- Joined
- Apr 19, 2003
Incredible. The only way to describe the situation is incredible. I'm not an nVidia or Ati “fanboy” by any stretch of the imagination. I buy whichever videocard performs the best or is the best “bang for the buck” at the time of purchase. Not once in my fairly lengthy lifetime of purchasing videocards have I ever had issues of this magnitude ignored by a videocard manufacturer. Let me start from the beginning...
I upgraded from my BFG 7800 GT OC to a supposedly lovely BFG 8800 GTS – near top of the line at the time of this writing. The videocard isn't cheap at $500 retail new from the vendor at which I purchased it. So you can imagine my dismay when I discovered the apparent issue surrounding the 8800 line of videocards: the most shoddy drivers in the history of mankind.1
So I loaded up the game I most frequently play these days: Counter-Strike: Source. The first thing I noticed was that there was fog in incorrect places and textures looked extremely abnormal. Then, inexplicably, the system locked up and crashed. Hard reboot, no warning. “Hmm” I pondered. I looked online for posts regarding this issue and, from what I have seen, the abnormal textures and unexplained fog was an issue with the Source engine and this card. The “solution” was to force DirectX 8.1 instead of using DirectX 9. That's all I'll mention of the abnormal fog and such in the main body of this, as it's seemingly a separate issue. 2
On to the inexplicable crash. I restarted and forced DirectX 8.1 with CS:S. I played for a bit (perhaps a few hours) until I got a lovely Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). The BSOD looked like a typical STOP BSOD with the following message, in my case:
Little did I know that I would soon come to be will acquainted with this particular blue screen from hell. I shrugged it off after checking to ensure that my temperatures were within tolerable ranges and that voltages from my PSU (Power Supply) were acceptable. They were, so I continued playing over the next couple of days.
Every time I'd go to play a game of CS:S, I'd get in and play for an hour or two (usually) without issue (except for DX8.1 looking quite vile). After this period of stability I'd get the BSOD. Again and again. Every single time. I was quickly becoming agitated.
So I started scouring the net and I found out that droves of people were having the exact same issue: BSODs in the middle of a 3d application. Some were playing World of Warcraft, some were playing CS:S like me, and some others were playing Battlefield 2.
The first thread I found mentioned issues with the a gentleman's 8800 GTX randomly hard locking or BSODing on him (found here). The second thread I found, a bit later, consisted of quite a few WoW players (I won't make fun of them for playing WoW... this time) getting the exact same BSOD at nearly the same coordinates on “Burning Crusade” (link). I found the nVidia forums littered with people professing of such problems.
As suggested in the thread I filed a support ticket with nVidia. First I described my problem and linked to the thread to on their forums to no avail. After pleading with the support “specialist” they finally “escalated my case” to Level 2 tech support. Ooh, sounds snazzy. I wait a week to get the following response:
Oh, I wasn't aware that nVidia didn't support their drivers or care about their users? It must be lovely to live in a world in which you can manufacture a GPU, sell it to companies, write drivers for it, then leave them totally unsupported. It'd also seem that the “technician” had an issue reading what I had explained or following the link to their very own forums. He/She spoke only of my issue in “CS.” My texture issues in CS:S were a tertiary concern (see footnote 2) to the more glaring problem of oh, I don't know, rampant BSODs preventing me from playing the games that I enjoy? As I mentioned it's not an issue that lies solely with CS:S, many people have spoken of issues across several different games and 3d applications, some even crashing while not in a 3D applications.
At this point I'm absolutely incensed. How could nVidia be so reticent about the issue? It has not been mentioned in any of the driver releases/bugfixes/”known issue” notes. Not a peep on their forums. Not a press release, not a single “Hey guys, we're working on it. Please hang tight.” The only communication I received is through the ticket and that was quite unsatisfying to say the least.
I'd also like to point out just a few of the actions taken by people to resolve the issue, unsuccessfully:
- Removing nTune
- Extra cooling
- Swapped hard drives
- Different memory
- "Beefier" PSU (Up to 1000W)
- Different motherboards
- Different processor combinations
- Stripping of parts down to a nearly bare system
- SEVERAL drivers. I've personally tried 3-4, including the latest, to no avail.
