Why Nvidia WHY????....

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psycocookie

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I've just forked out $1800AU on 2 XFX 7800GTX for my new sli rig and nothing seems to be going right with them.

First off my games always randomly freeze this includes games like farcry, and when ever I try to run certain programs like limewire and such if get a BSOD which is due to an infinite loop caused by the nv4_disp which is a nvidia driver issue. I've searched every where on the web for a solution and i find people having this nv4_disp from 2001. the best advice that "seemed" to work was turning off fast write in the bios but i can't seem to find fast write anywhere in my bios, may cos I hav a DFi Lanparty Sli which has 2 pci-e slots and no agp slots?? Ive changed drivers from nvidia as well, including trying the 80.40 forceware drivers to no avail. I've checked everything else as well ie memory with memtest, made sure there was enough power etc everything is fine. From the BSOD i know its a nvidia driver problem.

Now I've got another problem. I've just installed Chronicles of Riddick: escape from butchers bay and after the installation I can't enter the game. When I click on the shortcut I get an error message saying that the game requires opengl version 1.3 or higher to run. WTF??? I thought the 7800GTX came with OpenGl 2.0?? What in the world is going on? How do I know its activated along with SM 3.0? The Nvidia GUI isn't really user friendly like ATi's. I never had this kind of problems with my 9700pro. Sigh may be it was a mistake shifting to nvidia. I really hope not.

I've spent alot of money on this rig and it drives me crazy that i can't utilise it to its full potential. Sigh. Please for the love of god can anyone help me?

My system is listed below.

Lian Li PC-V1000 Aluminium Case
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 939 Retail Box Dual Core
DFI LANPARTY nF4 SLI-DR 939
1Gb of Kingston DDR3200
2x XFX nVidia 7800GTX OC OVERCLOCKED (490/1300) 256Mb
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Paste
Zalman CNPS7700Cu
Zalman VF700-Cu
PANASONIC BLACK 1.44MB FDD
Western Digital Raptor 74Gb 10K RPM SATA
Western Digital 2500KS 250Gb 16Mb SATA II
Pioneer 110 Dual Layer 16x DVD+-RW
Samsung 16x DVD-Rom OEM Black
OCZ PowerStream 520w PSU
Logitech Z-5500 5.1 THX Speakers
 
From what I've heard some of the XFX-brand 7800GTX cards are having problems running at their advertised core speed of 490mhz. It seems XFX may have pushed the cards too high without enough testing. As a test, lower the core speed of both cards to 470mhz and see if it works. If it does, I'd flash both cards with BFG 7800GTX bios.

If that doesn't work, I'd reinstall the videocard and motherboard chipset drivers.
 
thanks for the quick reply. But I'm not comfortable with the bios as such especially with overclocking, or in this case underclocking. How do i go about doing it??
 
probably be a pain in the ass


but try each card by itself, to identify if one card is the problem, or if both cards are borked
 
The escape from butcher bay thing is a common problem, there is some fix for it. Unfortunately as i am on my way out the door i dont have a link for you but you could try google'ing it.
 
Download Coolbits and install. It opens up the over/underclockig utility in your NVIDIA display settings tool. You shouldn't have to underclock a $600 card though. That is unsat. Have you considered that your PSU isn't hacking the load. An overtaxed PSU can cause all the symptoms you are seeing. Try and find a utility that will track our voltages while the system is under a heavy load like Far Cry. If you are seeing huge fluctuations then you have found your problem.

