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Random slowdown bug plagues GeForce 8800 cards

helmutcheese

helmutcheese

helmutcheese

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http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/12877


" Late last month, a TR reader who calls himself Cybercat alerted us to what he said was an inexplicable problem affecting some GeForce 8800 cards, and particularly the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. According to Cybercat, the problem causes random slowdowns, often halving frame rates until the user alt-tabs out of the game and back in again. More interestingly, the problem doesn't appear to be tied to any particular hardware configuration, Windows version, or display setting. Users with all kinds of setups have been reporting problems, from the Nvidia and eVGA forums to the NVNews, Rage3D, and Guru of 3D forums.
We decided to contact Nvidia about the issue, and Nvidia Technical Marketing Director Nick Stam has now gotten back to us with the following message:

Sorry for delay, took a while to gather info.
We are aware of this issue and our driver team is working on it now.

We expect a fix some time in July.

That might be too late for some, though. Cybercat says a number of users have already given up and returned their cards since the issue began cropping up. It's not hard to understand why, either: the oldest forum thread we could find describing the problem dates back to February of this year. ( http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=86982 ) "
 
Its apparently to do with the on board memory filling up on the card last I heard. Nice to hear that they are fixing it. I guess the driver wasn't flushing the memory correctly?
 
Been known for a while, theres a big thread on it here http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=91118 supposoedly caused by USB Mice and Keyboards they rekon in there, especially in Fear.

I had that what he's talking about in Fear, but only at that corridor with those windows, and in Tomb Raider Legend, it probably will be something to do with the memory, as once it fills up the games crawl, but if you alt+tab out it clears the memory back out so its run fine again when you go back in until till it fills back up again, ive not really noticed it in anything else, still good to know they are working on a fix. :)
 
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I had this issue really bad with my 320MB 8800GTS. It has not been as bad with th 640MB version, but I still alt-tab before each CoH game I play in order to get maximum fps.

At least NV have recognized the issue and have promised a fix.
 
Yea, I just realised a lot of games I've been alt+ tabbing out of the game and going back in and through to myself hmmm framrates are higher, but as before never thought anything about it after that.
 
I had this issue with Fear, uninstalled it in the end because it was irritating and inexplicable. Had this with WoW, and a reinstall fixed it. Fingers crossed now.

I actually currently have it with Halo 2 ! I just realized. It's when I approach the temple part in the first bit of Delta Halo level with the helljumpers. I have to alt-tab to fix it, and if that doesn't work, setting the AA level to 0 then back to 4 fixes it.
 
Actually i now i come to think of it, i remember after a while in Fear that used to like slow down a bit, as you could see when looking around it used to sort of slur, but i fixed it by turning the textures down to medium in game, ran great after that all the time. :)
 
LoadsaMoney said:
Actually i now i come to think of it, i remember after a while in Fear that used to like slow down a bit, as you could see when looking around it used to sort of slur, but i fixed it by turning the textures down to medium in game, ran great after that all the time. :)
Click to expand...

Omg, you have an 8800 and oyur turning textures down to medium, you dont need to do it man...
 
i get that in Just Cause on my x1900xt. play the game for about an hour and a half or so then it slows down to a crawl. exit game and load it back up and its fine for another hour and a half. odd that just cause was the only game to show that problem though :confused:
 
Well if someone wants to try it out, drop the texture resolution down to medium and tell me if they can see any differences, as i certainly couldn't. :p

Now you mention the x1900 above there, i remember that corridor in Fear with the windows doing the exact same on my old x1800, that used to lag like hell when going through there to, and my x1800 was a 512mb.
 
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I've just bought a new board partially as an attempt at fixing this problem. I had no idea it was a known issue with the cards!
 
Cyber-Mav said:
i get that in Just Cause on my x1900xt. play the game for about an hour and a half or so then it slows down to a crawl. exit game and load it back up and its fine for another hour and a half. odd that just cause was the only game to show that problem though :confused:
Click to expand...
Just Cause has it's very own array of annoying bugs one of which is this one, a memory leak effect without any apparent memory leak :p
 
Glad they are working on it. I returned one card to try and fix the problem, I guess I could have just hung on until it was fixed. For me, it was CnC3 which showed this problem.
 
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