I'm most likely forgetting a few things, too.
If you're thinking about buying an 8800 series card my advice to you is: DO NOT. Sure, you may be one of the lucky ones that have no issues, but do you really want to take that chance? Hold off on buying the card until nVidia steps up to the table and states that they're working on the problem.
Please either submit a question here Or email them at [email protected] . I'm not sure if the postmaster address is read but it is live, at the very least. Also note: although they don't purport to support their GPUs they should be supporting their drivers.
This issue needs to be exposed and nVidia needs to, at the very least, acknowledge the existence of a problem. I'm submitting this to several different places in an attempt to bring exposure to the issue. We should not be ignored.
Specifications on my computer, as it stands:
2x Opteron 252 Troy Processors
Asus K8N-DL Motherboard
2x 512MB Corsair TWINX Registered ECC XMS
BFG 8800 GTS 640 MB
2x 250GB WD Caviars in Raid0 plugged into a RocketRaid card
1x 120Gig Seagate drive (boot)
Fortron BlueSomething 520W PSU
Note: I'm submitting this to OC-Forums, Digg, The HardForums, and the nVidia forums. Pass this along to your friends. Make them at least listen to us and try to help us find out what the issue is.
Please post up in support of this.
-Ex
Edit: before anyone asks, this is using windows XP.
DIGG IT: http://digg.com/hardware/BSODs_Abound_Unresolved_Crashes_w_nVidia_8800_Leave_Many_Out_In_The_Cold
Link at [H]: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1157331
nVidia forums link: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=27989
More links to those having issues:
http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=26392
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1150347&page=3
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=21758
------
1 I should mention that at the time of this writing this seems to be a driver issue. Given that all signs are pointing to it being a driver issue I'm going to leave this in. If it turns out not to be a driver issue I will retract this statement.
2 Just to elaborate: Basically people that were off in the distance appeared as a smoky silhouette instead of a well defined and visible opponent. Random white fog would appear everywhere. Things are completely bugged out if you run the 8800 series at DX 9 with CS:S. This is supposedly a separate issue.
I upgraded from my BFG 7800 GT OC to a supposedly lovely BFG 8800 GTS – near top of the line at the time of this writing. The videocard isn't cheap at $500 retail new from the vendor at which I purchased it. So you can imagine my dismay when I discovered the apparent issue surrounding the 8800 line of videocards: the most shoddy drivers in the history of mankind.1
So I loaded up the game I most frequently play these days: Counter-Strike: Source. The first thing I noticed was that there was fog in incorrect places and textures looked extremely abnormal. Then, inexplicably, the system locked up and crashed. Hard reboot, no warning. “Hmm” I pondered. I looked online for posts regarding this issue and, from what I have seen, the abnormal textures and unexplained fog was an issue with the Source engine and this card. The “solution” was to force DirectX 8.1 instead of using DirectX 9. That's all I'll mention of the abnormal fog and such in the main body of this, as it's seemingly a separate issue. 2
On to the inexplicable crash. I restarted and forced DirectX 8.1 with CS:S. I played for a bit (perhaps a few hours) until I got a lovely Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). The BSOD looked like a typical STOP BSOD with the following message, in my case:
Code:
STOP 0X0000007E (OXC0000005, 0XBFB4E28E, 0XAD6258CC, 0XAD6255C8)
nv4_disp.dll - Address BFBE28E base at BF9D40000, DateStamp 458ae707Little did I know that I would soon come to be will acquainted with this particular blue screen from hell. I shrugged it off after checking to ensure that my temperatures were within tolerable ranges and that voltages from my PSU (Power Supply) were acceptable. They were, so I continued playing over the next couple of days.
Every time I'd go to play a game of CS:S, I'd get in and play for an hour or two (usually) without issue (except for DX8.1 looking quite vile). After this period of stability I'd get the BSOD. Again and again. Every single time. I was quickly becoming agitated.
So I started scouring the net and I found out that droves of people were having the exact same issue: BSODs in the middle of a 3d application. Some were playing World of Warcraft, some were playing CS:S like me, and some others were playing Battlefield 2.
