & 400 GDDR2. 459 x 2 = 918. Makes sense right? Using the stock multiplier, the card clocks up to 729 ROP, 1458 Shader & 464 GDDR2. But through independently raising the shader clock (and thus modifying the multiplier mentioned above), I managed to get the shaders up to 1782 MHz. For the record, that’s 22.22% faster than the shaders run at the default multiplier. This puts my shaders dangerously close to a 100% overclock, the holy grail of overclocking. This is how that translates to actual game performance.

	Half-Life 2 Episode 1	STALKER	Serious Sam 2
729/1458/464	25.78 FPS	95.77 FPS	30.70 FPS
729/1782/464	29.24 FPS	107.35 FPS	35.47 FPS
Percent Difference	+ 13.42%	+ 12.09%	+ 15.54%

Episode 1 & STALKER were benchmarked at 1920×1200. Serious Sam 2 was ran at 1280×1024. Other important hardware in the system:

Q6600 @ 3200 MHz (400 x 8), Asus P5B D, 3GB DDR2 @ 400 MHz, 5-5-5-10, Vista 32-bit, v163.71 drivers.

Okay, with that business out of the way I think you get the idea. This can make a big difference if you’re GPU limited. If you roll with a high end 8800 it is less likely to produce such noticeable results so consistently if only because you’re less likely to be GPU limited. But if you’re running an 8600 or lower, double digit performance increases are within reach.

How It’s Done

As of this writing, there is only one software application that is capable of controlling the ROP and shader domains independently, and that application is RivaTuner 2.05. Well, 2.04 as well but the control wasn’t fully integrated into the UI in that version. Although it’s a very useful and powerful program overall, I’ve never been much of a fan of RivaTuner’s UI. I don’t understand why you need to find and click discrete little arrows to access most of the functionality. This is why I’m pretty explicit in the steps below.

First of all, install RivaTuner version 2.05 and the latest Nvidia drivers. I recommend the 163.71 set which is the latest as of this writing. This works in both XP and Vista but you have to do an extra step for XP. I’ll start there.

1) To Enable Vista like shader multiplier control in Windows XP Open RivaTuner –> Switch to the Power user tab –> Expand RivaTuner \ System –> Set NVAPIUsageBehavior to 1 as shown here — > Restart RivaTuner.

In this same section of the “Power User” settings, you can set NVAPIShaderClockControl to 0. This will revert RivaTuner’s UI back to what it was before 2.05. But it will still be able to change clocks with the new drivers, unlike previous versions of RivaTuner and all other overclocking apps as of this writing. Obviously you don’t want to do this if you want to adjust shader and ROP clocks independently which is what this write-up is about.

2) Now that that is out of the way, open RivaTuner’s hardware monitor. Click the top “Customize…” arrow and then the magnifying glass as shown here.

This is what you should see. As labeled, the top graph is the ROP domain and the 2nd graph is the shader domain.

3) Leaving the monitor open, go back to the main tab then click the lower “Customize…” arrow then the “system settings” icon as shown here. This is where overclocking is done in RivaTuner. Check the “Enable driver-level hardware overclocking” checkbox at the top left. Change the drop down box at the top right to “performance 3D”. Nvidia’s drivers have the ability to clock video cards differently depending on the circumstances, which is what the top right dropdown box is about. For games, your card will kick into the performance 3D clocks.

Note that in the new version there are now 2 sliders, one for ROP clock and one for shader clock. There is also a new “link clocks” check box. This check box does just what you’d expect, linking both clock domains according to your GPU’s default multiplier. With this checked, both clocks will change when you move the sliders.

4) Move the sliders and click apply to change clocks. When clicking apply when the program is set to performance 3D, I’ve noticed that the clock jumps up to what you’ve specified for a bit even though I’m not running any 3D applications. If it doesn’t do this for you, or you want the performance 3D settings to “stick” fire up something like RTHDRIBL to force the card to go into performance 3D mode.

