GeForce series 6 problems

[Sloth]

Here's a few things you could try:

 

Update your motherboard drivers.

Try a more recent driver.  61.77 is an old driver and support for the 6600 is dodgy at best.  Even 66.93 would be a better bet., but I'd recommend this driver (it's the best I've seen to date and will certainly support your card.

 

I'm not sure how clued up you are with updating drivers, but just in case here's a quick guide:

 

You need to download DriverCleaner Pro first (here)

 

1.  Download the driver (and your chipset drivers if they aren't installed)

2.  Uninstall your graphics driver.

3.  Boot into safe mode, selecting no when it asks if you want to install a driver.

4.  Run driver cleaner (it's pretty self explanatory, only seleect the Nvidia oprion (not nvidia stereo, wdm or nforce)

5.  Reboot.

6.  Say no to install a new driver.

7..  Run the setup file for the driver you downloaded.

 

This should give you a clean starting point.  If the problems persist try booting with only 1 stick of ram.  It could be your card is defective.  For one reason or another a lot of 6600gts have problems, so you might want to contact the manufacturer.

 

Post back if this doesn't help.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Thanks for the suggestions I have tried different drivers, I actually reformated the harddrive , reinstalled windows installed the nvidia shipset drivers ver. 6.39 and then the ForceWare 71.81 WHQL drivers. I have at least the four most recent drivers from Nvidia prior to this including the beta driver.

 

I have also tried running the game with one ram stick at a time. Since I have this problem in other games and in 3dmark05 it is not directly related to Kotor2. My test score in 3dmark05 is a bit above 3000 so it seems the card doing ok in that respect but it does not display the grahics as it should.

 

Don't really know what to do but I guess it's about time to contact the manufacturer.

[Sloth]

I'm running the same MOBO with a XFX GeForce 6800GT...but I'm not having any issues like you are. 

The first thing...Is your card in the correct PCI slot on the MOBO?  Your card should be in the blue slot & not the black one.  Do you have the SLI chip (on the MOBO) set for only a single card?  Do you have the SLI option enabled or disabled in your BIOS? 

I noticed on my 6800 card that a MINIMUM of 500W power supply is needed for PCI Express cards.  (I know you stated you own a 6600, but I'd definitely be looking at a stronger power supply.)  Also, do you have all the power connections on the MOBO connected.  There are 3 that you should have connected.  Then there is a power connection on the graphics card itself that you need to connect.

 

Hope that helps some!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Card in blue shot, the SLI in single mode, actually it was in dual mode from the beginning even though the manual states it should be in single mode when the card is shipped. I got the Antec 480W Neopower psu now which should be more than sufficient, I have a single 6600gt card which requires about 3.5 amps both on the 5.5 and 12v rail. All in all I need about 18amps on the 12v rail and I have 33, the margin on the 3.3 and 5.5rails is even bigger. All power connecters are plugged in. Are you running xp sp2 by the way, could the gfx drivers have problems with sp2? Thanks for suggestions.

[Sloth]

Sloth,

 

I have some interesting news for you. The screen artifacts you captured in your BMP... I have just reproduced them by chance. The black dots you see there follow exactly the polygonal edges of the scene geometry. It's like seeing the wireframe of the scene as an overlay.

 

Now, this happened simply by chance when I mistakingly ALT-tabbed out of the game and it then had restore the rasterizer/framebuffer.

 

The game is pretty unstable when doing that, so I wasn't surprised. But the fact that it happened to me might be interesting for you, because it tells you:

 

1. It's not your PSU (although changing to a good one is always desirable)

2. Your GPU is not damaged (very unlikely)

3. It's very likely a driver/API problem

 

I'm asserting this, because my GF6800GT runs flawlessly in all games, and still I could reproduce these artifacts, which points to a software<-->hardware conflict.

 

I know this isn't much help, but I thought you may find this interesting.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Thanks for the info I had just decided that something was wrong with the card then I read your post and now I just don't know.

[markussun]

Sloth,

 

well, I didn't want to contribute to making you feel even more confused, sorry.

 

I would wait for the 1st KotOR2 patch, which should be imminent.

 

However, if these screen artifacts appear in other games as you stated, then it's a global problem you have, particularly when it happens in 3DMark.

 

KotOR2 is an OpenGL game, while 3DMark is DirectX.

 

Two things you want to try (that you haven't tried yet):

 

1. Unplug your Geforce from your slot and plug it back in firmly. Often simple things like a slight misalignment can cause the weirdest issues.

 

2. Re-install DirectX9.0c

 

If you have a friend who can supply you with an equivalent Geforce card, do that to ascertain if it's a hardware issue on your card, or rather a problem of the rest of your hardware and software.

 

Good luck.

[GMan2]

I'm using SP2 so I don't think that is your trouble.

You mentioned that you may be having issues with Ram? Are you using Ram recommended for the board? (Now this is an area I know little about) but when I purchased my board last week the guy told me to absolutely make sure that I had Ram recommended by Asus for use on this board.

 

Good Luck!

[Sloth]

Sloth,

 

well, I didn't want to contribute to making you feel even more confused, sorry.

 

I would wait for the 1st KotOR2 patch, which should be imminent.

 

However, if these screen artifacts appear in other games as you stated, then it's a global problem you have, particularly when it happens in 3DMark.

 

KotOR2 is an OpenGL game, while 3DMark is DirectX.

 

Two things you want to try (that you haven't tried yet):

 

1. Unplug your Geforce from your slot and plug it back in firmly. Often simple things like a slight misalignment can cause the weirdest issues.

