NF3 + 6800 + 7x.xx drivers = game freezing issue

Have you had this issue or seen it?

  • Yes I have this issue right now. I'm PISSED!

    Votes: 116 48.9%

  • I have the hardware, but don't have this issue.

    Votes: 50 21.1%

  • I HAD this issue and switched to ATI or VIA or gutted my system and went to PCIe.

    Votes: 20 8.4%

  • I HAD this issue but one of the workaround completely resolved it.

    Votes: 14 5.9%

  • I have not had this issue, but have definitely seen others with it in person, online, etc.

    Votes: 37 15.6%
  • Total voters
    237
OldPueblo said:
Kyle forwarded this information on to Nvidia and was told that they have a specific driver to resolve this in the works. They said it would appear on NZone "soon." Good news, now let's just see what their definition of soon is. :D Big thanks Kyle.
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Who is Kyle?

This sounds like good news if its from a reliable source at Nvidia. I recently purchased the 6800le card not knowing about this bug ahead of time. I've noticed the 3 second pause about 3 times so far. I wasn't sure if I should send my card back for a refund or what.
 
theres no completely no option? i have a 6800 NU, latest 77.xx WHQLed and an nf ultra mobo... no issues AT ALL
 
Was at a LAN party with a couple of friends this evening, playing Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorow. The lock-ups happened a couple of times, and were always pretty consistent in their onset. Each time it happened, I would first get a lot of wierd artifacts, and colors would shift around and such, then the freeze, for about 8- 10 seconds, then 2- 3 seconds of audio stuttering, then back to normal. One time I heard a Windows sound in the background, so ALT-Tabed out to see, and it ws a NV4.dll error, with something about not having full video capabilities until a reboot. I went back to the game without rebooting or restarting the game, and it didnt happen again. Played great the rest of the night.

This is the only thread Ive read on this subject. Is this pretty common in the sequence of events?
 
[]i9 said:
Was at a LAN party with a couple of friends this evening, playing Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorow. The lock-ups happened a couple of times, and were always pretty consistent in their onset. Each time it happened, I would first get a lot of wierd artifacts, and colors would shift around and such, then the freeze, for about 8- 10 seconds, then 2- 3 seconds of audio stuttering, then back to normal. One time I heard a Windows sound in the background, so ALT-Tabed out to see, and it ws a NV4.dll error, with something about not having full video capabilities until a reboot. I went back to the game without rebooting or restarting the game, and it didnt happen again. Played great the rest of the night.

This is the only thread Ive read on this subject. Is this pretty common in the sequence of events?
Click to expand...

My freezing problem isn't anything like that. I don't get any other problem, just the 2 - 3 second pause, then everything is back to normal. Well, I didn't have speakers hooked up at the time, so I'm not sure about any sounds, but I didn't get any other artifacting or anything like that...
 
im very tempted to go get an asus a8v right now... problem is what am i suposed to do with a POS nforce 3 board?
 
Eliminator said:
im very tempted to go get an asus a8v right now... problem is what am i suposed to do with a POS nforce 3 board?
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Ill buy it from ya.
 
[]i9 said:
Ill buy it from ya.
Click to expand...
i posted it on the classifieds on other forums... problem is i live in toronto and shipping to the states is expensive.... ive been looking for local buyers but no one wants it.... i guess i shot myself in the foot when i wasted $200 cdn with taxes on it back in december and i would feel kinda bad to let it go.... i have reached 340fsb with it before.... rarely seen any clock up that high
 
I got an Asus A8V Deluxe and now everything seems to be working fine. Even installed the Audigy 2ZS and now my machine hasn't crashed at all. I didn't really like having to create a driver disk to get the SATA hard drive to boot off of the VIA controller, but oh well.
 
Have you guys tried the 78.03 beta drivers from nvidia?

I was having a lot of issues with NFSU2 when I had run it on a previous install from the same computer, apparently the latest crappy nvidia drivers were giving me the errors. Updating to the beta drivers solved the problem for me, maybe it could give some users a fix to this.
 
highonv8splash said:
Have you guys tried the 78.03 beta drivers from nvidia?

