Help Please - 6800GS agp - A few questions...

[gimpycow]

First post to the anandtech forums but long time visitor...

I just upgraded from a 9800Pro to a BFG 6800GS/OC and have the following questions:

1) UNLOCKING PIPES:
I read the entire link of how to unlock pipes here - http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1500237

However, when I get to step 4 - "navigate to the NVStrap tab. On it, toward the bottom, you will see a check box that says "Allow Enabling Hardware Masks." Go ahead and check it" - I find that my "Allow Enabling Hardware Masks" is greyed out as is everything on this screen. Any idea why and what to I should do so I can enable hardware masks? This is a key step to try and open the additional pipes on the card.

2) DRIVERS:
I downloaded the latest NVidia 81.98 forceware drivers which are supposed to recognize the 6800 GS and 7800 GS cards but they DO NOT recognize my 6800GS. I have to use the drivers that came with card and they work fine. Just wondering if this is expected and should I be concerned that I wont be able to use future NVidia drivers? Also, is there a forceware driver set that other 6800GS users have been able to use? I would hate to be stuck with the drivers that came with the card forever...

3) PERFORMANCE:
My default 3dMark05 score at 1024x768 went from 2742 (9800Pro) to 4467 (6800GS). This is an increase of 61% which is very nice but I was hoping for a score above 5,000.
Should I expect better performance considering my system specs are:
Athlon XP 2700+, 1GB PC2700 Corsair High Performance memory, and an ASUS NForce 2 mobo

4) BF2 Graphic Settings:
Will increasing the textures and lighting to high put an additional load on my 1GB of system memory now that my card has 256MB of onboard memory? Also, has anyone found a sweet spot for graphic settings running the 6800GS with BF2? I have everything cranked up to high at 1024x768 with 4xAA and I do notice some slow down at times but then it gets silky smooth at other times. I have some more testing to do with settings but I am thinking somebody has already found the best graphic settings with smooth gameplay.

Thanks in advance for your time and assistance!

 

[CKXP]

Originally posted by: gimpycow
First post to the anandtech forums but long time visitor...

I just upgraded from a 9800Pro to a BFG 6800GS/OC and have the following questions:

1) UNLOCKING PIPES:
I read the entire link of how to unlock pipes here - http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1500237

However, when I get to step 4 - "navigate to the NVStrap tab. On it, toward the bottom, you will see a check box that says "Allow Enabling Hardware Masks." Go ahead and check it" - I find that my "Allow Enabling Hardware Masks" is greyed out as is everything on this screen. Any idea why and what to I should do so I can enable hardware masks? This is a key step to try and open the additional pipes on the card.

2) DRIVERS:
I downloaded the latest NVidia 81.98 forceware drivers which are supposed to recognize the 6800 GS and 7800 GS cards but they DO NOT recognize my 6800GS. I have to use the drivers that came with card and they work fine. Just wondering if this is expected and should I be concerned that I wont be able to use future NVidia drivers? Also, is there a forceware driver set that other 6800GS users have been able to use? I would hate to be stuck with the drivers that came with the card forever...

3) PERFORMANCE:
My default 3dMark05 score at 1024x768 went from 2742 (9800Pro) to 4467 (6800GS). This is an increase of 61% which is very nice but I was hoping for a score above 5,000.
Should I expect better performance considering my system specs are:
Athlon XP 2700+, 1GB PC2700 Corsair High Performance memory, and an ASUS NForce 2 mobo

4) BF2 Graphic Settings:
Will increasing the textures and lighting to high put an additional load on my 1GB of system memory now that my card has 256MB of onboard memory? Also, has anyone found a sweet spot for graphic settings running the 6800GS with BF2? I have everything cranked up to high at 1024x768 with 4xAA and I do notice some slow down at times but then it gets silky smooth at other times. I have some more testing to do with settings but I am thinking somebody has already found the best graphic settings with smooth gameplay.

Thanks in advance for your time and assistance!

welcome to AT, AFAIK forceware drivers 82.12 offically support the 6800gs agp 82.12 you might want to give those a try. now to question #1, in the NVstrap driver menu, did you click the install button first? that should open up the greyed out area.

 

[Jman13]

CKXP is right on the Install option for the other pipes. With your processor, I think without unlocking the other pipes, you have no chance of breaking 5,000. However, with them unlocked, you'll get there.

On my 6800GS (same card as yours), at stock, I got 4520 in 3Dmark05, and my processor is a little better than yours, which will account for the slight difference. After unlocking, I went to 5157, and after overclocking to 400/1100, I'm at 5511.

Drivers...either use 82.12 or one of the beta sets (I'm running the 83.60 betas).

The textures and stuff should really all be handled by the card's memory. I don't play BF2, but expecting silky performanc on an intense game at 4xAA is a bit much. Try playing with just 2xAA

 

[gimpycow]

Ah...ye ole Install button eh?

