Sivodsi Posted March 20, 2007 Share Posted March 20, 2007 New laptop with an Nvidia Geforce Go7600 so finally can see fog! Yeah! Loaded up a scenario on CMAK, and scenario briefings are blank, nothing but whiteness. Same for CMBB. No problem with any other text, but I haven't played a game yet on it yet. Read the troubleshooting guide for nvidia anti-aliasing problems, turned it off but no difference. Tried alt-tab, and to another program and back again to refresh the screen, but no bananas. Can anybody help? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted March 20, 2007 Share Posted March 20, 2007 I'm not aware of a workaround for what you're seeing. Interesting that it is only happening on the scenario briefing text and not other in-game text. Which particular driver are you using ? I assume that you're using Windows XP, is that correct ? Depending on how much 'experimenting' you want to try there are 'modded' drivers from LapTopVideo2Go, including 100.xx series drivers for Windows XP (not WHQL though). I don't know if a newer driver will address this particular issue or make things worse (a definite possibility). However the above linked site does have some older Nvidia Reference drivers that have been modded to support the Go series of mobile GPUs. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreenAsJade Posted March 20, 2007 Share Posted March 20, 2007 Hmmm - he said "no other problems, but I haven't played a game yet". So maybe there are other problems?! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sivodsi Posted March 21, 2007 Author Share Posted March 21, 2007 Thanks for your answers. Have played a PBEM file and worked perfectly except for the scenario briefings being a complete whiteout. Same problem in CMBB and CMAK. I am on XP home, you say 'windows driver', but wouldn't it be the nvidia drivers that I should update? (Excuse my ignorance on these matters!). There's a whole load of settings to fiddle with in display props - advanced - nvidia settings, especially interesting is the ability to set up a profile for a game. If I knew what setting to fiddle with I could make it so that it applies just to CM. Do you guys know of any settings that are relevant to text? It would be good to get an idea before I start fiddling. edit to add: just found the latest nvidia drivers, will install those and see how it goes [ March 20, 2007, 11:40 PM: Message edited by: Sivodsi ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sivodsi Posted March 21, 2007 Author Share Posted March 21, 2007 Gah! No good. I tried to install the latest drivers from the nVidia website, but after running setup all I get is a message saying that no drivers could be found that are compatible with current software. Back to square 1. Edited to add: Apparently driveragent.com has some drivers that are better than the ones I already have. Has anyone used this service? Costs $29 to join... [ March 21, 2007, 12:50 AM: Message edited by: Sivodsi ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted March 21, 2007 Share Posted March 21, 2007 Use the link I have above and you can get free drivers. I'm not sure about what Driveragent.com is offering. I assume that they're not really offering you anything more than what you can find for yourself by some thorough searching on the 'net (i.e. - they're not offering a driver that cannot be found elsewhere). They're probably just charging a fee to cover their hosting costs and possibly make a little profit. The drivers on the Nvidia website do not support the GeForce Go 7600 series. The Go series that they support are the 7800 and 7900 series. On top of that they only support certain laptops (though it would probably be the majority of models on the market) that have those GPUs. The standard Reference drivers don't support any of the Go series mobile GPUs. The driver I linked to above is a standard Reference driver that has had its INF file 'hacked' to include settings/detection for the Go series GPUs (since that is the primary difference in the files). It's an annoying fact that the major video chipset makers rarely support their mobile GPUs directly. Often they say "go back to the laptop manufacturer to get drivers". The general reason for this is that the laptop manufacturer may have had something 'custom' done for their video implementation (custom display output options, maybe different memory options, etc.). Supposedly such customizations could cause problems with Reference drivers so the GPU manufacturers support the laptop manufacturers directly rather than supporting the laptop manufacturer's customers directly. This typically results in the laptop manufacturer rarely putting out updates to the video drivers (possibly because it costs them a little more in their contract with the GPU manufacturer). However as far as I can tell, it is VERY rare that a reference driver with the appropriate INF changes doesn't work with most mobile GPUs. Hardware customizations of mobile GPUs for laptop manufacturers seem to be rare or to the point that it doesn't make a difference to the video driver. Anyway, try the link above for some free drivers. The 100.xx series may not work all that well with CM or may cause other problems (I'm not sure since I haven't tried it myself). There are links to other series of drivers such as '95', '90', '85', etc. (each link has several drivers underneath it). However the GeForce Go 7600 may not be supported by anything older than most of the '90' series. [ March 22, 2007, 07:15 AM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sivodsi Posted March 22, 2007 Author Share Posted March 22, 2007 Thanks for the info, didn't realize the situation. I'll give it a go when I have some time and report back here. Cheers! