6.xx GPUs(6800) series issues with Nforce 3?

[Genx87]

Ill preface this by saying I have had my current computer for 13 months. It is an ASUS K8N-E deluxe(nforce 3 250),A754 A64 3000+, 1.5GB PC3200, 74GB Raptor, 6800GT.

The machine has worked wonderful until I tried the BF2 demo in late July. Then I started noticing a serious stuttering issue. I have been way too busy with life to actually toy with it and try to figure it out. But lastnight I got sick of DOD:Source stuttering and decided to try and trouble shoot. I have installed the latest Nforce drivers, the latest 70.xx series drivers and nothing seems to help. I have even uninstalled Nvidias GART driver as one post suggest this helped. The problem is it seemed to work for awhile but then instead of stuttering I am seeing sub 10 FPS which is way too low for this machine.

One person on an Nvidia fan website brought up and interesting point. The stuttering started with the 70.xx series of drivers. When i installed the BF2 demo I did indeed installed the latest 70.xx series of drivers and ever since have had this issue. Ill be installing a 60 series driver tonight and pray to god it works. I can't handle playing games like this.

I am curious if there are people on this msgboard who have had the same issue and if you have fixed it? Does Nvidia know about this possible conflict?

It sounds like this issue is limited to 6 series graphics cards, Nforce 3 chipsets, and 70 series drivers.

Interested in what people have to offer on fixing this issue or what issues they are seeing.

 

[Snakexor]

its the 6 series chipset drivers, it doesnt let the graphics card run in agp8x/4x mode, only in pci mode....i dont what it does or doesnt install, but this is what it does...just use the 5.10s

 

[Genx87]

I have been using the 5.10s until lastnight

 

[blckgrffn]

Never heard of it, and personally have used over a dozen 6 series cards in Nforce3 boards.

Maybe try a rebuild? Maybe your power supply is going out? A friend of mine did have that issue when his power supply was weakening and it kept kicking his video card (6600GT) into low power mode and back and forth again...

 

[oldfartjc]

Originally posted by: Genx87
The machine has worked wonderful until I tried the BF2 demo in late July. Then I started noticing a serious stuttering issue. I have been way too busy with life to actually toy with it and try to figure it out. But lastnight I got sick of DOD:Source stuttering and decided to try and trouble shoot. I have installed the latest Nforce drivers, the latest 70.xx series drivers and nothing seems to help. I have even uninstalled Nvidias GART driver as one post suggest this helped. The problem is it seemed to work for awhile but then instead of stuttering I am seeing sub 10 FPS which is way too low for this machine.

One person on an Nvidia fan website brought up and interesting point. The stuttering started with the 70.xx series of drivers. When i installed the BF2 demo I did indeed installed the latest 70.xx series of drivers and ever since have had this issue. Ill be installing a 60 series driver tonight and pray to god it works. I can't handle playing games like this.

I am curious if there are people on this msgboard who have had the same issue and if you have fixed it? Does Nvidia know about this possible conflict?

It sounds like this issue is limited to 6 series graphics cards, Nforce 3 chipsets, and 70 series drivers.

Interested in what people have to offer on fixing this issue or what issues they are seeing.

I had this problem along with many others which is documented on several forums even when using 66.93 drivers. No matter what I tried and I tried everything, it would never run any D3D game like HL2 or Far Cry without 8 to 10 second pauses and stuttering. In fact many of us tried so many different so called fixes as you will see when you go to the links to a couple of forums that I list below, that I finally decided to pull my MSI Neo 2 Platinum out after almost 3 months of frustration and wasted time and installed an ASUS A8V Deluxe VIA chipset board and cured all my D3D game problems. The only other sure fix is more expensive and that would be to install an ATI video card which also gets rid of the problem. This doesn't happen to everybody but it does happen quite often and only with the 6800 series video cards and any NF3 motherboard. I found 66.93 drivers worked best for me but it still happened way to often. I have now been running great for over a month with no other change but the motherboard and can now use the newest video drivers. Below are only 2 forums of many where this problem has been documented, and these 2 alone have 100 pages of posts on this problem, including several from myself. I must say it's been nice to sit down at my computer and just play the games without screwing around with so called fixes and the frustration that follows when it does the same thing again. Sorry for the long post and good luck with your problem, maybe you can try a few of the things listed on these 2 forums and they may help you, but don't count on it but you never know until you try.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=938842

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=32759&page=1&pp=15

 

[CrystalBay]

My NF3 + 6800GT only stutters when fast writes are turned on in the bios. With Fast writes off it performs flawless.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Considering the fact that If you choose Nforce 1,2,3 on Nvidia's sites you get the 5.10 drivers, while only Nforce4 lets you download the 6.xx series drivers, I'd say Nvidia is well aware of which drivers works best for Nforce 3...

 

[Markbnj]

I have had no problem with my 6800GT running in 8x AGP mode, fastwrites enabled, and the AGP aperature blown out to 256 megs. That last setting had the biggest single effect on BF2 performance, regardless of the fact that many knowlegeable people claim it has no effect at all. BF2 runs extremely smoothly now, with little or no lag at all in single or multiplayer games.

I wouldn't assume that you have a chipset/driver level problem because BF2 stutters. The game is incredibly resource hungry. You have about a half gig of ram less than I would recommend for running it on all high gfx settings.

I would check the agp aperature. If it is set to the stock 32 megs try setting it to 256 and let us know what happens. I did not see a big performance boost with fastwrites, so I may turn it back off. One other note, BF2's frame rendering evidenced considerable horizontal tearing until I enabled vsynch in the nVidia driver control panel.

Good luck.

 

[Genx87]

Reinstalling the 66.93 drivers completely cleared this issue up for me.
I am using the 5.xx series chipset drivers.

For testing purposes I installed the 70 series drivers again and the stuttering came back. It appears on my system the 70 series drivers are the source of the stuttering.
Ill try the 80 series later today and see if the issue is cleared up or not. If not Ill be submitting a bug report to Nvidia.

I believe games like BF2 require the 70 series drivers.

 

[Boogak]

I had this problem when I upgraded to a DFI Lanparty NF3 board from an Asus K8V SE Deluxe (Via chipset) board. When running any Direct3D application, it would pause for 5 seconds or so, then continue, all at random times. I tried everything suggested on forums (fast writes off, agp aperature settings, modified GART settings, etc) but my BFG 6800 GT just would not work right with the nForce3 board. I finally swapped back to the Via board and have been troublefree again, with fastwrites on. So there's definitely some type of compatibility issue and it's annoying that nVidia refuses to fix it even now after a year.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: CrystalBay
My NF3 + 6800GT only stutters when fast writes are turned on in the bios. With Fast writes off it performs flawless.

Same for me.

 

[cubeless]

Originally posted by: MDE

Originally posted by: CrystalBay
My NF3 + 6800GT only stutters when fast writes are turned on in the bios. With Fast writes off it performs flawless.

Same for me.

ditto...

 

[LandRover]

I've never experienced any of those issues with my eVGA 6800GT and eVGA NF3 board (Fast Writes are enabled). Maybe I'm just lucky because they are both made by the same company, but I kinda doubt it. For what it's worth, I'm using GART driver 4.40. It was included in a remixed driver set for NF2 boards. I'm using the 78.01 video drivers.