 

2. Re-install DirectX9.0c

 

If you have a friend who can supply you with an equivalent Geforce card, do that to ascertain if it's a hardware issue on your card, or rather a problem of the rest of your hardware and software.

 

Good luck.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I tried both your suggestings but no luck, thanks for the suggestios anyway. Unfortunatly I don't know anyone with a pci-e card so I cannot try with a different card. I wrote to club 3d a couple of minutes ago, hope they will have some suggestion and not give me the usual update your drivers answer.

[Sloth]

I'm using SP2 so I don't think that is your trouble.

You mentioned that you may be having issues with Ram?  Are you using Ram recommended for the board?  (Now this is an area I know little about) but when I purchased my board last week the guy told me to absolutely make sure that I had Ram recommended by Asus for use on this board.

 

Good Luck!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Actually I have cheap ram that is not on the offically supported list, but one would think that computer would be unstable of the ram is bad, it has crashed once during a period of three weeks. Maybe I could try and borrow ram from a friend and see...

[Hazy]

It is not the top ten percent of the screen that is missing it is about 10% of the pixel rather randomly scattered that are displayed as black. Have a look at the attached picture.

 

Hi, Sloth! I seem to have the same exact problem as you do.

 

I have a Club3d 6600GT AGP, with P4 2.6, can't remeber which MOBO (I'm writing from work). PSU is the one that came with Antec Sonata case. Latest official drivers from NVidia. WIN2k + SP's.

 

With 1024x768, 2xanisotropic and 2xantialiasing KOTOR2 runs like a dream. With 4xanisotropic I got the same glitches as you did after about two hours. With higher resolutions KOTOR2 was playable for maybe 30 mins. After that the game looked like your screenshot.

 

It's a new card, so I haven't tryed it with much else than KOTOR2. Ghost Recon we played online for hours, 1280x1024, absolutely no problems, so I believe it can't be temperatures or my powerless PSU (though it's an older game).

 

But I just checked what the release notes for the latest NVidia beta drivers said:

"Issues Resolved in Version 67.03. GeForce 6600 GT AGP: Fixed a 3D corruption problem that appears when this card is used with certain motherboards, such as SIS motherboards.""

 

So could it be, that it's just a driver problem?

[Sloth]

It is not the top ten percent of the screen that is missing it is about 10% of the pixel rather randomly scattered that are displayed as black. Have a look at the attached picture.

 

Hi, Sloth! I seem to have the same exact problem as you do.

 

I have a Club3d 6600GT AGP, with P4 2.6, can't remeber which MOBO (I'm writing from work). PSU is the one that came with Antec Sonata case. Latest official drivers from NVidia. WIN2k + SP's.

 

With 1024x768, 2xanisotropic and 2xantialiasing KOTOR2 runs like a dream. With 4xanisotropic I got the same glitches as you did after about two hours. With higher resolutions KOTOR2 was playable for maybe 30 mins. After that the game looked like your screenshot.

 

It's a new card, so I haven't tryed it with much else than KOTOR2. Ghost Recon we played online for hours, 1280x1024, absolutely no problems, so I believe it can't be temperatures or my powerless PSU (though it's an older game).

 

But I just checked what the release notes for the latest NVidia beta drivers said:

"Issues Resolved in Version 67.03. GeForce 6600 GT AGP: Fixed a 3D corruption problem that appears when this card is used with certain motherboards, such as SIS motherboards.""

 

So could it be, that it's just a driver problem?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

This problem seems to be quite rare so it made me think that it could be unique to the club-3d cards. Now I get the corruption from the first second I play so it cannot be overheating I think. At least not in my case. But since you don't get the problem from the beginning and get it sooner when you have higher settings maybe you should try downloading some software that measures your GPU temperature.

 

I have the PCI-E version of the card and I use the latest drivers (have tried with a bunch) so I'm not sure it is driver related. I'm actually pretty clueless at the moment but I have written to Club-3d support so I'll wait and see what they have to say.

[Sloth]

Problem solved! I got the card replaced today. The guy at the store said that a manufacturing problem (bad memory) was verly likely the cause. It runs flawlessly with the new card! So it was a faulty card.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions!

[Darth Makaan]

it was a card problem

[Hazy]

Problem solved! I got the card replaced today. The guy at the store said that a manufacturing problem (bad memory) was verly likely the cause. It runs flawlessly with the new card! So it was a faulty card.

 

Congrats, Sloth! At least one got his problem solved, mine still exists... :/

 

Yesterday the defects reappeared while playing at 1024x768, which previously ran smoothly. It seems it could be heat related, but I'm not sure yet...

 

And heck, I'm not going to change a fan to a card I bought two weeks ago. I'll have a chat with the retailer....

 

But let's wait for the patch first. And recheck all the drivers...

[adrich81]

6600s have developed a number of problems. You might have a bad card, heat problems are particularly common. What brand is it?

[Hazy]

What brand is it?

 

Club-3d GeForce 6600GT 128MB AGP

 

Damn, and I had to save a few euros by ordering it online!

 

Now I wish it was that small local store where I bought it. It would be so much easier (and faster) to get a replacement. There's always a hassle with these online orders. Should have known better...

 

I'm sorry, small local store. Next time I don't mind paying that little extra from the good service I've always received.

[adrich81]

Actually I invariably find I get better customer service online. (That says a lot about the standard of customer service you get on the highstreet in the UK).