NF3 + 6800 + 7x.xx drivers = game freezing issue

Have you had this issue or seen it?

  • Yes I have this issue right now. I'm PISSED!

    Votes: 116 48.9%

  • I have the hardware, but don't have this issue.

    Votes: 50 21.1%

  • I HAD this issue and switched to ATI or VIA or gutted my system and went to PCIe.

    Votes: 20 8.4%

  • I HAD this issue but one of the workaround completely resolved it.

    Votes: 14 5.9%

  • I have not had this issue, but have definitely seen others with it in person, online, etc.

    Votes: 37 15.6%
  • Total voters
    237
Just signed on here because of this problem.

Running a ASUS K8N-E Deluxe nForce3 250Gb MB and a newly bought Gainward 6800 Ultra (standard nVidia design). Have tried a lot of different alternatives, and had a lot of different results. What I found out was that the freezing was most frequent when I was running the newest GART drivers from nvidia.com. Tried it with both 77.30 (drivers that came with the BF2 DVD) and 77.77 (from nvidia.com), without noticable differences that I could see. I've been running dxdiag to test the direct3D, didn't even bother to start games (BF2, GTA San Andreas). The tests there revealed the chopping...

And now, I'm frustrated. Really don't whant to send my card back and get an ATI card, but if there is no solution to this, it's the only way... :(

Anyways, thanks to those of you that have sit down for hours testing this, it makes NVIDIA look bad.
 
I have the problem as well. Over the weekend I built a box with:

MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum
A64 3000+ venice core
Antec 1040B with Antec 480W Trueblue PSU
18GB WDC hard drive (7200RPM)
1GB (512x2) Corsair XMS PC3200XL Pro
BFG 6800U OC

Everything went together fine and worked well until I tried games. I first noticed it in 3DMark2005, but thought it was a glitch with the benchmark. Then I had the same problem with UT2004. Was at my wits end, so I went back to my main system until I have more time to mess with it. I'm using the latest nForce drivers and video drivers. What I plan to do when I feel like messing with it again is uninstall the new drivers and install older drivers to see if that helps. Since the 6800U is actually from my main system, I may have to end up with an ATI card in the spare system if nothing else works... :(
 
I've gone through all official drivers from 71.84 to 77.77 and anything beyond 71.89 has this issue with my methodology of testing. The interesting thing though is if this is so related to the GART driver (which I believe comes with the nForce drivers, not the ForceWare), then why is it fine with some drivers and not fine with others? I have kept the same GART driver the entire time, so something must change in the way the GART driver is being utilized. Maybe we need to find all "GART-related" files in the 77.77 drivers and replace them with 71.89. This of course sounds like a bit of a dangerous driver hack and who knows how well it will work, not to mention the fact that I have no idea how to identify those files. The fact that a year later this issue is appearing more and more on new systems just kills me. "Oh just uninstall the GART driver and cripple your performance" is nowhere near acceptable to me. I think I've gathered enough info to at least fire an e-mail to Kyle to see if he or someone else has some time to broach this subject with Nvidia or even just to get the word out to keep people from buying this combo. People are building brand new systems that dont work out of the box. Thats a crime in my book.
 
heh i just dug up my post from a few months back (march) from guru3d.... funny nothing has improved ever since

i have tried looking for answers on many forums and places so ill try here as well...... for the past 4 months ever since i got my nforce3 mobo with a64 there have been continous stutters and crashes in games..... recently i got the blue screens fixed but the 2-3 second stuttering is still there ..... it happens in any 3d game and it comes anytime after 15min to 1 hour..... my card works fine in other systems and other cards work fine in my system.... so if anyone has fixed this problem please tell me how so i can try to keep track and try to figure out this problem as nvidia couldnt care less about it...
list of things i have tried:
1) multiple bios/drivers
2) turning off fastwrites
3) messing with agp aperture
4) messing with blitting in riva tuner
5) agp compatibility mode in riva tuner
6) 2d/3d clocks the same
7) forcing constant performance level in riva tuner
8) cooling the card better
9) stock clocked everything
10) multiple operating systems
11) many games all with the latest patches
12) disabling power management
13) check for irq conflicts
14) changing agp speed
15) changing agp voltage
16) tried with both SP1 and SP2
17) disabled DEP
18) turned off all background programs
19) scanned for viruses/spyware
20) defragged
21) scanned registry for errors
22) applied some arctic silver on the core temps are 49*C for the core and 44*C for the ram when idle
23) messing with vsync prerender limit
24) adding much beter cooling to the motherboard north bridge ***fixed blue screens only***
25) need i say more?
 
