Help me out everyone, I'm wanting to gather as much info as possible on this issue. Call me crazy but I really have a hard time thinking this is as unresolvable as numerous people are coming to believe. I have spent countless hours researching this because (so far at least) I refuse to believe that Nvidia is just going to "get away with this" crap. I have had this issue since day one I bought my BFG 6800GT. For those that aren't aware of this issue, here is all I have been able to gather so far:
Apparently there is some kind of bug when you bring an NF3 motherboard, an 6800 series video card, and supposedly any driver in the 7x.xx series. Some have had varying symptoms but the overall symptom that I have seen is that you can play any game fine EXCEPT that it will all of the sudden freeze for roughly 3 seconds or so and then proceed as if nothing happened. Some have this happen every 10 seconds and some only have it happen once every half hour. Doom3 and maybe all other OpenGL games work perfectly fine, this seems to only affect DirectX games. There have been many "fixes" recommended by many people (none by Nvidia that I'm aware of), however those "fixes" only seem to work for a few and not the vast majority. Here's a list:
Turn off AGP fast writes
Adjust the latency of your PCI bus with RivaTuner
Change your AGP aperture size to "something else"
Remove the nForce GART driver
Some have moved to the 80.40 driver and it fixes some games but breaks others.
Simply moving to WinXP 64-bit has fixed this on some games with no hardware changes at all
Move back to the 6x.xx drivers, however this of course makes some newer games not work right
Increase the voltage on your AGP slot
Flash your card BIOS to force 2D and 3D to be the same clock rate
UPDATE: Uninstall GART driver from add/remove per BFG tech support (didn't help me)
UPDATE: Turn down graphics settings to keep all game data in card RAM. This of course sucks after buying an expensive card.
I'm sure there are more that I haven't seen or have simply forgotten. And none of these are fixes technically, they are workarounds. And as far as I can see, none of this has anything to do with heat or not meeting the minimum requirements for the card (including power supply).
Now here's the rant part. This appears to be completely random. There are lots of NF3/6800 people not having this issue at all. But there are enough to where I think this warrants some serious help from Nvidia. Simply google "nf3 6800gt freezing" or various other combinations of those words and you will find plenty of people that have this issue or used to have this issue and went to ATI or VIA. This is even all over their Nzone forums. Are you paying attention Nvidia? You make the chipset for the motherboards and the cards and the drivers, so as far as I know this is your issue and you are losing a decent amount of respect and business. This appears to me to be related to drivers alone since moving to WinXP 64-bit fixes some games without changing any BIOS settings or swapping out any hardware. However once again some games still have this issue in 64-bit.
Now (if you've read this far), please use the poll and/or post what you know about this issue. Correct me or tell me to add whatever info you know about this and then direct everyone that you can here so that we can get as much info as possible in one place. Please PLEASE (maybe some mods help out here?) do not bother posting "Just go to ATI" or "Nvidia sucks." Maybe we can get enough info to then go tell Nvidia exactly what the issue is here so that we can get a fix.
The bottom line is that "we" paid good money for good hardware. We shouldn't have to be forced to purchase more hardware to resolve this issue. I didn't go with the cheapest crap I could find, I spent the money to get the quality stuff. How flagship products like their top of the line AGP chipset and top of the line AGP cards have this issue when used together is beyond reason to me. Its unacceptable.
Apparently there is some kind of bug when you bring an NF3 motherboard, an 6800 series video card, and supposedly any driver in the 7x.xx series. Some have had varying symptoms but the overall symptom that I have seen is that you can play any game fine EXCEPT that it will all of the sudden freeze for roughly 3 seconds or so and then proceed as if nothing happened. Some have this happen every 10 seconds and some only have it happen once every half hour. Doom3 and maybe all other OpenGL games work perfectly fine, this seems to only affect DirectX games. There have been many "fixes" recommended by many people (none by Nvidia that I'm aware of), however those "fixes" only seem to work for a few and not the vast majority. Here's a list:
Turn off AGP fast writes
Adjust the latency of your PCI bus with RivaTuner
Change your AGP aperture size to "something else"
Remove the nForce GART driver
Some have moved to the 80.40 driver and it fixes some games but breaks others.
Simply moving to WinXP 64-bit has fixed this on some games with no hardware changes at all
Move back to the 6x.xx drivers, however this of course makes some newer games not work right
Increase the voltage on your AGP slot
Flash your card BIOS to force 2D and 3D to be the same clock rate
UPDATE: Uninstall GART driver from add/remove per BFG tech support (didn't help me)
UPDATE: Turn down graphics settings to keep all game data in card RAM. This of course sucks after buying an expensive card.
I'm sure there are more that I haven't seen or have simply forgotten. And none of these are fixes technically, they are workarounds. And as far as I can see, none of this has anything to do with heat or not meeting the minimum requirements for the card (including power supply).
Now here's the rant part. This appears to be completely random. There are lots of NF3/6800 people not having this issue at all. But there are enough to where I think this warrants some serious help from Nvidia. Simply google "nf3 6800gt freezing" or various other combinations of those words and you will find plenty of people that have this issue or used to have this issue and went to ATI or VIA. This is even all over their Nzone forums. Are you paying attention Nvidia? You make the chipset for the motherboards and the cards and the drivers, so as far as I know this is your issue and you are losing a decent amount of respect and business. This appears to me to be related to drivers alone since moving to WinXP 64-bit fixes some games without changing any BIOS settings or swapping out any hardware. However once again some games still have this issue in 64-bit.
Now (if you've read this far), please use the poll and/or post what you know about this issue. Correct me or tell me to add whatever info you know about this and then direct everyone that you can here so that we can get as much info as possible in one place. Please PLEASE (maybe some mods help out here?) do not bother posting "Just go to ATI" or "Nvidia sucks." Maybe we can get enough info to then go tell Nvidia exactly what the issue is here so that we can get a fix.
The bottom line is that "we" paid good money for good hardware. We shouldn't have to be forced to purchase more hardware to resolve this issue. I didn't go with the cheapest crap I could find, I spent the money to get the quality stuff. How flagship products like their top of the line AGP chipset and top of the line AGP cards have this issue when used together is beyond reason to me. Its unacceptable.