Win2k, BP6 and TNT2 combo problems

[T-Bruno 0]

Hi everyone.

 

I've read almost every post and have gotten lots of good info from this board. But now I've got a problem that I'd like some opinions on.

 

Here are my system specs.

 

Win2k Pro Final

128 mb micron ram

BP6 with latest non beta bios

dual celeron 400 o/c to 500

Diamond TNT2 w/v3.81 drivers

maxtor 20gb 7200 rpm hd

 

My problem is that I've got a fair number of games that "lock" my computer up. No BSOD, no reboot just a complete hang-up of the system. I end up having to do a hard reboot to bring the system back up.

 

Specifically, I've had the following games do this:

 

Asherons Call (just a few times)

Everquest (lots)

MindRover (every time)

Nascar 2000 Demo

Elmo in Grouchland

 

So after reading the thread on the latest nvidia drivers I saw someone mention the 3.66 drivers as being thought of as "most compatible".

 

I dropped back to them and MindRover is now working just fine. I haven't had a chance to try any of the others out yet.

 

I see some people having great success with the newest drivers but I've been dealing with this problem since the first version of non-beta drivers.

 

So is anyone else running into these kinds of problems? Any ideas on a fix since I know I take quite a performance hit using the 3.66 drivers?

 

I tried the trick of using an older driver file with the 3.78 (I think) drivers but no change. I tried using powerstrip to set the AGP to 1x and that didn't make any difference either.

 

BTW, I don't have anything but Norton AntiVirus and get right running in the background.

 

So if any of you have any idea of a fix for this please let me know.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Tim Brunson

[pcm 0]

I have the same motherboard / TNT2 card combo. I too, have found Everquest to be very unreliable with every version of the NVidia drivers I can find. I haven't seen the 3.81 drivers, so I cant comment on those. Basically, the game will hard freeze, requiring the reset button be pressed. This may happend on program startup, or in a few hours. Im also running Ultima Ascension under Windows 2000 with no problem. I do find running powerstrip greatly increases the chance of EQ crashing, so I removed that. I think its the crappy drivers myself. I just wish I could find a graphics card that worked all the time (

[blueberry 0]

yah, i have the same problem with eq. the 3.78 driver from nvidia are complete crap. the leak 3.69 driver work better but it still crash. i still can't get q3a to work in smp.

 

sys spec

bp6 2 celeron 366 @ 550

256 8e ram

viper 550

[cshawn18 0]

All I know is Norton made my system do some really weird stuff and then when I tried to uninstall it it gave me errors. As soon as I got all norton files off my computer everything works great.

 

my specs are almost identical

[Skywise 0]

what sound card you have btw?

[Da_G 0]

First off, my system specs.

 

Abit BP6 w/latest BIOS (QQ-2?)

384MB PC-133 SDRAM

Dual Celery 366 o/c to 523 or something like that, 94 Mhz bus @ the mo

Elsa Erazor X2 (32MB DDR GeForce) w/5.13 drivers (O/Ced to 333Mhz/140Mhz)

IBM 20.5GB HDD

Sony CRX-140S/C + Adaptec 2930CU (SCSI Burner + Card)

Linksys 10/100 Ethernet Card

3com 56k PCI voice modem (not winmodem sh*t)

SB Live! (using win2k-included basic driver)

MS Intellimouse Explorer (using Intellipoint 3.1a)

GeForce is at a 1/1 AGP ratio, btw. It's totally stable at up to 110 Mhz (but my CPU's arent) and yes, i've tried putting it back to 2/3 ratio..

I used to have a TNT-2.. Diamond V770

Anywho, I've played alot of games on here..

 

My expierience with hardware/software interaction is as follows:

 

The Sims: Worked fine on both the TNT2 and GeForce, with 3.66, 3.81, and 5.13

 

Freespace 2: Ditto

 

Grand Theft Auto (1 and 2): Both work fine with the following exception: GTA2 plays at like half-speed when im using SMP.. seems to be the way it calcs out the framerate limiter.. cuz if I turn it off, it works just fine.

 

Kingpin: Just fine under all drivers

 

Midtown Madness: Only tried it with 5.13, plays fine, no crashes, but heavy graphics corruption (seems to be related to the 2d dashboard, etc being on, if i move the camera outside the vehicle and turn off all the gauges, it goes away)

 

GL Quake 1: Works fine

 

Quake 2: Works fine

 

(can you tell i play games alot? hehe)

 

Soldier Of Fortune: Here's where it gets weird. Only tried it with 5.13 so far, it works fine on the TNT2.. With the GeForce, it seems to hard-freeze my whole system after about 15 minutes or so.. This seems to be due to the speed i'm running the core of the GeForce at, though, and not the drivers.. Turning it down 5Mhz to 140Mhz, which is what i use now, makes it completely stable.

 

Half-Life: Under all previous drivers when you hit esc to go to the menu screen, it gives you a black screen, but the computer isnt frozen and the monitor isnt asleep.. it's just black. I have to find my way blind around it. Havent tried with 5.13.

