HOW TO: force software shaders for the x3100

Many games will run much fast under software mode. The following directions to force software mode were posted on the intel forums:

To enable SW TnL for a specific game, open the registry, do a search for

_3DMark06.exe

In that same area, create a new DWORD entry: "_[name of executable for the game]"

Set it to 1 for SW TnL. Swap it back to 0 for HW TnL.

Note that there are like a billion subdirectories (okay more like 12) which contain _3DMark06.exe and you'll have to create the same new entry in each one, just to be sure.


*note* I only had to add the dword to the first reg dir that came up

For some games, such as Simcity Societies, Galciv 2, HoMMV, I am getting DOUBLE the frame rate under software mode.

 

interesting stuff noxxle99, is there a purpose for this in Vista (since it does not support HW T&L yet)?

 

I think it DOES support HW TnL. btw 15.7 is out

 

should this be done for xp too?

 

"should"? It depends, some games might run faster in SW mode. For Vista, it seems like MOST games do.

 

Wait for Vista Service Pack 1. It'll lower memory usage tremendously, which might solve the performance problems or at least make it better.

 

i really dont think thats the problem. Its just horrible driver support for vista.

 

You could be right, but we don't know. At first we thought that it was lack of hardware T&L support. But then we found out that it supports hardware T&L. Then we found out that in XP, much more games run faster on hardware T&L than software. It COULD be the memory, we don't know. Might not be worth waiting for Intel drivers if it really is Vista.

 

I still don't understand how it can be the memory. I have 2 gigs, thats way more than I need for most games. I have checked my system resources during gaming, and there is plenty left over.

 

intel x3100 cards arent good for gamings, as good as the hardware is its software isnt as good. =/

il pass this tip to my cousin to see if it will work

 

I wouldnt count on that. Some reports show that there's a negligible performance boost between vista rtm and vista sp1. I have never heard of sp1 lowering memory usage tremendously.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 No performance boost
Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/60215/windows-vista-service-pack-1-no-performance-boost

 

How do we know that this is what it actually does?

(Also, am I the only one finding it interesting that it apparently has special rules for 3dMark? Sounds a bit like the cheating NVidia and ATI got into a lot of trouble over a few years back, doesn't it?)

 

You mean whether it can be changed to run it on hardware or software mode by changing registry settings??

1. Because the latest X3000/X3100 drivers have the ability to change between software and hardware T&L depending on the game
2. But then we found some systems don't perform as well(like say with a crappy CPU), while some does(with a good CPU)
3. Since software T&L is really running on the CPU, we assumed that Intel isn't using a dynamic adjustment of hardware T&L/software T&L, but they have it fixed-somewhere
4. Then we found the place for it-I think an Intel guy told us that there is one in the registry(note this guy doesn't work for IGP related work)

That pretty much concludes that you can change it using registry settings. You don't need to apply that "special trick" for 3dmark, you can do it the registry editing way if you want, like me. But if you don't want that hassle, you can do the special way, just for 3dmark.

 

I'm having some problems in the registry trying to locate these files. I run the search through the registry but it comes back with no results. Any help please?

 

Hmm, what's puzzling me a little bit though, is that hardware t&l is *ancient*. I mean, the Geforce 256 had that.
However, these days it's not even relevant in the first place. It's basically been superseded by shaders. Modern (dedicated) GPU's don't even *have* hardware T&L, they emulate it through shaders.

I wonder if it means that all shaders are run on the CPU instead of GPU then.
Oh well, guess we'll never know, unless someone here turns out to be an Intel engineer

 

just thought i'd bump this thread with a new way for forcing s/w t&l, credit goes to C.Jackson from VR-Zone forums

 

X3100 has both ancient T&L and shaders. When we say hardware T&L, we are really talking about both. The architecture itself is a unified shader architecture, so the X3100 might also "emulate" T&L as you say. This is why its only up for the drivers for the X3100 to have DX10 support.

I was looking at a wrong Vista benchmark when talking about that. I was talking about the hotfix that lowers the virtual memory usage. I wasn't sure what I was thinking about back then, it seemed like SP1...

Anyway, SP1 allows the X3100 on Vista to have hardware MPEG acceleration. Something limits them on the non-SP1 for hardware acceleration I heard. So hopefully I am thinking there might be something in 3D that's also not fixed until SP1.