Trying to find a workable driver for my 6800GT?

Is there anyone here who can suggest/point out a Video Driver for my 6800GT - that will run the damn I17/UltraMode "rebuilt" graphics Engine?

I got by with the 91.74 Drivers for years = literally (and had run on older ones than that for quite awhile. I've learned the hard way, more than once even, That the standard answer/advice "Always Update Your Drivers BS" - is often = just that B.S.!
But the semi-recent "Improvements" to the Game Engine have been causing me nothing but trouble, ever since they first landed - I had to fiddle with some settings right away - attempting to cling to my "old" settings/quality/performance/etc. as best I could.

I'm running a simple little system, and I was getting by just fine using very-modest graphics settings with my old card. (And, yes my rig is "ancient" - I know and have plans to build a new one "Soon™"

I was running No Water FX, simple/low shadows, 2xAA & 2xAF or there abouts... with the only really "demanding" settings being High Quality Character & World textures/shaders - or whatever the setting were before(?), those and High/not max 'World Detail' and whatever setting gave me the Farthest Draw Distance = LoD?)

Did I mention, I really hate the way they changed all the settings? And that I really, really HATE being thrown under the "S.O.T.A. Bus" the way they did to all of us still running "Puter-sauruses" (happily or not).

So I've tried 197.45, and 260.99 (and 260.89 iirc) - the major problem I have with changing drivers repeatedly is that I've got a nForce 3 250/Ultra (its a Shuttle FN-95 V2 SFF M.Board), Athlon 64 3200+ (939 Winchester 90nm), with onboard Marvell-Yukon GigEthernet, and onboard nForce 3 Audio (and it uses NVMixer Audio), and WinXP 32bit.

That adds up to a truckload of Nvidia Drivers, that they stopped supporting/updating long ago - the nForce5_11 Drivers were the last ones, and my board doesn't use them all. I can't afford to disrupt the IDE Driver (= it's complicated with the option of Nvidia SATA RAID drivers or IDE to SATA drivers), I barely remember how I sorted it all out the first couple times, it wasn't pretty.

So updating the video driver made GoogleMaps fly like it's never done on this box before, Yippee! But the game Keeps crashing = I'm getting lock-ups & lag-blackscreen-reboots, fortunately only one BSOD = when I didn't go thru the Uninstall, SafeMode Reboot, Driver Sweeper, Re-boot, Install New Driver steps properly.

YES, I do know what I'm doing (for the most part), I've managed to minimize upsetting/messing with this mass of "not so user friendly" combination of drivers, MB/components, and a GeForce BFG 6800GT OC AGP, they're all orphans...
That Shuttle abandoned, BFG Died = (R.I.P.), & NVidia gave up supporting all of the various legacy parts/software long ago. This whole, "Our latest driver will support your 6800GT just fine" is a B.S. lie and they know it... or they should!

So, I've been reading and I'm at the point where I think that the 197.13 might work, that anything post "Release 256.xx" won't get along with a card this old = Pre-Series 8. Seems that anything prior to Series 8.xxx is "off their radar" and not their concern.
I've known that for about 4 years or so around the time of the 8600-8800's and SLI became the end-all be-all for NVidia.

Drivers were screwy & for the most part NOT backward compatible back in the late 70.xx - 90.xx versions (that's why I stuck with the 91.47 ForceWare, which was near the end of the line for Forceware - I've got 91.31 drivers archived. IIRC, they didn't work very well when they were new...

Sorry for the Extra-Long Rant - I've been working on this for a long time now, and it got much worse after I18 went Live, and seems to get more and more buggy every damned time the publish anything - even "minor fixes" or stealth hotfixes.

I'm not trying to run UltraMode anything - I just want to play with low quality gfx for characters & world, a decent draw distance, maybe 2xAA at 1280 x 1024 = the native res. of my 19" FP (dell/samsung).

I've tried Windowed Mode maximized, I've tried all the most common answers/solutions - with some success. My rig runs fine till I start playing CoX, it fine besides that (I don't really have any other games installed FarCry would overheat it always has if I wasn't careful & now its likely just too old(Hmm?), GalCiv2 crashes when the Galaxy gets too crowded - but thats not to unusual either. I've run all the usual Spyware/Malware/Anti-Virus scans/programs & only found 1 "homepage hi-jacker" for IE...

