GeForce 6800 and random freezes

[betterdan]

I have trouble only with directx games and apps when overclocking also loubkt. Open GL games run fine with my card overclocked. Weird.

[Goth]

i'd like to know if someone with xp pro 64 bit suffers the same stuttering????
'cause i think it's more a driver stuff than an hardware stuff : i mean i have zero problems under opengl games but with direct x 9 ......
may be under 64 bit condition.....

Yes in happens with Win XP Pro 64 and it's actually worse under Win XP Pro 64.

[loubkt]

ok thank's for your answer about stutt's in xp64......i think we're goooood to keep it for life....
god! i can push my 6800 from 325 core to 410 with no pb under doom3 and if i do a 3dmk'03 freez....

[Goth]

ok thank's for your answer about stutt's in xp64......i think we're goooood to keep it for life....
god! i can push my 6800 from 325 core to 410 with no pb under doom3 and if i do a 3dmk'03 freez....

I don't think it's a driver problem. If it was I think they would have fixed it by now. I think it's a defect in the Nforce3 chipset. My BFG 6800 Ultra never stuttered when I had an Nforce2 motherboard.

[Remus]

The stuttering only occurs in Direct X and only with a NF3 chipset, but why does it only affect Direct X? I don't think the problem solely lays in the chipset. I had a FX 5900@525mhz core 900mem and it didn't exhibit this problem.

Since there seems to be no solution or explanation to the stutter for those who have a nf3 chipset in conjection with Direct X game. We should press nvidia for at least an explanation and hopefully a solution.

[d2thez]

Well perhaps, just perhaps, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Friends over at guru3d have mentioned that the new beta 77.13 drivers have cleared up stuttering and freezing when the 6800/NF3 combo is used.

It is too early to tell for sure and make conclusions, and I can't test it myself since my rig is unable to be setup right now because I just moved.

So if anybody wants to take the initiative, let us know if this is perhaps the long awaited solution.....

[betterdan]

Ok dammit I will be the guinea pig for this as it is very easy to test for freeze ups on my machine. If I overclock at all and start 3d mark 01 i get almost instant freezing. be back in a bit.

[betterdan]

Nope didn't work. DAMN! :(

[Remus]

just tested, and unfortunately it didn't work.

[AutoSear]

Didn't work for me, either :( Going back to 66.93's - the last driver to work without freezes and stuttering on my machine.

[Mr.Niceguy]

try the drivers from tweaksrus.
they have been working wonders for those of us in the 6600 area. with 2d errors, lockups etc...

[tazdirector]

So I spent most of the day reading through several forums, including 30 of the 48 pages of this particular topic after my computer began to exihibit some of the same problems.

I decided to follow a rather detailed plan of attack in trying to solve the issue starting with a re-installation of all drivers. (I did a FRESH install of XP last friday, so I didn't think it necessary to do that again). No luck with driver updates.

I tried the FW approach. No luck.

Like many of us in this topic, system stability was NEVER an issue OUTSIDE of gaming (and DX9 for that). Even still, I performed a block of Memtest and Prime95 tests to ensure that the memory wasn't the issue. No errors in a combined 8 hours of testing.

I finally tried one more thing. One thing that wasn't mentioned too often in this topic. I did a driver clean of the nVidia drivers (I was running the latest 71.89). I then installed one of the most stable set of Forceware drivers still available, 66.81 (downloaded from here: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=884).

ROCK SOLID. Haven't had a single crash yet. I've been running 3DMark03 and 3DMark05 on a rotation for the past 12 hours including 30 minute blocks of the following games:
- Guild Wars
- Freelancer
- Nexus: The Jupiter Incident
- Doom 3

Despite going back to older Forceware drivers, I only had a slight drop in my 3DMark03 and 05 scores (less than 50 points on the 3DMark03). No problems with DirectX compatibility that I've seen and the Nalu demos work perfectly now as well.

All this stability with my unlocked 4 pipes and a vertex shader on my BFG 6800 OC card.

If you're having difficulties with this problem and you haven't tried this, give it a shot. Let's just hope nVidia can clear up these issues on future releases. Maybe the 8x.xx series will have better luck.

