what the 7950GT AGP????

[jmartin357]

Originally posted by: AnotherGuy
no dude u should have 24 pipes instead of 20 in the 7900gs

The box might say 7900 but u gettin the right card

yeah, I thought that too, so I ignored all reason and put it in. it's a 7900gs. and yes, the 7900gs is slighly better than my 6800gt, and it will take newegg a week or two to receive my package (for which I will have to cover shipping and insurance) and then they may or may not actually send me a 7950gt to replace the other card.

so I'll probably just keep it and avoid the hassle. I love upgrades.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: jmartin357

Originally posted by: AnotherGuy
no dude u should have 24 pipes instead of 20 in the 7900gs

The box might say 7900 but u gettin the right card

yeah, I thought that too, so I ignored all reason and put it in. it's a 7900gs. and yes, the 7900gs is slighly better than my 6800gt, and it will take newegg a week or two to receive my package (for which I will have to cover shipping and insurance) and then they may or may not actually send me a 7950gt to replace the other card.

so I'll probably just keep it and avoid the hassle. I love upgrades.

Dude you need to contact Newegg first thing tomorrow & insist that they fix this problem without charging you anything ... you paid 20% more for that card then you should have & theres no way you should stand for it.

Newegg will fix the problem for you if you speak up & if you complain enough I'm sure you'll be able to have it resolved within a week maximum.

 

[Skunkwourk]

Originally posted by: jmartin357

Originally posted by: AnotherGuy
no dude u should have 24 pipes instead of 20 in the 7900gs

The box might say 7900 but u gettin the right card

yeah, I thought that too, so I ignored all reason and put it in. it's a 7900gs. and yes, the 7900gs is slighly better than my 6800gt, and it will take newegg a week or two to receive my package (for which I will have to cover shipping and insurance) and then they may or may not actually send me a 7950gt to replace the other card.

so I'll probably just keep it and avoid the hassle. I love upgrades.

only slightly better than the 6800gt?

 

[Auric]

Seems to do quite well here.

 

[jmartin357]

because I know you guys love the updates on this project...

ok, so after I complained newegg really came through. overnighted a replacement which I just put in. and so long as I'm content to run w/out video drivers it's a peach. but if I put the drivers from the disk on windows will crash within 1 min of loading. I figured maybe the drivers on the disk were borked, so I tried to d/l nvidia's suggested drivers, and they tell me I don't have an nvidia product. gah. I'm currently d/l'ing 97.92 and 158.19...... does anyone have a suggestion for me (which driver, how can I prevent the lock/reboot, why do I have such trouble upgrading?)

 

[happy medium]

Check XFX web site for new drivers. They are working on the problem. Did you use the driver cd that came with the card?

http://www.xfxforce.com/web/support/showSearchDriversSerial.jspa

 

[jmartin357]

thanks for your response. yes, I did use the drivers from the cd. while they are the only drivers that will believe I have an nvidia product, they are also the only drivers that cause a lockup and 10 seconds later a non-bluescreen reboot. I'm currently downloading any driver I can get my hands on from guru3d and all of them so far tell me I don't have an nvidia product.

I'm concerned that you're aware of "the problem" that they're working on. as per expectation, their website is horribly unusable, but after refering to my email from newegg I was able to trick it into giving me a non-bookmarkable page for my card based on a part number (and serisouly, am I expected to crack open the case, jerk out the card and write down the serial number before hitting a support site? wow). they suggest several drivers, one the nvidia suggestion (doens't work) another in the 91 series (doesn't work) quite a number of vista drivers (no vista) and nothing that I find on the cd (which was like 93.83... I don't remember because I only get seconds to look before the system locks).

so here are my options. keep trying for a new driver. could work. reinstall windows. (hours and hours and hours of work for.....?). rma this card and the other one. rma just this card and keep the 7900gs or remind myself that incremental upgrades are always the wrong answer and stop reading forums of this nature.

your advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[Captante]

Looks like some folks over at the Nvidia forums have run into the same problem & come up with a work-around ... you'll find a link to the modded driver thats working for them about 1/2 way down the first page of this thread:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=33580

Be sure to fully un-install the old drivers before trying these ... report back & let us know if they work for you.

 

[jmartin357]

hm. using the link you sent I can trick any fw driver into believing it's for my card. some with more success than others. using what nvidia thinks I should be, (93.71) I'll be prompted for a disk that I can not supply. I tried the 158 series and the 165 series and both of them result in non-resetting, non-blue screening lockups.

so I guess we've eliminated one of my options: drivers will not fix my problem. that leaves reinstall, rma, rma2x and general frustration.

if you want my mostly uneducated advice, do not buy the 7950gt. ever. but hey, if you do, here's a fun side note: f8 on my asus something or other motherboard (which is the replacement for my msi something or other that would never work with my previous video card) will get you into raid bios setup. and lord would I have enjoyed that design meeting.... "hm, we need a hotkey for our raid setup... should we pick and intrinsic windows key command to make booting into safe mode 1000x harder? yes! yes we should!"