The first thread I found mentioned issues with the a gentleman's 8800 GTX randomly hard locking or BSODing on him (found here). The second thread I found, a bit later, consisted of quite a few WoW players (I won't make fun of them for playing WoW... this time) getting the exact same BSOD at nearly the same coordinates on “Burning Crusade” (link). I found the nVidia forums littered with people professing of such problems.
As suggested in the thread I filed a support ticket with nVidia. First I described my problem and linked to the thread to on their forums to no avail. After pleading with the support “specialist” they finally “escalated my case” to Level 2 tech support. Ooh, sounds snazzy. I wait a week to get the following response:
Nvidia Tech said:
Oh, I wasn't aware that nVidia didn't support their drivers or care about their users? It must be lovely to live in a world in which you can manufacture a GPU, sell it to companies, write drivers for it, then leave them totally unsupported. It'd also seem that the “technician” had an issue reading what I had explained or following the link to their very own forums. He/She spoke only of my issue in “CS.” My texture issues in CS:S were a tertiary concern (see footnote 2) to the more glaring problem of oh, I don't know, rampant BSODs preventing me from playing the games that I enjoy? As I mentioned it's not an issue that lies solely with CS:S, many people have spoken of issues across several different games and 3d applications, some even crashing while not in a 3D applications.
At this point I'm absolutely incensed. How could nVidia be so reticent about the issue? It has not been mentioned in any of the driver releases/bugfixes/”known issue” notes. Not a peep on their forums. Not a press release, not a single “Hey guys, we're working on it. Please hang tight.” The only communication I received is through the ticket and that was quite unsatisfying to say the least.
I'd also like to point out just a few of the actions taken by people to resolve the issue, unsuccessfully:
- Removing nTune
- Extra cooling
- Swapped hard drives
- Different memory
- "Beefier" PSU (Up to 1000W)
- Different motherboards
- Different processor combinations
- Stripping of parts down to a nearly bare system
- SEVERAL drivers. I've personally tried 3-4, including the latest, to no avail.
I'm most likely forgetting a few things, too.
If you're thinking about buying an 8800 series card my advice to you is: DO NOT. Sure, you may be one of the lucky ones that have no issues, but do you really want to take that chance? Hold off on buying the card until nVidia steps up to the table and states that they're working on the problem.
Please either submit a question here Or email them at [email protected] . I'm not sure if the postmaster address is read but it is live, at the very least. Also note: although they don't purport to support their GPUs they should be supporting their drivers.
This issue needs to be exposed and nVidia needs to, at the very least, acknowledge the existence of a problem. I'm submitting this to several different places in an attempt to bring exposure to the issue. We should not be ignored.
Specifications on my computer, as it stands:
2x Opteron 252 Troy Processors
Asus K8N-DL Motherboard
2x 512MB Corsair TWINX Registered ECC XMS
BFG 8800 GTS 640 MB
2x 250GB WD Caviars in Raid0 plugged into a RocketRaid card
1x 120Gig Seagate drive (boot)
Fortron BlueSomething 520W PSU
Note: I'm submitting this to OC-Forums, Digg, The HardForums, and the nVidia forums. Pass this along to your friends. Make them at least listen to us and try to help us find out what the issue is.
Please post up in support of this.
-Ex
Edit: before anyone asks, this is using windows XP.
DIGG IT: http://digg.com/hardware/BSODs_Abound_Unresolved_Crashes_w_nVidia_8800_Leave_Many_Out_In_The_Cold
Link at [H]: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1157331
nVidia forums link: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=27989
More links to those having issues:
http://www.evga.com/community/messageboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=26392
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1150347&page=3
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=21758
------
1 I should mention that at the time of this writing this seems to be a driver issue. Given that all signs are pointing to it being a driver issue I'm going to leave this in. If it turns out not to be a driver issue I will retract this statement.
2 Just to elaborate: Basically people that were off in the distance appeared as a smoky silhouette instead of a well defined and visible opponent. Random white fog would appear everywhere. Things are completely bugged out if you run the 8800 series at DX 9 with CS:S. This is supposedly a separate issue.
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