Okay, here's my story...
In August, I build rig. E6600, P5W DH Deluxe, PNY 7900GT (I wanted eVGA, but OOS). Rig works fine with then current drivers.
In September, school starts. I don't have enough time to play games, but do keep up to date on BIOS/video driver upgrades.
In mid-December, exams are done, I dig out the game CDs. Major BSODs right after starting games. I had tested with two or three games. This is with 93.71 and BIOS 1707. Upgrade video drivers to 93.81; seems fixed.
In late December, after a few other stability issues outside games, memtest86 fails my OCZ RAM. RAM is replaced with 2x1 gig Kingston DDR2-667, passes memtest. Stability problems gone.
At the same time, I pick up a copy of Sid Meier's Railroads! Begin noticing that after a few hours of playing, box will sometimes BSOD. Error message points to NVIDIA drivers. There are also occasional display glitches (e.g. lines across screen) in that game.
Late January, I decide to try Vista. With NVIDIA drivers, box will BSOD after 10-25 minutes... eventually, even the MS drivers produce the same result. Angry, I give up and reinstall my XP image... (Thanks Acronis TrueImage) back to 93.81 and the Railroads BSODs. (Meanwhile, my 5 year old Intel mobo/ATI video card box runs Vista RC2 rock solid...)
There's also another odd thing I've noticed. On my second monitor, if I have a big black area, some pixels will sometimes be ... blinking. It's hard to describe, but if anyone wants, I can perhaps use my digital camera and try and record it. This behaviour was visible on the BIOS screen at boot, but it could be hardware or just a problem with a 5 year old LCD...
Now, my question is reasonably simple: are NVIDIA's drivers just full of bugs, or is my card physically slightly screwy?
If the card is screwy, I'm quite tempted to buy one of those new 320 megger 8800GTSs, but spending $350-400 (CAD) on something that's not broken would be annoying. (As an Intel fanboy, the idea of funding AMD R&D by buying ATI is... not exactly appealing)
In August, I build rig. E6600, P5W DH Deluxe, PNY 7900GT (I wanted eVGA, but OOS). Rig works fine with then current drivers.
In September, school starts. I don't have enough time to play games, but do keep up to date on BIOS/video driver upgrades.
In mid-December, exams are done, I dig out the game CDs. Major BSODs right after starting games. I had tested with two or three games. This is with 93.71 and BIOS 1707. Upgrade video drivers to 93.81; seems fixed.
In late December, after a few other stability issues outside games, memtest86 fails my OCZ RAM. RAM is replaced with 2x1 gig Kingston DDR2-667, passes memtest. Stability problems gone.
At the same time, I pick up a copy of Sid Meier's Railroads! Begin noticing that after a few hours of playing, box will sometimes BSOD. Error message points to NVIDIA drivers. There are also occasional display glitches (e.g. lines across screen) in that game.
Late January, I decide to try Vista. With NVIDIA drivers, box will BSOD after 10-25 minutes... eventually, even the MS drivers produce the same result. Angry, I give up and reinstall my XP image... (Thanks Acronis TrueImage) back to 93.81 and the Railroads BSODs. (Meanwhile, my 5 year old Intel mobo/ATI video card box runs Vista RC2 rock solid...)
There's also another odd thing I've noticed. On my second monitor, if I have a big black area, some pixels will sometimes be ... blinking. It's hard to describe, but if anyone wants, I can perhaps use my digital camera and try and record it. This behaviour was visible on the BIOS screen at boot, but it could be hardware or just a problem with a 5 year old LCD...
Now, my question is reasonably simple: are NVIDIA's drivers just full of bugs, or is my card physically slightly screwy?
If the card is screwy, I'm quite tempted to buy one of those new 320 megger 8800GTSs, but spending $350-400 (CAD) on something that's not broken would be annoying. (As an Intel fanboy, the idea of funding AMD R&D by buying ATI is... not exactly appealing)
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