Did NVIDIA break V-Sync with 8 Series?

[xtknight]

I've had some trouble with NVIDIA's Windows drivers lately, so it wouldn't shock me that the concerns in the OP are valid. The drivers have steadily gotten worse.

OP: Does RivaTuner work for VSync?

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: chizow
I think NV should include a "Jump to Conclusions Mat" with their drivers for the OP. Might cut down on some of these Zomgziiiieeeest3hWORLDisEnding11eleven!!!!11bbq!!! threads.

maybe he should just take Matt2 up on his trade for 2900xt + cash offer.
-Some people just like to complain. i think the OP has always disliked nvidia and is getting his "money's worth" out of this and similar threads.

Personally, i loved both nvidia and AMD GPUs recently ... except for their pricing. Hard to find a damn sale!

Now what the HELL does this mean? it is *only* theInq so i DON'T want to start a thread [don't click if you don't want to give them hits i quoted all the important stuff]:


G80 running out out memory, driver fix under construction

By Theo Valich: Tuesday 31 July 2007, 07:19
IT SEEMS THAT Nvidia's Geforce 8800 series of graphics cards suffers random slowdowns, and this can be particularly problematic for owners of the Geforce 8800GTS 320MB, the cheapest 8800 out there.

The problem lies in fact that the G80 GPU has some trouble with texture memory management. In many unrelated cases, this bug starts leaving textures in video memory and system memory, causing the board to run out of texture memory. Once you run out of memory for textures on your graphics card and system, you will experience a lot of swapping with textures on a hard drive, and that is recipe for disaster, at least as far as framerates are concerned.

Some games are more affected than others, it all depends on how the game engine is handling textures. We learned about the situation a while ago, but it has been two weeks and fix is still not out. We heard from Nvidia that testing is well under way, with both Windows XP and Vista - combining these operating systems with different GPUs.

and

Nvidia will fix 8800 by mid-September

we managed to get an update from an Nvidia rep regarding the actual timeframe of the driver release that will fix the 8800 slowdown issue.

As it stands right now, fix for this highly annoying bug is planned for a release between the end of August and middle of September. My personal assumption would be that the latter date is a more realistic one. Nvidia stated that this problem is "of complex nature," and it seems to us that fixing one card leads to issues with another.

We wonder whether something went wrong in the whole 320-bit/384-bit memory controller combination, or whether the problem is caused by the fact that game developers were creating games with 256/512/1024 MB boards in mind, and Nvidia showed up with 320/640/768MB ones?

Just in case, if you play Battlefield and are one of numerous gamers plagued by the slowdown problem, Alt+Tab is not the answer you might need. Pascal, one of our readers came back to us and told us that Nvidia encourages you to use special button in the main page of the menu - this button opens a browser outside the game, and then you can swap back into the game without having the game screen destroyed.

anybody see this? ... i never did

Have you heard of the "Alt-Tabbing" technique people are using to gain massive fps in BF2142? The problem seems to be, the memory on G80's fill up and never discard unused textures leaving no room for new ones hence MAJOR disk thrashing in certain situations. Alt-Tabbing "purges" the textures from video memory creating a whole new bunch of room for new textures, only to fill up again and Alt-Tab again. Now, I never played BF2142 so if anyone can verify they've experienced this or not, that would be great. Nvidia is working on a fix and states it will be available mid September.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: xtknight
I've had some trouble with NVIDIA's Windows drivers lately, so it wouldn't shock me that the concerns in the OP are valid. The drivers have steadily gotten worse.

OP: Does RivaTuner work for VSync?

Worse how? What games do you play so that I can compare?

I play:

CoD2
Painkiller
STALKER
FEAR
Diablo2 (don't laugh )
HL2
And am about to try the Overlord Demo.

I know what you're going to say, but I only had one issue with any drivers for this G80 and I have had it since end of April. Currently using 162.18's coming from 158.22's.

