197.45 Drivers 8800 GTS Cards or Higher...
By
Rroff,
Posted on: 2010-05-02 10:52 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
I had an 8800GTX on Windows 7 64-bit for most of beta testing and kept up to date with the drivers. No problem at all. Occlusion would slow me down a lot but there was no crashing.
Now I'm on a 480 and using the 197.41 drivers and everything is great. I can use more of the occlusion options (though cranking them all up to max still brings me down to single digits). Stability is still rock solid.
P.S. I haven't been doing the old uninstall/sweep/install bit for at least a year. NVIDIA seems to be doing a lot better with driver installations lately. Or maybe it's a Vista/Win7 thing.
GTX260 SLI - 197.45 drivers on Windows 7 64bit... So far absolutely no problems and aslong as I use triple buffering when VSync is on (I usually play without VSync) completely smooth.
I generally run 130% world/character detail, shadow maps, high quality for environment/reflections and water and medium/performance/bilateral AO with 4x AA and 1680x1050 and thats perfectly smooth and playable most of the time. If I'm on an 8 player team in one of the more chaotic missions I will turn down the ultra settings/AO each 1 more notch tho but keep shadow maps on.
GTX260, XP SP3 & 197.45:
- Crashes on changing any Ultramode settings unless in safe mode
- Shadow mapping screws up after entering then exiting SG base for the 1st time (disco glitter ball effect - buildings become shadow maps that move and rotate when you do) - have to re-enter and exit for it to fix itself
- After about 20mins of game play, contacts list & costume window (including tailor) will cause game to crash
- Again, after about 20mins, scrolling any window will cause the display to flicker and result in framerate reduction
- Game will often crash on exiting if any or all of the above happen
- The longer I play the more frame stuttering, and general graphics glitches I get
http://www.scene-and-heard.com/cov/covsig.jpg
It occurred to me that in the interest of helping others work out their growing pains with I17, I'd post what happened to me and see if the same has been happening to other Nvidia users.
Pre-I17 I was using the 196.21 release with minor graphics lag. When testing I17 in OB there were little to no problems with Ultra Mode settings almost maxed. Little lag, but nothing tweaking the sliders a bit when it hit live wouldn't fix. When this system was built in 08 the game flew, course it's expected that overtime things might slow down. I maintain regular maintenance (Spyware, Virii checks, defrags, file cleanup, keeping drivers up-to-date) almost weekly or every other week (or longer in the case of driver updates). My current setup consists of...
ASUS Crosshair II Formula Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Processor (3.0Ghz a Core).
Windows XP Home SP3
3GB DDR2 Corsair RAM
BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 512 PCIe
Anywho, when I had noticed Nvidia released the 197.45 drivers on their website I went ahead and picked those up to give them a shot. My driver install procedures are fairly common. Uninstall old drivers/Boot into safemode/Driver Sweeper the old drivers/reboot & install new drivers.
So, upon installing the latest drivers and running CoX I noticed immediately there were problems. The game would freeze randomly. My system would BSOD when I did manage to get to play anything and the framerate was HORRID! In combat where my FPS are usually pretty solid they had to have been dropping into single digits. The stuttering was unplayable. Then of course I'd crash. When that happened, not being happy with the last two driver releases I went back and installed the 195.62 set and continued to play problem free with fast steady frames and no crashes.
Enter Issue17...upon creating my Demon Summoner and entering the Tutorial zone I had my first taste of the new update. Clicked on "Caze" and BAM blue screen. Against my better judgment I decided to give the 197.45 drivers another shot thinking "Hey, its Issue17 it has some new stuff, maybe they'll handle it better". Wrong. The only thing different this time around was the FPS issue had stopped. No stuttering because of particle effects while in combat (This I was happy about). However the crashing, freezing and BSOD problem continued despite tweaking the Ultra Mode settings to keep it running fairly stable (Ambient Occlusion is sweet, but intensive for something so seemingly simple).
After trying two different drivers with similar results it became clear to me to give the one in the middle another try and re-install the 196.21s I had been running before all this. So far the crashing/freezing has stopped. I can run UM settings a little higher then I could with the other two but unlike on Test, I can't run Ambient Occlusion at all. Might have more to do with the server load, who knows.
Right now I've got it to the point where it looks nice, runs decent enough in the open world. Excellent in missions (as always). Enjoying my DS/Pain MM right now and things look good. I'm hoping that Nvidia does some more tweaking with their drivers and/or Paragon Studios continues to do some more optimization of Ultra Mode to iron things out. Perhaps it might be time to bite the bullet and just buy a new card and not worry about it.
How have some of the rest of you Nvidia users faired during the launch of I17? Good? Bad? Ugly? In my adventure I've found the latest drivers DO NOT like City of Heroes/Villains.
- Bow �o �he Reaper of Souls�
- 68 Unique Characters / Fifteen Level 50s & Counting! Damn you alt-itis!!!!!!!