Another thing you can do is download DrivercleanerPro and then remove the Nvidia Display driver using windows add/remove setting. Then run drivercleaner pro and then relaod the latest Nvidia driver which is 78.02 Lasstly. Riddick is a notoriously buggy game that was never patched. It runs poorly on a lot of systems and I don't think it runs at all in SLI
 
Speaking from experience, the NV4disp BSOD can be a number of different problems, including a possibly defective card, as a general rule of thumb though, always update a game if it was made before a video card, a lot of older games are not familiar with the new technology, I'd try the underclocking approach, but I had similar issue and it turned out to be the motherboard (Soyo P4VTE and XFX 6600GT has an issue).
 
i get this alot when i upgrade, which i also do alot. do a clean xp install. "youll be glad you did". put your game saves somewhere, consider making new config files(new card right?) after xp and dx9c install, install games.put in the riddick patch . i had exact problem when i got 2x7800gt last week in farcry and bf2. good luck.

edit - make sure you install farcry 1.3 also

very truly yours,
politenessman


number 1, all cpus 3000mhz and under, all gpus, all drivers, all os's
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1253354
 
Infinity loop is more than just an nvidia problem, ati has it too, so shut your pie-hole about it being isolated to nvidia only.

Now..to help you, I had that inifinity loop problem with my 9700Pro, and my problem was my memory. timings were off, causing my games to crash, giving the inifinity loop error. This was ALONG time ago, 3 years I think. Not many people have this issue, and when they do, it's usually hardware rather than software, so i suggest running memtest or sisoft sandra burn-in test to determine if your hardware isn't malfunctioning.

other than that. blame nvidia for the rita and katrina.


gas prices too
 
I had the same thing with my BFG 7800s in SLI. I would get BSOD when opening things like limewire, POL for FFXI, and other mundane programs. I tried everything, reformatted like 5 times, different drivers. It would work for a while then start to BSOD again. I finally tracked it down. Some mundane apps dont like 8x AA and will make them BSOD. No idea why. 8x AA works fine in 3d apps. Turn off AA and AF and I bet limewire will work just grand. Stupid app.
 
I just built an sli rig around bfg cards, and I've yet to experience a problem.

Maybe you need to blame somebody besides Nvidia? :)
 
Thankyou everyone for their posts... Especially you bildad.
funnily enough by setting my graphics card's AA and anistrophic settings to application choice, it eliminated the BSOD's from programs like limeware, and patch theRiddick helped too, haven't had time to test farcry again just yet but will do when i get a chance..

One of the things that occured to me just now is that, I originally had 2gb of OCZ platinum DDR3200 Ram modules in the system but had to RMA them cos they were buggy (there were sooo many errors from memtest, and I couldn't even install windowsxp). I am now using the 1Gb kingston ram from my old comp but still have the settings for the 2Gb stick in my BIOS the RAM voltage is at 2.7 volts is that too much or too little?? could this also cause my system instability? I should ask this in the memory forum but what the hell.

Oh just to clarify a few things I wasn't blaming nvidia per se, well ok I was but it was only because the BSOD was for the nv4_disp infinite looping which I was lead to believe by other forums I've read was due to nvidia's drivers...

thanks again everyone for the help... much appreciated.
 
I've got a nvidia driver bsod with my stable card so I've just been sticking with 77.30, I might try the next one they release but so far havent seen any performance benefit / feature additions for my old card to bother.
 
Just a thought, but if your not looking to get high overclocks you might have been better off with an asus a8n sli premium. While the dfi is an excellant board it has such a plethora of settings that if ones not right it can cause instability. Instability in your mobo can manifest itself in memeory, cpu, and gpu. Very nice machine by the way :)
 
i have the same vid card/mobo and had this exact same problem with the bsods about nf4_disp, usually happened for me while i was exiting a game

for me, it was a driver problem, either the nforce drivers or nvidia display drivers. right now im using the 77.77 display drivers and nforce 6.66, first thing is not to install the audio drivers for the mobo (i have my onboard audio disabled in the bios) then install each nforce driver (swbus, nvidia ethernet, ide controllers) one at a time with rebooting after each

also i didnt install the nvidia firewall/network controller, it jus slows down internet connection n e ways :p
 
My friend has that same DFI motherboard and it took him a couple of weeks of fiddling with settings to get it running perfectly stable in memtest. There are just way too many settings for the ram. From the sounds of it your OCZ was probably fine, just the settings were off.
I'd also want to check the powersupply to make sure it's not being overstressed. Try running games with just one GTX installed to see whether it's the SLI or not.
 
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