I was having a lot of issues with NFSU2 when I had run it on a previous install from the same computer, apparently the latest crappy nvidia drivers were giving me the errors. Updating to the beta drivers solved the problem for me, maybe it could give some users a fix to this.
Click to expand...

Where to get them?
 
Tanks tried them on 32bit still f'd... I guess its the ol 64bit mess next weekend.....I am thinking AV8 deluxe....you?
 
First post here. :)
I was having the exact same issues as many of you describe. I have a Neo2 Platinum and a XFX 6800 GT.
I never had any issues until upgraded drivers (from 66.93) that came with the BF2 Demo. Since then I've had issues in seemingly every game I play. I too tried all the fixes, and when I adjusted my PCI Latency to 64, that seemd to help alot for a short while. Then it got much, much worse.
I read thru this thread and a BIG Light bulb went off. I had taken eveything back to stock speeds when the troubles started. After adjusting the PCI Latency (and stupidly thinking i fixed the problem), I went back and did a small (5%) OC to see how my system reacts. But............ I then realized I had forgotton to lock the AGP bus. So the VC was being OC'd also. After reading several posts about taking a factory OC'd card back to stock, or lowering the stock speeds helping or even fixing the problem, I realized that is why my gaming became much worse after I OC'd again.
So, I locked teh AGP bus, then I lowered my core speed to 386 (memory left at 1.0). I then played BF2 for about an hour on two different servers and did not have one single stutter/pause.

So long story short, I lowered the clock speed of my card and it has helped ALOT, maybe even eliminated the stuttering problem. I will obviously need more gaming time to be sure, but right now I'm extremely relieved.

I do realize that I should not have to do all this BS to get games to play correctly, but right now I have no other choice.
With everything at stock speeds 3DMark03 gives me 115xx.
At my new lowered VC speed, I got 113xx.
I can live with the 2% decrease in performance for now.
 
dude thats 3dmark 03... thats nothing.. use 05 and see the difforence
 
Warrior said:
dude thats 3dmark 03... thats nothing.. use 05 and see the difforence
Click to expand...
Nothing?
03 is almost completely a VC bench, so why would need to use anything else?
 
Well update on my problem, my comp got hit with lighting and Alot of parts went bad, so I did alot of RMA'n and I now using a ASUS K8N and my replacement EVGA 6800 in about a week, and I will then post back and let know if I still have the same problem with new board new vid card, and a fresh install of windows. wish me luck ;)

In total I had to get new Hard Drive 1 of my 1GIG sticks of ram went bad a new mobo and a new vid card :( damn Florida being lighting captial :mad:
 
Warrior said:
dude thats 3dmark 03... thats nothing.. use 05 and see the difforence
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As requested, I ran 05 and got 4932 at stock speed, and 4856 at the lowered speed.
That's only a 1.5% decrease.

That makes sense to me because 400 down to 386 is a 3.5% decrease in speed. And when you take in the fact that the core speed is only a part of the overall performance of the card, then a 1.5-2% decrease is what should be expected.
 
ike0069 said:
Nothing?
03 is almost completely a VC bench, so why would need to use anything else?
Click to expand...

He said this because 03 is getting outdated and is starting to be bottlenecked more by cpu/mb/memory than video to a certain extent. If you want to see what that's like go try out 01 and see what happens if you just change your FSB a bit. ^_^ And yeah, GPU clock is only a peice of the picture. In fact, 05 relies more on things like pixel shaders which are more dependant on how many pipelines than a few MHz difference to a certain extent.
 
I joined here just so I could post on this thread :D I had exactly the same problem with my set-up. I have a PNY 6800GT and a DFI Lanparty NF3 motherboard. I used 61.76 drivers for the longest time because this driver set didn't give me any problems with my set-up at all, but I was forced to upgrade to a new driver because of Battlefield 2.

All the 7x.xx and 8x.xx drivers gave me the dreaded NF3/6800gt stuttering problems. This past week, I have been browsing the net to find a fix and the only workaround that I have found to work 100% of the time in all my current games (Battlefield 2, SWAT4, Act of War, Sims 2) is by underclocking my card. I set the core to 325 from 350 and my memory is set to 990 instead of its default 1000. I now run BF2 at 1600x1200, all settings are at high and I encountered no hiccups whatsoever using Nvidia's 77.77 driver.

