Big issue with Nvidia drivers, need HardForum help :(

H

HeadRusch

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 8, 2007
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Normally I lurk over on AVSForum's and have for years, while reading HardOCP's reviews. Now, I gotta turn to the forum for help to see if anyone else is experiencing this same problem:
Quick Info:
GTX 580 Twin Frozr II - Overclocked
I7 - Running at 4.8Ghz when gaming, Hyper Threading disabled.
SSD, hard drives, etc, etc.
Windows 7 64bit.

I run a Westinghouse 37" Monitor, W37W1...the original...I've had it for, maybe six years now? 1080p, 1920x1080...no tv tuner...only 1 DVI input that accepts 1080p signals. VGA but who needs the soft text and halos of sharpening. I run a DVI to DVI connection and for years its been just perfect.

Up until Nvidia's drivers of 285.xx I was fine.

However, ever since then I have basically slowly been losing my ability to run games at 1080p, my monitor's native resolution.

Something has changed in the drivers. Some games will work at 1080p as normal, OTHERS however will simply throw up a corrupted screen, showing me high-resolution diagonal lines and dots, as though the drivers are sending the signal out of sync or something, producing a completely unintelligible screen of diagonal lines. The game is running, you can hear the sounds in the background and its responding to keypresses....but that is it. Its not like the screen is visible with issues, its just a screen of diagonal lines of assorted colors, some flashing dots and such...as though SOME timing in the signal is just wrong.

Some games...are NOT affected by this. Crysis 2 works fine at 1080p.....DX9 or DX11 mode...no problem. It just works.

Assassins Creed, the first one, running the DX10 executable...would not run. Until i went into the CFG file and changed it from 1080p 60hz to 1080p 59hz, suddenly it works fine (!?).

Dirt3...no matter what I choose or change it to in the xml configuration file (60hz, 59hz)...refuses to work.

Important Facts:
If I change the resolution DOWN to 1650x900, which is the next "lowest" resolution that my monitor supports, works fine. Of course....that image is less than stellar.

IF I SWAP IN my 24" AOC monitor which normally sits unused instead of this one, guess what. No problems. Every game runs fine at 1080p. The Westinghouse is 6+ years old, the AOC is 2 years old. Both run DVI to DVI.

I've asked NVIDIA if they were simply not supporting older monitors somehow, and I have even gone so far as to do the EDID OVERRIDE process in the registry, which shoouldn't have been needed as this monitor does not show up as a TV, but as a monitor......but no changes were seen as a result.

So...anyone else experiencing this?

Any help or advice would be most appreciated. I'll buy another 37" TV if I have to and use it as a monitor but.....with some things working, some things not.....I figure there is something I am missing, and I am hoping its something i can correct for. Any help would be most appreciated.

ps: I've tried to delete old DEVICES from the registry (deleting the entries in the registry for monitors, including this one, hoping it would re-build the display device) but I am unable (unauthorized) to delete those rows in the Registry.

Thank you All.
 
if you revert back to 285 drivers does that fix the problem?

that is the first thing i would do to verify that that the new drivers caused or by coincidence some hardware problem hasn't occured.

also if possible i would try a new DVI Cable (very all connections are tight)

i've used my 37W1 for years and haven't experienced anything like this and i doubt there is anything that Nvida would have done on purpose to cause this..

also as a test try the VGA port just to make sure, maybe nvidia changed the the DVI signal processing was done in the driver update.
 
Correct, if I revert to 285's the problem goes away, everything runs as expected.

I don't think its the DVI cable because it works fine with the other monitor, same cables, etc.
I suppose what I could try is running the HDMI mini-output....use the converter that takes it from mini-hdmi to HDMI>DVI cable (I have one of these)..I haven't actually tried that yet.

As for the VGA Port......I wonder if I still have a VGA cord :D Will have to go look, thanks for taking the time to respond.
 
