GF 3 problems

[ParaBellum]

First the good news: CM still runs with my new GF3.

The problem is that I have serious problems with direct3d.

I can't start games like SH2.

When I try to test direct3d in the directX program all I get is a black screen and an error message. Same with the full-screen directdraw test.

I have installed 23.11 drivers, directX 8.1.

I also tried the 28.32 drivers, same problem.

I tried to uninstall all nvidia drivers and delete all remaining nv*.* files manually, installed a fresh directX8.1 and then 28.32 drivers, same problem.

Sorry to post this un-CM-related thing here but I really don't know what to do...

Ah, and I'm running an 800Mhz Duron with a Gigabyte Ga-7IXE4 mainboard, 448mb RAM, WIN 98 and a MSI Geforce3 Ti 200.

[ May 12, 2002, 06:20 PM: Message edited by: ParaBellum ]

[Schrullenhaft]

I'm not sure how CM is running if you're having problems with Direct 3D. CM requires Direct 3D or runs in Software Rendering mode at 640x480. Is this what you're running now ?

Have you run the DirectX test before attempting to start any DirectX games or have you only attempted to run the test after a game hasn't worked ?

I'd suggest increasing your AGP Aperture to 256 (if your CMOS/BIOS setup supports this). Also I'd suggest installing the AMD AGP drivers. These can make a difference quite often. You can get some of them from Gigabyte (v. 4.80 - Northbridge) or from AMD (which may be slightly newer).

[ParaBellum]

Thx for your help, Schrullenhaft, much appreciated.

Yes, CM runs fine at 1024x768, no software mode.

I just formatted my c: drive, reinstalled win98, installed the amd mainboard drivers, installed directX8.1, then the 28.32 nvidia drivers and still got the same problem.

When I start the dxdiag program I get error messages with the third directdraw test, and the direct3d test.

I get these errors before or after I ry a directX game, no difference.

I can run CM fine, and games like IL2 that run in openGl run fine, too.

But other games that ran fine on my GF2MX like SH2 or Jedi Knight 2 now only give me black screens. I hear the sounds so the games are running just the gfx aren't...

I guess I'll try some older drivers, maybe this helps.

[ May 12, 2002, 11:06 PM: Message edited by: ParaBellum ]

[ParaBellum]

Ok, I again tried new drivers, but it stays the same. It seems I can't get direct3d to work with my geforce3.

Never encountered anything like that.

I uninstalled drivers, reinstalled them, formatted the harddisk, installed windows, drivers, directX, and even with the original MSI drivers I couldn't get it to run the direct3d test in dxdiag...

I'm lost...

[Schrullenhaft]

The latest BIOS for your motherboard is FAD (beta) or F9. However there is no mention of graphic card compatibility patches in any of the BIOS updates.

In the DirectX Diagnostic do you have all three of the settings in the Display tab enabled ('disable' will be raised as a button if they are enabled) ?

I know some of the AMD Northbridge chipsets had problems in the past with NVidia-based cards and their AGP transfer rates. I don't think that there were that many problems with the AMD 750's, but I can't exactly recall (I think it was mostly the previous Slot A generation of chipsets). It's important that you install the AMD chipset drivers since they can, sometimes, fix compatibility problems (or lessen them). Make sure it is the 'northbridge' drivers and not just the 'southbridge - IDE' drivers (which are separate in AMD's case).

If you go into the Device Manager tab in the System control panel are there any 'conflicts' listed ? What is your 'Graphics Aperture' in the Chipset Features portion of your CMOS/BIOS setup ? You can supposedly go from 32Mb to 2Gb, with 64Mb being the default. Though this setting doesn't go low enough to disable AGP transfer you may want to experiment with it. I don't see any other AGP related items in the CMOS/BIOS setup.

The AMD 751 chipset is limited to AGP2X. You may want to download an utility to tinker around with the video card's default setting (which might be AGP4X). Though a higher setting on the video card's BIOS shouldn't be too much of a problem, maybe in this case it is. You can download an overclocking program from Guru3D (select Videocard Utilities > Overclocking and Tweaking > get something like RivaTuner, PowerStrip or NVMax). I think only PowerStrip may have an AGP setting, which you may want to try at AGP 1X if the shareware version supports this (if it does, then it may only support it for that session and you have to reapply the setting when you reboot).

[ParaBellum]

-All settings in the directX tab are enabled.

-After installing win98 I installed all AMD drivers for the mainboard, including the northbridge drivers.

-No conflicts are listed in the device manager.

-AGP aperture size is set to 128MB, tried it with 64, same results.

-Among the MSI software there is such a 'tweak' utility, "Turbo...".

There AGPx1 is selected, and I can't change it to 4x or 2x.

I noticed that when I first wanted to install the original MSI drivers on a clean (with AMD drivers) Win98 the setup program always froze when istalling the files.

And once or twice I got error messages when I tried to install newer nvidia drivers.

So far I tried 23.11, 28.32, 21.85 and 21.83 nvidia drivers and the original MSI drivers, to no avail.

Always first deinstalling the old driver before installing the new drivers.

[Schrullenhaft]

Don't know what to tell you.

Direct3D has to be working to some extent if CM is running above 640x480. Why the tests fail on your machine I don't know. CM should be incapable of running above 640x480 if it is only left to software rendering (on the Mac it can do 800x600 in software rendering).

Your chipset supports up to AGP 2X. Depending on the video card's BIOS it may detect your AMD chipset and limit the AGP rate to 1X. This was a change that NVidia and/or some of it's OEMs did awhile back to address some of the compatibility problems that the GeForces were running into on the AMD chipsets. Some people program their BIOS's to use a higher AGP rate (there is an NVidia BIOS editor on some 3rd party websites). I've heard people say that AGP2X was more stable than AGP1X (though this particular setting may not be recommended for you).

Have you tried installing the PowerStrip or another tweaking utility ? I believe that FastWrites and SideBand Addressing may already be disabled, but if not you may want to disable them with one of these utilities to see if it makes a difference (disabling them does affect your performance).

How long have you had your memory ? You may want to deconfigure it down to 256Mb and see if this does anything. Try to keep all of the installed modules the same brand, capacity or possibly age (at least temporarily here to see if it makes a difference).

Looking around on the net, it is the AMD 750 series chipset that has problems with GeForce cards. The following excerpts came from the net:

That is a known problem with AMD Irongate chipset and nVidia Geforce cards. The reference drivers from nVidia version 3.62 or later will set the AGP mode to AGP1x. Most drivers are based on these reference drivers from nVidia, which will have the same result. Running the Geforce on a Irongate chipset at AGP2x will result in system crashes during 3D aplications. The problem with this combination is acknowledged by AMD and nVidia and therefor the AGP mode will be forced to AGP1x. This means that this problem occurs on any mainboard using the Irongate chipset. The only way to force the card to run in AGP2x is to modify the systems registry.

The following link tells what needs to be modified in the registry to change the AGP setting (though it was written when an older driver was current and it may no longer be present - it also is geared towards changing the setting to 2X):

Tom's Hardware GeForce/'Irongate' registry tweaking

And another except that may be applicable to you (and negate a good chunk of what's been said):

The biggest of which was the newly launched NVIDIA GeForce which had a big problem with the AGP implementation in the AMD 750 chipset. Eventually this was fixed with later revisions of the AMD 750 chipset...

Unfortunately I don't know which revisions of the chipset have this feature fixed.

[ May 13, 2002, 05:31 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]