7000x64 gaming drama

[bloke]

hey i was wondering if anyone could help me with the prob im having.

i could play games fine in x32 but i seem to be having troubles in x64, i have tried a number of things (compat mode including when installing, reinstalling without game updates, with updates)

i installed 2008 x64 redistribution pack and made no diff.
tried the windows update 179xx wddm1.1 display drivers (ppfft)
tried earlier disp drivers
uninstalling physx

crysis (with or without game updates) locks in the menu, thats in the rare occasion it does make it into the menu otherwise it sits at a black screen until you press space bar to close the inaccessible "this programme has stopped responding" dialog box

cod4 mw locks at mission loading screen and needs forced reboot

cod5waw when i select to start a mission, select difficulty and it just goes back to the mission select page no matter how many times you try it??

i use my system mainly for gaming so this is really doing my head in.

i have nforce 20.08 forceware drivers
182.06 geforce drivers
along with the latest physx software
all 64bit drivers.

running on 790i ultra, 9800gx2 quad sli, q9550, 4gb ddr3
rest of specs are in my profile.

if someone can help me figure this out i would be grateful!

thnx
Rick.

 

[Mark]

How did you get those chipset drivers, the only ones I have seen are nForce Driver 15.23 for the 7 series.

 

[bloke]

NVIDIA nForce-Driver 20.08 WHQL Vista 64-bit download from Guru3D.com

that is the only driver i have that is from a third party btw, the rest are from the oem manufacturers (nvidia/xfx ect)

i should try the 15.23 drivers again, but somehow i doubt it will make a difference.

 

[Mark]

I think I have read somewhere that there is a problem with SLI in the Beta, maybe you could try disabling it to see if changes anything, in the meantime I will try the driver you are using to see if any of my games are effected.

 

[RemovableBorcy]

Indeed. SLI support is spotty, at best. Attempt running all of those games in single card mode. That will probably work.

 

[bloke]

hmm unless i just remove the sli bridge between the 2 cards and just enable duel sli (could just have a problem with quad sli) if that dont work ill just disable sli all together.

ill give it a bash when i get home from work.

i hope they fix that sli problem then, the gx2's need sli other wise they are a paper weight (not like they arnt 1 already)

 

[bloke]

I think I have read somewhere that there is a problem with SLI in the Beta, maybe you could try disabling it to see if changes anything, in the meantime I will try the driver you are using to see if any of my games are effected.

let me know how you go cos i know they are not an original nvidia driver as you stated and are more than likely just a third party compilation of drivers that have the best performance put into 1. though they do state its a whql driver? which makes me wonder how that is if nvidia dont list the 20.08, unless they have taken individual drivers from numerouse whql drivers and expected it to remain whql supported?

i had another custom chipset driver compilation that was supposed to improve performance in vista as the creator had taken the best proven drivers and compiled them into the one installer (like your 15.23 forceware) if u get what i mean, though i didnt notice much of a difference as i was trying to improve hdd scoring, it turned out i had left the sata1 limiting jumper on the drive, so i was never sure if this had improved at all.

i did install the 15.23 drivers last night and there was no difference, it did take an extra 5 seconds or so to lock up though. lol

cheers.

 

[Mark]

Had a go on GTA IV, COD4 & COH all working fine with the nForce driver you have, so I think this is an SLI issue, maybe just with X64 as you say they were working fine on x86.

As far as performance increase goes with these new drivers, I tried a benchmark on Compay of Heroes and Max and average frame rates were the same but there was a slight improvement with the minimum fram rates by about 3Fps.

 

[bloke]

Had a go on GTA IV, COD4 & COH all working fine with the nForce driver you have, so I think this is an SLI issue, maybe just with X64 as you say they were working fine on x86.