 

NFS 5: Porche Unleashed Demo: Works fine with 5.13, didnt test w/previous drivers.

 

Unreal Tournament: Works perfectly. No problems whatsoever. (5.13 Drivers) w/previous drivers it would freeze on switching to the 3-D mode about one out of every 3 times.. Tracked that down to the player skin resolution, eventually. If it was at high, it'd get the freezes, if it wasnt, it'd work fine. Oddly enough if you changed it in-game to high after loading it, played, and then changed it back before closing it, it would work perfectly every time. Must have had something to do with initialization.

 

3Dmark 2000 Crashes reliably every-other-time the demo/benchmark is run when it gets to the part where the 2 helicopters are fighting and one explodes (with 5.13) With previous drivers it crashes much more often, more like 4 out of 5 times.

 

GeForce demos from dell: When I first stuck in the GeForce, w/o changing the drivers from the TNT2 (Seemed to auto-detect the GeForce and install the drivers, this was 5.13 drivers), After installing the demos and before rebooting everything worked fine.. After rebooting, The bubble demo seemed to lose it's 3D acceleration (.3 fps) and the bubble just wasnt there, only the background. All OpenGL acceleration seemed to die too. I then went to uninstall/reinstall the drivers, and it gave me a file not found error upon trying to reinstall the GeForce drivers. Everything seemed to copy over okay, but I got the error. Just for the hell of it, I tried to uninstall/reinstall another driver and got the same file not found error installing them. Had to format/clean install to get it working again (Booting off the CD and upgrading over win2k didnt help any) There's a wack ass bug.

 

SB Live!: With the release Liveware it stutters and all that crud.. you know the drill. In addition, it seemed to pause for 5 seconds or so during boot after the GUI was loading and explorer was loading all the startup files just after playing the startup sound that comes with liveware, and then once again loading the Creative Launcher. S'why I use the basic drivers.. i'm not THAT desperate for 4-spk out and EAX, I can wait till it WORKS.

 

PowerStrip 2.65.02: Before I clean installed (and after putting in the GeForce), if I didnt close PowerStrip manually, windows wouldnt reboot/shut down/sleep (wouldnt give me an end task window either).. After the clean install, it works fine.

 

Other anomolies: Dragging Windows Media Player around while playing a movie halts the movie for a fraction of a second, and the window doesnt move.. then works just fine.. (this is, however, a big improvement from when it'd put the monitor to sleep)

 

Before the clean install, Nero (which had been working fine prior to me putting in the GeForce) wouldnt finish burning a CD.. it'd get about 75% thru and just die.

 

HPT366 Controller: With the drivers I was using before clean installing, (I dont have any loaded for it now) when I had my boot drive (the IBM 20.5GB) hooked up to it, it would time out the IDE port 4 times on each boot (about 15 seconds each timeout, for a total of 1 minute doing NOTHING during boot) before it would continue loading. Worked just fine after that. I seem to remember new drivers for it are out, i'll hafta try it with those..

 

SPD/IF input on SB Live!: When I had my 8x CD-ROM hooked up to this with the creative released Live ware loaded, i'd hear clicks in the speakers every few seconds randomly.. Unplugging it would make them go away. After the clean install, and w/o Live ware loaded, I dont hear those clicks.

 

I never tried the leaked Creative Live ware drivers at full accelleration (at least, if they dont default to it) So I dont know if that worked with them, But I do know that they worked just fine for EAX etc... and the released ones.. suck.

 

Other than the file not found error I had, Win2k is an excellent operating system (considering it comes from microsoft), the drivers just havent matured yet. (Although I must add, my Epson Stylus 900, NIC card, and modem work perfectly fine w/the win2k included drivers) I use it at work on the 3 machines I use, and here at home.. At work I use 3 gateways, all nearly identical, P3 550's w/ATI video cards.. using the supplied drivers it's rock stable, one is running Win2k Adv. Server and is a fileserver for 50+ Mac computers and 100+ Windows 98/NT/2000 boxes, In addition to being a print server for those machines, and an actively-used computer (We're stress-testing it for deployment as a school-wide server, using the clustering feature for reliability) Aside from a few user errors with Active Directory (I managed to get it to not let me see the user list at all somehow) It works perfectly. I can even play a game of quake on the server while it's serving out to everyone and it wont slow down even 1k/sec. Quite an improvement from the old PowerMac we had serving all those machines.. it was slower than !#&*%(!#% with background tasks (more the fault of the OS than the CPU, for sure)

 

And if you've read this far, you must be insane.. But hopefully this info helps someone figure something out with the driver issues..

 

Edit: Forgot to add that any textures going thru AGP (for instance in the 3Dmark texture speed test, at 32MB, or Final Reality at 32MB) slow the card from 100+fps down to like 2-3 FPS.. is AGP really there...?

 

Edit: Added Unreal Tournament.

 

------------------

-Da_G

 

 

[This message has been edited by Da_G (edited 11 April 2000).]