RyanLucier
Gawd
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2006
- Messages
- 667
UPDATE:
The 8800gtx's were simply INCOMPATIBLE with the x58 system. This same behaviour was exhibited by 7 different 8800gtx cards running in SLI.
The 8800gtx sli crashing problem was fixed on the 680i system however by swapping out the cards for another pair of 8800gtx's. One, or both, of the original cards went bad or was bad all along.
so if you've got an x58 and you're having problems with 8800gtx's... RMA'ing it won't fix the problem. The 8800gtx's have issues with the x58. This behaviour was also confirmed on another system by another person, I had them run the same test with a very similar system and it had the same behavior, crashing etc.
/UPDATE
THREAD INFO:
This thread is documenting the 175.16 and NVLDDMKM.DLL error many people are experiencing under Windows Vista, as well as the things I've tried to solve it for my particular case. Anyone feel free to say you're experiences as well, primarily those with problems, so we can figure out if there's any common threads here.
DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM:
Using windows Vista, while playing any DX10 games, the screen flickers a few times, and then the inevitable crash follows, resulting in a blue screen of death and the culprit being NVLDDMKM.sys. I experience crashes with the system overclocked and not overclocked at all. And in windows XP, it's stable as can be.
OBSERVATIONS:
1. This error ONLY happens in Vista, not XP, with the exact same system.
2. So far, only experiencing this problem with DX10 games. DX9 games, such as Warcraft 3 or Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance work fine.
3. According to Hasoos, a forum member, if you are playing a game where your frames per second drops under 10 fps, it could trigger this failure. That also means if you underclock your card, and it was already struggling, you could just make the problem worse.
4. According to: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1032579964#post1032579964
Apparently, pirated versions of vista do not have this problem... That leads me to believe that the "crippling" that results from having a pirate version turns off some features that are actually the cause of all these NVLDDMKM.DLL issues. Perhaps coincidence, perhaps something more.
5. Something further supporting Observation 4 is the fact that I've noticed that information pop-ups seem to be the culprit of some of the crashing. Playing world in conflict, at the main menu screen, if I hit the volume up or down button on my keyboard, it results in the driver stop responding and restarting - this is also precisely when a popup occurs on my screen, telling me the volume would be raised (I don't actually see the popup, but it WOULD have shown up if it didn't crash.). It doesn't hard crash in a BSOD though.
Something to ponder, especially since the crash hasn't happened in DX9 games when I raise and lower the volume to the best of my knowledge.
THINGS TRIED TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM:
1. Installed SP1 and all available updates off windows update.
2. Ran a "barebones" vista install with ONLY the 680i 9.64 nforce motherboard drivers and nvidia 175.16 graphics card drivers installed, vista SP1 and all windows updates installed. Crash still happened.
3. Installed nvidia beta 175.75 drivers - "insta-crash" in hellgate london disappears. However, world in conflict develops a "rainbow color" effect, where everything is all trippy, like you ran the entire screen through an invert filter in photoshop or something.
4. Removed all overclocks on system.
5. Disabled SLI.
6. Turned off UAC.
7. Turned off Aero.
8. Heavily underclocked 8800gtx's, does not rectify insta-crash. Haven't endurance tested playing games with heavily underclocked cards, but I imagine it will crash eventually too.
9. Regarding northbridge cooling & cooling in general: I removed the northbridge and replaced the thermal pad with AS5 the day I received it. 2 x 120mm intake on the front, 2x80mm exhaust on the back, as well as 3x120mm fans mounted to the radiator, external to the case so they're not dumping heat inside the case. CPU waterblock is Swiftech Apogee GT. The GPU's idle around 62 and 70C in Vista doing random web surfing etc. and in games never exceed 85C.
10. Renaming NVLDDMKM.SYS in c:\windows\system32\drivers to nvlddmkm.sys.old and expanded the nvlddmkm.sy_ included with the nvidia driver package into the same directory (effectively replacing the old version) and the lockup still occurs.
11. Running the system with a APC 1300VA Uninterruptable Power Backup, so the voltage coming into the computer is "clean." This is the model:
http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BR1300LCD&total_watts=200
12. Bumped up voltage of ram to 2.1v. According to the SPD, the memory is spec'd to run 400mhz 4-4-4-15-2T @ 2.0v, and I gave it an extra .1v.
13. Removed soundblaster X-Fi Elite pro from the system, didn't help.
=============================
As always, if anyone has any ideas, fire 'em up lets figure out WTF is wrong with this problem for everyone experiencing it. Hopefully by documenting things attempted to fixing it and putting it in one neat thread we can get some sort of ideas going.