From here, I recommend unchecking “link clocks” and overclocking each domain individually to discover where your hard limit is on both, I suspect they will almost always be different. If you’ve already discovered your maximum overclock you need to find out if it was the ROP or Shader domain that was holding you back and push the domain not at fault higher. I am not going to cover how to determine overclock stability in this article, but the basic idea is to run some sort of 3D stress test and/or game to see if it crashes or produces artifacts. I should probably mention that RTHDRIBL has it’s uses but it does a poor job of determining unstable clocks so don’t stress test with it.

If, like me, your ROP domain was maxed out but your shaders weren’t, you increase the shader multi until you max them out as well. If, however it is the shaders that are limiting your overclock, lower your shader multiplier then find your maximum ROP domain clock.

Thanks to Unwinder, RivaTuner’s author for adding support for the new Nvidia overclocking interface so quickly. Hopefully, thanks to his program and this little write-up you can get as much extra performance as I did.

A Quick Look at Ubisoft’s new Ad Supported Catalog Releases

Somewhere in the middle of this evening’s 3rd or 4th general browse, I stumbled upon a few sites almost casually announcing that Ubisoft was now offering 4 of it’s commercial games as free ad-supported downloads. These sites mentioned the news as if it wasn’t a totally unprecedented move by a major game publisher that if successful, could change the way publishers handle their back catalogs. The games Ubisoft is making available are Far Cry, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Prince of Persia The Sands of Time and the original Ghost Recon. All are great games, although making sense of the Rayman Raving Rabbids controls on a PC has stumped me in the past.

Not being particularly interested in any of these titles mostly due to previous experience, I decided to pull one down simply to see what Ubisoft has cooked up. Far Cry was a safe bet because I already own a copy and am very familiar with it. As far as I know, the installers for these games are currently only available on Fileplanet which requires free registration to download (barrier to entry number 1). After waiting about 30 minutes my Fileplanet download was ready and I went off to play 360 while it was coming down.

The installer comes in one zip archive housing 9 files, one of them being the setup.exe. I mention this because installing the game wasn’t particularly turnkey. Sure the above is no problem for any halfway savvy gamer but perhaps not for the more casual audience “free gamez!!” is bound to attract.

Anyhow, during the install process you have to enter a valid Ubisoft login and pass. These can be had via free registration on the Ubisoft website (barrier to entry number 2).

Far Cry’s click through EULA includes this new sections. Among other things it outs the ad company that they’re using (Double Fusion).

This game incorporates Double Fusion Inc.’s (“Double Fusion”) ad-serving technology (“Technology”), which allows certain items, objects or images (e.g. advertisements) to be placed in the game via your PC or console (“Placements”). The Technology also collects certain non-personal identifiable information about you the end user, including standard anonymous information, such as IP address and some information about your hardware and activities during your play of the game and interaction with the Placements (collectively referred to as “Non-Personal Information”). This Non-Personal Information, such as number of impressions for specific Placements, may be shared with and used by Double Fusion, its advertisers, advertising agencies, the developer of the game, us, the publisher or distributor of the game, and/or other distributors of the game (“Affiliates”). By the use of this game, you hereby consent to the temporary upload of the Placements to your PC or console; and the Non-Personal Information being collected and shared with and by the Affiliates. By the use of this game you also acknowledge having read Double Fusion’s privacy policy with respect to the use of your Non-Personal Information which can be viewed at www.doublefusion.com/privacy.htm, and which applies to you and your play of this game. IN SOME JURISDICTIONS, IP ADDRESSES MAY BE VIEWED LEGALLY AS PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION. YOU HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE TO DOUBLE FUSION’S COLLECTION AND USE OF YOUR IP ADDRESS AS NON-PERSONAL INFORMATION EVEN THOUGH YOUR IP ADDRESS MAY BE VIEWED LEGALLY AS PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION.