The incredible irony here is that we are spending so much of our free time trying to fix hardware that is not broken as demonstrated by you and many others that have swapped it in and out. The one thing we CAN'T fix is the ForceWare drivers, and after all the research I have a hard time believing its anything else.
 
I have the same Issue in BF2, it freezes for 3 seconds or so, then the game continues to play. It's very Irritating.
 
I remember at Quakecon when the nVidia rep was saying how they're going to finish the NF4 chipset and then come back to the NF3 and fix problems with it. Who knows, but this angers me just a bit. I usually find this happen during CS:S. It will stutter horribly, but I can play DOOM III fine at 450/1.2. Another thing I found was, I could play CS:S @ 800x600 with 450/1.2 just fine. Who knows...
 
Kyle forwarded this information on to Nvidia and was told that they have a specific driver to resolve this in the works. They said it would appear on NZone "soon." Good news, now let's just see what their definition of soon is. :D Big thanks Kyle.
 
OldPueblo said:
Kyle forwarded this information on to Nvidia and was told that they have a specific driver to resolve this in the works. They said it would appear on NZone "soon." Good news, now let's just see what their definition of soon is. :D Big thanks Kyle.
Click to expand...


That's great new! Awesome work Kyle!
 
well its been 2 months since bfg said that nvidia will be coming with a fix soon... im not getting my hopes up
 
Eliminator said:
well its been 2 months since bfg said that nvidia will be coming with a fix soon... im not getting my hopes up
Click to expand...

My opinion exactly, I read on nvnews that nVidia was working on a 'fix' from last year November.

ANYWAY, I have a VERY interesting and frustrating story to share..here goes...

Two days ago my friend with the exact same graphic card(Chaintech 6800nu) as me albeit with a P4 rig told me I should test his card as it was causing his system to shut down unexplicably.

After telling him it was probably his cheap no-name generic PSU, I took the card to test it...

Installed it in my system (EXACT SAME card as mine) and voila! It works perfectly...but thats not the kicker...

THERES NO STUTTER...WHATSOEVER! Tried every single driver out there from the 60 series to the beta 80.40 and no stutter! Turned FW on..NO STUTTER!! Overclocked it to 400Mhz Core...you guessed it, no stutter.

You wanna know what really pisses me off? We bought these cards together! Hell, they even have the same BIOS versions...bugger that, they have the same build date AND their serial codes are ....998(his) and ......999(mine), only one digit apart!

If only I had luck, i would have taken his box when we bought the cards, unaware of what problems I "could" have had. Life experience has shown me I have no luck and never will.

The only difference between them that I can figure out is that his is a better core and therefore a better overclocker(goes up to [email protected]), my gpu core only overclocks to 367mhz(and theres a good dose of stutter with that oc).

I could have swapped it without his knowledge...but he's a good friend and I would feel guilty. I explained all this to him and he's doubtful about the swap (I know I would be :p )

Hope he swaps with me though..seems like my only hope now.
 
Is this a 6800 series only problem or does it happen on all 6 series cards? The system in my sig doesnt exhibit the stuttering problem, but I was planning on upgrading to a 6800 gt. If I dont see this problem now, would I see it after upgrading?
 
Its a crap shoot, but I'd rate the chances high enough to where I wouldn't risk it unless you can get rid of the card easily (take it back, etc). As it stands, I'm not recommending this combo to anyone I know. And it appears to be the 6800 series only as far as I can see.
 
Eliminator said:
78.03s will be posted on nzone soon... i doubt theyre the stuttering fix ones
Click to expand...
I just tried 77.77 drivers tonight and they run fine now that I am using an ASUS A8V Deluxe system board. I couldn't even play any D3D games when I was using the MSI Neo 2 Plat. using these drivers because they paused and stuttered so much it made the games unplayable. I always had to go back to 66.93's or 71.89's. The 71.89 drivers didn't work as well as the 66.93 ones but the 66.93's caused a BSOD exiting Brothers in Arms. It is still hard to believe that nVidia can't fix their own problem when everything runs with no problems at all on a VIA chipset board. :)
 
Alowishus said:
Is this a 6800 series only problem or does it happen on all 6 series cards? The system in my sig doesnt exhibit the stuttering problem, but I was planning on upgrading to a 6800 gt. If I dont see this problem now, would I see it after upgrading?
Click to expand...


Im having the same problem with my AGP 6600 GT
but I dont get to vote, there isnt an option for folks like me. :(
 
If its the exact same issue, hell vote anyway. :p I wondered if 6600s had this issue as well. If so, it doesnt seem its anywhere near as big a problem as the 6800s. I would think if the 6600s had the problem we would see a lot more since I'm sure a lot more people have the 6600 over the 6800.
 
