Reguarding Nvidia's 8800GTX, and my fury.

[acrobat]

OHH!!!

I get 2 and 3 aswell, and I never knew that was something to do with the graphics card! I actually had never used sleep in PC's before, because my old one was so flaky, I had to turn it off when I wasn't using it. But this one I leave on 24/7 and I wanted to be able to set it to sleep when I popped out and it wasn't doing anything. So I tried... and it messed up and got stuck in a black screen... so I've never done it since. Now I know why!!

Also, I've experienced 8. aswell. GRAW2 no shadows and also quite a few graphical issues in quite a few other games. It never annoyed me that much because its a new card and I'm quite forgiving. But as time goes on, I get less forgiving. Because its not really a new card anymore.. I think it was released in about September or October or so? So its almost a year old now. Thats not good. *slap Nvidia*. But these crashes make it basically semi-broken/useless. So it goes beyond a pain and more REALLY annoying.

So I can understand you switching anyway. I can't believe they would be so foolish too... Theres basically a bloomin HD TV revolution happening and they are in a position to be everyones best friend... Allowing people to seemlessly join the HD revolution with their PC's and whatever, and gamers to have the best performance on the market.. And here they are making a big mess of it... Fools.

[Mossy]

I would say it is a driver issue, i would double check everything before you send it back we sell a lot of these cards daily and very few get returned, the ones that do tend to be returned NFF so I advise you check every possiblity before you raise an RMA.

[acrobat]

Interesting (almost)-breakthrough!!!

Somebody in another thread here (I think it was one of the Bioshock threads in the gaming section - I am still looking for it), suggest I try with "high detail shaders" turned off. I am sure somebody suggested this anyway... unless an angel came to me in a dream and I am confusing it with that.

Anyway, I have tried things like this in other games, and I am pretty sure it didn't work. But in Bioshock there is a specific "high detail shaders" setting. So I set it to off, and everything else was still set to maximum.. and the game worked! I have just been playing it, running around for ages looking at the water and whatnot...

So whoever suggested that is some kind of legend, and the problem has been isolated basically... I would email Nvidia right away and explain this but as I said... they have their fingers in their ears. Although, perhaps they already know it and just can't fix it. Anyway, I need to check in some other games (like Company of Heroes as mentioned earlier) and see if I can isolate the problem down to "high detail shaders" in that game too.

But anyway, thats really promising. It doesn't really help me.... yet atleast. But its slightly comforting atleast having a better idea what is causing the problem.

I would say it is a driver issue, i would double check everything before you send it back we sell a lot of these cards daily and very few get returned, the ones that do tend to be returned NFF so I advise you check every possiblity before you raise an RMA.

Thanks Paul. RMA is always an absolute last resort for me though. As I said, I bought the card in December so its about 9 months now of me trying to find a solution. I consider myself to be good with computers too, so its been a lot more than head scratching. I've tried dozens and dozens of things really. Complete driver removal with a proper tool. Tried every Nvidia driver available (new and old, beta and none beta). Tried removing various components (like my X-Fi) incase they where conflicting. Tried running the PC in safe mode. Tried doing extreme things to make sure its not a temperature issue (I wont go into what I did). Fresh install of Windows. Tried doing some trick with msconfig that disables all windows processes or something.. (I followed a guide for that one) Etc. Totally exhausted every possibility basically, so RMA was my last resort.

No need to worry though, I didn't buy this card from Scan

[acrobat]

Update to the semi-breakthrough bit above ^^^^

I tried playing Bioshock again, and it still crashes, even with "high detail shaders" turned off. It just seems to take longer to crash. I also tried "high detail shaders" turned off, aswell as lowering some of the other settings and the texture settings to medium - and yet it still crashed. So theres no solution it seems I am gutted. Will have to just wait and see what happens with my replacement card next week. I'm going to give the driver cleaner one more go too, but I'll have to do that tomorrow as im nackered now.

[grart]

Sorry to hear about the issues that you are having with your card Acrobat, I hope it gets resolved soon.

You mentioned earlier in your thread about the 8800 ultra cards and non issues, I have not fully confirmed were my issue lies but so far things are pointing towards it being a graphics card issue.
I am planing tonight to swap my card out with another one a 7800GTX which has not had a single issue in the machine its coming out of, I am going to see if the games work with that card in, going to double check the memory to.

I had ran my system under vista 32, but had a repeating nvlddmkm issue so I went back to xp, but xp is proving to be worse by along way, or my graphics card has failed at the same.

[Kingofpain]

have u tried updating the drivers?

just kidding...

[acrobat]

Sorry to hear about the issues that you are having with your card Acrobat, I hope it gets resolved soon.

You mentioned earlier in your thread about the 8800 ultra cards and non issues, I have not fully confirmed were my issue lies but so far things are pointing towards it being a graphics card issue.
I am planing tonight to swap my card out with another one a 7800GTX which has not had a single issue in the machine its coming out of, I am going to see if the games work with that card in, going to double check the memory to.

I had ran my system under vista 32, but had a repeating nvlddmkm issue so I went back to xp, but xp is proving to be worse by along way, or my graphics card has failed at the same.

Yikes I hope not. I am also not 100% about the Ultra's now too. I saw someone else with problems in a different forum, although I'm not sure if that was another problem or the same as this. Being able to swap with your 7800GTX will be really useful! I wish I could do that. But anyway, I'll be getting my replacement card this week sometime so hopefully that will shed some light.