Best o' luck

Tazdirector

The Rig (v.5)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
AMD Sempron 3100+ (overclocked to 9x240 ~ 2160.1 Mhz @ 1.5v)
DFI LANPARTY NF3 250GB (nVidia nForce 5.10 driver set, 5/04 BIOS)
1024MB (2x512) GeIL Ultra PC4000 (DDR500) 2.5-4-4-7
BFG TECH 6800 OC 128MB (stock cooling / 66.81 nVidia Forceware Drivers)
- w/ 4 pipes unlocked, 1 vertex shader unlocked
Ultra X-Connect 500W Power Supply (too cool)
Cooler Master Centurion Case
80GB ATA/133 Drive (I know, I know...SATA, blah, blah, blah)
Windows XP / sp2
SpeedFan Temps (35C CPU idle, 57C 6800OC idle)
3DMark03: 10613 / 3DMark05: 3782 (need to fine tune some more)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

[AutoSear]

Great post, tazdirector.

My machine is also 100% stable outside of DirectX games.

My stuttering didn't start until I tried the first official nVidia driver in the 7x.xx series. Every release since, official and beta, has resulted in stuttering. Like you, I've tried everything. I'll continue to use the 66.93's and hope nVidia fixes this problem.

[burzin]

Damm,

I just replaced my old GeForce FX5200 with a new GeForce 6600 GT AGP. When I play Rome-Total War in the "battle" senerio, just as the progress bar ends, my PC freezes and I have to reboot. I can play FarCry without any hitch.

I have a P4 2.4Gz with 512MB Ram. I have attached a direct power line to my Card. I have the latest drivers too.

I have read this thread. Would the different solutions mentioned here (for the 6800) be applicable to my 6600 GT as well?

Thanks!
Burzin

[Remus]

You don't seem to have the same problem. The issue that most users are having who have replied to this post are stuttering and freezing with Direct x games, and are primarily on an Amd64 with a nf3 chipset.

Have you installed any mods for RTW? When I first attempted to install the Rome total realism mod I would get a CTD when ever it loaded a battle. Doing a reinstall cleared it up.

[burzin]

Have you installed any mods for RTW? When I first attempted to install the Rome total realism mod I would get a CTD when ever it loaded a battle. Doing a reinstall cleared it up.

No I have not installed any Mods. I reinstalled the game but same problem. This only happened after I installed my 6600 GT

[tazdirector]

**** UPDATE ****

So after a solid day of testing and gaming, I decided to try my luck on the latest BETA drivers released month ago. After reading surprisingly positive ratings from fellow OC'ers, I decided to give it a go, just to see if any improvements could be had on top of stability.

I downloaded the 77.13 BETA drivers from the Guru3D site (they included a handy setup utility as well).
LINK: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1087

Did an uninstall of the nVidia 66.81 drivers and a Driver Clean. Then I installed the BETA drivers, rebooted and starting my stability testing"

- 2 Hours of 3DMark03
- 1 Hour of 3DMark05
- 1 Hour of Aquamark3

Verdict (thus far): ROCK SOLID!

No crashes, no glitches, no artifacts. On the other hand, no noticeable speed increase (maybe 1% to 2% in DX9 gaming). Even still, it's nice to know that I can run a set of 7x.xx drivers with some stability.

I proceeded to do some general DX9 gaming with FS9 and a dash of Doom 3. For the most part, I didn't notice any increase in smoothness or image quality. At the same time, I ran without a hitch. Like they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

ON MORE NOTE:
In my previous posting, I did leave out ONE important step. Before I installed the 66.81 driver set, I did a complete driver clean of ALL the nVidia drivers. This included my Forceware set for my mobo (NF3 250). Instead of installing the latest driver set from DFI (I've got the LANPARTY UT), I decided to install the latest Forceware set from nVidia (5.10).
After I thought about it, I should have tested these new mobo drivers with the nVidia 7x.xx driver set I was running before when I was suffering the massive BSODs.
For anyone having problems with a 6800 and NF3 mobo, it may be worth a try to clean out the mobo driver set and install these:
LINK: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_udp_winxp_5.10

