my situation, plan A then plan B

[motherboard1]

ok guys, I made the dive and went for the 6600 GT, they had one at a local place here, and theres just something you cant beat about walking out of the store with it, instead of ordering online and waiting

its made by Leadtek, I hope that matches what you guys showed me

WinFast A6600GT TDH

 

[motherboard1]

by the way, my overclock for the Geforce fx 5500 without any Ramsinks on it yet was so far 270/286 >> 306/345 3Dmark03 score went from 1013 to 1206, CPU score was around 335 deviating randomly up and down by about 10 throughout the tests

I know it sucks, dont laugh

and its been running stable at that all day playing games

 

[b1029384756]

9800pro's have 256bit memory, so does a 9700pro.

some 9800's do have a 128bit bus, i think thed 9800se, but pro's are 256.

This is the case most of the time, but some of the so-called 128MB 9800 Pros were intentionally crippled with a 128-bit bus and slightly lower clock speeds than a standard 128MB 9800 Pro. You need to look closely at the specs when buying one of them to be sure, and he specified that he was looking at the 128-bit version, which is why he needed to be dissuaded from buying it.

 

[hUMANbEATbOX]

This is the case most of the time, but some of the so-called 128MB 9800 Pros were intentionally crippled with a 128-bit bus and slightly lower clock speeds than a standard 128MB 9800 Pro. You need to look closely at the specs when buying one of them to be sure, and he specified that he was looking at the 128-bit version, which is why he needed to be dissuaded from buying it.

ya there was a company or two towards the end that pulled that crap. by and large, 9800pro's are 256bit, that is ATi's spec for them at least. you are right tho, you do need to look for that.

and about the 6600GT, you will like it for sure, it will be a nice solid upgrade on agp without spending an arm and a leg. and when you are ready to move on to a pcie platform, you will be able to sell that card easily enough, or have a decent backup rig.

so how does it run? what kind of benchmark comparison?

 

[motherboard1]

k, all sorted out now, ran 3Dmark03 : 6173 thats quite the increase over my old card , wich was even overclocked to get its score of 1206

just got a system crash while playing Americas army though, says that the driver for 6600 is responsible, and could not complete a draw operation

by the way, do you think I should take off the Ram Sink and heatsink, clean em off, and apply thermal grease and reseat them myself?

I know ofter takeing the heatsink off of my Geforce 5500 I discovered how poorly they had applied the thermal paste at the factory, most of the chip was wasnt even covered at all, it was as if they just threw a blob of paste on the chip and slapped on the heatsink

but I dont know if such a sloppy job is the usual

 

[hUMANbEATbOX]

i would look for a temp monitor for nvidia. i haven't had one of their cards for a while now, so i'm out of the loop for that. maybe ask in the nvidia forums, see what they have to say. you can almost guarantee that applying as5 or similar yourself will be better than they did stock. at least with a temp monitor, you could see what kind of drop in C you get.

how does it oc? apart from that crash in AA, is the card doing what you needed it to do, play at the higher res? i would think so...

 

[motherboard1]

I havent overclocked it, I dont intend to for some time, just dont like the idea of of overclocking a new card I think

is it possible to turn down the core slowdown threshold, its at 145c right now, but that sounds really really hot, wouldnt the card have melted by the time it reached that threshold? but it wont let me change it in the Nvideo controll panel

and yes it does everything I needed, Im very pleased, but I would like to learn how to use the Nvidea settings to put black bars on the top and bottom of my screen, so I can play battleifeild 1942 at 1280 *960 to avoid any scaleing (battlefield doesnt support my native res 1280 * 1024 )

I was told I could do this if I had an Nvidea chip, Do I need a certain driver for this option? I was kind of looking forward to it

Im playing the most graphically intence maps on Americas army now, maps I couldnt have even suffered with my old card, but now with 1280 by 1024, all graphics settings maxed, and I have 8X AA and 2X AF, and its smooth as silk

I actually only get about 30 fps in Americas army, but thats because its all my processor can push in this game, no matter how low I set the graphics, but its more than Im used to anyway, so to me thats smooth

 

[motherboard1]

the same crash happened again, this time in halo demo

getting a little alarmed now with this infinite loop error

says the file NV4_Disp is responsible

0x000000EA (0 x 81A6FA60, 0 x 81A35748, 0x 81813710, 0 x 00000001 )

then upon reboot it says that the 6600 was unable to complete a draw operation

 

[cre8]

Get the newest drivers from nvidia.If that doesn't help try some beta drivers or X-treme G drivers http://www.tweaksrus.com/

 

[motherboard1]

Ok, gonna do that right away, because it just happened a 3rd time, only seconds into a game of Rome total war

thats three times, 3 different games

hope it doesnt mean the card has bad memory or something

==============

uninstalled Winfast drivers from controll panal, there isnt an uninstall entry in the add remove programs list for the 78.01 drivers, so I just went aheand and installed the latest from Nvidea 81.98

Rome completly froze solid, right away again, before I could even press start battle, I couldnt be bothered to wait for the error again, I just hit the reset button on my computer

going to try other drivers now

 

[hUMANbEATbOX]

i would boot to safe mode and use some type of driver cleaner, then install the latest drivers. i'm not to handy with nv's tho :\

 

[motherboard1]

yah, I wiped my drivers out this morning and installed 80.40 forceware drivers you linked to and have been able to complete a few battles without a problem, and since previously I was lucky if I could hit the Start battle button before it would freeze, Im gonna go ahead and assume its all fixed, thanks

 

[motherboard1]

it happened once more since, but Im not here about that, while researching this problem, I came accross the term AGP fast writes, and in the bios it is disabled for me by default

would I benefit from enableing it? performance wise I mean, I dont expect it to cure my Infinite loop error ( wich atleast doesnt happen often anymore )

some forums/articles have information and comments to indicate it will improve performance, while others blame it for instability problems

Im gonna go ahead and try it anyway, but if anyone thinks Im makeing a mistake let me know so I can change it back