I posed on Nvidia forums...got ignored harder than an ugly chick on a gay cruise..... :p
 
I think he checks the threads twice a week, responding to 5-7 pages worth of posts sometimes. Yeah, it's not exactly great over there. Tons of forum noise due to driver TDR bugs, and users with faulty "superclock" cards with legit TDRs. They were just kinda getting a handle on the 500 series power management issues, and 600 hit the market. =/
 
Well, I did make another post there today....asking about "Does Nvidia no longer support older Westinghouse monitors" and we'll see what they say, but I won't hold my breath. The user community is usually a better source for answers.

Worst case is a I buy a new TV......I've grown accustomed to 37"...32 is a bit small, and 42 is just a bit too big from my seating distance.
 
The wall would have issues with that :) Honestly, 32" is my sweet spot...37" is right about the point you can see pixels in games if you look hard for them.

Regardless, I tried messing with some custom resolutions in the NVIDIA app. Setting it to display 1920x1080p at either 59 or 61hz produces the corrupted screen I am accustomed to seeing. Setting it to 58 produces a squished, illegible screen. So I'm stumped :p
 
Does your monitor have a "PC input" option in any sense (menu, port, even labeling a port as such from the OSD...?)?
 
No, not really. This monitor has several inputs. DVI1 is the only one which accepts 1080p. DVI2 will only accept a signal up to 1600x1200 resolution (yeah, I know, makes no sense either). Mind you this is a 2005 firmware, Westinghouse released 3 versions of this monitor over the years and this is the first version.

Again, working fine at 285.xx......then suddenly it all starts to go downhill after that. Is Nvidia treating the monitor differently now, is it sending a different kind of signal that is screwing this older monitor up, etc, etc, etc,. I've tried playing with the scaling "Don't scale anything, let the display do scaling, etc"....nothing.
 
Give the new beta unified drivers a try, they fixed my Displayport issues and there are several other fixes in there too.
 
I have been seeing this same problem (I run the very same setup but with a GTX 570)
I find that by setting the refresh rate to 59Hz that it fixes the overscan issue.

however I havent tried the new driver yet and may not be able to try for a couple more days (work has me just drained the last couple of weeks)

hope that helps a bit.
 
In my drivers I no longer have the option to run at 59hz.....I swear I used to have two settings, 59hz and 60hz and both worked and neither seemed to make any difference. Now, nvidia only shows me 60hz and.....well, there we go.

UPDATE:
I followed up on someones advice on another board to look into how people solved the CRYSIS 24Hz issue, and one of the suggestions was this:

Make a custom resolution in the Nvidia manager for 1916x1080 at 60hz.....or 59hz, whatever it was. Then set the nvidia console to have NO SCALING. So you lose 4 pixels of information, unnoticeable on most 1080p screens. And run your desktop at that resolution.

And sure enough, it worked. When games run they run at 1080p, not 1916....something about the desktop setup....I dont know what the answer is, but when I did that, my games that refused to work (SHANK, DIRT3, ASSASSINS CREED original).....suddenly worked fine.

Its a clumsy work-around for something that should just 'work', but at least it put me back into the game.

Hopefully this post brings some other folks some help/relief......I wont say its an answer but its a band aid....I'd prefer "shit just worked" like it did at 285.xx and earlier driver revisions.
 
HeadRusch said:
I followed up on someones advice on another board to look into how people solved the CRYSIS 24Hz issue, and one of the suggestions was this:

Make a custom resolution in the Nvidia manager for 1916x1080 at 60hz.....or 59hz, whatever it was. Then set the nvidia console to have NO SCALING. So you lose 4 pixels of information, unnoticeable on most 1080p screens. And run your desktop at that resolution.

And sure enough, it worked.
Click to expand...

I'm going to have to try that. I was using -DX9 as the work-around.
 
Assuming your display is 1080p.

1) set a custom resolution to 1916x1080 at 60hz.
2) set to NO SCALING
3) set your desktop to this resolution...on my westinghouse this works fine
4) Launch any game, if it still comes up screwy try to force the game via command line or CFG file or whatever to run at 1916x1080 (I had to do this, for example, with Burnout Paradise which refused to work otherwise).

Like I said...band aid...but functional. Good Luck.
 
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