Don't you realize this is a conspiracy to make you upgrade to pci-e sli motherboards? What other explanation can there be to such an obvious driver issue going unacknowledged. I have this issue as well with any 77.xx driver. Go back to the old ones and poof......problem gone. Nvidia don't care about Nforce 3 agp users. They'll figure a way to break them on the VIA agp boards soon and force those agp users to settle for old drivers.

Where are you ATI.............wheeeerrrrrrreeeeeee...............aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!
 
wrangler said:
Don't you realize this is a conspiracy to make you upgrade to pci-e sli motherboards? What other explanation can there be to such an obvious driver issue going unacknowledged. I have this issue as well with any 77.xx driver. Go back to the old ones and poof......problem gone. Nvidia don't care about Nforce 3 agp users. They'll figure a way to break them on the VIA agp boards soon and force those agp users to settle for old drivers.

Where are you ATI.............wheeeerrrrrrreeeeeee...............aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!
Click to expand...
Sorry, but the problem is never (poof) gone just by using the older drivers, it just runs a little better then say 71.89's, without quite as many pauses. We all wish it were that easy but it's not, as hundreds of pages on this subject on different forums over the last year has shown. Also, if you run 66.93's which work better for pauses and stutters on most D3D games then you have BSOD's when exiting a game like Brothers in Arms. The only fix would have to come from nVidia or switching to an ASUS A8V Deluxe like I did or the more expensive way by buying an ATI card. It cost me $114 but everything works great now even with the 77.77 drivers. :)
 
MSI K8neo Platnium (nForce 3)/BFG 6800GT OC/1 GB Mushkin Black Mem = Same Problem. 66.93 fix's it pretty well. But make's BF2 look like crap.

Just Thought I would say you arnt crazy its real.
 
wrangler said:
Don't you realize this is a conspiracy to make you upgrade to pci-e sli motherboards?
Click to expand...

Hmm... New VIA AGP board: ~$70, give or take depending on your needs. New nForce 4 PCI-express board + let's say Geforce FX 6800nu PCI-E: ~$80 + ~$200.

If it's a conspiracy, it's a rather dumb one. The inherant flaw of requiring a new video card automatically shoots the cost up much higher to go to pci express than to stay with AGP and just skip nforce 3. Not to mention that equivalent nforce 3 or VIA AGP boards are just plain cheaper than their nforce 4 counterparts.
 
Mostly just a joke guys. :D

But the problem is real. I know for me, that going back to drivers before 77.xx removes the pausing in d3d and that seems to be a pretty common remark concerning this issue.

Has anybody noticed a relationship to this problem and what sound solution is being used. I.E. is it happening more for onboard Realtek sound users or more for Creative users, etc. etc. Maybe it's a conflict issue.

I am about to go look and see if there is a gart driver with a higher version number than what is in the 5.10's that can be extracted from another package but I doubt it since all of the other updates are for Nforce 4 only and those are pci-e. (conspiracy......hmmmm....planned obsolescence/non-support of existing platform forcing purchase of new equipment)

I've also seen people with Nforce 4 having problems with 77.xx drivers referring to a memory leak issue.
 
well i asked BFG again recently.... not much of an update but this is what they said:

Unfortunately we haven't got any status updates on this issue outside of what you already know. Nvidia is still working on it, but have yet to release a new fix of any kind. They are pretty sure the fix will come in the form of nForce drivers combined with a possible BIOS update for the affected motherboards, but when that will happen (or even IF that'll be the ultimate solution) remains to be seen.

I know it's fristrating, but unfortunately this is all the information even we at BFG have regarding the matter. We reccomend switching to a VIA, SIS, Intel, or other non nForce-3 board if the wait is becoming unbearable, we know of no other such issues on any other chipset (which is why nvidia doesn't believe it's a card problem).
 
Heh, I personally don't care if its not a card problem. That still leaves it in their lap as a motherboard chipset problem. :p And to address the sound solution question, I have had the same issue regardless of whether I've used my onboard RealTek ALC850 or my SB Audigy 1. I physically took my Audigy out to make sure it wasn't doing some funky bus mastering/PCI IRQ slot thingamajig and saw no difference. I've been using the ALC850 during this entire time of testing so as to keep my machine as simple as possible.

