Previously the creative.products.3d_blaster.annihilator FAQ
Previously the creative.products.3d_blaster.annihilator FAQ
version 4.01
Maintained by Christopher Hill (aka Minkus)
Email contact information and about me
Version 15.6
Last updated 13:10 BST 19/8/2000
Polish translation of Hardware section : Polish translation of Software section
Russian translation
Italian translation #1
Italian translation #2
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Keep visiting - this FAQ generally gets updated daily, so long as there's something to update!
This FAQ contains information on all GeForce and GeForce2 GTS cards, and especially Creative cards.
If you find this FAQ useful, consider joining the distributed.net code cracking effort - you could win $2000:
If you do, join the GeForce FAQ team by clicking here!
By the way, the reason that there are three adverts is that the top one is mine, and the other two are for Tweak3D.
A redirector is available. You can use this address:
http://go.to/geforcefaq
or the usual address:
http://www.geforcefaq.com
This article is provided as is without any express or implied warranties. While every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this article, the author assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
Please sign the Unreal Tournament / Direct3D S3TC petition at the following website:
http://www.petitiononline.com/s3tcut/
Changed AGP Miniport Driver link in 'What's all this with the GeForce and the Athlon?' question to a webpage link so I don't have to keep updating the link when the file is updated.
Added a link to another website to 'What is a Quadro and how can I convert my GeForce into a Quadro?' question.
Added Detonator 3 (6.18) drivers information to all driver questions and added archives for all old driver versions.
Added Asheron's Call note to Windows 9x 5.33 notes.
Added TV-OUT support page link to 'How can I make the TV-OUT display stretch to the full size of my TV, and generally tweak TV-OUT?' question.
Added DVI information page link to 'Does the GeForce / GeForce 2 support flat panel (DVI) correctly?' question.
Added motherboard incompatibility warning link to 'Will my motherboard work with the GeForce?' question.
Added 6.18 tip to 'I have problems with Need for Speed 5: Porsche. How can I fix them?' question.
Added 6.18 notes to all drivers questions.
Added 'I have a Video Memory option in my BIOS that I can set to UC or USWC. What should it be set to?' question.
Added 'How can I force AGP1X to be used instead of AGP2X or AGP4X?' question and referred all questions that tell you to disable AGP1X to it.
Added 'How can I disable AGP Fast Writes?' question and referred the 'I have an Intel i820 based motherboard and I have various problems. How can I fix it?' and 'My GeForce keeps on locking up. How can I fix it?' questions to it.
Added precaching tip to 'How can I speed up Unreal Tournament on my GeForce?' question.
No, despite what you may have read in reviews. There is only the standard monitor output.
However, Gateway do have an OEM version that does have TV-OUT and DVI. The spec sheet is here: http://www.gw2k.com.au/products/specs/spec_nVidia_32mb_GeForce256.asp
If you have a standard 26 pin VMI connector on the DVD decoder you can plug the cable into the left half (near the bracket) of the VIP connector on the Annihilator. However, pins 14/27 will be in the way - you will have to bend them out of the way. Note that doing this isn't officially supported!
If you don't want to bend the pins, instead use an internal SCSI connector. The connector is the correct width - connect only the correct half of the SCSI connector to the MPEG card.
There is one upgrade that has been produced by Creative for the Annihilator Pro - however, it has been leaked and is not available officially on their website (it is not really meant for all users at the moment). You can download it from the following website:
http://zoiah.m3dzone.com/
under the Random Stuff / NVIDIA-based videocards / Creative / Annihilator Pro / 2.10.07.02.12 section.
This BIOS version is supposed to fix problems with the Annihilator Pro only displaying 16MB of RAM detected on bootup.
You can also use an NVIDIA reference BIOS: see the 'Where can I get the latest NVIDIA Flash BIOS and which should I use?' question.
Be warned that using the NVIDIA BIOS will void your warranty. Also, check your card's current BIOS version as some cards already have a more up to date BIOS than the NVIDIA BIOS that is available. Check this by rebooting and looking at the screen that comes up before the POST screen - the control panel applet does not give a reliable reading of the CL BIOS version (read the 'How do Creative's BIOS versions differ from NVIDIA's BIOS versions?' question for the reason why).
