[Dave Baumann]

The latest version 1.1 of nHancer has just been released and its website www.nhancer.com is online now.

nHancer is a new advanced profile editor for nVidia cards. Version 1.0 has been released about two month ago and acclaimed much praise in the community.

nHancer offers many more options than nVidia’s own control panel, including advanced SLI options to make almost every game SLI compatible, additional options for anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, optimizations and much more.

A database of profiles is available on the website, and we’re planning to add many more games to this database. With the help of the community, eventually this database is supposed to contain all games, old and new, to make them SLI compatible and offer the best possible image quality for every hardware out there, ranging from a GF 4x00 Ti to a 6800Ultra SLI.

http://www.nhancer.com/

[digitalwanderer]

Have you tried it yet Dave or are you just pimping a news e-mail?

EDITED BITS: Oh man, you need net 1.1 installed for it? Bleh! :?

Downloading net 1.1. now...

[jaymind]

This is one of the most useful apps for a video card I have tried in ages. I use this exclusively with my 6800GT now. And the other FSAA modes it unlocks easily are very nice to play with.

It has the usual MSAA mode, plus a full range of SSAA modes and all of the moxed modes that have been available to date on various cards.

Sweet little app - definetly worth using.

[trinibwoy]

Yep, been using it since it first came out. Very intuitive and clean interface. Was playing around with the AA modes yesterday. Got 14K in 3dmk01 with 8xAA

They also have some sample pics on their website with the effects of different levels of AA and AF - pretty useful for doing quick comparisons.

[Tim Murray]

/me wishes .NET 2.0 would just come out already.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by The Baron

/me wishes .NET 2.0 would just come out already.

What will be the big advantages?

[Tim Murray]

it doesn't take an hour to boot up like 1.1? at least, with the beta.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by The Baron

it doesn't take an hour to boot up like 1.1? at least, with the beta.

Pagh. Kids these days are always in such a rush.







I installed this thing and it looks pretty good, but I haven't tried it out yet.

[UPO]

I thought that there is no gamma correct multisampling on nVidia cards.How is it implemented? Software emulation?

[Tim Murray]

Originally Posted by UPO

I thought that there is no gamma correct multisampling on nVidia cards.How is it implemented? Software emulation?

I believe this is one of the weird NV40-only hidden FSAA modes.

[wireframe]

I have to put my praise up for this app. This is exactly the kind of interface that the controal panel needs and almost exactly what I would like. Being able to access the hidden modes is great and it's especially interesting to play around with the 16x mode on some games (kinda...almost....nearly perfectly playable for games like Silent Hunter III).

The one thing that would make this tool perfect, other that slightly larger controls because I dislike small fidgety buttons when they don't need to be, is drag-n-drop and a search/scan function. There is nothing wrong or terribly bad about adding games manually, but I figure we all play the same games so it shouldn't be too tough to database this.

One 'hidden' functionality of this tool is the ability to quickly save/export the profiles. For example, when you change drivers you may use the restore function of Windows, but this won't save your profiles XML file. With this tool you can easily export all the profiles and keep backups.

[DemoCoder]

Originally Posted by UPO

I thought that there is no gamma correct multisampling on nVidia cards.How is it implemented? Software emulation?

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewto...=253483#253483

An NV employee lurking that thread told me that tried my suggestion and it worked. I didn't know that they ever released a driver with it, thought it was just an single developer's afternoon experiment.

[UPO]

Nice trick!
IIRC supersampling modes don't blend subsamples "gamma correctly" . Since SSAA is slow anyway wouldn't be reasonable to use similar shader for it?

[DegustatoR]

Originally Posted by DemoCoder

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewto...=253483#253483

An NV employee lurking that thread told me that tried my suggestion and it worked. I didn't know that they ever released a driver with it, thought it was just an single developer's afternoon experiment.

Most of 7x.xx FW versions has it as a hidden AA mode.

[Grestorn]

Just saw that Dave has posted my mail about nHancer in this thread. Thanks Dave!

If you have any questions or suggestions, send them to me. Or even better, write a posting in the forum of the nHancer site.

Originally Posted by wireframe

The one thing that would make this tool perfect, other that slightly larger controls because I dislike small fidgety buttons when they don't need to be, is drag-n-drop and a search/scan function. There is nothing wrong or terribly bad about adding games manually, but I figure we all play the same games so it shouldn't be too tough to database this.

I planned to include drag'n'drop from the very beginning, but hadn't had the time to do it yet. It's one of those features that look great on paper, but almost nobody is using it. But if you want it, I'll do it. It's not that much work after all.

Originally Posted by wireframe

One 'hidden' functionality of this tool is the ability to quickly save/export the profiles.

Is it that hidden? Hm... Maybe I should put a toolbar into the app, to make these functions more visible... on the other hand, I don't want the app to use even more screen space as it is. What do you think?

Originally Posted by wireframe

For example, when you change drivers you may use the restore function of Windows, but this won't save your profiles XML file. With this tool you can easily export all the profiles and keep backups.

This is even done automatically. If you install a new driver and restart nHancer (after you've restarted your system), nHancer will directly show you the import screen with the list of profiles you had before the driver install, and you can choose which profiles to reimport.

[Grestorn]

Regarding the gamma corrected 4x AA mode.

There is a bug in the current drivers with that mode. If you use it once, the normal 4x mode doesn't work properly anymore (it's using completely wrong gamma values), until you restart your system. Just wanted you to know that, in case you were wondering

[Guden Oden]

Originally Posted by Grestorn

Maybe I should put a toolbar into the app, to make these functions more visible...

How about a standard set of apply/ok/cancel buttons too? Fiddling with the options and then having to remember what they were originally if one changes one's mind isn't really ideal...

[Grestorn]

Originally Posted by Guden Oden

How about a standard set of apply/ok/cancel buttons too? Fiddling with the options and then having to remember what they were originally if one changes one's mind isn't really ideal...

Actually, I made this decision quite conciously. One of the reasons is that nHancer immediately recognizes any change made by another tool (control panel or otherwise) and updates itself accordingly. This wouldn't work if the user has made changes he hadn't committed yet.

Another solution to your problem would be to integrate a multiple level undo. This is not that hard to do, but it takes some time. The only reason I didn't already implement an undo feature is that I thought that the application is just to small to justify the effort.

[Guden Oden]

The problem with having no a/o/c buttons is it isn't entirely obvious when the program saves changes, or indeed if they've been saved at all when it's closed down. It might not be such a biggie for experienced users (though it kind of gets on my nerves these buttons aren't there ), but I'd imagine it's a fair bit more disconcerting for beginners. It's windows standard after all that these buttons be present, and come on now, how often do people have multiple tweaker apps open at the same time? That's a recipie for disaster anyway because though your app might be aware of what those apps do, the same probably isn't true the other way around... I somewhat doubt the usefulness of this particular feature.

[Grestorn]

nHancer is not the only tool to work that way. In fact, most registry tuning tools, e.g. aTuner, work in a very similar way.

There is no need to close nHancer for the changes to become effective. Any change is effective immediately. And I'm going to great length to explain that multiple times in the online manual (that doesn't get read by anybody, of course ).

About the "multiple apps at the same time", I beg to differ. I frequently use the control panel while nHancer is active. Of course, I always close the cp when I'm finished, to avoid any problems, since as you wrote the cp doesn't register changes made by other tools. But nHancer can always remain open.

Another thing is the import of profile that happens if you open a .nhprofile file, either on your own system or from a weblink. Another instance of nHancer is used to import that file, that instance closes itself automatically afterwards, but an instance that might already be running is reflecting the imported profile nonetheless.