NVidia Drivers

Anyone have a favorite Nvidia Driver for City of Heroes?

Today's patch caused me some driver trouble that I've been troubleshooting for the past few hours and I'm trying to locate a set of drivers for my card that will play the game without a hard lockup of my machine.

I'm using an older card that still runs well, the 8800 GTS, until today that is.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Errrr... the latest drivers?

I feel your pain, I'm still running a 'BFG 6800 GT OC' - yippee!

Somewhat more seriously, Many people have posted about this recently and, "Man in the Sky" only knows how many others are having this same problem. I've had troubles since I17 was released, they recently got to the "game breaking" level = as in I can't even get past the freakin server select screen, much less logged into to a character & loaded into the game.

I hope you can find a driver that runs this, please let us know if you do I'd like to give whichever driver that is a try on my system.

Also, FWIW the newest version of 'Driver Sweeper' are located at http://www.phyxion.net/ - 3DGuru doesn't (or didn't last time I checked).

I'm about to take the 2.75 version and go try uninstalling and re-installing a variety of drivers for the nth time... *sigh*

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 wouldn't count on New hardware fixing the issue, check a few of the other threads here, there are people with New hardware having about as much trouble as people with older Video Cards/Systems.

Too may people are doing just what you're talking about = Upgrading Hardware instead of insisting on an actual fix for the problem. And it's leading the hardware snobs to think they're right - "it's just your old hardware... get a new rig and be quiet. Really we know everything!"

It's bound to catch back up with some of these folks before too long, I bet we'll soon enough see people here that went and bought a new Video card or worse an entire System. Because nobody can be bothered to troubleshoot bugs anymore.

The next most popular cop-out "it must be spyware/malware/a virus, Time to wipe and re-install..." = This is the second worst B.S. excuse for not bothering to spend time troubleshooting & finding then fixing software issues!

I19 is out, I expect them to have someone from Q/A working on figuring out how why the new engine isn't backward compatible with the "Required", Suggested/"Recommended" Hardware specs. for the game.

If they can't do this then in a reasonable amount of time = Then, they need to fess-up about failing to keeping the game backward compatible on "then current" (when they made the promise) hardware - Going forward with the release of I17's UltraMode (and that FSM forsaken "graphics slider"), and change the official listed Required Hardware Specs!

All they've shown an interest in fixing is getting all the shiny new bells and whistles and Dual-card SLI Mode working, Nvidia has been obsessed with SLI Driver compatibly/optimization since...

Oh, right around the time your 8800 GTS was released (roughly) AIRC, that's when they started pretty much ignoring anything not Series 8 or soon after Series 9 cards and making them run in pairs, so they could post better Benchmark Scores than their competitors.

Which makes me wonder to what extent NVIDIA really tests their 'Unified Drivers', And just how much (if any) the Dev team spoke with NVIDIA about keeping CoH functional while/after they re-built the Engine for I17/UltraMode?

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 have a 8800GTX and find that if I stick with the 257 drivers from June, then I have no problems. If I update to anything more recent, then I lock up on exit.
It has been much discussed, with no commmon issue that anyone can point to and say "That's the problem".
Some people can run the latest drivers with no problems, some can't run the newest but can run 258 or 259 with no problems. Others like me have to run 257. This is across all models. 6800s, 8800s, 250s....No rhyme or reason that anyone has found. Annoying for sure, but in the meantime find the set that runs for you and stick with it for now.

The only luck I've had on my system is using the Forceware 93.71 (http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71.html) drivers. Any driver newer than that for me make my machine go wonky. My card is a 7600 GS fyi. Your mileage may vary.

CW

I've been having having strange issues myself with my 9800GT: After playing CoH or Mass Effect 2, things get slow as hell, to the point that even restarting the PC can only be done manually. I suspected the latest driver update also, but after reading this thread I'm quite sure of it.

I'm using a Nvidia 9800 GT, and have tried the last 4 drivers, and have tried several different settings.

Since yesterday's publish, when I have CoX running, I can't Alt+Tab to anything without causing severe lock-ups. I normally run anywhere from 4-6 other programs when not playing, with absolutely no problems, and no more than 3 when CoX is running.

I have a 9500 GT and the 257 is about the only thing I can run without having to fight my way through new settings and the like.

Believe me, I would love to run the 260 or better. I like the install utility.
But then again, I'm hoping to get a new Vid card after the holidays. I like what I have, but I want to play CoX with nearly all the graphical bells and whistles on.

Thank you for the time...

@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test)

Seems my issues were related to Hero Stats. After updating it, everything is running smoothly once again. My wife just checked with her old version of HS and it still freezes up.

Using the latest drivers actually does not work depending on the card you have, at least for me and a few users. I have a NVidia GeForce 8600 GTS. Any driver past the 169.25 will cause CoH to consistantly crash between 20 to 40 minutes of play, but pretty close to the 30 min mark. In all fairness, I gave up trying to get the latest driver, and rolling it back at the 197.45 one. So "best is better" doesn't always work, at least for old stuff.

Now, granted, the computer is getting old, so when it does die, which is a graphics card that consistantly works with CoH? Note = I'm an old dude who doesn't need all the ultra-mode bells and whistles. I just want a "fully compatible" card, that will rarely crash, if such exists.