No, I didn't click that although I was tempted to. I don't remember reading that in the directions to unlock the pipes but I may have missed it. THANKS GUYS!!!!

As for the drivers, do you know if NVidia will be supporting the 6800GS in future non-beta forceware drivers? Right now, I think I will stick to the drivers that came w/the card since they seem to be working fine and performance is in line w/what it should be.

Finally, as for the sweetspot for BF2 graphic settings, anybody else have 1GB of system memory along with this card and if so, what do you run the game at?

I will post back with my unlocking results when I get a chance to try it again tonight.

Thanks again!

 

[gimpycow]

BF2/Graphics cont...

I also wanted to add that during some BF2 testing last night, I took all of the graphic settings to HIGH including textures, lighting and shadows. I turned off the AA entirely. Turning off the AA helped a lot. That being said, I still get spurts of hard drive activity which usually means virtual paging is going on. I know it is not punkbuster as it is set to sleep every 500 seconds and the disk access is occuring more than that.

I am fairly certain if I lower some BF2 graphic settings, that the virtual paging will stop. If that proves true, then that tells me the game wants more system memory due to the higher graphic settings outside of the 256 MB of onboard 6800GS memory. I do know that since I turned the graphics all to HIGH, it takes about an additional 30 or so seconds to load a map for the first time. Wouldn't it then stand to reason that there might be more loaded into system memory as well? Since I "only" have 1GB, that might be my virtual paging problem...at least that is what I am thinking.

In a nutshell, I have seen BF2 at HIGH graphic settings and I would loathe to go back to any MEDIUM settings now especially since I have a bran new 6800GS card under the hood. I also think the 6800GS card can handle the HIGH graphic settings but my gut feeling is that only having 1GB of system memory is my problem.

Just wondering in anyone else with 1GB of system memory and the 6800GS card might be able to give me their experiences with graphic settings in BF2? Also, if any of you can give me additional insight on what you might think is going on in regard to my hard drive sporadically spinning during gameplay causing the game to get choppy for a second or two.

Thanks again!

 

[Wolfshanze]

As for the drivers, do you know if NVidia will be supporting the 6800GS in future non-beta forceware drivers? Right now, I think I will stick to the drivers that came w/the card

I hate to break it to you, but BFG drivers ARE NVidia drivers. BFG doesn't make their own drivers, they simply give you NVidia drivers, and they in fact say so on their website.

So if you're using drivers from BFG that support the card, they are more then likely NVidia Beta drivers, since none of the "official" NVidia drivers support the card yet.

 

[gimpycow]

Good point on the drivers that came w/the card...that makes sense. My reasoning still stands that I will just continue to use this driver as it works fine.

That being said, the 6800GS agp has been out for a few months now. NVidia should have standard forceware drivers that support it. Maybe I have been spoiled by ATI's driver releases when I had my 9800Pro...

My concern remains...I want to see a standard ForceWare driver from NVidia that supports the 6800GS and soon. I don't want my card to become a lost "black sheep" to NVidia and then a new game down the line needs a driver update which I can't use...

 

[gimpycow]

Hey fella's,

I just received the following reply from BFG Tech Support in regard to 6800GS AGP Drivers:

"The current drivers do not support the 6800 GS or the 7800 GS. You will need
to use the drivers that came on the CD for now. Nvidia is supposed to be
releasing updated drivers sometime this month."

I sent an email to NVidia as well but just got some generic repsonse which answered absolutely nothing. At least I know from BFG that NVidia seems to be aware and working on the issue.

So, the DRIVER piece of this thread is pretty much done for now.

 

[Jman13]

You really can use the beta Forceware drivers. They recognize the 6800GS and are perfectly stable. I'm running the 83.60 drivers.

 

[CKXP]

Originally posted by: gimpycow
Hey fella's,

I just received the following reply from BFG Tech Support in regard to 6800GS AGP Drivers:

"The current drivers do not support the 6800 GS or the 7800 GS. You will need
to use the drivers that came on the CD for now. Nvidia is supposed to be
releasing updated drivers sometime this month."

I sent an email to NVidia as well but just got some generic repsonse which answered absolutely nothing. At least I know from BFG that NVidia seems to be aware and working on the issue.

So, the DRIVER piece of this thread is pretty much done for now.

not so fast....forceware 83.40 WHQL official support for the 6800gs agp

 

[gimpycow]

Hmmm...I will have to look and see if I can find em.

Also, just to update the PIPES part of this thread, I unlocked the four masked pipes on my card last night but I saw texture corruption everywhere. So...I had to disable them again...no free performance for me...

Now to find the sweetspot for BF2 gaming. When my graphics are all turned to HIGH, my hard drive pages like crazy. When they are set to medium, it is smoother than ever. I guess I need to crank one setting to HIGH at a time and test. More system memory would probably solve the problem but for my aging system, I would rather not spend more money in that dept as I already have 1GB.