Thought I had a defective 6800GT

[Slacker]

Maybe a combination of drivers and a weak power supply.

My computer had been locking up and monitor going to sleep simultaneously while I was using the computer, at first it was in Q3 and 3dmark03 then it started doing it while web surfing and finally it would do on start up after showing the windows desktop for only a few seconds.

I tried a few things, re-seating all the components, changing agp aperature and swapping in an older power supply that didnt have the P4 plug on but I rigged one up just to test it.

Finally I went and bought a new power supply, an Antec True430. I installed it and booted up and did some web surfing with no problem, played a few minutes of Q3 and then tried 3dmark03, in Q3 it was o.k. but I only played for a short time but when I ran 3dmark it did it again, then when I rebooted it wouldnt finish loading windows again, locked up and monitor off simultaneously aaarrrrrggggghhh :|

I tried safe mode and it booted up fine and had no problems surfing, this is when the :light: came on, It's TEH DRIVERS STUPID

I had the BETA 62.20 drivers installed, in safe mode I uninstalled them and rebooted with no problem and then installed the official 61.76 drivers and everything has been fine since then (last night around 11:00) played Q3 all night 'til around 6:00 a.m. and ran 3dmark 3 times with different overclocks and got over 12k!

Now my 6800GT is like the Mickey D's, I'm Lovin' it

 

[Rage187]

Cant wait for mine.

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: Rage187
Cant wait for mine.

Same here. :thumbsup:

I got in on the Provantage $339 6800GT deal and it's coming tomorrow...

 

[SickBeast]

nVidia driver issues?

I suppose the nVidia people will point out that this was a beta driver.

 

[FluxCap]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001

Originally posted by: Rage187
Cant wait for mine.

Same here. :thumbsup:

I got in on the Provantage $339 6800GT deal and it's coming tomorrow...

How did they honor your order and didn't honor all the others that I have read about?

 

[Rage187]

"I got in on the Provantage $339 6800GT deal and it's coming tomorrow..."

Have you checked your email lately?

 

[Kalmah]

Yeah, Nvidia seems to have been releasing beta drivers with every release of new generation cards for the last couple generations. Then you usually have to wait a few months before you get official drivers so that you can actually use the card "the way it's ment to be played". hehehe

I'm not ranting. I'm an Nvidia fan but this has gotten kind of irritating for me lately.

 

[FluxCap]

Originally posted by: Rage187
"I got in on the Provantage $339 6800GT deal and it's coming tomorrow..."

Have you checked your email lately?

Read the last page of this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=40&threadid=1352242&STARTPAGE=6&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

Did it really get honored? If so, I am going to slam them in resellerratings because I cancelled my order after the price increase and being told they would not honor a single preorder at that price. I want to see some real proof this was honored.

 

[PowderBB3D]

Originally posted by: Slacker
It's TEH DRIVERS STUPID

Hahahahaha

 

[SynthDude2001]

Originally posted by: FluxCap

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001

Originally posted by: Rage187
Cant wait for mine.

Same here. :thumbsup:

I got in on the Provantage $339 6800GT deal and it's coming tomorrow...

How did they honor your order and didn't honor all the others that I have read about?

I don't know, but there were only two other posters in that thread who said they got in on the deal too - it has something to do with our proximity to the one warehouse that apparently did get the cards in before the price was jacked up. One guy was from Fort Worth, less than 30 miles from the warehouse, and already got his card on Friday. I'm in San Antonio myself, so I'm not getting mine until tomorrow. I do have a tracking number for it.

 

[nitromullet]

I'm currently running the 62.11 drivers with DX9c enabled and everything works fine except for the following:

- I had the 3D nVidia logo screen saver, and it would lock up for about 10 secs then reboot every time the screensaver came up. I'm using the lame WindowsXP screen saver now to prevent this problem.
- Uru - Ages Beyond Myst - There is a level with a waterfall that cascades down over a cliff and into a pond. Part or the puzzle involves moving objects in the water to create a bridge to walk over. Well, with my GT the objects that are supposed to be in the water are not there and the waterfalls appear to lock up the card for a a few seconds at a time. The waterfall disappears and I can't move. This goes on unitl I get away from the waterfalls. Other than that, the game plays fine and looks fantastic.

 

[Shad0hawK]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
nVidia driver issues?

