Hardware oddity... Please help..

[warchild]

I recently replaced my ati-4870 with an xfx GTX-275 ( and afterwards a GTX-260) and both the nvidias have this bizaar behaviour of the 3D animation pausing every few seconds for some part of a second. it's like watching a palsy victim, and it makes working impossible.. i dont even know what to call it, but has anyone else seen anything like this?? Can anyone help me troubleshoot and alleviate this problem?? So far, i've tried driver change outs from the 180 series and 190 series, as well as the CUDA drivers.. no joy there..
Thanks..
Pam

Oh yeah.. System stuff..
MB: EVGA Nforce 780i
CPU: Core 2 quad 6600
Mem: 4 gigs 800 mhz kensington
GPU (s) XFX GTX-260 (ATI 4870)

Just as an aside. The problem does not occur with the 4870, though that card intereres with some other games i enjoy playing a lot ( mabinogi )

[Nick C]

Have you got VSync (Vertical Sync) turned on in your GX cards settings?

[rvn817j]

One thing that immediately comes to mind is driver conflicts between ATI and Nvidia. Did you clean out all the ATI driver remnants with a driver cleaner? Good luck.

[harleyman]

Pam...have a look at these settings..
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=3023


Also..Did you delete your FSX config and allow it to rebuild a new one NOT showing your old ATI card???

[Seadog]

Pam, available from www.guru3d.com (http://www.guru3d.com) is the very popular Driver Sweeper utility, which can be downloaded here

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Guru3D---Driver-Sweeper-%28Setup%29-download-1655.html

A lot of people think a fellow named Nick Needham is the top expert on how to set up Windows and FSX and various drivers, and he publishes a tuning guide over at SimForums run by Flight 1. It can be found here and can only be viewed in its entirety via Internet Explorer

http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041

In a fairly recent separate post he advised that anyone switching from ATI to nVividia or vice versa should do an entire reinstallation of their operating system. I had never heard that before, but here's the reference

http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=31907

Nick has also said that Driver Sweeper should be run in your operating system's SAFE Mode for best results. Frankly, I'd sure give that a whirl before wiping out my entire computer and reinstalling from the ground up.

Good luck. :salute:

[Bjoern]

Pam, try this:
http://sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showpost.php?p=322164&postcount=5

[warchild]

Thanks guys.. it's going to take me a while to follow up on all these suggestions. I did learn that Catalyst didnt uninstall, not even with windows install cleanup, and i ended up going through and ripping it out by hand.. i can only assume that there are bits and pieces of the ati stuff left over in there someplace i havent found yet.. I'm going to give all these suggestions a go and see what i can come up with..
Thanks again :)
Pam

Oh.. PS.. i didnt delete the fsx config yet, because the problem even happens in other programs including 3D games and media player..
Newest update. I went to install the 195 series drivers and the screen went blank and stayed there now.. had to go to safe mode to delete the Nvidia drivers and reinstall the ard using what windows 7 could come up with.. too weird.. way too weird..

[harleyman]

Hmmm Not good..

That was a driver conflict I think..

Run driver sweeper in safe mode ..Reboot..install nvidia drivers..make sure they are 32 or 64 bit ..What ever OS you run...

[2Low]

I feel for you. I'm going through the exact same thing. 4850 to a gtx 275 and it now stutters pretty bad. I did the driver sweeper in safe mode, followed Nick's guide again and everything I could think of. I think there is still ATI stuff on there somewhere. I know I should get better performance than this.

I'm biting the bullet and doing a complete OS/FSX re-install later this week (I do it about every 3-4 months anyway). Hopefully you don't have to go through the same tedium and find a better solution, good luck.

[golakers]

I have the same problem with the F-14D, but ONLY when flying in sunlight and ONLY with that model, every other plane works well. Could it be the same thing? And why ONLY that tomcat model?

[jmig]

Pam, Why would you want to get rid of the 4870? I bought one and my video problems all disappeared. I don't see a need to go back the the green guys.

