Geforce 6800 Drive Issues in 98SE

[nd172934]

Hello everyone,

So I understand the issue of decreased performance with newer 9x Geforce drivers has been discussed before, but I hope that someone with a 6800 series card can help me with the issue of drivers. I'm currently running 81.98 drivers, and I've notice problems ranging from inexplicably poor frame rate, constant screen tear, misloaded textures, to games crashing claiming there is no free video memory. The current system I'm using dual boots to a separate windows 2000 hard drive, and none of these problems occur on that install. So, for anyone with experience, are the earlier driver revisions better? It seems the earliest driver to support 6800 series cards is 61.76. I've seen PhilsComputerLab's video showing a clear decrease in performance with newer drivers for earlier series cards, but is the same true for 6 series cards? If it helps, here's the specs of my current system:

AMD Athlon 64 4000+

Asus A8V-X

1 GB DDR 400 RAM

XFX Geforce 6800 GT AGP

Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum eX

Most games work well, but there are too many examples of strange glitches in other games to list here. Most glitches involve poor framerate or games refusing to start if the resolution is too high or some sort of problem with textures failing to load or game breaking screen tear even when v-sync is enabled (Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is the worst for this)

[pangoomis]

Newest NVIDIA GPU drivers for 9x do contain the most amount of bugs in games (and not only games, say hello to the broken uninstaller  ). Definitely try earlier versions.

As for the performance decrease, from what I know, it doesn't apply much to the 6 and 7 series. Mostly because there's no earlier driver versions to compare with so don't have to worry about that. The 6 and 7 series GPUs are much more powerful than FX and older series so even if drivers were to decrease performance, it wouldn't be so noticeable in day-to-day gaming.

[nd172934]

Make sense, thanks for the response.

 

I just got back from vacation, so I'll try out driver revision 77.72 (the last to mention 9x support in release documentation) and maybe 61.76 (first release to support 6800 gt) and I'll post here with the results.

[nd172934]

Ok, so I have been comparing 61.76 and 77.72 for a couple hours. It seems 77.72 is the best driver revision for 9x compared to 61.76 and 81.96. I don't claim I was absolutely thorough in my testing, but from trying out the games I've had problems with, 77.72 is the best. All the glitches I mentioned in my original post when using 81.96 were not present when using 77.72 or 61.76. However, I had some strange occurrences with 61.76 where some programs such as 3DMark03 or Operation Flashpoint CWC would blue screen the computer when ran (yes, my copy of Cold War Crisis is a legit retail copy). I even had one time with 61.76 during testing where the system BSODed after startup in spite of no hardware or driver chances. So, if anyone is seeing this thread, I would recommend you use Nvidia 77.72 instead of 81.96 if you have a 6 series card in a 9x system.

 

Edited September 19, 2021 by nd172934
Corrected spelling

[Nokiamies]

On 9/19/2021 at 10:55 AM, nd172934 said:

I even had one time with 61.76 during testing where the system BSODed after startup in spite of no hardware or driver chances. So, if anyone is seeing this thread, I would recommend you use Nvidia 77.72 instead of 81.96 if you have a 6 series card in a 9x system.

 

did you install Direct X 9? On my driver tests old directX was main reason to crashing. 61.76 can bsod even when trying open DXDIAG or anything that tries to read GPU, I need try 77.72 on mine since only tried 81.96

[nd172934]

Sorry for not responding in a while, but in that windows install, I had indeed updated directx to the final release supported by windows 98 (october 2006 I believe).

[jumper]

When having problems, don't install a newer DX9 than the video drivers were officially tested with. For 77.72 this means June 2005.

 

[nd172934]

Good to know, thanks for the heads up.