6800GT stuttering

[Eliminator]

i just upgraded to a athlon 64 winchester with Msi neo 2 platinum and now i get the famous stuttering problems with my 6800GT.... i tried riva tuner with motherboard compatibility mode but that doesnt fix it..... i would prefer to keep fastwrites on as I lost 400 pts in 3dmark05 by upgrading to an a64 from an axp... i believe i saw on this forum some tweak in rivatuner... can anyone help me? i really wanna try to keep fastwrites on

[saturnotaku]

Yet another case of someone who could have used the search function. But since I'm in a magnanimous (sp?) mood, I'll do it for you:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=32759

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=37865

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=40952

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=39173

[Chippy]

i just upgraded to a athlon 64 winchester with Msi neo 2 platinum and now i get the famous stuttering problems with my 6800GT.... i tried riva tuner with motherboard compatibility mode but that doesnt fix it..... i would prefer to keep fastwrites on as I lost 400 pts in 3dmark05 by upgrading to an a64 from an axp... i believe i saw on this forum some tweak in rivatuner... can anyone help me? i really wanna try to keep fastwrites on

400 Points? Pah.

I have lost 4000 points. I used to be able to run my 6800GT at 440/1100 and now I have to drop it down to 410/1100 to stop the stuttering.

This - and today finding out that the borked video processor is not fixed and never will be - makes me very very near to switching to ATI.

A sad time indeed.

Chip

[jolle]

the "blit" settings in RivaTuner seemed to do the trick for me..
RivaTuner/ForceWare/DX logo/ Blitting tab.
enable the 2 top of the 3 settings..

400 Points? Pah.

I have lost 4000 points. I used to be able to run my 6800GT at 440/1100 and now I have to drop it down to 410/1100 to stop the stuttering.

This - and today finding out that the borked video processor is not fixed and never will be - makes me very very near to switching to ATI.

A sad time indeed.

Chip

hehe yeah, nVidia sure screwed you over by not making their hardware capable of running top notch at 90mhz above spec...
I mean what times are these? when people can sell things that wont work way out of intended specs? its all going to hell I tells you..

The VPU is a bummer tho.

[Chippy]

I mean what times are these? when people can sell things that wont work way out of intended specs? its all going to hell I tells you..


Rather short sighted view that, Jolle.

You make no allowance for the fact that manufacturers specs are the *minimum* level of performance that the kit is supposed to deliver. Not the *average*. When they say a card's spec is 400MHz, they are not saying some will do 380 and others 420. They are saying they will *all* do 400.

In making a spec like that, they have to allow for some really crappy environments that their kit will have to work in too. Poor PSU's, overheating badly ventilated cases and bad drivers.

Isn't it reasonable that if you are an enthusiast, and you have really good environment for your kit to work in - rock solid power supply, great cooling etc etc - that the kit should actually do a bit better than "spec"? Isn't that what "coolbits" is all about.

What irritates me most is not that my card will "only" do 410MHz. Clearly that's not too bad and I have no grounds for complaint about that. What's *irritating* is that I know it will do so much more. 440MHz is no problem for this card with my other components. But because of a BUG that no-one at BFG or nVidia is prepared to investigate, the performance is compromised.

Its irritating, thats all.

Chip

[saturnotaku]

Isn't it reasonable that if you are an enthusiast, and you have really good environment for your kit to work in - rock solid power supply, great cooling etc etc - that the kit should actually do a bit better than "spec"?

No, because hardware is engineered according to specifications set forth by NVIDIA. The GeForce 6800 GT was designed to run at a 350 MHz core and 1000 MHz memory. Anything you get above and beyond that is simply a bonus. What you believe your card should be capable of is irrelevant. While BFG does cater a lot of its business towards the enthusiasts, this group only constitutes a small fraction of the market. They want to appeal to the broadest range possible to produce and push as many units out the door as they can so the most people can buy them. That's simple business theory. Focusing only on such a small target group would be suicide considering the tough competition they face.

