Question about the Quadro tweak utility

[Gail Oyer]

I lurk quite a bit here & will someday be a contributor. In the meantime, can anyone help with this? Last week I bought an M90 from the Dell business outlet. It has a Quadro FX 3500 video card w/512MB. I've installed the latest NVidia driver (& checked to make sure it is properly installed). But every time I run the Tweak Utility, the 16X anti-aliasing option is grayed out. Have I left out a step?

Many thanks for any advice!

[Michael Yeargain]

I know that some of the settings will grey out others in particular profiles. But whether or not the Q tweek utility does this by default I can't remember.

Seem to me mine was greyed out as well but I may be mistaken. As I was one time before about four decades ago...

[Al Navas]

I lurk quite a bit here & will someday be a contributor. In the meantime, can anyone help with this? Last week I bought an M90 from the Dell business outlet. It has a Quadro FX 3500 video card w/512MB. I've installed the latest NVidia driver (& checked to make sure it is properly installed). But every time I run the Tweak Utility, the 16X anti-aliasing option is grayed out. Have I left out a step?

Many thanks for any advice!

Gail,

Please look at this thread. I asked a very similar question, and I believe the answer also applies to the FX3500.

The term for 16X is Supersampling, which may be of lower quality than 4X, as Dean states. Therefore, you might be better off simply using the Tweak Utility. I did not do sufficient testing to determine whether my system showed lower quality, although some anomalies suggested I should leave things alone .


.

[DanEpps]

If the 16x option is greyed-out, it is not available for the particular card.

[Al Navas]

I believe the 16X is just not available while the Tweak Utility is installed. The image below shows what I get when it is not installed, and I select the card's Advanced Settings:





Al

[DanEpps]

Here is the key Al...

Why is the 16X anti-aliasing option grayed out? If your card has less than 512MB of video memory, the driver doesn't appear to support 16X hardware anti-aliasing, so we disable that option.

It looks like the card itself may actually support 16x but with less than 512MB, the tweak utility does not recognize the 16x option or the driver doesn't report it to the utility.

[Al Navas]

hmmmmm.... I do think the real reason is that 16X is not as good quality as 4X, so it is not allowed in Tweak, as Dean reported.

[DanEpps]

I think I found the real answer Al (emphasis mine):

2007-Jan-03: Updated to Version 1.0.2.1. This adds detection and correct options for the Quadro FX 2500M found in Dell and HP Laptops. Even though this graphics board can have 512MB of dedicated memory, it only supports 4X hardware antialiasing.

Also, Dean never says that 16x is lower quality. In fact, he says it is higher quality but slower speed:

What's the anti-aliasing option? The Quadro FX series provides hardware-level image smoothing to remove \"jaggies\". Enabling anti-aliasing does affect performance slightly, but image quality is well improved, which makes up for the slight performance hit. We recommend you enable at least 4X anti-aliasing, if not 16X.

What will I notice after installing the tweak? Within eCabinet Systems, complicated objects and jobs will rotate more smoothly, especially those with transparencies; jaggies should be reduced with 4X anti-aliasing or nearly eliminated with 16X anti-aliasing.

[Al Navas]

Dan,

You can see the source of my confusion below - I cannot specify 16X with Tweak 1.0.5.1, as the only options are Disabled, and 4X. I want my money back!

Dean - Is Tweak 1.0.5.1 supposed to allow the selection of 16X anti-alias?

[DanEpps]

Read my earlier post Al...the Quadro FX2500M (and it looks like all of the mobile series) do not support 16x, regardless of whether they have 512MB pr not. This is from one of Dean's posts to the Quadro Tweak Utility thread.