6800 XT/GS Artifacts

[4fingers]

Hi all

I just got back my replacement card and decided to play a bit Rainbow six Vagas and found some lovely artefacts waiting for me.
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/3746/artifactsyx6.th.jpg (http://img521.imageshack.us/my.php?image=artifactsyx6.jpg)
Then I decided to play Portal
http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/5158/testchmba030003lz3.th.jpg (http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=testchmba030003lz3.jpg)
I have the latest 163.69 nVidia drivers and my BIOS is up to date. Any idea what could be causing these things because it wasn’t happening before in my old card and I played a lot of Rainbow Six on that card.

Thanks

[xfxsupport]

Try rolling back to a previous driver like 93.71 or somthing similar from the NVIDIA archive:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp-2k_archive.html
I have seen some of the newer drivers cause issues with pervious series video cards in some games.

[4fingers]

Wow thanks for the fast reply.
I will let you know how I get on with trying out previous drivers.

[werty316]

Looks like you got some graphic tearing; as suggested try another display driver.

[4fingers]

I just realised that those links are for windows XP/2000 yet I have windows vista. I tried looking for older drivers for vista but couldn't find any.

[werty316]

Just a few places to get drivers:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showforum=66
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=32
http://www.tcmagazine.com/forums/index.php?automodule=downloads&showcat=14

[zachig]

Yeah, it looks to me more like a Drivers' problem. :???:

Try different drivers and let us know if it worked out for ya...;-)

[4fingers]

Sorry for replying so late but I have had so much work to do and so little time to actually play games that I kind of put this issue behind me for a while but I am back on top of it now.
I have tried these drivers so far:

10051-vista-x86-32bit-[Guru3D.com]
158.18_forceware_winvista_32bit_english_whql
163.75_forceware_winvista_32bit_international_beta
163.75_forceware_winvista_32bit_international_whql

All give similar results shown in the pictures above although if it helps to know that I also get a “Nvlddmkm Stopped Responding” message most times when I turn on my computer.

Another possible side effect was that Team Fortress 2 was running at 10 FPS the other day.

Just to make sure it is a software problem I tried the card on another computer with windows XP instead of Vista and played portal (the game pictured above) and I am glad to at least report everything was working fine there.

[Miker]

Vista might be just to much for that card. Vista and DX9 is even glitchier then Vista and DX10.

[xfxsupport]

Since the card seems to be working fine in XP then it does sound like a driver/software issue. When you were installing different driver versions, did you try using any sort of driver cleaner? What we have seen is that drivers will actually become mixed in Vista if you dont completely clean them out of the OS.

What happens is you install a new version of drivers, but not all the older files are overwritten. Windows will be still using some of the older driver files in conjunction with the newer ones you just installed, which sometimes causes problems.

[4fingers]

I tried a driver cleaner over at http://www.drivercleaner.net/ where I uninstalled the drivers, restarted into safe mode and ran the driver cleaner which removed some files. Then when I booted back up in windows I installed the 163.75 windows vista drivers again.

Sadly this maked no difference, I still get the same effects as seen above although they are positioned differently each time the game loads but some places always have them (like the lift in the image above) while other places dont have them at all no matter how many times I play the level.

Also it seems that I get a 10 -20 FPS for Team Fortress 2 no matter what my settings are although I havent tested this fully.

[Miker]

That card just might not be good enough for Vista.

[4fingers]

I don't understand that because my friend has a GeForce FX 5200 card with windows vista and plays the same games I am playing with absolutely no problems.

[Miker]

5200 in Vista?! PCI or AGP?!

[4fingers]

Yes, just confirmed via text that he is using a PCI nVidia GeForce FX 5200 card with Windows Vista 32 bit Business Edition installed.
We play Team Fortress 2 together sometimes and he gets a better frame rate than me.

[Miker]

My girlfriend has a 5200 PCI with a 1.8GHz P4, 512m RAM and it won't run any online source game (XP Home). I used to have a 6800 128m and I know for a fact it should be able to run source games at 1280x1024, most things on high, no AA.

Has anyone on here ever used a 6800 with Vista?

[4fingers]

My girlfriend has a 5200 PCI with a 1.8GHz P4, 512m RAM and it won't run any online source game (XP Home).
Well my friend has a slightly higher spec as he has an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ with 1Gig of RAM and the GeForce FX 5200 card is a 256MB edition. He is also happy to play at 800 by 600 with all other settings on low so that is probably why he is able to play the same games I play.

If it helps to know we managed to match all in game graphics settings when we compared our FPS so it wasn’t just because I was at a higher resolution than him.

I used to have a 6800 128m and I know for a fact it should be able to run source games at 1280x1024, most things on high, no AA.

Has anyone on here ever used a 6800 with Vista?
Yes me! No seriously this is a replacement card that I got given by XFX to replace my GeForce 6800 GS card for a slightly different GeForce 6800 XT card. It wasn't until I got this new card that I noticed these in game artefacts.

Unless anyone else has anymore suggestions I will try and get my sisters GeForce 5600 card to run on my computer and see what happens and then I am needing to re-install Vista so once I have tried those two things Ill report back on my findings.