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sivodsi Posted March 22, 2007 Author Share Posted March 22, 2007 Well blow me if the problem didn't solve itself. I have been mucking around with the display settings trying to get it to play on a tv set, and something I did there fixed the text reading problem in CM. So not sure if I should go ahead and update the drivers "if it ain't broke..." 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hensworth Posted March 22, 2007 Share Posted March 22, 2007 Well, I'm on a new laptop with Vista and a GeForce Go 7600 and I can read the briefings but I don't have fog. After checking in here I downloaded Rivatuner to try and turn fog table emulation on but I can't find the setting. I was looking in the registry editor under the Poweruser tab but I couldn't find it. Any hints ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted March 22, 2007 Share Posted March 22, 2007 I'm running RivaTuner on Windows XP with RivaTuner 2.0 RC 16.1 (Final is available now), so I'm not sure how good my instructions or experience will be for you. When you open up RivaTuner on the Main tab go the the 'Driver settings' section and left click on the arrow-like icon at the end of the text box that most likely says 'Forceware detected'. A graphical menu will popup to the right of this. The second icon with a green 'X' in a purple field is for DirectX/3D settings, click on this. This will open up another dialog box with tabs. Go to the 'Compatibility' tab and in here there will be a section called 'Compatibility settings'; in here there will be a check box for 'Enable fog table emulation', check it. Supposedly this will set the driver to emulate fog-tables, which has been good enough for CM with Nvidia drivers in previous versions of Windows. However newer drivers under Windows Vista may be another matter. I'm not sure if the code exists in them for fog-table emulation (hopefully it still does). If it doesn't, then this will do nothing for you (assuming that there isn't some other issue with CM, Vista and Nvidia). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hensworth Posted March 23, 2007 Share Posted March 23, 2007 Thanks Schrullenhaft. The problem seems to be that Rivatuner can't find my driver. Can't remember the exact way it shows that, I'm at work now, but it said something to the effect of 'No driver found'. The version of Rivatuner I downloaded said 'Vista ready', so I don't think it's because I'm on Vista. It's probably more to do with the fact that it's a laptop custom driver as you describe above. If I had known about this I probably would have given the purchase of a laptop some more thought. I don't like the idea of not being able to go to Nvidia for my drivers. So now how do I get Rivatuner to recognize my driver ? Throw it on the forums at 3DGuru ? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted March 23, 2007 Share Posted March 23, 2007 That's strange that a 'Vista-ready' version of RivaTuner isn't seeing your driver. What does the text box say that should normally say 'Forceware detected' ? Do you know which version of the Nvidia drivers you have for your laptop, typically this should be found in the Device Manager > Display adapter > Driver tab (or something to that effect, I don't have Vista). Your driver is still a Forceware (or whatever Nvidia wants to call its drivers now) driver, it just has the modified INFs to allow it to be used with the particular GeForce Go in your laptop. If RivaTuner refuses to see your driver, then download one of the newer drivers (100's, 95's, some of the later 90's) from the link I gave above. This should provide an updated driver. Next (after all of the requisite reboots) uninstall RivaTuner, then reinstall it (with a possible reboot in between). Hopefully it should see the Forceware driver at this point and give you the options to enable fog-table emulation (which is usually on by default I'd assume, but possibly not). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim1954 Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Originally posted by Sgt_Kelly: Well, I'm on a new laptop with Vista and a GeForce Go 7600 and I can read the briefings but I don't have fog. After checking in here I downloaded Rivatuner to try and turn fog table emulation on but I can't find the setting. I was looking in the registry editor under the Poweruser tab but I couldn't find it. Any hints ? I'm not running Vista so I can't verify but this post over at the Blitz indicates that even nvidia cards loose fog capability under Vista. http://www.theblitz.org/message_boards/showthread.php?tid=39548 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hensworth Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Thanks Jim. I can't really be bothered at the moment anyway since I don't play CM that much anymore. I've switched to a wireless router as well and I can't play TCP/IP anymore as a result. I'm going to have to get that sorted before I worry about fog again. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.