Upon loading up Far Cry you get treated with your first ad almost immediately. For me it was a short 10 second McDonald’s commercial that I don’t even recall what happened in. Wait, I remember something; there was a dude and he talked. Anyway, from there the intro video’s play. One of these “videos” was new. It consists of the following oddly worded statement, “This game is brought to you as a courtesy and contains advertising. We hope you enjoy your free game play.” Note that gameplay is always typed as one word in this context. I suspect somebody from the French Ubisoft headquarters penned that. Anyhow, after that rolls and Far Cry’s other usual intro videos play you’re dropped onto the new and improved main menu. Two banner ads have been added. The largest is at the bottom center, the other is in the upper right. Both we’re static and we’re advertising McDonald’s. After fiddling in the options menu for a bit I loaded up the first level. During the load screen I got hit with the same 10 second ad from before. After that finished, the level loaded and we were go for Far Cry.

I ran and gunned my way through the first level (I know the early levels of Far Cry very well). “How do I know I can trust you?” etc. I expected to see another ad while level two loaded, but alas, they neglected to show me one missing a valuable impression opportunity. After blasting through about half of the second map, the game crashed. Upon loading it back up, no matter what I did I couldn’t get another ad to show. The banners we’re gone and the impression that played when I first loaded the game was MIA. Maybe the problem is on their end; there is a good chance that the servers dishing this stuff out are flaky right now due to high demand. Or maybe my system decided to purge the ads of its own volition, I don’t know.

So there you have it. Even if the ads showed up on every load it would be a great bargain if you’ve never played these games before. I especially recommend Far Cry for shooter fans and Prince of Persia for action/fantasy fans. Both are triple A games that will run on most any system.

PS3 folding@home Screensaver also a Moneysaver

Since it’s ranks were added to the worldwide army of folding@home enabled devices in March of this year, the Playstation 3 has turned many heads in the distributed computing community. The PS3′s highly parallel Cell Processor chews through floating point operations like Japanese gamers chew through new iterations of Final Fantasy. Cell is architecturally perfect for the folding@home project. Sony realized this when it was looking for an altruistic pursuit to help demonstrate the raw potential of their new chip.

Fast forward 5 months later and The Pande Group at Stanford (with significant help from Sony) have revised the PS3 folding client for a second time. The new update offers the following.

• New protein calculations have been exposed making the PS3 client more versatile. This is the real news here people. The more versatile the PS3 client can be the more Stanford can use all that power to do projects that would take significantly longer on the PC.
• New visualization options for the famous vibrating protein renders. Plus the shaders and lighting has been improved on all of the rendering modes.
• A new advanced mode which is intended for PS3 users that fold for 8 hours a day or more. I suspect Stanford will push out higher priority projects or work units out to advanced mode users since these clients will be more reliable and productive.
• Remote Play support. Translation: check up on folding from your internet connected PSP. Generally pointless.
• New screensaver that lowers power consumption & frees up resources for folding.

Overall its a great update full of new features both frivolous and substantial. What caught my eye was the claim of lower power consumption with the new screensaver. You see, the PS3 renders a map of the world which slowly rotates as the folding proceeds. This keeps RSX, the PS3′s graphics processor, busy even though its completely unnecessary especially if you have your display switched over to some other input as I’m sure most of us do while folding. The new screensaver blacks out the screen except for a white folding@home logo that changes position every 15 seconds. This should give RSX a rest and, if what Sony claims is true, lower power consumption somewhat.

After reading the changelog, I felt some quick testing was in order to see just how much power and/or money the new screensaver will save your average PS3 folder. To do this I used my trusty P3 “Kill A Watt” which can measure power in several different ways, the most useful of which are direct wattage flow and killowatt hour (kWh) tallying.

A Quick Power Primer

Most power companies (at least in the US) bill by kWh. A kWh is equal to the flow of 1000 watts of power for one hour. So if your PS3 drew a constant 1000 watts (it doesn’t of course) for exactly an hour you would have used 1 kWh of electricity. Or, if you ran a 100 watt lightbuld for 10 hours, that would also add up to 1 kWh. At the end of the month the power company tallies this all up and bills you a certain amount of money per kWh. For me, that is approximately 23 cents each. Keep in mind though that I live in California and power here often costs significantly more than the rest of the US. Finding out how much you pay per kWh will be necessary if you want to get a handle on how much folding is costing you or would cost you. This information should be on your power bill in some form or another.