[tyle6]

I have run vista with a 6600 and had no issue. I would go for a good driver cleaning with driver cleaner pro. and then clean the registry aswell.

[4fingers]

I am back

After no luck with a driver cleaner I simply reinstalled vista which didn't help at all. So unless the driver installation always goes wrong I cant see it being a driver issue.

I then tried a Geforece FX 5600 card without installing or changing the drivers in my machine. This card had no problems and boosted my FPS which made for much smoother gameplay as well as no sign of the common artifacts which I always find in my 6800 XT.

I am starting to think that this card is just not compatible with Vista, after all it doesn't mention anything about vista on the box. Although my Geforce 6800 GS which I had prevously before it broke worked fine on Vista which is what seems odd.

If anyone else has any ideas I suppose I will start a ticket and see what they say.

[4fingers]

Just a further update to let you know that I started a ticket for this #129826

I also thought I best show you what happens on rare occasions:
http://aycu17.webshots.com/image/37376/2002652478992784500_th.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2002652478992784500)
and
http://aycu11.webshots.com/image/41330/2003759213842721500_th.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2003759213842721500)

[XFXTechSupport]

The card is supported by Vista, I have used them in our lab here. However I have never seen those white lines from your previous screenshot in a Source game before.

Out of curiousity, have you tried disabling your Aero interface permanently, and going with the basic one? Also try downclocking the video card a little bit.

[4fingers]

Thanks for the advice XFXTechSupport

After going to Personalise -> Windows Colour and Appearance -> Windows Vista Basic shows that first tests seems like it may have helped my frame rate otherwise I am still noticing those artefacts shown in my first post.

I haven't over clocked this card so any help on how you go about down clocking it would be great.

Finally I found it rather odd that in the Advanced Display Settings there seems to be some data missing e.g. "NVIDIA (Unknown)" and "Chip Type: NVxx"
http://aycu01.webshots.com/image/37880/2004866741030649647_th.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2004866741030649647)
Was just wondering if that was normal.

Thanks for your help so far.

Edit: It appears that has happened to a few people to me in the past and seems unrealted to what I am having:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=41890&mode=linear

[4fingers]

Hi Again,
It’s been a while but the problem still persists, I have tried my card in these set ups:
Windows XP on other machine - works fine.
Windows XP on my machine - works fine.
Windows Vista on different computer - works fine.
Windows Vista on my machine – doesn’t work fine.
So obviously it is something to do with it not liking windows Vista on my machine.

I went over to XFX support ticket system and they suggested that I try setting the PC-BIOS to "optimal" or "setup". Disable side-band addressing and fast-writes (which was not available), set the AGP aperture size to 128 and set AGP to 4x to help with stability. All of which didn’t help.

A break through happened when I was using FXComposer 2 (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/fx_composer_home.html). In the program I was able to load in a teapot model and switch between OpenGL mode and Direc3D mode. While on the Direct3D mode I found I was getting the usual graphical glitches, as you can see from this image:
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/7752/directxoq8.png
When I switched over to the OpenGL tab the teapot had no graphic glitches what so ever:
http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/4350/openglcl1.png
I checked the DxDiag and it reported no problems .

Since Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas and all source games use DirectX I tried to find games that I could switch between OpenGL and Direct3D. I remembered in CS 1.6 you could switch between Direct3D and OpenGL, so when I ran it using Direct3D although no visual glitches could be seen the FPS was down to 30FPS. When I switched over to OpenGL it went up to 60 FPS.

When I told XFX via the support system they said this would be a software issue and that I should probably best to contact software vendors. I am currently clueless what I should do next so I thought I would ask you lot if you knew of anything that I could do that would fix this?

Thanks again.

[XFX Tech]

Hold your Windows key and press R. Type dxdiag in the Run box and click okay. Run through all of the tests and address any issues. With what you are saying there has to be an issue with DirectX on your system.

[4fingers]

I checked the DxDiag and it reported no problems.
That is what I thought as well, so I thought I would upload screen shots of the DirectX Diagnostic tool.
http://www.uploadgeek.com/thumbs/0/DxDiagSystem.png (http://www.uploadgeek.com/uploads456/0/DxDiagSystem.png)http://www.uploadgeek.com/thumbs/0/DxDiagDisplay1.png (http://www.uploadgeek.com/uploads456/0/DxDiagDisplay1.png)http://www.uploadgeek.com/thumbs/0/DxDiagDisplay2.png (http://www.uploadgeek.com/uploads456/0/DxDiagDisplay2.png)http://www.uploadgeek.com/thumbs/0/DxDiagSound1.png (http://www.uploadgeek.com/uploads456/0/DxDiagSound1.png)http://www.uploadgeek.com/thumbs/0/DxDiagSound2.png (http://www.uploadgeek.com/uploads456/0/DxDiagSound2.png)http://www.uploadgeek.com/thumbs/0/DxDiagInput.png (http://www.uploadgeek.com/uploads456/0/DxDiagInput.png)
As you can see nothing is being reported as broken of faulty. Do you want me to upload the DxDiag.txt file as well?

I do have Doom3, does anyone know if I am able to switch between OpenGL and DirectX in Doom3?