As far as performance increase goes with these new drivers, I tried a benchmark on Compay of Heroes and Max and average frame rates were the same but there was a slight improvement with the minimum fram rates by about 3Fps.

nvidia dont seem to spend much time with chipset drivers for some reason, so ill reinstall the 20.08 drivers (an 3fps increase is better than nothing) and use them till something newer is released.

the problem is a: i need quad sli for the gx2's as they are a pretty sloppy slow card
b:i need x64 cos of the shared vram with system memory issue, i dont like using a pagefile and cos i only got 4gb ram, 2gb of shared vram/sys ram leaves me with around 2gb, then i have 1gb (or more) for the o/s then what ever left is for gaming (which isnt much considering the demanding games i like playing).

even if i get more ram i will need x64 to utilise, say 6gb, wont i?

ill post up if sli fixes the issue.

cheers for ur help Mr GRiM!

 

[Mark]

No worries Bloke.

 

[smarteyeball]

even if i get more ram i will need x64 to utilise, say 6gb, wont i?

yep. No getting around the 3.5 limit in x86.

 

[bloke]

ok i disabled sli, and gaming as i knew it was working once again!!

my next question is i re-enabled sli then powered down, removed the sli bridge and nvidia control panel still shows sli enabled, gpu-z shows sli (4gpu's enabled) but i removed the sli bridge? AND the games are still working while i done this??

any clue?

 

[bloke]

yep. No getting around the 3.5 limit in x86.

i thought so, why is this so hard to fix in x86?

 

[bloke]

ok i think i figured it out. The sli bridge allows data to stream directly between the two cards. Graphis cards with a high bus rate tend to require the sli bridge for the data, in my case the gx2 is a mere 256bit, therefore by removing the sli bridge my xfx790i is using its pciex16 bus to do the sli bridge work which in my situation is very handy. I guess mobos with a lower pcie bandwidth would struggle with this feature. Hopefully someone else trying to figure this out stumbles across this.

Thanks again guys for all your great help!
Rick.

 

[bloke]

can anyone confirm that this is fixed in versions above beta7000? obviously not in 7000 as im using it

 

[angryman]

i thought so, why is this so hard to fix in x86?

You can't fix it, its a coding limitation... we need to move to 64bit. Its been slow going since so much of our computer programs are coded for 32bit.

its kind of like the y2k bug, some folks didn't think ahead when creating it


Feel free to read up on it, a neat fact in this article is how 16bit would limit us to 64kilobytes of RAM

Big leaps hey?

Coding Horror: Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM?

 

[bloke]

You can't fix it, its a coding limitation... we need to move to 64bit. Its been slow going since so much of our computer programs are coded for 32bit.

its kind of like the y2k bug, some folks didn't think ahead when creating it


Feel free to read up on it, a neat fact in this article is how 16bit would limit us to 64kilobytes of RAM

Big leaps hey?

Coding Horror: Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM?

thanks ill read up on that, i knew about the limitations with the memory and 32bit o/s but i thought they might of somehow worked around it in win7x32, would make life easier on alot of ppl, windows 7 does recognise 4gb though, but weather it actually uses it is another story.

but i couldnt be happeir with 7, apart from the sli issue which will more than likely be fixed in final release.

 

[angryman]

thanks ill read up on that, i knew about the limitations with the memory and 32bit o/s but i thought they might of somehow worked around it in win7x32, would make life easier on alot of ppl, windows 7 does recognise 4gb though, but weather it actually uses it is another story.

but i couldnt be happeir with 7, apart from the sli issue which will more than likely be fixed in final release.

I would give 64 a try, I am on it currently, but using all my 32bit programs, so far, zero issues!

 

[bloke]

I would give 64 a try, I am on it currently, but using all my 32bit programs, so far, zero issues!

i am using x64, its just i first tried win7 7000x32 but due to that issue im using x64 now. im happy with it now that i fixed the sli issue (for now)

 

[Mark]

I went back to Vista to test those new chipset and display drivers and my FPS doubled on Company of Heroes, they are now equal to Windows 7 and the best thing is that everything now works and is compatible, the big show stopper for me ATM is Punkbuster, I'm over it, Vista is now my Primary OS again.