Wirehead Studios

Ever since upgrading my video drivers, Quake 2 was getting stuck at 60Hz no matter what I did.  There's no more refresh rate override panel in the Nvidia control panel since the old one went bye-bye.  I found a nice little utility that works quite well.  It's called RefreshLock.  Snag it here:
http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rl/

It works great and it's a must if you like playing older games at a higher refresh.  :doom_thumb:

Reforce (RefreshForce aka RefreshLock) is what I've used for a long time -- especially when I got my trinitron.  Without it, I wouldn't have been able to take advantage of the high refresh rates that the trinitron offers.

One note of mention for ATI drivers (I use omega drivers, but it still should apply), in the displays tab you will see your monitor(s).  From my experience, the driver screws up some of your refresh rate forces even when using the RefreshForce app.  For instance, at 1280x960 I wanted to use 120hz.  This was impossible while the driver option in the above mentioned location had Refresh Rate Override option at anything other than Disabled and the Use DDC information selected.  You might find similar problems at lower refresh rates in which you know the bandwidth a frequency ranges should support a resolution and refresh rate but cannot attain it.  T

This does not apply to situations in which you see the "Signal out of range" or "Frequency out of range" type errors.  These errors are actually the monitor telling you that the signal being fed to it is not within its capabilities.  This only applies to a situation where you have a refresh rate that won't get set (i.e. my case of wanting 120hz but being limited by the driver to 100hz).

I like RefreshLock better than RefreshForce for the specific reason that I don't like it to be permanent.  I might want to run the same resolution at differing refresh rates depending on the game I'm playing, etc.  You also run the risk of running a frequency overrange.  If it's only temporary all you have to do is a reboot.  If it's forced permanent, it's boot with VGA mode and rearrange the desktop - quite a pain in the tail when that happens.

Under the old Nvidia control panel any overrides also took precedence over application-level forcing.  For example, if I had set to 100Hz, but set r_displayrefresh to 60 in Doom 3, it would stay at 100Hz.  The newer Nvidia control panel allows descriptions of custom modes but as far as I've discerned there's no override control anymore at all.  RefreshLock so far has worked flawlessly for me with the newer driver, especially with the "set only when at 60Hz" option so it doesn't bork my desktop refresh.  Best Quake 2 I've played in a while.  :slippy_thumb:

The new nVidia control panel sucks. The classic one provided more control over the graphic card.
I'm using RForce. I use a LCD monitor, and you know that LCD monitors suck unless you set them at 75hz (actual maximum frequency of LCDs).

I was referring to something a little different.  Not application settings, but RefreshForce vs ATI driver.  I could set it to anything, including different refresh rates from what the driver was set to, but I was unable to go beyond what the driver would allow if I had the DDC on.  Weird stuff.