About 3 weeks ago I've bought new videocard - 6600GTAGP. Untill that time all run stable and smootm on my computer (old card was GF3Ti200). Now I experience periodic freezes of the game (only game, not all the system) Ctl-alt-del helps to shut Duke3d.exe process. Freezing may occur at any time, from begining of the level till playing half an hour.
I've tried to trace the source of the problem several ways:
Removed all models (def lines from duke3d.def)- same problem
Removed all hires textures - no effect, freezing continied
Removed skyboxes - same
Removed maphacks - same
Switched drivers - from 71.25 to 70.90 - no effect.
Tried different video settings - anizotroping, antialiasing , agp apperture size, refresh fixing, etc. Changed settings with Riva tuner - same again.
My specs:
WinXP SP2 (SP2 installed 3 months ago - cannot be source of the problem)
AthlonXP 1700+@2400+ (Hardly can be the reason of the freezes, because it can work up to 2600+)
Mb Soltek 75drv5 (via 333)
512 ram
Western digital 80Gb
Video Prolink 6600GT AGP (500*900) - not overclocked, temp up to 60C.
Power supply Powerman 300Wt. (Good enough for 6600GT)
Genius PCI modem
Some PCI lan card
Case has good air flow (two blowers - in&out)
All this system work fine on all programs and games , exept jDuke.
Half Life 2 & Doom 3 runs without any glitches with decent FPS.
There is no hardvare conflicts of resources of videocard with any other device.
I have no joystick installed
How can I debug/ trace source of those crashes. Maybe i's new drivers problem?
:(
TX at
Try using official drivers instead of leaked test sets. ;)
piterplus at
Thanks, you're forgot to add try not to overclock ;)
Thats not a serious help.
piterplus at
Drivers problem
Just want to add , that a week ago I installed official 66.93 nvidia drivers.
After that lockups and freezes become less freqiently, and after some time (around 10-20 sec) game unfreezes itself and go as usial.
Yesterday I tried 71.40 drivers. In this combination (drivers+Geforse6600GT) game freeze more often and after freezing screen go with gorizintal brown-black strips.
Nothing help to get out of freeze except ctl-alt-del and shutdown of duke3d.exe process.
So, I assume this is hardly my hardware problem (becouse it only happen with Duke3D - everything else, including HL2 and D3 goes well).
I think there is some incompatibility of new drivers or combination of drivers+GF6600GT with Jonos'f port.
Unfortunately, support of 6600 series started from 66.93 drivers and I cannot try early versions with my videocard.
I can add that is not only my problem - I've met description of similar cases here on forum.
maniac1701 at
Nvidia 6600GT game freezes
i used to overclock computers in the past and they may seem stable at first but then later on they start to act up. when you put it down to normal speed every thing goes back to normal.
Why are you overclocking it anyway? a 1700+ is an awsome cpu more than sufficiant for todays games and your geforce 6600 will pack a huge punch on its own. i have a 2500+ cpu with geforce 5200 and i would rather have the faster video card than the faster cpu.
TX at
maniac1701 said
a 1700+ is an awsome cpu more than sufficiant for todays games
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. No. A 1700+ is nowhere near sufficient for running today's games at reasonable framerates and detail levels and it would be a big waste to run a decent video card with one(at stock speeds). With high end video hardware, games today are more CPU limited than anything else. The 1700+ can be firmly placed into a "lowest of the low end" type category.
Note that this has nothing to do with the problem.. just pointing out an inaccuracy. If I was stuck with a 1700+ I'd be overclocking it too. I strongly doubt the overclock is the cause of his issue, but if he really wants to check he can let it run Prime95 overnight.
CheapAlert at
What, my Athlon 950 with Geforce2gts 64mb has no problems running most of today's games...
Nxskingdom at
ok then play doom 3 full quality then tell me if it runs well...
maniac1701 at
yeah 1.2ghz is a minimum these days, but combine that with an ultra high end graphics card and you'll be running games like doom 3 with a good frame rate
TX at
maniac1701 said
yeah 1.2ghz is a minimum these days, but combine that with an ultra high end graphics card and you'll be running games like doom 3 with a good frame rate
No, combining a subpar 1.2 GHz CPU with an ultra high end video card will still give you a crappy framerate, unfortunately, because the video card will be sitting around waiting for the CPU to catch up as opposed to doing any actual work. Games these days are a lot more CPU limited than one would think.
maniac1701 at
i don't agree when i got my geforce fx 5200 128mb card it breathed new life into my computer. games that were barely playable were now running smooth. unfortunatly it isn't good enough to run doom 3 with a decent frame rate but if i had a 6600 or better that would be another story.
from what i've read most of todays games the graphics are done by the gpu and the physics/ai is done in the cpu and the increased ai/physicis detail is why you need a 1.2 or higher to run these games.
edit:
when i upgraded from an athlon thunderbird 800mhz to a athlon xp 2500+ i noticed almost no difference in frame rates in most games, however when i pulled out its geforece fx 5200 and replaced it with geforce 2 mx and installed the 5200 in my new computer the mx slowed everything down by a lot.
Baddle Axe at
On the topic - The latest official release of the nVidia graphics drivers is 71.84. Try them and see if it works any better. I also have a 6600GT and with these drivers the game works perfectly with 70+fps 1024x768 high res textures, models, shadows and AA 16x, but i also have an Athlon 64 3200 but anyway thats not the point. Try the new drivers and see if that helps
On the off-topic - Its hard to say whether games are more CPU or GPU limited.
In the process of building this computer, my Geforce 6600GT arrived before my CPU, so i stuck my GFX card into my PIII 800mhz with 256mb of RAM and i ran the Half-Life 2 demo with everything low at about 20 - 40fps, and the real game at about the same. But with my Athlon 64 3200 and 512mb RAM plus my Geforce 6600GT I can run Half-Life 2 at anywhere from 60 - 130fps with everything up at 1024x768. |\/|y c0|\/|pUt4r r0x0rz! lol so i reckon its pretty hard to say