What's *irritating* is that I know it will do so much more. 440MHz is no problem for this card with my other components.

Perhaps when you had the card clocked so high you were doing damage to it that you couldn't see. And that's your own dumb fault.

[Buck Armstrong]

What irritates me most is not that my card will "only" do 410MHz. Clearly that's not too bad and I have no grounds for complaint about that. What's *irritating* is that I know it will do so much more. 440MHz is no problem for this card with my other components. But because of a BUG that no-one at BFG or nVidia is prepared to investigate, the performance is compromised.
Its irritating, thats all.
Chip

Its not a bug, and 440 probably IS a "problem" for that card, regardless of heat or PSU. While the GT might be the same chip as the Ultra, the Ultra has two molex connectors for a reason; it allows the GPU to run stable at speeds above 400, which many GTs won't do for very long. Even when people get their GT to run higher than 410, they soon have to underclock it because the GPU gets damaged. This happens even if you up the voltage, just ask around or use the search function.

So if yours is running stable at 410, you've got a good overclock for a GT. If you want to go higher, you should probably buy an Ultra.

[jolle]

OVERclocking, IE going past the given specs, is always a gamble.
Its become more comon, safer and there are alot more tools to help you do it, such as better cooling, cleaner more stable power, failsafes that will shutdown at overheating, Autoreseting BIOSes etc.
Even so, you take the card out of spec at your own risk, and it IS a risk in doing so.
It may not function as intended, signal integrity weakens without raising the Vcore which creates stability issues as errors occur, and raising the voltage adds heat, that will have to be disipated faster then it can generate or the hardware will eventually fail.
OCing is increased stress which may shorten the life of the hardware, as some Voltmodders have experienced at great monetary loss.

There is always a Disclaimer involved with OCing.
Still, there is often some overhead in most hardware these days, if there werent, the varying quality of the GPUs would lead to alot of failures to run at the guaranteed stock speed in alot of cases, and yields would be lower.
But simply assuming that a 350Mhz Core will run just fine at 440Mhz (almost 25% faster) and that its weak if it doesnt, is a bit strong, even with all the special treatment you give it..
400Mhz, which is alot, is something alot of people can get up to with the right cooling, the level of the Ultra, and that is quite a increase really.
Still, some of the GT GPUs might be GTs due to the fact they didnt qualify at the speeds of the Ultra.

[Chippy]

And that's your own dumb fault.

Arse.

[55illinois]

No, you're the arse for whining about hardware that doesn't operate properly out of spec. What a concept!

Arse.

[noko]

LOL, mine only did 390mhz stock and I was happy with that OC, more happy after volt mod. Now that temps in Florida are somewhat cold I can OC to 420 artifact free but normally never play a game over 400mhz. Principle is walking on a cliffs edge can be dangerous if you stay there too long. In addition the difference between 400 and 420 is just not noticeable.

[Zetto]

jeez chip, go over to ati already and whine on rage3d forums! :D

Just kidding ;)

[ChrisRay]

Anyone who complains their hardware doesnt work perfectly out of spec and OCing.. well deserves to be slapped around some. I really feel sorry for Nvidia/ATI/XGI. When people come to them with problems generated from overclocking.

[jAkUp]

an overclocked card unstable.... no ****ing way!! :rolleyes:

[Eliminator]

well the fact that before the card was perfectly stable at those clocks and now it doesnt work just ticks me off.... i tried with fastwrites off and low clocks and i still get lockups in cs souce and stuttering in far cry with the 66.93s...... when are the stupid 70s suposed to come out... i gota give those a try..... betas didnt work well for me when i last tried so im waiting for final...

[Vagrant Zero]

My GT used to do 425/1100. Now it seems to crap out at anything beyond stock [though I'm not entirely convinced it was the OC that did her in seeing as how all my problems occur in 2d yet 3d runs without a hitch, 2d being at 350]. I could RMA it if I wanted to [still under eVGA's warrenty] but I OCed it and it still runs without a hitch at stock so I got what I paid for [except for the VPU, but that's why I'll simply download the decoder if I ever need it, not going to pay for something that was promised to me originaly at purchase].