[Irocx]

.................... both the nvidias have this bizaar behaviour of the 3D animation pausing every few seconds for some part of a second. it's like watching a palsy victim, and it makes working impossible.. i dont even know what to call it, but has anyone else seen anything like this?? .........
Thanks..
Pam




Hi Pam, what you describe sounds exactly like what I've been going through with Windows 7. My frames are locked at 20 and don't budge but I get constant little pauses in the display. What OS ya using?

I've found pumping up the texture bandwidth multi to 60 and locking at 35 FPS takes much of this away, even though I have a hard time maintaining 35 fps - go figure. Locking Vsync doesn't seem to make a difference. I finally went back to the 182.50 drivers and it has helped some. Funny thing is it's the exact same fsx install as on my XP64 drive, which doesn't have this issue. Wondering if vysnc is broken in W7 w/Nvidia's drivers.

Yes, clear out the old drivers and you might try playing with the texture bandwidth multi - hope it helps.

[warchild]

Pam, Why would you want to get rid of the 4870? I bought one and my video problems all disappeared. I don't see a need to go back the the green guys.
Wellllll, because my eyes are old i guess.. You see, i dont sit at a desk. i have to use my recliner for various medical reasons, so, my tv becomes my monitor, but it's ten feet away.. now, when i run mabinogi, where i enjoy a lot of my play time, the ATI reduces everything down to a small square in the middle of the screen, with text so small, no one can read it.. now, thats important because, i do a bit of teen counseling on there. help kids out as best i can and try to get them connect3d with the right people/organizations, so being able to read became a prime motive for me..
in FSX, the 4870 was an excellent card, but i'm finding the gtx-260 to be equally as good, plus the GTX-260 allows me to use the cuda drivers to push the available processor cores to over 200, making my computer a really nice little not quite super computer, which is an extreme help to me in creating flight models.. It means i can make them more accurate..
i guess the bottom line is that, i run an nvidia motherboard, and using an nvidia card alows me to access features that the ATI wasnt able to access with this motherboard or processor. If i was running an amd chipset and cpu, then i would have stuck with th ati, as they work together quite nicely. lets face it, in that price range, all you get is good boards. dosnt matter if it's ati or nvidia. what matters is setting up a system to give you the most bang for the buck, and that usually means matching your gpu to your motherboard, which i've now done.. :D..

[warchild]

Wellll, i kinda sorta fixed my problem.. even after using windows install cleaner, i found catalyst stuff all over the place, so i booted into safe mode and yanked the rest out by hand. then i deleted the nvidia drivers and tried a re-install. installing the 195 series drivers however caused my screen to blank out. i dont know whats causing that, so, i was able to install the 185 series drivers and everything seems to be running ok now.. furMark checks out with almost a hundred frames a second in native 1920x1080 mode so i cant complain. i've yet to benchmark fsx but i have a feeling that the performace will be about the same as the 4870 in general.. Once i plug the CUDA drivers in, i should be cooking with gas.. :)..
Thanks for the help guys. I was stumped, and i very much appreciate it..
Pam

[warchild]

Hi Pam, what you describe sounds exactly like what I've been going through with Windows 7. My frames are locked at 20 and don't budge but I get constant little pauses in the display. What OS ya using?

I've found pumping up the texture bandwidth multi to 60 and locking at 35 FPS takes much of this away, even though I have a hard time maintaining 35 fps - go figure. Locking Vsync doesn't seem to make a difference. I finally went back to the 182.50 drivers and it has helped some. Funny thing is it's the exact same fsx install as on my XP64 drive, which doesn't have this issue. Wondering if vysnc is broken in W7 w/Nvidia's drivers.

Yes, clear out the old drivers and you might try playing with the texture bandwidth multi - hope it helps.

Irocx.. i'm using windows 7 RC still ( i'm too broke and too cheap to by the released version ), but the problem was happening even in media player, which was what confused me.. everything was being effected by it.. glad it's cleared up now though..
:D
Pam

[harleyman]

Yea Pam.......Thats good to hear...

I always enter the regestry and manually search the software dropdowns and kill what I'm after...