6800 ultra issues, need advice

Finally got my ultra last evening. Pulled the 5800, installed the new card, installed drivers (61.34 shipped with the card), and booted up. Ran Nfr and checked for residual drivers, none in the file. No problems apparent. Ran 3dMark03 and the screen froze during the troll battle and nature for just a few seconds. Then tried to run FarCry, which launched, but after about 2 minutes the screen corrupted into a series of wavy lines. I check the temps and they were within specs on the GPU. I thought it might be drivers and downloaded the 61.36 WHQL's from Guru3d, and installed them. About this time I noticed that windows was dragging during shutdown and hung on reboot once. Cranked up Farcry, different level, same thing happened, plus the rcreen froze for about 10 seconds then resumed play. So i tried NWN which would launch the exe. file then hang, never launching the actual game. The menu/update screen would post and you could open the various utilities there, but it wouldn't launch the actual game play. This hadn't happened before. I then shut down and thought I might've crossed the power feed for the card so I unbundled the wiring and verified that the 6800 was on a separate rail, which it was. My thought was I had crossed it with the hard drives power, but that wasn't case. I used system restore, back to prior install of the new card and started over. Same results. Need some suggestions on possible solutions. The 6800 is on a seprate rail, the two raptors on on a separate rail, and the cd's, floppy, spare hd, and and Audigy2 are on one. I would think that would be enough power to make it happen. I am not trying an overclock at this point, just trying to get it up and running steady. If I don't tax the card it seems to run fine. I didn't get a chance to get any other games booted, but I would think it would run Farcry no probs.
Suggestions please!

I would check my power supply.That is what it sounds like to me.And my personal Opinion of Antec is a low one...

I had some issues with the drivers I got with mine shipped from PNY. I am running the 60.42 drivers and have had no problems since. Whatcha doin with that 5800???

The 5800's a keeper for now, although I hadn't realized how much noise that sucker makes until this one fired up. I had to put my ear down thee to see if it was running.

I'll try the optional drivers when i get home.

Also, what power supply other than Antec would you recommend? I would go for the 550w neighborhood if I changed anything.

mrgreenjeans said:

The 5800's a keeper for now, although I hadn't realized how much noise that sucker makes until this one fired up. I had to put my ear down thee to see if it was running.

I'll try the optional drivers when i get home.

Also, what power supply other than Antec would you recommend? I would go for the 550w neighborhood if I changed anything.

Click to expand...

fotron or antec true series 550w would be nice, but i don't think its ur psu, my Antec true330w is pushing my 6800GT fine, there was also a thread on NV where someone tried a 6800u in their shuttle with 200w psu....

I couldn't find 60.42's but did use 60.72's which haven't crashed during a game but keeps crashing and rebooting just as 3d03 finishes the final sound test! Also found out that the NWN issue is with Zone Alarms Pro and not the card. Got a link for the 60.42's?

Do you have msn messenger? I dont have a link for it.

Sorry, no IM, took it off after bugging me once too often. I checked a couple of other sites and several have had good things to say about the 61.71's. I'm going to give them a shot. Thanks for the feedback. I'll let you know.

I think they have all of them here

http://www.guru3d.com/

They don't have a 60.42 listed and the 61.71 crashed on Farcry...again.

Ive always had issues with haveing fastwrites enabled. When i shut it off all these problems go away. Just a thought, But hey, it might help.

If not, Is your GPU HS on tight? Could be a heat issue?


Harry

Fast writes, is that accomplished in the bios settings? I've gone to 61.11's, and ran Halo fine last night, but when I tried the 61.70's, I got an error saying a file in Halo, (shaders/bin.32) was corrupted and to reinstall the game, however, when I loaded the 61.11's it ran fine with nary a hiccup, and awesome graphics and colors. Love the colors in that game. I think there's some issues with FarCry and nVidia needs to work on the drivers.
I did note a huge difference in the graphics quality between the 60 series vs. the 61 series. The 61 series seems to have much more pronounced detail and accuracy of rendering.
I'll keep trying 'till THEY get it right.

Got clean 3dMark03 run, 12,500 . My 5800 hit 6390 right before the switch out. I did relax my memory timings a bit thinking that might be the issue, but that's the only system change. Quite an increase i would say. I think nVidia needs some work on the drivers.

Hmmm. It does sound like a power issue though. Wierd stuff. Have you tried running the rig with the spare drives and fans unplugged, maybe leave the case open for cooling, just to be sure its not a power issue. As far as the drivers Id try whatever WHQL driver is available, that should run solidly even if its not the fastest driver.

It seems to be holding steady on the 61.11's. I 've played Halo and FarCry with no problems, max settings, although the WHQL drivers did cause crashes, whereas, the ones I'm using now haven't. I think it was mainly a driver issue. It's been running steady for over two days, including 3dMark03 and AquaMark, now without a crash so maybe the problems fixed.
I will say one thing, the graphics are really incredible with this card. I've started Halo and am playing it again just for the visuals. Thanks for your input guys and I'll keep you posted on the driver issues.

Yea, it seems NV has some driver issues to work out. I have heard of many conflicting stories on what drivers work best, and it seems to vary greatly from system to system.

I went to their site and the latest they have listed is a 56.?? series driver, which I don't beleive even supports the 6800's. I now they'll pull it out, and when they do it'll will really smoke!

Try guru3d.com they have a few later versions.

Always check there, that's how I've got so many different drivers I've been trying. I went back to nVidia's site out of curiousity and they don't even post support for the 6800's yet on their driver page. oops!