By the way, on another forum, someone suggested RAM voltage/timings may be the cause (because it was for the person who suggested it). I did try to sort to make sure my RAM was set up properly once before, but I'm still not 100% sure its set up right. I will check that now though.

have u tried updating the drivers?

just kidding...

hahah

[Clunk]

Theres been lots of problems with the Ultras. I think its a hardware problem with those though.

[acrobat]

Ahh, thats a shame. So annoying hearing half the world talking about bioshock and I can't even play it

I've been faffing around with my RAM timings and voltages tonight, to see if that made any difference. (Someone suggested it somewhere else). But it didn't anyway. I tried the required normal voltage, and then I tried over that and under that, and nothing worked. Just thought I'd add that too, seeing as I've mentioned pretty much everything else.

p.s. I'm still waiting on the RMA. It should be this week sometime. So I'm hoping I can come back here and post about the new card soon. I think that will tell me for sure if its hardware or driver. (So I'm hoping for hardware because atleast then it'll be resolved..)

[scrandman]

This reminds me of the major hardware problems suffered by the 7900GT's & GTX's when they first came out. Problem appears to have been bad VRAM. nVidia solution - 7900GS & 7950GT and let the poor suckers who bought the first "gen" suffer.

[grart]

I tested the 7800GTX in my machine all was stable, no issues at all.

The under clocking of the gpu on my 8800 ultra, from its sold 685 to 650 (actual 648) made all the difference. Can play 2142 for several hours no issues, the only thing that will cause the graphics side of things to fail is world of warcraft, you can log in fine but if you log out the game crashes as it used to, alt+F4 to close the game and its gone so I can live with that.

I have put a rma request in for the card, since its not doing what it was sold to be able to do. With any luck all will be working as it should soon.

I was wondering if anyone else with issues be it 8800 GTX, GTX ultra or other cards that if they tweak there gpu back say 5% does it become stable. Since I think there is going to be a large percent that will start to work with no issues at all.
It defeats the object of the numbers that are claimed by the makers that they will work to ie 685 which is higher then the stock 612 I believe on the ultra, but it would prove one thing, that its the BFG, Asus, XFX and the like that tweak the chip sets above the std level that is the cause and not a failing from nvidia as I don't believe they claim the cards will clock as they are sold, they just make the chips. There will be a few that are duff chips, but there sadly always will.
It does not make me want to say I will keep the card that I have knowing that if I under clock it, it will work, I would like a card that I was sold to work to the numbers I was told it would. For others that have believed that its been drives that have been the cause, it would be worth trying.

But its all food for thought.

[acrobat]

YES!
ITS ALL OVER!

I can't believe its taken me 9 months to get this sorted out..... I was so convinced it was a driver issue, that most of the time I have just spent waiting for a magic fix to appear, and it never did. Like I said, I have replaced this card once before, so I was convinced it wasn't two faulty cards in a row.

But it was! They must have made batches of faulty cards, and I got two from the same batch.

Its now 9 months on, so I got another RMA, and its been so long that even the box is different now. So its clearly from a new batch. I got it home about 2pm and I've been trying all the games that used to crash. I've played them constantly and have had no crashes at all. I've completed the Bioshock demo which used to crash in the first 30 seconds, and I've been playing CoH for hours (which crashed regularly too). And lastly, I quickly tried Rainbow6:Vegas, and Hitman:BloodMoney which both used to crash too.

None of them crashed

So I'll let this thread die now, unless anyone wants to talk about anything. But just to be thorough, heres some extra info:
1) Last night I tried removing a RAM chip to run the PC in single channel RAM mode. But the crashes remained. So it wasn't a conflict with dual channel (as someone suggested on another forum).

2) I haven't changed any of the drivers or re-installed anything, or done ANYTHING differently, to when I was using the last card. I took the faulty card out, took it to get replaced, brought the new one home and slotted it in and went straight into windows and loaded up Bioshock. So I am 100% positive that it was a faulty card and nothing else has changed.


I hope this thread can help somebody else out there. Either a Hexus member or not. If you have this problem with your graphics card, get it replaced. You are entitled to it in your warrenty. Don't take any messin' from these hardware suppliers. And if you still get crashes... get it replaced again, and don't give up until it works. It took me two replacements until I got this one that worked.
NOTE: This only applies to people with this exact problem. If you have "Blue Screens" etc... or some other kind of crash, then that is most likely a different issue to this. This issue is specific to the crash described on the first page of this thread.


And lastly, thanks to everyone who offered help. I really appreciate it, as I always do.

[g8ina]

hehehe, wot a coincidence !!

I just today finished my lads gaming PC and the problems were :

1) a duff system fan in the Akasa Zen case, and
2) a duff 8600GTS from EVGA.

Now I've taken the fan out, replaced the P5B mobo and fitted a new Asus 8600GTS and everything is hunky dory using the latest nVidia drivers.

His 3dMark06 score is 9800 odd.

2 for 2 Acrobat

[notsobig]

many congrats to both of you

[WannaPiEcE]

so is this a SLi only issue?
I've had a 8800GTS for 6months and Vista Home Premium and XP Pro on Dual boot for over 3 months with no issues at all. I'm thinking about going SLi soon and would like to avoid this "Driver stopped and recovered error" if possible

Btw - 8800 + 680i drivers for Vista are comparable to calling a steering wheel and gas pedal welded to a frame with tires a "2008 Camaro"

[QUANTUMPINTEN]

Acrobat, did u ever get the card fixed and up and running?