I don't know what to say. this is how this always goes.

 

[Captante]

When you get prompted for the install disk, you just have to point the driver to the directory the driver un-zipped to, it doesn't matter that you don't have a physical CD ... this is the way all Nvidia drivers used to have to be installed & I took it for granted that you would know how to do it as a result.

Try again & see what happens.

 

[Captante]

Manual driver update instructions:

(1) Unzip the file I linked in the thread last night & pay attention to the directory it unzips into ... usually the temp directory but you can change it to anywhere on your HD.

(2) Go to device manager & double-click on display adapters, then right click on the adapter beneath ... most likely says standard VGA adapter or similar, select driver & then update driver.

(3) Select install driver from a list or specific location then don't search, I will choose the driver to install then browse to the directory you unzipped the Nvidia driver to earlier & select the NV4disp.inf master file...at this point it MAY show a driver to isnstall, but if not remove the check from only show compatible hardware & scroll to just below the top of the list then select the one named %NVIDIA_G72.DEV.01D9.1% & click next ... ignore the scary warnings & follow the steps to install the driver then re-boot. (don't worry ... even if its the wrong driver it won't hurt the card ... you may however need to manually adjust the clockspeeds to the proper settings)

(4) Upon reboot (provided all goes well) enter the Nvidia control panel & check the clockspeeds if possible ... you may or may not be able to adjust them because you are using a modded .inf file so the drive may not be fully recognized but they should be set by the cards BIOS.

Thats it & you should be good to go ... hope it works for you!

 

[jmartin357]

thanks for you patience.

yes, I'm aware that I needed to provide the location of the drivers. on the link that you suggest I found this file to download: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s=bc...e32670db2&act=Attach&type=post&id=4269

that contins two files, modes.txt and nv4_disp.inf. copying those files into the folders containing drivers will allow those drivers to pass the "do you have an nvidia card for this driver" test. most drivers will then prompt for nvucode.bin or nvucode.bi_ . I have several versions of that file on my pc, and if I browse and supply any of them (yes, I've tried them all) the system will attempt to continue but the install process will stop. forever. the computer is usable at that point, but the install will never happen.

in the event that I find a driver that will install (take for example the driver they shipped on the cd) the system will hang within 1 min of loading. every time.

fyi - I'm using an asus a8v deluxe with bios 1017. 2 gigs of corsaire ram and xp sp2 of course. fx55 for the cpu.

 

[Captante]

Its very possible that there are some leftover bits from old/failed Nvidia driver installs that are causing this problem ... have you tried running a program like Driver cleaner pro in safe mode to remove all traces of the old ones before installing the new one?

If not I suggest you give this a shot & then when you re-install make sure you choose either the G72 -or- 7900GT .inf file when you try to re-install ... you could also give the 7800GS .inf a try because that would be sure to set the core & memory clock lower then your 7950GT supports ... remember that the PCIe version is clocked somwhat higher then the AGP & if its being installed by mistake it could explain the lockups/BSOD's.

Edit: You might want to give one of these custom drivers a try as well:

Nvidia / XG modded drivers

 

[jmartin357]

ok. so this morning I have tried drive cleaning, new drivers, new drivers for lesser models and restarting. oh have I tried restarting.

no luck. so here are my options as I see them:

1. reinstall windows. after drive cleaning this seems like a redundant option, but it's out there. this is a build from 2k4 and it has seen 4 nvidia cards go through it in that time.

2. roll back to the 7900gs that newegg mistakenly sent me and try to convince them that they should take back the right card and that I'll be keeping the wrong one. that's a money loser for me, but may be the preferred option.

3. rma them both and try again.

4. rma them both and get an ati card.

5. run in safemode forever.

number 5 is certainly the easiest of the choices. not the most rewarding.

 

[Captante]

Wow ... I'm fresh out of ideas at this point, sorry nothing worked for you.

As long as you have you have your important data backed up I'd say try the re-install because an XP install from 2004 is about due to be wiped out anyway and it will likely enhance performance in many ways because of all the garbage you'll rid yourself of. At this point if you try that & it still doesn't work I'd either RMA both cards to Newegg or see if you can get then to credit you the price difference & let you keep the GS ... you could also go for an ATI X1950 Pro instead which will be a bit faster then the Nvidia's plus I've had better luck with ATI drivers for quite awhile now.

 

[jmartin357]

I went with the nvidia just because I've had reasonable luck in the past. I espeically liked their unified drivers, which I find are now gone anyway.

I put the 7900gs back in. to do the re-install I'd need to buy another hard drive (which is a good idea) but I've got far more money into "boy, a 22in lcd sure would be nice" than I ever intended.

thanks for your help.

 

[Captante]

No problem!

I still think you should try explaining the situation to Newegg over the phone on Monday when the regular customer service people are at work & see if you can get the $50 credited to you somhow... my bet is they'll take care of you.

Good luck!