Nvidia Video Cards + Drivers

[Lee Downham]

I currently seem to be running rock solid again here with Geforce drivers 178.13 and display power saving features off ... suggested this to someone else and seemed to fix their issues too ... even if its not a ~100% fix, if it works for a few folk then it'll be worth the post.
I am on an 8800GT 512MB (actually now I got two I can run in SLI :wink ... maybe it is just the 8 series of Nvidia cards then?

Try and report what cards you are running when replying on this issue too so we can see if there is some kind of pattern related to cards?

 

[Michael Herrmann]

for me it isent fixed cuz i have this freezes and for sure powersaving is off in bios and os and its totaly random sometimes i run a week every day without a prob
and the next day i have 2-3 times a freez with directly afterwars the nvidia display driver crashing *sad panda face*

*edit* i have a GF 8600 GT 512 mb ram

 

[Damian Henderson]

I don't normally have game freezes, only game where I get them sometimes is in Race07, all other games are fine,(GTR2, rFactor, Americas Army etc) powersaving on or off, different drivers etc etc, tried downclocking my GPU, even get it on my backup rig with an old ATI X1650 but still got the odd freezes in race rarely but they do pop up sometimes....

 

[Bob Miley]

Well I am not so upto date as most of you and suffer no graphics freeze on my GS7900 512Mb since I turned power save off nearly 2 weeks ago. Before this it was happening every 20 mins, which by strange coincidence was the powersave setting.

Sorry for not posting earlier about this but I like to test things for about 1 month before I suggest a fix.

As it has been suggested by someone else though I see problem in confirming it with my own experience.

 

[Lee Downham]

Wooohooo ... we have another taker on this, so maybe there is something in it??

Same sort of experience here ... was getting crashes about 10 or 20 mins in and seemed to be dependant on what the power save was set to ... hence me thinking of it in the first place.

I also have my card overclocked with Riva Tuner and since the 177 drivers, I started getting different machine locking up issues - maybe they work the card harder, dunno??
Anyway, I dropped my clock speeds from 670mhz / 970mhz down to 660/960 and it seems to have done the trick ...

 

[Simon Bacon]

Genius stuff Mr D. Been playing my offline season as well as a bit of FBMW practice today without a single freeze

Ta very much.

Simon

 

[Lee Downham]

... another taker :Hamm3rHed:

 

[Neil Gault]

been using these since the 25th hoping they would cure the odd stuttering lag i had been getting with 177.41 & 177.92 but no it was still there last night at brno so have now changed back to 175.16 in a hope to cure it.
card is a 8800gts

 

[Lee Downham]

been using these since the 25th hoping they would cure the odd stuttering lag i had been getting with 177.41 & 177.92 but no it was still there last night at brno so have now changed back to 175.16 in a hope to cure it.
card is a 8800gts

Do you have Motec enabled Neil?
... as I think I mentioned somewhere else recently, the disc I/O having that on can cause stuttering.

 

[Nigel Atkins]

i still get a little stuttering, mainly around pit buildings. but these dont kill your racing like frezzers do. so dont realy bother me.

 

[Neil Gault]

Do you have Motec enabled Neil?
... as I think I mentioned somewhere else recently, the disc I/O having that on can cause stuttering.

yes motec is enabled, if i get the same problem now then motec will be the next step.
It is a strange one, it kind of goes down to 2 or 3 frames per second and lasts for maybe 4 or 5 seconds before it clears again and so far it has only happened once per race night.

 

[Lee Downham]

you read my other thread about disabling display power save settings?
Try that if not ... worked for me and some others ...

 

[Lee Downham]

... I have also just noticed that if I switch my graphics settings around in Vista (eg. Sli to dual view, enable/ disable dual view or similar), then the damn thing decides I need power saving on my display re-enabling again automatically ... and Windows doesn't even ask if its OK to do this :GRRR:

 

[Alberto Marzi]

Mmmm...intersting , I am on 8800 gt 512 mb too and sametime there are some freeze (but also in GTR2 too ) . Now I'll check when these freeze appear . Thanks

 

[Oliver Amos]

I have had my monitor turn off after 20 mins since i put vista 64 on ages ago. I haven't had one odd crash. I can't see how it would cause the crash, but if it fixes it for you, then good stuff

 

[Lee Downham]

... no real idea but guess that there may be some kind of conflict between the power management service which is thinking it needs to shut down the graphics card, but in actual fact it is still in use ... the Nvidia drivers maybe can't handle it and ti causes an exception and crash ...

 

[Daniel Plaikner]

I have a XFX GeForce 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition 512 MB, power saving settins off. Had never any Freezes in any game. Then I tryed to overklock it a bit(only a little) with riva tuner. After that I get some badly freezes in race07, display driver crasehd also sometimes. So I made it back to factory settings and all is working fine :thumb: Grafik is on max

 

[Lee Downham]

I have exact same card Daniel and overclock it to 660 1715 960 with excellent results.
I do have a Thermaltake DuoOrb (review here) wired up to a fan speed controller in place of the rubbish OEM fan though because it was overheating and crashing all the time with that piece of $$$$$ .... was running constantly at 80 or 90ºc before (which Nvidia say is OK, but clearly is not), now I can run super stable all day and night and all the next day at just 45ºC max :eek:

(as long as display power management is disabled ... )

XFX issued me with a bios update to fix the default card issues. Can't find it on their website but have uploaded it here if you want it?

Before applying, I suggest using NiBiToR to check the version and BACKUP your existing bios.

Fan speed control override based on temperatures can also be done with Riva Tuner ... takes a bit of setting up, but works very well (unlike the default!!).

Best bet, buy a decent aftermarket GPU cooler fro €20-€30, overclock the hell out of it (I have had mine running fairly stable at 700mhz, 1785mhz and 1010mhz in the past!!) and have done with all that horrendous noise the default fan makes :thumb:


(DISCLAIMER: Do any and all tweaks at your own risk :wink

 

[Alberto Marzi]

I solved yesterday my freeze, with a 12x12 fan over my VGA , the high temperature was (zotac 8800 gt amp with VGA Cooler Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 without fan before yesterday) . Now the VGA work in game near 50° C

 

[Richard Hamstead]

Well I've just tried this but I won't be game to say it's fixed until atleast a week with no crashes. Also, next to the thing to change the Display power settings, there is a thing saying "Adaptive Display" On/Off. What does this mean?