[smthmlk]

i just upgraded to a athlon 64 winchester with Msi neo 2 platinum and now i get the famous stuttering problems with my 6800GT.... [...] ..... i would prefer to keep fastwrites on as I lost 400 pts in 3dmark05 by upgrading to an a64 from an axp..

Wait, you upgraded from a 32bit Athlon XP chip to a 64bit athlon64 winchester and LOST points in a benchmark? Something doesn't seem right to me, considering every gaming benchmark ive read at the various hardware review sites shows any amd64 chip blowing away the xp3200... Correct me if im wrong, though :)

[jolle]

If it stutters on the new Mobo, while it didnt on the old, it sounds alot like it would be down to the difference in AGP implementation between either the chipsets or the mobos themselves..

Did your old chipset use all the features the new one does?
SBA, FW and such?

you got the propper chipset drivers installed?
might be a idea to look around nforcershq.com forums on the issue aswell.

EDIT
Does 3dMark05 take CPU into noticable concideration?
seing how 3dmark03 was hardly affected by CPU at all..

How are your games running?

[Eliminator]

Wait, you upgraded from a 32bit Athlon XP chip to a 64bit athlon64 winchester and LOST points in a benchmark? Something doesn't seem right to me, considering every gaming benchmark ive read at the various hardware review sites shows any amd64 chip blowing away the xp3200... Correct me if im wrong, though :)

i didnt lose performance because my cpu is slower... my a64 is way faster than my old tbred..... but its the fact that i cant run the same clocks on the card anyone that causes me to lose performance....and the fact that it keeps stuttering....

now as for my old mobo..... ya it had all those options on like fastwrites, sideband addresing, etc.... it was an asus A7N8X rev 2 Deluxe....it worked perfectly fine... never had one problem..... with the my neo2 platinum... lots of problems... and yes i have the latest drivers for both mobo/gfx.... and games like farcry keep stuttering and cs:s keeps locking up

[jolle]

I went thru hell and fire with my Neo Platinum (s745) aswell.
Seems to have stabilized alot, got alot of BSODs and stuff when shutting some games down, like CS:S or BF, before...

I think my problems were largly related to the Extreme G drivers, but not entirely.
Moving from ForceWares Refreshrate overrides to Reforce seemed to stabilze things further.
And the few remaining issues I blame my old TwinMOS 333Mhz Ram on, until I get the cash to by new RAM and se if they remain or not.

Aside from that, I also checked the "blit" settings in RivaTuner as prev mentioned, which transformed D3 from disaster to extremely playable.
Swapped out and tried different nForce drivers, I was given the advice to NOT use Nvs SW IDE driver, which did seem to help stability too.
Turned off Fastwrites in a early stage so I dont know if it helped, still had alot of problems after doing so.
Also removed the A64 DEP support in boot.ini as some mentioned it to conflict with the drivers, not sure on if that did anything tho, but seeing how my AntiVirus software doesnt support DEP it seemed like I had nothing to loose.

So as it stands right now, it works, its pretty stable and I rarly get any BSODs.
But they still happen, rare as they may be, so Im guessing its either RAM or PSU, and the PSU is 480W but on the otherhand rather noname, so I cant entirly rule it out.
It did however work perfecty fine on my old setup, which is identical except for the 9700Pro, XP2700+, Asus A7n8x Deluxe.