The Numbers

Firing up folding at home brings my (60gb) PS3′s power consumption to an eyebrow raising 234 watts. This is in the same league as many high end gaming PCs. When the screensaver kicks in, that number drops to about 215 watts. With screensaver on or off, the draw is very consistent so calculations can be extrapolated from these two simple numbers. So without further adu, let’s do some math.

234 watts of constant draw is 0.234 kWh per hour. So, if ran for 24 hours straight a PS3 folding without the screensaver would draw 5.616 kWh (0.234 x 24).

5.616 kWh a day x 31 days = 174.096 kWh a month x 23 cents per kWh = $40.04

Thats right; $40 a month is the worst case scenario based on my power rates. I don’t think I need to tell you that that is no insignificant amount of money. Let’s run the screensaver numbers.

5.16 x 31 = 159.96 x 23 = $36.79

The cost of folding for one month straight drops $3.25 according to my power rates. Not a huge difference but considering that is $39 a year it’s certainly worth kicking the screensaver on if you’re worried about the power bill.

I could probably go on for a couple pages about what this could or should mean to you, but I think the figures tell the story well enough. If these numbers seem high to you, don’t panic. Check your power bill and run the above equation with your cost per kWh replacing my 23 cents.

Windfall

Any kind of windfall I come into whether plastic or paper is just an excuse to be me a little longer. That me is still the lost kid taking balmy through young almond orchards. All the while thinking out loud about the latest girl to drive me straight to delusion from Stockdale High School to nowhere. That me who is driven yet more insane looking out ahead of him and not seeing a hundred ordered rows but five thousand individual trunks which all lead to the same place. And for the record that’s about 8 feet off of the ground. That me who writes in abstract teengoth metaphor even though he knows its cheesy and annoying. For me this semi haze we walk in is what makes us more than human. It makes us more than hairless apes. It makes us more than bags of protein and pretention. The opposite of all this being, contentment or situational satisfaction. Cats lying in the afternoon sun drunk on naps and fancy feast.

This particular windfall (and let me tell you, it was a long time coming) came by way of my new place of employment which I am currently fleecing for a few grand a month by pretending to be a computer expert. I struggle to hold back the sucker snicker when the boss (herein referred to as Adam) hands me a check. If he only knew how many levels of lost I feel for the lion’s share of the day he’d take it back, slap me nonchalantly, and tell me to get out of his sight. As much as I try to resist it though I do learn a bit more each day so sadly I might morph into a computer expert eventually.

In the meantime, the acts seem to be working. I act like a computer expert many times a day as noted above. I act like I have people skills and can interact in the cold way usually referred to as politeness. I act like I’m not disappointed that I don’t have the type of personality that draws easy laughs, women’s smiles, and warm goodbye hugs. I act like I don’t feel a little twinge of regret and self loathing when the girl chooses my coworker to slap on the head with an envelope as she walks by instead of me. Not that I have met many eligible women thus far in my daily rounds. None that could sling a notably mean envelope anyhow.

Well, there may have been one, but she turned out to be married. Does that make sense? More on that tomorrow.

The Charlatan

Isn’t it funny how we’re all treated like experts at the things we do by those who don’t understand them? All the while most of us stumble through our daily tasks hoping those same people don’t realize we’re just like everybody else plus a bit of experience.

Do you see me? I’m the 16 year old kid pining over one girl or another he barely knows, writing bad over-abstract poetry, and having garbage revelations about the meaning of nothing. That’s me ten years and ten minutes gone. That’s me whole and optimistic ten years late and ten thousand hairs gone.

Computer expert worth $75 an hour! Ha! We’re all filthy charlatans.

Or maybe it’s just me.