I had only one problem with Call of Juarez Demo. Severely choppy no matter what settings I used.

Am I doing something so right? Or is it that I am not using Vista yet? I have Vista, but not ready to use it full time. I bought it for benchmarking.

What do you think?

 

[apoppin]

Have you heard of the "Alt-Tabbing" technique people are using to gain massive fps in BF2142? The problem seems to be, the memory on G80's fill up and never discard unused textures leaving no room for new ones hence MAJOR disk thrashing in certain situations. Alt-Tabbing "purges" the textures from video memory creating a whole new bunch of room for new textures, only to fill up again and Alt-Tab again. Now, I never played BF2142 so if anyone can verify they've experienced this or not, that would be great. Nvidia is working on a fix and states it will be available mid September.

actually ... no ... should i have ?

that is why i posted it here - instead of starting a new "inq" thread
[it is "kinda" related]

and the full article says NOT to Alt+Tab

if you play Battlefield and are one of numerous gamers plagued by the slowdown problem, Alt+Tab is not the answer you might need. Pascal, one of our readers came back to us and told us that Nvidia encourages you to use special button in the main page of the menu - this button opens a browser outside the game, and then you can swap back into the game without having the game screen destroyed.

 

[Keysplayr]

I know it says not to Alt-Tab, but that's what folks were doing. Toggling back and forth from game to web browser acting as a texture memory purge. At any rate, this needs fixing, fast.

 

[ronnn]

Yep, if those two traded, would end complaints from both. I don't have much driver problems, but I don't have vista yet. Maybe vista is the problem?

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: ronnn
Yep, if those two traded, would end complaints from both. I don't have much driver problems, but I don't have vista yet. Maybe vista is the problem?

I think it just might be. Or at least the specific configurations of their rigs. I have to say however, although I did not have a tremendous selection of games, I did not have any issues with either the 8800GTS or the 2900XT besides the CoJ demo and the Lost Planet Demo for the 8800GTS and 2900XT respectively during my benchmarking. But that was it.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: xtknight
I've had some trouble with NVIDIA's Windows drivers lately, so it wouldn't shock me that the concerns in the OP are valid. The drivers have steadily gotten worse.

OP: Does RivaTuner work for VSync?

Worse how? What games do you play so that I can compare?

Not much of a gamer actually, but simply installing them or playing around with the video settings has uncovered some flaws. My issues are mainly with the control panel. I have rarely, if ever, had a serious issue with NVIDIA or ATI drivers during gameplay. Even then I play SupCom occasionally and I've tried STALKER. No problems there. I never had VSync issues myself.

Other issues: for example, I had to reinstall XP after trying one of the 90 series drivers. It would say "pci.sys" is invalid or something to the extent, so it basically damaged the whole install. That was mainly what set me off.

They changed the mechanisms of the video playback color controls. My videos appear washed out and this never used to happen. I was unable to correct this through the color controls in an acceptable manner.

Overlay video failed to work on my PC throughout a large series of the newer NVIDIA 9x.xx drivers. This was also fixed later.

On startup my PC used to hard freeze due to the NVIDIA control panel loading. They fixed this later on.

There are some other quirks, like flat panel scaling not working in the 8 series, according to reports. Not sure if this was fixed. But the scaling options were moved to an Advanced tab and they also don't seem to work as well as they used to on the 7 series. Most of the options I tried in the new driver simply had no effect.

Major issues? Not at all, except the forgone XP install which hasn't happened since. But I never used to have any issues with the drivers. Now they seem to be gradually creeping up. I assume they have gotten a new driver team. Or maybe I just got really unlucky. I can't recall having a single problem with NVIDIA drivers until the 9x.xx series, then I had a ton of bugs all of a sudden. I assume it's because they were focusing mainly on Vista drivers. I could be wrong.

