{"id":51,"date":"2007-05-22T12:56:53","date_gmt":"2007-05-22T11:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ozone3d.net\/blogs\/lab\/?p=51"},"modified":"2011-09-07T20:47:43","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T19:47:43","slug":"dynamic-branching-and-nvidia-forceware-drivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ozone3d.net\/blogs\/lab\/20070522\/dynamic-branching-and-nvidia-forceware-drivers\/","title":{"rendered":"Dynamic branching and NVIDIA Forceware Drivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several weeks ago, I posted on Beyond3D<\/a> a thread on my dynamic branching benchmark<\/a>. I wondered why dynamic branching performances on Geforce 7 were worse than ones on Geforce 6 or 8. I believe I’ve got the answer: Forceware drivers.<\/p>\n

Here are some new results where ratio = Branching_ON \/ Branching_OFF :<\/p>\n

7600GS – Fw 84.21 – Branching OFF: 496 o3Marks – Branching ON: 773 o3Marks – Ratio = 1.5
\n7600GS – Fw 91.31 – Branching OFF: 509 o3Marks – Branching ON: 850 o3Marks – Ratio = 1.6
\n7600GS – Fw 91.36 – Branching OFF: 508 o3Marks – Branching ON: 850 o3Marks – Ratio = 1.6
\n7600GS – Fw 91.37 – Branching OFF: 509 o3Marks – Branching ON: 850 o3Marks – Ratio = 1.6<\/p>\n

7600GS – Fw 91.45 – Branching OFF: 509 o3Marks – Branching ON: 472 o3Marks – Ratio = 0.9
\n7600GS – Fw 91.47 – Branching OFF: 509 o3Marks – Branching ON: 472 o3Marks – Ratio = 0.9
\n7600GS – Fw 93.71 – Branching OFF: 508 o3Marks – Branching ON: 474 o3Marks – Ratio = 0.9
\n7600GS – Fw 97.92 – Branching OFF: 505 o3Marks – Branching ON: 478 o3Marks – Ratio = 0.9
\n7600GS – Fw 100.95 – Branching OFF: 508 o3Marks – Branching ON: 480 o3Marks – Ratio = 0.9<\/p>\n

my conclusion is: dynamic branching in OpenGL works fine (read the performance are better than without dynamic branching: ratio > 1) for forceware < = 91.37. For the drivers >= 91.45, the ratio drops under 1. Dynamic branching works as expected for gf6 and gf8 but not for gf7 since forceware 91.45. So the bug explanation is a plausible answer (and it’s easily understandable: in this news<\/a> we learnt that a forceware driver is made of around 20 millions of lines of code – a paradise for a small bug!!!). I’ve also done the test with the simple soft shadows demo provided with the NV SDK 9.5. The results are the same.<\/p>\n

I’ve just done the bench with a 7950gx2 and the latest forceware 160.02 and dynamic branching is still buggy… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several weeks ago, I posted on Beyond3D a thread on my dynamic branching benchmark. I wondered why dynamic branching performances on Geforce 7 were worse than ones on Geforce 6 or 8. I believe I’ve got the answer: Forceware drivers. Here are some new results where ratio = Branching_ON \/ Branching_OFF : 7600GS – Fw 84.21 – Branching OFF: 496 o3Marks – Branching ON: 773 … Continue reading Dynamic branching and NVIDIA Forceware Drivers<\/span> »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,42,469],"tags":[31,181,180,51,59],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opengl","category-tests-reviews","category-tools-de-jegx","tag-bug","tag-dynamic-branching","tag-forceware","tag-nvidia","tag-tools"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t