Thanks to the poster of this thread who suggested this fix. I know it sucks to underclock a $500 card but until NVidia releases a driver fix for this problem, im underclocking my card.

Edit: Im now using 335/1000 settings and im still stutter free.

BTW here are my specs:

AMD Athlon 64 2800+ @ 9x245 FSB 2200 mhz 1.7v
DFI Lanparty UT NF3 250GB w/ 10/05/04 Oskar Bios 1.8v
Corsair TwinX1024-4000 Pro (3-4-4-8) 2.8v
PNY GeForce 6800 GT w/ Nvidia Silencer 5
2x36GB Western Digital Raptor SATA RAID 0
200GB Seagate Barracuda SATA
Audigy 2 ZS
Thermaltake SilentTower CPU Cooler
OCZ Powerstream 420w PSU
 
I have the DFI NF3 250GB mobo, and with my RMA'd 6800, the 66.93 drivers are the only drivers which won't freeze my system within a minute of starting a 3d game. No overclocking or unlocking. Even with 66.93, games will eventually freeze and stutter, it's only a matter of when.
 
Not really sure if I qualify , really.
I had an AthlonXP + nforce2 setup with my MSI 6800.
Then I swithed to A64 + nforce3 (K8N Neo2 Platinum).
My card does NOT stutter at default speeds or at a (relatively) mild overclock.
However , it turned from a MONSTER overclocker to a below average overclocker.

On the nforce2 mobo it could go as high as 440/960 (check the 3DMark05 thread , mine is at 5603) , on the nforce3 mobo it can't even get within shooting distance of such speeds without stuttering/freezing.
Trying for 440/960 is an immediate blue screen.....

Do note that while my card doesn't stutter at defaults it is watercooled.
 
Sizer said:
I have the DFI NF3 250GB mobo, and with my RMA'd 6800, the 66.93 drivers are the only drivers which won't freeze my system within a minute of starting a 3d game. No overclocking or unlocking. Even with 66.93, games will eventually freeze and stutter, it's only a matter of when.
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Nothing worked to prevent the pausing and stuttering with my NEO 2 Platinum and BFG 6800 GT OC with D3D games, and I tried everything, until I switched to an ASUS A8V Deluxe 2 weeks ago. Now everything runs perfect and I don't have to waste any more time screwing around with nVidia's problem. There are way to many variables and so called fixes without any guarantee that any of them is a sure fix down the road. The next driver release might cause it again or little magical gremlins that start running around may cause the problem again. Underclocking works for some once in a while but not for most, other things may work to start with and then it shows up again. No thanks, until nVidia addresses this problem with a sure fix, my Neo 2 Platinum will stay in it's box or until my son decides he wants to build a new machine and use it with an ATI video card. :)
 
Interestingly enough I used coolbits to get my optimal speed and then decreased that by a 10 by 10 or so on the core and about 40 on the mem and it hasnt stuttered for about an hour of UT2K4, which was the must stutter intensive game I have played. Underclocking completely fixed it, but everything would be REALLY choppy. It would be almost constant at 80FPS but you can see it dropping to about 20FPS very very quickly, it would just flash red inbetween being higher, very strange

EDIT:I just reverted back to stock speeds (before "default" would give me 375 core and 1.07ghz mem) and after 2 hours of CS:S its fine. Hopefully a fix can come out soon so I can go back to ultra speeds without that annoying stutter crap.
 
Update:
I took my card back to stock speeds and almost immediately started getting the stuttering. I then lowered it 340/1000 and played stutter free BF2 for several hours.
I'm ready to say this has eliminated my stuttering problems. :)

Definitely not the most ideal method for fixing it, but whatever works right now.
 
I've had the 6800GT + NF3 board combo for about a year and this problem never manifested itself until I upgraded to the 7X.XX series drivers.

Both Warcraft III and Counter Strike Source would lock up for 5-10 seconds at a time before action would resume. Since I dont have money to buy a new VIA board I'm just going to wait it out, hoping NVidia will release the fix they promised.
 