My response was mainly to all the sudden denial of the OP's problems. Do you really think he's just making up the problems for fun? It's possible he's having problems and it just wouldn't surprise me that much. I wouldn't be able to give you any specific examples since I don't own an 8 series card but the concerns may be valid. The very nature of bugs is that they only appear in certain circumstances. I'm probably not having near the amount of issues since I'm not using Vista or the 8 series. I haven't tried ATI lately, either.

 

[BFG10K]

anybody see this? ... i never did

Of course..

In fact the problem has been around since at least 2004 which is when I first saw it on my 6800 Ultra. That fact that it's taking them this long to fix it means it's really deep rooted.

Worse how? What games do you play so that I can compare?

Click.

In fact it's quite interesting that if I drop my 7900 GTX back into my system using identical drivers many of those problems disappear.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: xtknight
I've had some trouble with NVIDIA's Windows drivers lately, so it wouldn't shock me that the concerns in the OP are valid. The drivers have steadily gotten worse.

OP: Does RivaTuner work for VSync?

Worse how? What games do you play so that I can compare?

Not much of a gamer actually, but simply installing them or playing around with the video settings has uncovered some flaws. My issues are mainly with the control panel. I have rarely, if ever, had a serious issue with NVIDIA or ATI drivers during gameplay. Even then I play SupCom occasionally and I've tried STALKER. No problems there. I never had VSync issues myself.

Other issues: for example, I had to reinstall XP after trying one of the 90 series drivers. It would say "pci.sys" is invalid or something to the extent, so it basically damaged the whole install. That was mainly what set me off.

They changed the mechanisms of the video playback color controls. My videos appear washed out and this never used to happen. I was unable to correct this through the color controls in an acceptable manner.

Overlay video failed to work on my PC throughout a large series of the newer NVIDIA 9x.xx drivers. This was also fixed later.

On startup my PC used to hard freeze due to the NVIDIA control panel loading. They fixed this later on.

There are some other quirks, like flat panel scaling not working in the 8 series, according to reports. Not sure if this was fixed. But the scaling options were moved to an Advanced tab and they also don't seem to work as well as they used to on the 7 series. Most of the options I tried in the new driver simply had no effect.

Major issues? Not at all, except the forgone XP install which hasn't happened since. But I never used to have any issues with the drivers. Now they seem to be gradually creeping up. I assume they have gotten a new driver team. Or maybe I just got really unlucky. I can't recall having a single problem with NVIDIA drivers until the 9x.xx series, then I had a ton of bugs all of a sudden. I assume it's because they were focusing mainly on Vista drivers. I could be wrong.

My response was mainly to all the sudden denial of the OP's problems. Do you really think he's just making up the problems for fun? It's possible he's having problems and it just wouldn't surprise me that much. I wouldn't be able to give you any specific examples since I don't own an 8 series card but the concerns may be valid. The very nature of bugs is that they only appear in certain circumstances. I'm probably not having near the amount of issues since I'm not using Vista or the 8 series. I haven't tried ATI lately, either.

No, I don't think he's making it up. It's just a little hard to comprehend a lot of these reported problems, when I don't see any of it. In other words, how can one person have SO many problems, when I have had little to none. I know the answer to this of course, but that does not alleviate the frustration I feel for the person and his/her problems.

 

[Keysplayr]

Of course..

In fact the problem has been around since at least 2004 which is when I first saw it on my 6800 Ultra. That fact that it's taking them this long to fix it means it's really deep rooted.

That's all well and good, but again, I'm still a bit concerned about why I never experienced this problem. Maybe I just don't play the "right" games.

In fact it's quite interesting that if I drop my 7900 GTX back into my system using identical drivers many of those problems disappear.

That is interesting.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: chizow
I think NV should include a "Jump to Conclusions Mat" with their drivers for the OP. Might cut down on some of these Zomgziiiieeeest3hWORLDisEnding11eleven!!!!11bbq!!! threads.

maybe he should just take Matt2 up on his trade for 2900xt + cash offer.
-Some people just like to complain. i think the OP has always disliked nvidia and is getting his "money's worth" out of this and similar threads.

