odd problem with old game and 9600GT

[jpangelo]

I play a lot of Urban Terror, an old game that started out as a mod for Q3A, and now is a stand-alone game for free. Anyway, I had a 7900GS, a pny I think, that ran it fine. I don't really play any other games- no time, etc. So I thought my 7900GS died, because my system started blue-screening, with a nvsys something or other listed on the bluescreen error. After it happened several times I went and bought a pny 9600GT from BB, and a 9.99 copy of need for speed prostreet. Installed it on a fresh windows install, and it all ran well.
Until I noticed the 9600GT stuttering in Urban Terror, where my old 7900GS didn't. A 2-gen newer card is struggling to draw smoke?? That was the principal culprit, when people would throw a lot of smoke. The card would choke, going down from a max 99, to 40 or so, stuttering visibly. The 7900 did not do this. I changed it back out last night and observed; in heavy smoke the worst the 7900GS would do is drop to 60 or so for a split-second, and right back up to 99, but it wasn't a noticeable stutter, like with the 9600GT. All settings were exactly the same, except the Physx on the 9600gt of course; and I had tried that both On and Off to no effect. Same image quality, I tried to look for anything that the 9600 was drawingbetter than the 7900, and it looked the same. All the game settings, and nvidia control panel, were the same.

Now, the 9600GT played the newer games, NFSS, and Unreal Tournament 3, pretty well, but to choke on an 8-yr old mod based on a 10-yr old engine is unacceptable, so I plan to take the 9600 back to BB.

What could cause the 9600GT to choke where the 7900GS didn't??

 

[RADEoN]

what is the ram difference?

 

[jpangelo]

Ram? Same on both cards, 512mb.
System ram is 2gb, on an (old) 939 system- 3800x2, 2gb ddr400, msi nf4 mobo.

 

[evilsofa]

Make sure you are running the latest version of Urban Terror (4.1) and Q3A (1.32). The Urban Terror FAQ may have some answers.

Seems to be an interesting discussion here but I didn't read the whole thing.

Also, when switching from the 7900GS to the 9600GT, you may want to consider fully removing the old nVidia drivers and installing the latest 182.08 WHQL nVidia drivers after the 9600GT is in.

 

[jpangelo]

Make sure you are running the latest version of Urban Terror (4.1) and Q3A (1.32). The Urban Terror FAQ may have some answers.

Seems to be an interesting discussion here but I didn't read the whole thing.

Also, when switching from the 7900GS to the 9600GT, you may want to consider fully removing the old nVidia drivers and installing the latest 182.08 WHQL nVidia drivers after the 9600GT is in.

As posted, I installed it on a fresh Windows install.

UT is a standalone, game, as I also posted (did you read the OP??) Q3A is not required.

I play UT 4.1. It wouldn't matter what version, the difference is between the cards. Same version, slower perfomance from a newer-gen card.

 

[defaultluser]

Incompatibilities happen. I've had games that don't play well on newer hardware.

It's possible that the new card emulates some older rendering modes - for example, video cards have been emulating the T&L unit from DX7 with a single vertex unit for years. It wouldn't surprise me if other rendering tricks were emulated slowly, with the assumption that they were no-longer used, and any older games would be "fast enough."

When you're trying to build the latest-and-greatest video hardware, sometimes you have to phase out the old stuff. Have you checked forums to see if other people are having the same problems on Nvidia 9-series cards?

 

[SoFGR]

soldier of fortune 2 had insane stuttering running especially in the last few missions of the campaign, till i RMA'd my 8800gt for a 4850, red faction and raven shield ( unreal 2.x game ) had many problems too, but it's not that bad there solutions for all three categories of problems, 1) play RF through the pure faction launcher and the texture corruption is gone 2) unreal 2.x stuttering issues have been solved since some forceware release back in august, you can still disable hardware transform & lighting from the game's ini file if you have to 3) try disabling "enable multithreaded optimizations" in the forceware control panel before playing Q3 engine games

 

[jpangelo]

Incompatibilities happen. I've had games that don't play well on newer hardware.

It's possible that the new card emulates some older rendering modes - for example, video cards have been emulating the T&L unit from DX7 with a single vertex unit for years. It wouldn't surprise me if other rendering tricks were emulated slowly, with the assumption that they were no-longer used, and any older games would be "fast enough."

When you're trying to build the latest-and-greatest video hardware, sometimes you have to phase out the old stuff. Have you checked forums to see if other people are having the same problems on Nvidia 9-series cards?

I had considered this.....

No, I checked here, this is about the only hardware site I still frequent....

thanks !

 

[jpangelo]

soldier of fortune 2 had insane stuttering running especially in the last few missions of the campaign, till i RMA'd my 8800gt for a 4850, red faction and raven shield ( unreal 2.x game ) had many problems too, but it's not that bad there solutions for all three categories of problems, 1) play RF through the pure faction launcher and the texture corruption is gone 2) unreal 2.x stuttering issues have been solved since some forceware release back in august, you can still disable hardware transform & lighting from the game's ini file if you have to 3) try disabling "enable multithreaded optimizations" in the forceware control panel before playing Q3 engine games

I tried disabling the multithread opts in Forceware. I have to play with it off, or it kills my fps.

Thanks for the replies guys, I returned the 9600GT last night. I had bought it from a B&M BB in a state of 'get it now!'. The 7900GS has not bluescreened, and if I do need another card, I will get it from the 'Egg, or here, and just use a little patience.

Thanks again!