I don't run IE and my homepage has been About:Blank for as long as I can remember - I'm 97% certain it isn't anything like that - I really don't have the patience to deal with someone demanding a HijackThis scan (I don't ever keep it installed, yes I've run it and found nothing significant - I'm familiar with all the processes I have running in Task Manager & what Spybot S&D and MalwareB (iirc) have reported. I've defragged recently,have plenty of free disk space, I've done all the standard stuff - and read thru all the solutions I can find here, at the NV Driver Forum, etc., and so forth.

Anyone who gets this far thru this post happen to know from experience a Driver Version that will be good/new enough to run this new Game Engine with UltraMode tuned all the way down or even OFF, and old enough to still run on my 6800GT?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.

I ran a second system with a 6800 Ultra during I17 Beta and shortly after launch. Mostly it ran as a file server until I could get things transferred off of it, but I did a bit of testing and it ran the game ... decently enough. It was already showing it's age as was the rest of that computer, so I didn't game on it except for testing or for logging in my alt account for SG invites, promotions, etc. All of my gaming by then was on my newer computer with a 4850 in it, so there was no reason to play on low graphics settings when it wasn't necessary.

I don't recall which drivers I was using, but they were recent drivers at the time, somewhere between January and April release dates. I'm thinking it was the March driver, but it's been long enough ago that I can't recall for certain. I can't look it up because the power supply went out in July and I haven't worked on the system since it wasn't really needed anymore. That computer was no longer workable for gaming which was why I got a new computer in the first place. Seriously, the computer was 6 years old, it was well past it's time as a gaming machine.

Having a date range should help you find the drivers and since you've already said that you aren't going to run the scans we'd ask for to try to help you, all I can offer at this point is a hearty "good luck".

Okay I admit, I was a bit cranky in my post above... it was just shy of 3am, and I'd been working on it all most of the day/evening.

And actually with all the problems that myself (and many others) have been having since they "improved the graphics engine" - I've been attempting to deal with this = much longer than that...

What would you have me run and/or do?

You should know that, the NVIDIA Driver Downloads page, says that 260.99 will work just peachy with my 6800GT.

I've installed and tried the new System Tools that looks/detects what card/system you have and that functioned just fine (kinda spiffy looking even - with updated Java). It found my card and all my hardware even the nForce3 Ultra/250 onboard stuff, & software - drivers, etc.

It told me the same silly thing = "Use the shiny NEW Drivers, no really - they work... honest".
And so far as watch DVD's, streaming video, a dozen + Firefox Tabs, WinAmp, Solitaire, and all the system utilities I can throw at it simultaneously... Everything but CoX!

And, at times I've been able to run the game mostly okay - for a random amount of time.
I had the problem with the UI flickering when scrolling up or down in the UI - like the Badge window, and the Market, and everything else with that same basic UI element - grab and drag the little bar to scroll.

I've had lag so bad when logging in, that I have to do it twice whenever I first start-up or restart, or swap alts, etc. Horrible loading screen lag... And I'm pretty certain I've seen other people with all the same problems (not necessarily at the same time), and the only answer for most has been

"Go buy a new computer" = the game is no longer backward-compatible.
Yep, my machine is closing in on 6 years old, but I refuse to accept this nonsense of "Here are the Hardware Minimum Specs & Recommended Specs" and the Devs can't keep the up support, or rather keep the game running on those specs.

Which they assured us - wouldn't be a problem before/during they were updating the Graphics Engine for "Ultra-Mode"...

My PC isn't "fried"... Old? Sure, but it's Not Dead Yet or even "broken" for that matter.

Seriously though, what would you like to know?

What should I run and post logs from? - mind you, I don't have a place to host files. (Never have - just like I don't do IM'ing, or Texting, or Facebook/Twitter/etc.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.

Cardiff_Giant:

The only help I can give you is this. I've got a 6x00 series Geforce. Granted, it is the lowest mobile 6800. Also, granted, the only version of Windows it has installed is Windows 2000, which means the only Nvidia driver it officially supports is the older 94.24 release.

That being said, the Linux driver is up to date: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-d...21-driver.html

Under Cedega the card runs CoH just fine in the "classic" rendering mode. Granted that's also because none of the advanced graphical features are exposed on Nvidia cards under Cedega.

The only other 6x00 I can lay hands on right now is a 6200 backed with an AthlonXp 2000 (~1.7ghz)... and given that it isn't my computer I'm not going to put CoH atop it.

Back when I had my 6800 OC I used this driver: 195.62 & it was working just fine ... this was back in May - july this year. I'm using a 5950 Ultra right now & have no access to the 'visual goodies' anymore as the other board fried due to heat - we think a fan died & we didn't know . I got it here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_195.62_whql.html

I hope that it works for you. *crosses fingers*

Pax