[Eliminator]

hmm ill try removing the refresh rate overrides..... tho it happens at 1024x768 as well and im not forcing anythin there.... grrr.... ill keep tweaking and testing

EDIT: actually im also gona go try the new 71.20s beta

[Eliminator]

hey cool the new 71.20s work properly..... i gota do some more testing.... i think i got my old clocks back now.... heres some comaparisons

66.93 test 2 3dmark05 athlonxp..... 15.0 fps @ 430/886
66.93 test 2 3dmark05 a64 ........... 14.3 fps @ 415/870
71.20 test 2 3dmark05 a64............ 15.7 fps @ 430/886

i gota try some farcry.... if the stuttering is fixed im gona go kiss the floor (xmasgrin)

EDIT: nope they dont properly work either.... managed to work in 3dmark05 for a while until for some reason it closed at the end..... and as for farcry it still stutters even with lower clocks

[jolle]

before I switched from NV SW IDE drivers, to the MS standard ones, I couldnt complete 3dMark05.
Screen just went totally black after the first test.

I think it was due to the IDE driver switch, but I was doing alot of meddling at the time, so it can have been the move to Reforce aswell, or something else.
If your not already on the MS drivers, try that and se if it works.

Did you ever try the "blit" settings in RivaTuner? you never answered that I think.
And FC is patched to 1.3 right?

[Chippo]

Would the person who *Banned* me - presumably for saying "Arse" - please like to step forward, so I know who to complain to?

Thank you.

Chippy

EDIT: And on the subject matter of this thread specifically....

I didn't bother to Argue with Saturnotaku, since he was rude enough to call me dumb. A more succinct response was appropriate for him I think.

But to the others of you who argued more constructively:

I accept that some people have different points of view. Overclocking is a complete sin and no-no to some, a mild risk to others and a necessity to a hardcore few. Yes, there are risks. But it up to each person what risks they want to take. And the risk also depends on the equipment involved, the voltages, temperatures etc.

To say ALL overclocking is bad is not a view I subscribe to. Look at the countless people enjoying excellent overclocks with the Athlon XP mobiles, or with the new Athlon 64 Winchester chips. 25% or 30% or more overclocks are commonplace.

To those of you who said perhaps I have damaged my videocard by overclocking: I *know* that is incorrect. (Well so far at least!). I can put it into my Athlon XP rig right now and run it at 440MHz, no problem at all.

Yet I put it into my Athlon 64 system and it won't do more than 410MHz.

This isn't a complaint. I even said so in my penultimate post above, if anyone actually read it.

But it *is* evidence that something in the GF6800 & Athlon64 combination is not working quite as well as it might. Its not really a big deal for me, but I like to know that my computers are working perfectly and if there's some hidden bug somewhere, it intrigues me as to what it might be.

Others are less lucky. Some can't even get their GF6800's to run at stock and still suffer from the same "problem" as me; i.e. the "stuttering" problem.

Does that mean my "problem" is less valid than theirs? No. Its the same problem and both I - and those who experience it without overclocking - would like to see it fixed.

What is so wrong with that?

And *banning* me for saying "Arse"? Now come on! No warning, no PM, no slap on the wrist. Nothing, just a ban? After 300+ posts from me without incident? Really guys that is too much.

[jolle]

I only ment to say that OCing is a risk, of instability, issues and at the extreme death of hardware.
Most of those who do it are aware of that, as Im sure you are aswell.

I never ment that it is bad, but there are no guarantees in doing it.
Some hardware clocks very well, some dont.
I was only a bit taken back by the fact that you seemed so discontent with a OC from 350 to 410, and were expecting a flawless 440.

Its strange tho if it worked at 440 on another motherboard, which I guess is similar to Eliminators issues.
It sounds like a difference in either the AGP, AGP power or something in that field is the reason.
I must have missread your post, cause I thought it just started having issues at 440 for no apparant reason, so my bad for skimming hehe.

Isnt there some feature for NV cards in the Nforce3 chipset that allows them to run faster?
OCs them a little or something.. or was that just with the NV3x line?
might be related, I think there is a "hacked" MSI bios that exposes those settings, or maybe it was in the "hidden" settings that can be unlocked in BIOS with a certain key combination, might find more on that over at the MSI section of NforcersHQ.com forums.