Zan2828 said:
I've had the 6800GT + NF3 board combo for about a year and this problem never manifested itself until I upgraded to the 7X.XX series drivers.

Both Warcraft III and Counter Strike Source would lock up for 5-10 seconds at a time before action would resume. Since I dont have money to buy a new VIA board I'm just going to wait it out, hoping NVidia will release the fix they promised.
Click to expand...

Same exact thing here, except I've onlyhad my setup since this Janurary.

Try underclocking your card slightly. It has completely fixed my problem. I now play BF at 1024x768, everything at medium as 2xAA. Very smooth and absolutely none of the video/sound stutters.
 
Sizer said:
Has Nvidia made one single statement regarding this problem?
Click to expand...

If they have, I have yet to find it... I think they just want to ignore it. My previous belief that they weren't going to abandon us AGP users is getting weaker by the minute as I still see no HSI bridge slapped on a 7800 (even the low end,) so perhaps they just don't care anymore and want to just let it slip into obscurity slowly and painfully for us. I'm a little dissapointed that they don't even so much as say anything on their own forums. I don't expect anything here, but, all the threads in their forums go unanswered even so much as an unofficial answer by a mod...

Well, I do hope mine doesn't do this. *sigh* Still trying to install XP, but, I'm worried, nonetheless. *crosses fingers* Seems like multiple people have said underclocking worked so far. It's not a great solution, but, any solution that doesn't leave us with ancient crappy video drivers is an improvement I suppose.
 
My PC is still going strong since changing the MB to the A8V. I haven't had a single lock up since. I have been running Guild Wars at 1280x1024x32 4xAA/8xAF and it is butter smooth. I am gonna install Halo, UT2004, Half Life 2, Doom 3, and Neverwinter Nights to see how well they work again. I have also been able to burn cds and dvds again without it locking up. I notice now though, that my BFG Card now will run hotter than it did before. On my old board with the latest drivers, it wouldn't get higher than 67 degrees Celsius. Now, it goes up to 74. I have the same cooling, and I am not overclocking the system. I know the card is already overclocked. I just don't know if I should worry or not.

Regards,
Chuck
 
New member, been looking at many similar threads can't believe the issue hasn't been addressed yet.

Have the following setup:

AMD64 3400+ (Newcastle)
K8M800-8237
1GB Ram (Crucial)
80GB IDE
Leadtek A400-TDH (unlocked)
500w PSU

When playing Hl2 & Pes4 the game will freeze for 3-10 secs at a time. The sound will loop and then the game will continue fine before doing it again.
Have tried all sorts of drivers upto 77.72 with no results.
Have disabled the onboard sound with no improvement.

Very frustrating as could play the game fine on my old Athlon xp2000+ & K7S41

Know this might not be the same cause as others in the thread but any help/suggestions would be great.
 
stadan1 said:
New member, been looking at many similar threads can't believe the issue hasn't been addressed yet.

Have the following setup:

AMD64 3400+ (Newcastle)
K8M800-8237
1GB Ram (Crucial)
80GB IDE
Leadtek A400-TDH (unlocked)
500w PSU

When playing Hl2 & Pes4 the game will freeze for 3-10 secs at a time. The sound will loop and then the game will continue fine before doing it again.
Have tried all sorts of drivers upto 77.72 with no results.
Have disabled the onboard sound with no improvement.

Very frustrating as could play the game fine on my old Athlon xp2000+ & K7S41

Know this might not be the same cause as others in the thread but any help/suggestions would be great.
Click to expand...

Yep sounds like the same problem we are all having. Only one known fix which is to switch to a VIA chipset motherboard. That's what I'm doing today, I'll try to post back let you all know how that goes.

EDIT: oops just noticed you have a VIA motherboard. weird.
 
taintedhobbit said:
My PC is still going strong since changing the MB to the A8V. I haven't had a single lock up since. I have been running Guild Wars at 1280x1024x32 4xAA/8xAF and it is butter smooth. I am gonna install Halo, UT2004, Half Life 2, Doom 3, and Neverwinter Nights to see how well they work again. I have also been able to burn cds and dvds again without it locking up. I notice now though, that my BFG Card now will run hotter than it did before. On my old board with the latest drivers, it wouldn't get higher than 67 degrees Celsius. Now, it goes up to 74. I have the same cooling, and I am not overclocking the system. I know the card is already overclocked. I just don't know if I should worry or not.

