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nVidia driver 169.XX breaks D3..

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:59 am
by Grendel
..at least on my 8800GTS640. Every driver after 163.75 I have tried (169.09, 169.21, 169.28 ) causes stuttering, a corrupted automap and corrupted menu after you leave the game (usually black screen).

:(

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 4:15 am
by Duper
you running OpenGL or D3d?

Mine's running fine but my card is a 7600GT.

I'm running the new drivers in OGL.

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 9:48 am
by Krom
No problem on my 8800 GT/512 (haven't tested with the 169.21 yet, but the 169.09 an 169.02 sets worked fine).

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:05 pm
by Top Wop
...so how you like Nvidia? All your favorite old games older than 7 years are now broken and there's nothing you can do about it. And they wont give a damn.

ATI here I come.

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:43 pm
by d3jake
If I remember right ATI got bought up by NVIDIA, enjoy.

Re:

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:53 pm
by fliptw
Top Wop wrote:...so how you like Nvidia? All your favorite old games older than 7 years are now broken and there's nothing you can do about it. And they wont give a damn.

ATI here I come.
I doubt ATI is any better in that regard.

Re:

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 4:00 pm
by Duper
d3jake wrote:If I remember right ATI got bought up by NVIDIA, enjoy.
That wasn't ATI. It was 3DFX that Nvidia bought out. and that was a long time ago.

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 4:49 pm
by Krom
Alright, I just tested out D3 v1.4 and 1.5b with the Nvidia 169.21 driver set, the automap does corrupt (although it still works) and the menus are all black. It happens because the menus and automap change resolution when you use a resolution other than 640x480. Turning on the extension limit in the video driver cures it, but then no textures show so that fix goes right out the window.

A temporary solution that seems to work is to alt-tab out of the game and back while you have the menu or automaps open and they come back normally with no corruption.

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 5:41 pm
by Tunnelcat
AMD bought ATI. Next we'll see GPU's integrated onto the motherboard or even in the CPU maybe. That's probably why they bought ATI. :roll:

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 6:02 pm
by fliptw
run a virtual instance of xp with a copy of the drivers that work?

Re:

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 6:09 pm
by Krom
tunnelcat wrote:AMD bought ATI. Next we'll see GPU's integrated onto the motherboard or even in the CPU maybe. That's probably why they bought ATI. :roll:
Read up on the AMD Fusion project...

Re:

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 10:36 pm
by Grendel
Krom wrote:A temporary solution that seems to work is to alt-tab out of the game and back while you have the menu or automaps open and they come back normally with no corruption.
I'm not too concerned about the corrupted menus but about the freezing -- every few seconds the picture freezes for 100 or so milliseconds. Very annoying. May have to do w/ the CPU load balancing in the drivers (it becomes unbearable w/ some background activity), haven't tested it w/ "threaded optimization" set to "off" tho. If ALT-TABing fixes the picture it's most likely a texture memory corruption problem tho. Anyhow, using 163.75 fixes both, the corruption and the freezes. Speed is about the same.

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 10:41 pm
by MD-2389
I found out something interesting. Not only does D3 have issues, but it broke B1942 (locks up when loading the spawn point map), and causes C&C3 to crash randomly with a Direct 3D error stack. To make it worse, if you revert to an older set (94.24), the issues persist. :roll: Way to drop the ball nVidia...

Re:

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 12:11 am
by Krom
Grendel wrote:I'm not too concerned about the corrupted menus but about the freezing -- every few seconds the picture freezes for 100 or so milliseconds. Very annoying. May have to do w/ the CPU load balancing in the drivers (it becomes unbearable w/ some background activity), haven't tested it w/ "threaded optimization" set to "off" tho. If ALT-TABing fixes the picture it's most likely a texture memory corruption problem tho. Anyhow, using 163.75 fixes both, the corruption and the freezes. Speed is about the same.
I'm not getting the freezes at all, threaded optimizations are all enabled. I'm using the full 16xQ AA and 16xAF at 1280x960 resolution (100 Hz) and it is totally smooth even in C.O.D. D3. I also tried 1920x1440, smooth as glass (almost silly that I can't get it to run under 60 FPS at that resolution and quality setting). It might be something else causing it, I am using single display performance mode as the default in my driver (I tried the multi-display modes and there was no difference). I have also tried no AA and a half dozen other settings with no effect.

I might have just stumbled across a potential fix for the automap/menu corruption though. Run the game at higher than your desktop resolution and see what happens.

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 3:42 pm
by Grendel
Hm, my overriden settings are: 16xAF, 4xSSAA (tried MSAA, no change. Did not try AA), single perf. mode (def. is multi, no difference), allow neg. LOD, texture filtering optimizations off, HQ, vsync off @ 1600x1200 OGL (4s timetest..) Applied \"enable overscan compensation\" fix to make \"NVIDIA scaling w/ fixed-aspect-ratio\" work. Running RivaTuner HW monitor in the BG (protected MMIO access, 7 graphs: shader, ROP & mem clocks, core & ambient temps, CPU 0 & 1 temps (C2D plugin). Tried w/ RT not running, no difference)

Since only the 169 driver show this problem I'm running 163.75 again, unwilling to reinstall 169. I'll keep it in mind tho, thx. I'm pretty sure the problem is rooted in the new drivers.

Edit: MD, make sure you uninstall the new driver first. If you did, uninstall again and use a driver cleaner before reinstalling your driver of choice.

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 3:59 pm
by Duper
whoops. Just looked and saw that I'm running 6371. The newest drivers didn't have anything that really affected my card. Didn't see any reason in changing. That and I'm not playing Crysis.

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 4:31 pm
by Krom
I'm not sure what I did, but ever since I set the resolution higher than the desktop background and then back down to normal same as the desktop I haven't gotten the menu corruption. -_-

I also set the Conformant texture clamp to use the OpenGL specification.

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 6:33 pm
by JMEaT
Why upgrade drivers if everything is working fine?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it...

Re:

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 10:24 pm
by MD-2389
Grendel wrote:Edit: MD, make sure you uninstall the new driver first. If you did, uninstall again and use a driver cleaner before reinstalling your driver of choice.
Know one that actually works thats free? I tried Guru3D's one, and it just made windows bluescreen. I had to go into safe mode and re-install the driver to get back in.

edit: Both Flatout and Flatout2 have the same problem as well.

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 10:59 pm
by AceCombat
driver cleaner works just fine

Re:

Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2007 1:22 am
by Grendel
MD-2389 wrote:Know one that actually works thats free? I tried Guru3D's one, and it just made windows bluescreen. I had to go into safe mode and re-install the driver to get back in.
Driver Sweeper or Driver Cleaner Pro should be free. The few times I used DCP I did the cleaning in safe mode.