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Problems with 8800 GXT and Vista Ultimate 64


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  • 2 weeks later...

Nvidia just released a new driver dated November 6th. Release notes says that it fixes some Open GL issues. I installed and tested it with CMBB. It does fix the corruption issue but still gets terrible frame rates. It didn't last long though. I found the driver to be extremely unstable. It crashed several times just in 1 hour. These weren't severe crashes but I still had to roll it back. It just wasn't worth it. COME ON NVIDIA!!! ALMOST THERE!!

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Update and consolidation of my experiences with running CMx1 on Vista.

As posted earlier, my system spec. is:

Core2Duo 2.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Windows Vista 32 bit

Graphics card is NVIDIA 8600 GTS

I have recently updated to driver 163.75.

Basic running:

I have always found CMBO to run problem free and smoothly with all drivers with this system.

For CMAK I got the cascading background problem with earlier drivers but since it was pointed out in this thread, I have been able to overcome it by overriding the application setting for antialiasing and setting it to 2x. For the last couple of drivers (and including this current one) I do not need to override the antialiasing mode and leave it application controlled. It still runs slower (see below).

For CMBB, then even with this new driver I get the cascading background problem same as with earlier drivers and need to overcome it by overriding the application setting for antialiasing and setting it to 2x. It still runs slower (see below).

Frame rates:

In all cases below, frame rates are for turns when battle is raging and plenty of units are on the screen, always with some burning units and/or smoke amongst them.

As a baseline I did a min/max/avg for a turn in a CMBO game on this system. The results were: 34, 78, 51.3. All the time it looked very smooth.

For CMAK I did the same for 2 turns in different scenarios with the results: 6, 10, 7.6 and 5, 14, 7.5.

For CMBB with 1 particular turn I got: 6, 7, 6.7 (but see below).

Although slower than I’d like, I find these CMAK/CMBB rates playable and are considerably better than the 4 FPS that is the only other number I’ve seen posted.

Information that may help in solving the issue:

As well as the difference for latest drivers between CMAK and CMBB with getting the cascading background problem or not I have noticed something else when looking at frame rates.

When I was between turns (in the orders phase), I noticed that the frame rate increased from 8-10 to about 20 when I switched from having a vehicle selected that was still functionning to having a vehicle selected that was abandonned or knocked out. To be clear, I had exactly the same view with many vehicles/units in each case, I just switched between which was selected for the bottom information panel. When none were selected the frame rate was also in the low range (10). Therefore it seems that the amount of information being shown in that bottom panel has a significant impact on frame rate (since there is clearly much less in there with an abandonned vehicle selected than at other times). This impact of the information panel seems much higher than any impact from the amount of units/smoke/firing going on in the actual battlefield display.

I have no idea whether that feedback helps to solve the issue or even whether BFC are looking into it or leaving it to Vista/NVIDIA upgrades. But there it is anyway.

The selection of abandonned vehicles also gives an opportunity to watch the action at higher frame rates when watching something particularly good (although the work round is not ideal). I tried out the same turn consecutively first selecting a functionning vehicle and then selecting an abandonned one. This was again with CMBB. So firstly, normal vehicle selected gave: 6, 16, 7.9 (much like the CMBB and CMAK turns previously benchmarked). Then, the same turn but selecting an abondonned vehicle throughout gave 13, 17, 15.0. An average frame rate almost twice as fast which was noticeable to the eye. As said, it isn’t ideal to select an abandonned vehicle when viewing a turn (I like to have selected something I’m watching the action of), however it is good to get up to that frame rate when watching vehicles on the move etc.

Hope there's something useful in there for someone.

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  • 1 month later...

My experience:

With q6600, 8800gtx, vista64 ultimate:

CMBB unplayable due to graphic corruption. Black background and multiple-rendered units. Meaning, a tank may show in game. If I rotate or move, the original tank location stays, as does every single frame of tank being drawn. This leads to several hundred tanks showing all over the place, clipped into each other. Does that make sense?

Still waiting, and hoping, for a fix.

Regards,

Ken

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Originally posted by MeatEtr:

FYI, nvidia released some new drivers(169.25)yesterday. Hope this helps.

I haven't made the switch over to vista yet. But probably will early next year. So please, let us know how it turns out.

I think this affect 64 bit Vista users.

Did any of you folks ever file a bug report or raised a strink over at nvnews?

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=5

Please be sure to give them instructions to reproduce it with the demo, not the full game.

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A bit more data (FWIW): I have a Dell laptop with the mobile version of the 8400. I have run both Vista (32 bit Ultimate) and XP (SP2) on this laptop at different times.

XP runs CMBB and CMAK without issue.

Vista has the same problems as described earlier in this thread (tearing of textures and so on, correctable by manually setting AA to x2 but with the framerates then becoming unplayable).

This seems to me strong evidence that the problem is software related, since the hardware portion of the equation has not changed. So I am thinking either DX10 or the Nvidia Vista drivers are to blame.

Speculation: I remember earlier someone mentioned that the CMAK and CMBB engines use calls from a much earlier version of DirectX. (5, shrug?) What I am wondering is if the legacy calls are not being supported in DX10?

Anybody got the technico chops to run with this?

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So you can confirm that it is broken in both 32 and 64 bit Vista?

I sure remember than people could use it on the 32 bit version.

Yes, CMx1 uses Direct3D from DirectX 5.x, which is a 1999 version. So far NVidia (but not ATI until recently) has cared to implement even these old API versions. As I said earlier, if nobody ever reported this issue now is the time to do it. NVidia is actually willing to do a reasonably complete job of implementing APIs. Your part of the work is to properly report bugs and test cases, including a link to the Demo.

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So you can confirm that it is broken in both 32 and 64 bit Vista?
I am running 32 bit Vista on this laptop. I have not tried 64 bit. I seem to remember CM ran properly at first but then broke with the symptoms described earlier, possibly after an update. Didn't mention this before because I didn't have any details and I didn't want to muddy the water.

I will try to get something submitted to Nvidia after the holiday. Thanks for the follow up.

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Hi all,

Just thought I'd add myself to the growing number of people upset by Nvidia.

I've been a Combat mission player since the start and I'm STILL delighted by the PBEM and turnbased system. I have all three earlier versions and recently purchased the fourth.

Unfortunately I've recently made the mistake of updating my PC for a gaming laptop. It comes with Vista and a Nvidia 8600m GT card, which plays Medieval 2 and EVE beyond what I expected. Unfortunately NONE of the Combat mission games work (CMSF plays at a snails pace but works the best out of the lot).

To be honest I was close to returning the laptop as I was so frustrated that my one and only turn based PBEM (cant find any others, can anyone help there?) wont run on it. It also upsets me that the games I'm currently running via mail with friends are useless.

Is there anything I can do to may be help push Nvidia to fix this problem?

Thanks

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