I think its time to start messing with some beta drivers, etc. Try all the same ForceWare drivers with beta nForce drivers instead of the 5.10 I've been using. If you think about it, you have to wonder why the latest official nForce drivers for nForce1/2/3 are dated Nov 04.
 
mods, can we get a sticky? there are tons of threads on this same topic, this one has the most info.
 
OldPueblo said:
I think its time to start messing with some beta drivers, etc. Try all the same ForceWare drivers with beta nForce drivers instead of the 5.10 I've been using. If you think about it, you have to wonder why the latest official nForce drivers for nForce1/2/3 are dated Nov 04.
Click to expand...

I just have an intuition that it is a new gart driver that is needed so yes, I agree that they need to give us an updated chipset driver package. At least I hope new gart driver would solve it because......................

I have noticed a lot of MSI boards signing in with this problem. That could just be because they were a popular nForce 3 board. But, so were DFI and ASUS and I just don't see them represented here. MSI IS notorious for weak bios support. If you don't believe me check out their own forum off of their website which can be found under tech support and then online knowledge base. People there with this same problem making new posts all the time in the "AMD64 nVidia Based Board" section.

I shudder to think it might be a bios problem though cause you might as well throw the board in the trash and submit to the forced upgrade. (if you care about graphics in d3d games that is) I don't believe I would EVER see a bios update from MSI for an nForce 3 board related to this issue.

All I know is if I treated people who bought stuff from me like this just cause it wasn't the newest thing I was selling, I would be out of business fast.

Not just pickin on MSI. My Neo-FSR has been a great board without a hiccup and I would buy MSI again.(please don't be a bios thing)

nVidia, however, acts like it never made an nForce 3.

AMD needs to wake up and start noticing that the same old flaky shit is happening again that gives them a bad name.
 
i had this problem with my neo2 platinum.. i got a DFI Ultra same chipset and all and same socket.. and it fixed the problem.. and i have 77.72
 
Ive found that if u go into the hidden options in bios and turn off the stock oc on ur card it works.. worked for me ive been looking for a fix for 6 months.. now its fine.. 71.89 drivers.. used 66.93 also fine.. used 77.77 fine and 78.01... and some forceware 71.40's goodluck.. if u need to know how to get into the options.. do this.. go to ur bios go to cell menu hold shift +f2 down while u press alt +f3 keep trying it will work after awhile.. dont know why it doesnt work right away.. turn off nv/ati oc
 
crossphyr said:
Ive found that if u go into the hidden options in bios and turn off the stock oc on ur card it works.. worked for me ive been looking for a fix for 6 months.. now its fine.. 71.89 drivers.. used 66.93 also fine.. used 77.77 fine and 78.01... and some forceware 71.40's goodluck.. if u need to know how to get into the options.. do this.. go to ur bios go to cell menu hold shift +f2 down while u press alt +f3 keep trying it will work after awhile.. dont know why it doesnt work right away.. turn off nv/ati oc
Click to expand...

I included that in my testing (I dont think I put it in my posts yet) and saw no difference. I think the only successfull workarounds are people that by virtue of random chance happen to get 10 variables all lined up perfectly in a row, including driver version, BIOS settings, who know's what. The trick is narrowing all that down. I wish I had more time to throw at this, should get some more done this weekend.

As for MSI, it very well could be that they mostly have this issue. Its not solely related to them though as has been seen in many other threads. MSI has released many BIOS updates as long as I've had my board (8 total), however I also have an older board so maybe they won't for my 754. Or maybe thats still not the issue, who knows. If its the GART driver, it can't be JUST the GART driver, its how the ForceWare drivers interact with it based upon what I've posted before. I'll try to use several from beta drivers to see what else I can find.
 
crossphyr said:
Ive found that if u go into the hidden options in bios and turn off the stock oc on ur card it works.. worked for me ive been looking for a fix for 6 months.. now its fine.. 71.89 drivers.. used 66.93 also fine.. used 77.77 fine and 78.01... and some forceware 71.40's goodluck.. if u need to know how to get into the options.. do this.. go to ur bios go to cell menu hold shift +f2 down while u press alt +f3 keep trying it will work after awhile.. dont know why it doesnt work right away.. turn off nv/ati oc
Click to expand...
i have a cool one.... nothing fixes it other than swiching the hardware.... setting nv/ati speedup to disabled did not help in fact none of the fixes that have been posted help.... only thing that helped a little was fastwrites..... i was able to get most of my overclock back by turning it off but doesnt fully fix the issue
 