This response was given by William Ball of Creative:
We have a different versioning convention from NVIDIA. Basically ours is CC.cc.oo.mm.ee and NVIDIA's is CC.cc.mm.ee.oo, where .oo is the OEM revision. So on NVIDIA's control panel or NVFLASH program, the .oo part is displayed last whilst our bootup signon message and the later BlasterControl application would display our convention. So, for our SDR BIOS, the version is displayed as 2.10.1.01.04 (our convention) instead of 2.10.01.04.1 (NVIDIA's convention). This might have led people to believe that we are using a 2.10.01.01 BIOS.
This is a known limitation of the current Creative drivers. Creative may release a driver set in the future that fixes this problem.
Unscrew the fan from the card, and lift it away. Blow away any dust that is around the fan. Then peel back the sticker from the back of the fan (the side you don't usually see) and put a drop of oil in the small metal area that you should be able to see. Replace the fan and put the screws back in (not too tightly). This should stop the grinding and will not invalidate your warranty so long as you don't damage the card.
By the way, if you're looking for a really good replacement fan, I and many others recommend the Tennmax's Lasagna BGA cooler. It's great quality, should keep your GeForce very cool, and doesn't obstruct your first PCI slot either.
This is a known limitation of the current Creative drivers - the core clock speed can not be adjusted. You can download a utility that will allow you to set both core and memory clock here.
The Annihilator board has SDR memory: the Pro board has DDR memory. DDR is twice as fast as SDR, and so at high resolutions (1024x768x32 and above) the DDR board is a lot faster than the SDR board. SDR memory has pins on only two sides: DDR memory has pins on all four sides.
Unified is a Glide wrapper created by Creative, so that you can run 3dfx only games on your non-3dfx card. You can download it from:
http://www.americas.creative.com/hotgraphics/unified/
However, it may not accept your serial number (you should try using the one on the actual card that begins with T). If you still can't get it to work, email William Ball (bball@creativelabs.com) with your serial number and he will email the files to you.
At least 250 watts is recommended and 300 watts is ideal: however, you may still be able to run it on 230W or lower (mine runs on 200W, and I've had a report of someone running on 150W). You need a more powerful power supply if you have a more advanced processor like the Athlon or more components in your system.
This information was sent to me by NVIDIA's Manager of Developer 3D Tools and Technology:
S3's texture compression scheme (S3TC) was licensed to Microsoft who incorporated it into DirectX. It is referred to as DXTC compression in Direct3D. The GeForce supports all five texture compression formats in Direct3D. With the 5.xx (Detonator 2) drivers the GeForce also supports S3TC texture compression in OpenGL.You cannot use the compressed textures in Unreal Tournament because in Unreal Tournament they are currently only available under S3's MeTaL API. The Direct3D and OpenGL implementations in Unreal Tournament do not currently support the compressed textures. This is a limitation of the current Unreal Tournament Direct3D and OpenGL engines, but it is available in Direct3D and OpenGL if Epic wishes to implement it. NVIDIA has offered to help with this.
It should be set to half your system RAM if possible, and if not it should be set at some point below or equal to the amount of RAM that you have. However, it is possible to experience speed advantages of 2-3 fps from setting the AGP Aperture size to 256 regardless of the amount of RAM that you have, and there are some games that may have visual problems fixed by setting the AGP Aperture size to 256.
Beware that setting the AGP Aperture size too low (below 32) will actually disable AGP which will cause a speed decrease, although stability problems may be solved - see the 'My GeForce keeps on locking up. How can I fix it?' question for more information.
There are also some programs that have problems (stuttering for example) when the aperture size is set too high. Experiment and see which setting is best for your system and programs.
It's possible that if you set your AGP Aperture size to 256 you will be able to load the 64MB texture test in 3DMark2000.
You can only change this in your BIOS setup - it may be called something slightly different, so look for a setting that is measured in MB and can be set to values such as 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256. Different motherboards allow different settings: my motherboard for example only allows me to set it to 64 or 256.
Creative Labs recommend setting this to UC. In the end it doesn't have a very great effect on performance and your system should work either way. If you know differently, email me!
WARNING: This section is really only for people who understand how DOS works. Don't email me asking what conventional memory or TSRs are, how to use EMM386 or LOADHIGH, or for instructions as to how to edit your autoexec.bat file - if you don't know, then this section is too advanced for you.
There is a program called VGABIOS that was written by NVIDIA. It is a TSR program that will load a Video BIOS after you have booted your machine, and use that BIOS instead of the BIOS on your card.
This means that if something goes wrong, all you have to do is remove VGABIOS from your startup files and your old BIOS will be used instead (it is unaffected by the process.
The disadvantage of this is firstly that the program takes up 64KB of memory (oh no!) and secondly that I imagine it is very, very slightly slower.