The 8800gtx's were simply INCOMPATIBLE with the x58 system. This same behaviour was exhibited by 7 different 8800gtx cards running in SLI.
The 8800gtx sli crashing problem was fixed on the 680i system however by swapping out the cards for another pair of 8800gtx's. One, or both, of the original cards went bad or was bad all along.
so if you've got an x58 and you're having problems with 8800gtx's... RMA'ing it won't fix the problem. The 8800gtx's have issues with the x58. This behaviour was also confirmed on another system by another person, I had them run the same test with a very similar system and it had the same behavior, crashing etc.
/UPDATE
THREAD INFO:
This thread is documenting the 175.16 and NVLDDMKM.DLL error many people are experiencing under Windows Vista, as well as the things I've tried to solve it for my particular case. Anyone feel free to say you're experiences as well, primarily those with problems, so we can figure out if there's any common threads here.
DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM:
Using windows Vista, while playing any DX10 games, the screen flickers a few times, and then the inevitable crash follows, resulting in a blue screen of death and the culprit being NVLDDMKM.sys. I experience crashes with the system overclocked and not overclocked at all. And in windows XP, it's stable as can be.
OBSERVATIONS:
1. This error ONLY happens in Vista, not XP, with the exact same system.
2. So far, only experiencing this problem with DX10 games. DX9 games, such as Warcraft 3 or Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance work fine.
3. According to Hasoos, a forum member, if you are playing a game where your frames per second drops under 10 fps, it could trigger this failure. That also means if you underclock your card, and it was already struggling, you could just make the problem worse.
4. According to: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1032579964#post1032579964
Apparently, pirated versions of vista do not have this problem... That leads me to believe that the "crippling" that results from having a pirate version turns off some features that are actually the cause of all these NVLDDMKM.DLL issues. Perhaps coincidence, perhaps something more.
5. Something further supporting Observation 4 is the fact that I've noticed that information pop-ups seem to be the culprit of some of the crashing. Playing world in conflict, at the main menu screen, if I hit the volume up or down button on my keyboard, it results in the driver stop responding and restarting - this is also precisely when a popup occurs on my screen, telling me the volume would be raised (I don't actually see the popup, but it WOULD have shown up if it didn't crash.). It doesn't hard crash in a BSOD though.
Something to ponder, especially since the crash hasn't happened in DX9 games when I raise and lower the volume to the best of my knowledge.
THINGS TRIED TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM:
1. Installed SP1 and all available updates off windows update.
2. Ran a "barebones" vista install with ONLY the 680i 9.64 nforce motherboard drivers and nvidia 175.16 graphics card drivers installed, vista SP1 and all windows updates installed. Crash still happened.
3. Installed nvidia beta 175.75 drivers - "insta-crash" in hellgate london disappears. However, world in conflict develops a "rainbow color" effect, where everything is all trippy, like you ran the entire screen through an invert filter in photoshop or something.
4. Removed all overclocks on system.
5. Disabled SLI.
6. Turned off UAC.
7. Turned off Aero.
8. Heavily underclocked 8800gtx's, does not rectify insta-crash. Haven't endurance tested playing games with heavily underclocked cards, but I imagine it will crash eventually too.
9. Regarding northbridge cooling & cooling in general: I removed the northbridge and replaced the thermal pad with AS5 the day I received it. 2 x 120mm intake on the front, 2x80mm exhaust on the back, as well as 3x120mm fans mounted to the radiator, external to the case so they're not dumping heat inside the case. CPU waterblock is Swiftech Apogee GT. The GPU's idle around 62 and 70C in Vista doing random web surfing etc. and in games never exceed 85C.
10. Renaming NVLDDMKM.SYS in c:\windows\system32\drivers to nvlddmkm.sys.old and expanded the nvlddmkm.sy_ included with the nvidia driver package into the same directory (effectively replacing the old version) and the lockup still occurs.
11. Running the system with a APC 1300VA Uninterruptable Power Backup, so the voltage coming into the computer is "clean." This is the model:
http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BR1300LCD&total_watts=200
12. Bumped up voltage of ram to 2.1v. According to the SPD, the memory is spec'd to run 400mhz 4-4-4-15-2T @ 2.0v, and I gave it an extra .1v.
13. Removed soundblaster X-Fi Elite pro from the system, didn't help.
=============================
As always, if anyone has any ideas, fire 'em up lets figure out WTF is wrong with this problem for everyone experiencing it. Hopefully by documenting things attempted to fixing it and putting it in one neat thread we can get some sort of ideas going.