Regards,
Chuck
Click to expand...
I too have been running great with all my D3D games like HL2 and Far Cry for almost 3 weeks now since switching from an MSI Neo 2 Platinum to the ASUS A8V Deluxe. I don't know what kind of BFG you have since you don't list your system specs., but my BFG 6800 GT OC idles at 63C and will go up above 85C when running the rthdribl demo program in a window. Now thats with a room temp. of around 81 F in my computer room here in Phoenix. My BFG temps have been the same on 3 different systems housed in this same Antec case and I have a lot of fans, my P4 2.8GHz, this system with the Neo 2 Platinum and now with the ASUS A8V Deluxe. My BFG temps have never varied so I wouldn't worry about yours although I don't understand why they would have gone higher by switching the motherboard. The rthdribl demo is great for monitoring system, cpu and video card temps as it runs in a window with your other windows open like ASUS Probe and the nVidia window with the temp. selected. Now you can watch everything in real time since your video card temp. can drop 10 C in a couple of seconds after exiting a game. :)
 
Sorry about that. I forgot to post my specs.

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 512kb cache (forgot the latest 939 core before Venice)
Asus A8V Deluxe Rev 2 (Used to be MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum)
2 x 512MB Corsair DDR400 Valuram
BFG 6800 GT OC AGP
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
Antec Truepower 550w
Maxtor 120gig sata, 7200rpm, 8mb cache
Liteon SOHD-16P9S
Pioneer DVR-109
Samsung Syncmaster 730B (Using the DVI)
Logitech MX-518
Microsoft Natural MM Keyboard
XP Pro SP2

I am running all the latest drivers now. Before, the BFG technicians recommended installing the Nforce drivers minus the GART, and the 66.93 video drivers when I had the nforce board in. It didn't freeze, but doesn't that hinder the performance of the AGP interface, not to mention some games crashing? I had a buddy who had a VIA P3 board, that when he reinstalled XP once, his games kept crashing until he reinstalled the 4 in 1 drivers with the GART. The chipset was automatically detected, but for whatever reason, the system worked fine with games after that.

Regards,
Chuck
 
Well, I lucked out. Turns out my new setup doesn't do this. At least, it hasn't yet. I played Far Cry several hours, but, that's all my testing so far. I'll do the REAL testing when Oblivion comes out. d-:
 
Zan2828 said:
Yep sounds like the same problem we are all having. Only one known fix which is to switch to a VIA chipset motherboard. That's what I'm doing today, I'll try to post back let you all know how that goes.

EDIT: oops just noticed you have a VIA motherboard. weird.
Click to expand...

Yeah was thinking it might be something else as i've got a Via board so any suggestions would be great.

Have tried underclocking card with Rivatuner but it won't allow me to underclock the memory (Stock 325/700)
 
If you get REALLY desperate to actually underclock your memory, you can always try editing the bios (using OmniEdit or whatever.) Essentially you'd be changing the "stock" settings, so if you ever get the problem solved, you'll probably want to flash it back to normal, else you'll have to use overclocking just to get to real stock settings.
 
If I underclock my 6800, 3d games are glitched up and won't even start. It looks like an NES game crashed from getting too much dust on the PCB. Lol :(

Man, have I got a shitty choice to make:

Stay with 66.93, lose features like bloom in Dystopia, can play games for a while but eventually will run into a freeze that requires a restart.

or

Go with latest drivers, get freezes and stutters that occur every minute at least, but the freezes never crash the computer.
 
stadan1 said:
Yeah was thinking it might be something else as i've got a Via board so any suggestions would be great.

Have tried underclocking card with Rivatuner but it won't allow me to underclock the memory (Stock 325/700)
Click to expand...
Try just using coolbits. I'm able to underclock my memory usiig it.
 
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