Strange, strange issue...

t0qt2bsngl

First, my specs:

P4 2.4GHz
1GB RAM
nVidia 6600GT OC (BFG) 128MB AGP 8x
Windows Vista Business
Latest official nVidia Vista Drivers
PT880 MSI MOBO (AGP 2.0)
350W PSU

I first purchased a 9800 PRO, but that blue screened like crazy for some reason, so I returned it, and found a 6600GT on tigerdirect with a huge rebate that made it cost just as much as the 9800 Pro.

Anyway, the nVidia card works.. But in every test, it's testing worse than the 9800 Pro.. I found that odd because the card had always tested much better than the 9800 Pro on various other sites. At first the card wouldn't even run The Sims until I turned AA and AS off. It came up with error messages that said a specific driver stopped working, and that it had been recovered.

Some people have already said it could be my PSU, and others have said that the Vista drivers nVidia released are still very poor. Any ideas? I can play The Sims 2 and HL2 at over 60FPS and 30FPS(respectively) now that I turned AA and AS off... Yet a tiny game like Chess Titans (Vista game) is completely unplayable. I get an FPS of about 12 with the graphics quality on high, and about 17 on low.... o_O

fobis

Well, you have to remember that your card will perform somewhat slower than it would on WinXP due to limitations in the DX9 backwards compatibility in the new DX10/Vista architecture.
I can't think of anything else for now... But I'll let you know if I think of anything.

t0qt2bsngl

Well I've asked around, and a lot of people think it's due to my PSU. Apparently it only has one rail, and only 12A on that one rail. I have no idea how PSU's work, or what all that means, but a lot of people are agreeing that there are not enough amps for my current setup. I've actually noticed that (and I've tested a few different driver versions) there is a common error message. It says, "The display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." People still seem to agree that it is due to my PSU, however I must also note that turning AA and AS off solves the problem. HL2 (although poor quality) runs at decent FPS, as well as The Sims, and Chess Titans when I disable smoothing features. If I turn them on, I either get that error message, or the games simply will not start up at all. This has been the case with the standard drivers, the 100.65 drivers, and the 100.95 beta drivers. To your knowledge, does increasing smoothing, and texture features in the nVidia Control Panel require the GPU to tap into the PSU more? Thanks for responding. It's a bit quiet around here.

Prince_Link

12AMP!!!!! OFTLOATIG!!!!

..... the 6600GT requires 18a and i wouldn't even use it on less then 22a

the only limitations of vista is that DirectX 8 and 7 games are rendered in Dx9 shaders, which the 6600gt shouldn't have problems with.

t0qt2bsngl

I started with the 100.65 drivers, and got an error message that said:

"Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has recovered successfully."

I then switched to 100.95 drivers, with the same error message. I got a 500W dual 18A on 12v rails. I didn't get any error messages when I switched PSU's, but the performance remained horrendous, so I then switched back to 100.65, and got the very same message again.

fobis

Hmmm.. did you upgrade to Vista from WinXP? I suppose there might some serious driver issues leftover from XP... I'd suggest you uninstall all of your chipset and video drivers, run DriverCleaner (if there's a vista-compatible version out), and reinstall drivers.