I suppose the nVidia people will point out that this was a beta driver.

i think you just did

some may vall me a fanboy(so what), but i have been working with both cards for over 15 years(and in fact own both in machines at home) and can honestly say if any company needs help in it's software dept. it is ATI.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Shad0hawK

Originally posted by: SickBeast
nVidia driver issues?

I suppose the nVidia people will point out that this was a beta driver.

i think you just did

some may vall me a fanboy(so what), but i have been working with both cards for over 15 years(and in fact own both in machines at home) and can honestly say if any company needs help in it's software dept. it is ATI.

ATi has excellent DirectX drivers; it's OpenGL that has always been their problem. This thread illustrates that nVidia is not immune to driver problems, albeit in this case they were on a beta driver set.

 

[Shad0hawK]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: Shad0hawK

Originally posted by: SickBeast
nVidia driver issues?

I suppose the nVidia people will point out that this was a beta driver.

i think you just did

some may vall me a fanboy(so what), but i have been working with both cards for over 15 years(and in fact own both in machines at home) and can honestly say if any company needs help in it's software dept. it is ATI.

ATi has excellent DirectX drivers; it's OpenGL that has always been their problem. This thread illustrates that nVidia is not immune to driver problems, albeit in this case they were on a beta driver set.

thier dx drivers historically have stunk too but they have been getting much better(stability wise)

case in point, a customer brought in a computer saturday and wanted a ram/vid card upgrade but had a VERY limited budget they had brought in a built by ATI 9200 to replace an old tnt vanta, the drivers on the CD kept saying that i had to install from a standard vga driver even though i had already uninstalled the old drivers and set it up as standard VGA. so to double check i went to display properties and sure enough it said "standard vga adapter" after 45 minutes of jacking with with multiple driver versions i asked the customer if he had his heart set on an ATI card, he said "no" so i installed a fx5200 that was also cheaper, the drivers installed on the first try with no errors so i asked to customer to leave the computer overnight to test stability. it ran 3dmark01 demo in loop mode overnight and was running this morning until we stopped it at 3pm.

the customer was happy. like most people he did not really care what card was in it as long as it worked.

to be sure i have had issues with nvidia cards(and drivers) as well but nowhere near the scale of the problems ATI cards/drivers have compatibility wise. i do not say this from any emotional attachment to one company but through a decade and a half of hands on experience building and repairing PC's.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Slacker
Maybe a combination of drivers and a weak power supply.

My computer had been locking up and monitor going to sleep simultaneously while I was using the computer, at first it was in Q3 and 3dmark03 then it started doing it while web surfing and finally it would do on start up after showing the windows desktop for only a few seconds.

I tried safe mode and it booted up fine and had no problems surfing, this is when the :light: came on, It's TEH DRIVERS STUPID

I have had similar problems with various NV drivers in the past too, both beta and official. The worst symptoms were as you described, suddenly the monitor goes into power-down mode, and the PC locks up, no ability to do a "blind shutdown", nothing.

I had this problem with a few of the driver revs somewhere in the 40.x or 50.x range, either with a TNT1 PCI, or a GF2 MX AGP 4x, don't recall which was in my machine at the time. Actually, for a while, they were both in my machine.

Speaking of which, various NV drivers also had issues with my Hauppauge WinTV PCI capture card, and proper overlay support while running multiple monitors. Also some issues with overlay mode when only using a single monitor.

I also had some problems more recently, with the "NVIEW" feature of the 5x.xx drivers, interacting badly with some programs and causing massive slowdowns in window repaints, and also a bunch of errors showing up in the System Error Log, about mutexes and locks and timeouts and stuff.

So for those that think that NV drivers are somehow immune to bugs, think again.

That said, with respect to actual 3D performance during games, NV drivers have still been much more trouble-free than ATI drivers. I'm still having issues with gamma ramps (too dark) running original UT (4.36 official patch), with recent Cats. (WTF? Hasn't ATI fixed their in-game gamma problems yet??) The worst part is, it doesn't happen all of the time, usually the very first time that I start the game, the gamma is fine, but if I ever have to ALT+TAB out, or quit and restart, everything is extremely dark. It's a royal PITA. I have a Radeon 9200 64MB AGP 8x in a KT4V-L mobo with KT400/8235 chipset, btw.