Personally, i loved both nvidia and AMD GPUs recently ... except for their pricing. Hard to find a damn sale!

Now what the HELL does this mean? it is *only* theInq so i DON'T want to start a thread [don't click if you don't want to give them hits i quoted all the important stuff]:


G80 running out out memory, driver fix under construction

By Theo Valich: Tuesday 31 July 2007, 07:19
IT SEEMS THAT Nvidia's Geforce 8800 series of graphics cards suffers random slowdowns, and this can be particularly problematic for owners of the Geforce 8800GTS 320MB, the cheapest 8800 out there.

The problem lies in fact that the G80 GPU has some trouble with texture memory management. In many unrelated cases, this bug starts leaving textures in video memory and system memory, causing the board to run out of texture memory. Once you run out of memory for textures on your graphics card and system, you will experience a lot of swapping with textures on a hard drive, and that is recipe for disaster, at least as far as framerates are concerned.

Some games are more affected than others, it all depends on how the game engine is handling textures. We learned about the situation a while ago, but it has been two weeks and fix is still not out. We heard from Nvidia that testing is well under way, with both Windows XP and Vista - combining these operating systems with different GPUs.

and

Nvidia will fix 8800 by mid-September

we managed to get an update from an Nvidia rep regarding the actual timeframe of the driver release that will fix the 8800 slowdown issue.

As it stands right now, fix for this highly annoying bug is planned for a release between the end of August and middle of September. My personal assumption would be that the latter date is a more realistic one. Nvidia stated that this problem is "of complex nature," and it seems to us that fixing one card leads to issues with another.

We wonder whether something went wrong in the whole 320-bit/384-bit memory controller combination, or whether the problem is caused by the fact that game developers were creating games with 256/512/1024 MB boards in mind, and Nvidia showed up with 320/640/768MB ones?

Just in case, if you play Battlefield and are one of numerous gamers plagued by the slowdown problem, Alt+Tab is not the answer you might need. Pascal, one of our readers came back to us and told us that Nvidia encourages you to use special button in the main page of the menu - this button opens a browser outside the game, and then you can swap back into the game without having the game screen destroyed.

anybody see this? ... i never did

Although I haven't run into those problems myself, they aren't at all that surprising. Many including myself noticed the major differences in performance when the 320MB GTS was released and a few review sites used RivaTuner to monitor vRAM usage. With the 320MB GTS, games above 1440 or so pegged vRAM usage and spilled over into system RAM resulting in drastic frame rate hits. Considering few memory variants (256 vs 512 etc) exhibited this much of a performance hit in the past, some figured it was a problem with the way cached textures were (or weren't being) purged from the frame buffer and figured driver updates might improve the situation going forward.

Possible other factors could be the odd memory configuration of the G80, as mentioned above. In a nutshell, the layout of the memory modules/traces and the # of "shader quads" means there is never a proportionate ratio of memory to shaders with the G80. This could lead to inefficiencies and potential bottlenecks/problems with memory management.

Lastly, I'm not sure if the problems are limited to Vista. I'm pretty sure they're not. But still its interesting when you look at AT's coverage of the "2GB Wall" Part II. Vista allocates more memory based on the the amount of memory on the card, perhaps in an attempt to prevent performance degradation from cached textures. Problem is, if you have a limited amount of system RAM and a lot of vRAM, you're going to "hit the wall" sooner, resulting in the paging/thrashing problems people seem to be having with the G80.

 

[BroadbandGamer]

This is strange. I can run 1152x864 with scaling off and v-sync works. Now if I try running a widescreen resolution like 10680x1050 with scaling off v-sync doesn't work. For some reason I can't get v-sync to work with widescreen resolutions. Now if I scale the lower resolution to fit my 1920x1200 screen v-sync works.