Best o' luck

TazDirector

The Rig (v.5a)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
AMD Sempron 3100+ (overclocked to 9x240 ~ 2160.1 Mhz @ 1.5v)
DFI LANPARTY NF3 250GB (nVidia nForce 5.10 driver set, 5/04 BIOS)
1024MB (2x512) GeIL Ultra PC4000 (DDR500) 2.5-4-4-7
BFG TECH 6800 OC 128MB (stock cooling / 77.13 BETA nVidia Drivers)
- w/ 4 pipes unlocked, 1 vertex shader unlocked
Ultra X-Connect 500W Power Supply (too cool)
Cooler Master Centurion Case
80GB ATA/133 Drive (I know, I know...SATA, blah, blah, blah)
Windows XP / sp2
SpeedFan Temps (35C CPU idle, 57C 6800OC idle)
3DMark03: 10771 / 3DMark05: 3782 (need to fine tune some more)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

[burzin]

Hi,

After days of sweat and toil and trying everything else (which didnt work). I reinstalled the 66.xx drivers......and VOILA ! The damm thing starts working!!!!

So, If you have problems with the 71.xx drivers....please FIRST try installing the old 66.xx drivers and see if it solves your problems.

Regards,
Derek

[loubkt]

i've done few benchmark with no problem at all but it was with DOOM3....my card goes up to 410 with no stuttering or freez (default is 325 mhz core)....but no way if i put a direct3d application : 5 to 10 sec freez....
i really think it is a driver related problem with direct x9 or direct 3d stufff

[AMC_Duke]

i agree i can run everything open gl just fine then wow or battlefield 2 demo both direct 3d freeze my system only working driver is 71.81 or what ever the version of the official release is. with 71.81 it freeze to but ! it recover in about 5-6 secs with all drivers above i have to reboot.

i think its all direct 3d and driver releated :thumbdwn:

[Universal]

I'm using a 250 mobo, athlon 64, and a 6800gt. I can only run the 6x.xx drivers without my computer hanging every 10 seconds in a directx game. Now with Battlefield 2 requring 7x.xx drivers I've had to face this problem. Because with Battlefield 2 and the 7x.xx drivers my computer will just shut down alltogether.

I've read a lot of people saying that these problems have a lot to do with your power supply not providing enough power. But I've looked at some of your sigs and many of your psu's look fine. Mine on the other hand is a 450w with 14 amps on the 12v rail.

So I opened up my computer and unplugged everything I didn't need. My dvd burner, my second hard drive, even my case fan. All I had plugged in was my video card and hard drive. Started up Battlefield 2 and I played for 7 hours and it only hung two or three times.

Tomorrow when the computer store opens I'm going down to pick up a more powerful psu. Preferably something with at least 20 amps on the 12v rail. We'll see how it goes.

[Goth]

I used the suggested Riva fix that forces the video card not to throttle.
All ten second lockups went away I can even run games with fast writes on and still do not get the ten second lockups. You would think that if it's a throttling problem that Nvidia would have implemented a fix in their drivers by now.

[Universal]

Old PSU (http://www.outletpc.com/c0841.html)
New PSU (http://www.outletpc.com/c0865.html)

Replacing the PSU and turning off fastwrites made a major difference. I still get a 3 second hang maybe once an hour but it's way better than having one every 10 seconds and eventually having my computer shut down.

[thepiecesfit]

try cleaning off the dust from the card... i only get those pauses when the card seems to be overheating... they just get worse and worse till the system locks.... I cleaned all the dust off the cards fan and heatsink and its rock solid again.. and yes fast writes on nvidia board and nvidia graphics = bad shut it off... sidebanding perhaps as well

[mushies]

try cleaning off the dust from the card... i only get those pauses when the card seems to be overheating... they just get worse and worse till the system locks.... I cleaned all the dust off the cards fan and heatsink and its rock solid again.. and yes fast writes on nvidia board and nvidia graphics = bad shut it off... sidebanding perhaps as well


ABSULOTLY RIGHT !!! WORK FOR ME TOO !!! ITS ALL ABOUT THE OVERHEATING
edit: you can see my post at page 47, before the cleaning