crossphyr said:
Ive found that if u go into the hidden options in bios and turn off the stock oc on ur card it works.. worked for me ive been looking for a fix for 6 months.. now its fine.. 71.89 drivers.. used 66.93 also fine.. used 77.77 fine and 78.01... and some forceware 71.40's goodluck.. if u need to know how to get into the options.. do this.. go to ur bios go to cell menu hold shift +f2 down while u press alt +f3 keep trying it will work after awhile.. dont know why it doesnt work right away.. turn off nv/ati oc
Click to expand...
We have all been there and done that and it didn't do anything for most of us in fixing the problem. What games are you playing as some work worse than others? So many things have been tried over the last year that I don't think there are any new ones left. Just another attempt to fix something with rubber bands and chewing gum when the problem is nVidia's. Funny, but I didn't have to do a thing a week ago after I installed my ASUS A8V Deluxe other than load the VIA chipset drivers after XP discovered all the new hardware. I haven't even reloaded XP Pro yet since it's running so well. There are hundreds of pages in this and other forums with no sure fix except for a VIA chipset board or an ATI video card on the NF3 board. After almost 3 months of screwing around I decided that $114 wasn't to bad a price to pay to get rid of this frustration and start to enjoy actually playing games again. :)
 
I have this problem too, and I have tried almost everything you can to get rid of it, without success :(

Since my motherboard and geforce are from MSI, i asked the tech support, and they told me:

"About your concern, vga driver version 77.77 is for Win XP 64bit, so please remove it. Then please reinstall NVIDIA VGA Driver 71.25 for Win XP/2000 from this link"

The 77.77 from NVIDIA is for Windows XP/2000, 98, ME, etc.. How can a driver for windows 98 be 64bit? Tech support always sucks...

I hope someone finds a workaround without quality / performance loss, since buying new hardware is not an option for me.


My hardware list:

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard, BIOS 04/12/2005-MS-7025-6A61CM5DC-00
MSI GeForce NX6800GT-TD256 graphic card
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 0.09µ Sockel-939 CPU
2x Corsair CMX512-3200XL CL2 RAM
2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA 200GB harddiscs (in mirror RAID @ the onboard NVIDIA raid controller, SATA1&2 connector)
Plextor PX-116A DVD-ROM drive on IDE1 connector
"be quiet!" 400W PSU

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2, all "Windows-Update" patches installed.
DirectX 9.0c
RealTek AC'97 Audio driver version 5.10.0.5890 from MSI homepage
 
Fun little update, I was going over the 78.03 driver release notes and found this entry:

GeForce 6 Series: Stuttering occurs in the game EverQuest II.
NVIDIA has optimized performance in the 77.72 drivers to reduce stuttering
related to the GPU and drivers. However, in-game stuttering can still occur as
the result of the following system conditions:
• Using high-quality/maximum-visual game settings on a PC with less than
1.5 GB of system memory—EverQuest II's highest quality settings are
extremely hardware intensive (graphics, memory, and CPU).
• Misconfigured AGP aperture settings and fragmented hard disks can also
contribute to in-game stuttering.
Click to expand...

Interesting things to note are as far as I know the stuttering began official driver-wise in 77.72. If I remember correctly, 77.30 did as well, but they were beta drivers. As well, I have not thought to defrag my drive, wouldnt it be funny if it was something that dumb? Oh and thats under the heading "Not Nvidia issues."
 
Owning a 6800GT is a real PAIN.

I have suffered the BSOD nv_disp.dll for months

The card didn't react well with the Audigy 2 ZS drivers so went back to motherboard provided sound.

Game sluttering. (Altough I tried some regedit tweaks found somewhere that seem to fix it)

Nvidia purevideo install made of my video codecs a mess.


And now with 77.77 and 78.11 the computer just freezes.


MB is a NFORCE 2, and I have tried EVERYTHING, with no luck.


The computer acts as it should with an ATI Radeon 7500 installed.
 
I picked up an Nforce3 board last month and so far it is having no problems with my 6800nu.

ECS K8 Nforce3 MB
Athlon 64 3000 754
XFX 6800nu
1 gig DDR 400
XP Home SP2
Driver V. 61.72
 
We hate you. Kidding, glad you played the lottery and won.

More interesting finds:

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...SZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PWFncA**&p_li=&p_topview=1

I don't know where they are saying you can see "PCI mode", the only place I see it is in the "AGP Settings" link on the left side AFTER you have installed NVTweak and enabled all the hidden tabs. In my testing as far as I can tell I am in "PCI mode", even when not stuttering with the 71.89 drivers. Anyone know what this means or is anyone NOT in PCI mode on that tab?

They also have a link for what they deem are appropriate BIOS settings:

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...SZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PWFncA**&p_li=&p_topview=1
 
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