The program cannot be run under Windows - you must run it either before Windows starts or in MS-DOS mode.
You can download the latest version of this program from the following website:
http://zoiah.m3dzone.com/
under the Flasing & Dumping / Flashing Tools / TSR-BIOS Tools section.
The syntax for the program is 'vgabios -fFILENAME' where FILENAME is the name of your video BIOS file. You can put this in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file and load it at bootup.
If you want to save on 64KB of conventional, you can use LOADHIGH (after loading EMM386) to load VGABIOS into the HMA.
There are step-by-step instructions for using VGABIOS available at the following website:
http://zoiah.m3dzone.com/
under the Flasing & Dumping / Tutorials / How-to use VGABIOS section.
See the 'Where can I get the latest NVIDIA Flash BIOS and which should I use?' question for information on NVIDIA reference Flash BIOS files.
You can download the latest (leaked) NVIDIA GeForce flash BIOS files from the following site:
http://zoiah.m3dzone.com/
under the Reference / BIOSes / GeForce (256/2 GTS) BIOSes section.
Once you get to the site, you will have a number of options as to which Flash BIOS you should download. Here is a short guide (thanks RobRich):
| If you have a: | Use |
|---|---|
| SDR card with no TV-OUT (Creative Labs Annihilator) | SM |
| SDR card with a Brooktree TV-OUT | BT |
| SDR card with a Chrontel TV-OUT | CH |
| DDR card with no TV-OUT (Creative Labs Annihilator Pro) | SMDDR |
| DDR card with a Brooktree TV-OUT | DDRBT |
| DDR card with a Chrontel TV-OUT | DDRCH (not available) |
If you don't know what TV-OUT chip you have, go into the NVIDIA Display Control Panel and take a look at the main 'GeForce 256' tab. There should be a line that says 'TV Encoder Type' - thanks Matthew Manor!
WARNING: Before you flash your card with the standard NVIDIA BIOS, please note that once you have done so you will NOT be able to:
In addition you will void your warranty. Please do NOT email your manufacturer if this goes wrong!
For that reason, I would advise everyone to make a backup of their original BIOS file before they flash their BIOS. You can use a program called SaveBIOS to do this - just run the program and it will create a VIDBIOS.BIN file. Put this file somewhere safe, and if you ever need to revert back to the old version just use NVFlash with your backup file.
You can download SaveBIOS here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/savebios.zip
If you were silly and didn't take a backup, try the following page:
http://zoiah.m3dzone.com/
under the BIOS / Manufacture BIOSes section.
See the 'Where can I get and how do I use NVFlash?' question for information on using the NVFlash program that actually flashes the Video BIOS.
You might also want to read the 'How can I use the latest Video BIOS without flashing my Video BIOS?' question.
NVFlash does not work under Windows 2000.
You might want to read the 'How can I use the latest Video BIOS without flashing my Video BIOS?' question. Be warned that flashing your Video BIOS could quite possibly permanently damage your card, and it is unlikely that any company would be willing to replace the card for free. Having said that, so long as you follow these instructions you should not have any problems. This is NOT for beginners.
You can download the NVIDIA Flash program at the following website:
http://zoiah.m3dzone.com/
Download the latest version under the BIOS / Utilities / NVFlash section.
You will also need a copy of DOS4GW - download it at the following website:
http://www.fastgraphics.com/zip/dos4gw.zip
Extract both files to an empty directory, along with the Flash BIOS file that you are going to use (see 'Where can I get the latest NVIDIA Flash BIOS and which should I use?' question).
Reboot your PC and when it says 'Starting Windows 9x...' press F8. Select 'Safe Mode Command Prompt'.
Switch to the directory where you extracted the files and type: NVFLASH -fFILENAME where FILENAME is the name of the Flash BIOS file you downloaded.
Now wait. The screen may go black, but watch the keyboard lights - they will make a pretty pattern to assure you that the system is still working ;)
When the process is finished, reboot.
The GeForce does not support DVI inside the chip itself - it was added with another external chip. This should not cause problems.
The GeForce 2 supports DVI in the chip itself - however there appears to be a problem as the chip can and does generate out of band signals. This means that with some displays there is no problem but with others there is.
If the manufacturer uses an external chip for DVI output on a GeForce 2 this is not a problem, but be wary of using a GeForce 2 card without an external chip with your flat panel display as it may not work.
There is more information on this problem at the following website:
http://www.riva3d.com/dvi.html
The Quadro is a high end version of the GeForce for 3D graphic designers. It costs a lot more and generally comes with more Video RAM. There are some extra features that it supports as well:
However, the only physical difference between the GeForce and the Quadro (apart from the extra RAM) is that a few resistors are in a different location. It is possible to resolder these resistors to make your GeForce think it is a Quadro.
WARNING: If you resolder your resistors then you will void your warranty. In addition you could permenantly mess up your card if you get it wrong. For gamers there is very little advantage in performing this conversion.
To read more about this operation, see benchmarks before and after, and find out where the all important resistors are and where you should move them to, read the pages on the following website:
http://go.163.com/~xtennis/G-Quadro/
(Note that there is more than one page - scroll to the bottom for more pages)
There is also a mirror of some of the above site along with some more information on the following website:
http://www.geocities.com/tnaw_xtennis/
There is a list being compiled here:
http://www.g256.com/guides/geforcecomp.shtml
If you have a GeForce 2 you might want to also read this page:
http://www.insanehardware.com/articles/nvidiacompatible.htm
Make sure that your card is firmly seated in the AGP slot, and clean away any dust in the slot or on the card.
Try a different monitor. In some rare cases the GeForce simply won't work with a certain monitor. If this is the case, try replacing the GeForce and seeing if that helps.
If the above solutions don't help, you could try taping up the last pin (furthest from the backplate) on both sides of the card.
You will have to return your motherboard to Abit for modification. There is a compatability between this motherboard and certain manufacturer's GeForce 2 cards. It will not cost you anything in labour and component charges but you will have to pay for P&P to and from Abit. Contact Abit for more information.
Try slightly changing your FSB speed.
This may be caused by an overloaded power supply. Try upgrading your power supply to at least 300 watts.
If you have a Creative card, contact Creative and they will supply you with an updated Video BIOS that may fix this problem. You can also find a link to download the updated BIOS in the 'Are there any newer Video BIOS upgrades for the Annihilator?' question.
You may want to replace the card even if this does help: this problem may also be a bad solder joint on one of the memory chips that causes problems occasionally or all the time.
Try disabling the SCSI BIOS on your card if you don't need it. You only need it enabled if you actually boot off the SCSI device.
You may need an updated SCSI BIOS for your AHA-39160 card. The version you need is 2.57.2 or later. You can download the BIOS from Adaptec's site.
This seems to be caused by the Backup utility supplied with Windows 9x attempting to detect new tape devices on boot. You can fix it by renaming the files drvwppqt.vxd and drvwq117.vxd in the Windows\System\Iosubsys directory. If you find this causes your tape drive to stop working, you'll have to rename the files back. You can safely delete the files if you don't have a tape drive or don't get problems.
Another possible fix is to simply disable the startup sound.
Both of these problems may be caused by your monitor. Try another monitor and see if it fixes the problem.
The first problem in particular seems to be caused by non-DDC compliancy. You may also experience a pause when you enter the Output Devices tab in the Display Control Panel.
Check in your C:\CONFIG.SYS file to see if you are loading EMM386.EXE. If you are, remove the line.
Make sure you have the latest drivers installed.
This solution is outlined on this page:
http://www.daytonsmisc.com/article1.htm
Go into the System Control Panel, click on Device Manager, and find your CD/DVD-ROM drive(s) and hard drive(s). Go into each one, click on Settings and tick DMA. This enables UltraDMA.
Make a permenant swap file of 150MB. In the System Control Panel, click on Performance and select Virtual Memory. Select 'Let me select my own virtual memory settings', select the hard drive that you want the swapfile on (the fastest drive) and type 150 in both boxes. Click OK, ignore the warning and restart.
Make sure that Video BIOS shadowing is disabled in your BIOS.
Make sure that your GeForce card is not sharing any IRQs with another card - the only device that can have the same IRQ is the 'IRQ Holder for PCI Steering'. If you find that the GeForce is sharing an IRQ, try moving the card that it is sharing the IRQ with to another slot.
If your AGP Aperture is set to 256MB, try setting it to another amount, as described in the 'What should my AGP Aperture size be set to?' question.
You can try disabling auto-mipmapping in the control panel. This has helped some people with stuttering problems: however, it may result in reduced image quality and overall speed.
Try installing the Intel chipset drivers from:
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/driver.htm.
There is a problem with this chipset and the AGP Fast Writes function of the GeForce which means that 3D applications are actually slower. You can find out more about disabling AGP Fast Writes in the 'How can I disable AGP Fast Writes?' question.
You may not have to switch off Fast Writes in the 5.08+ drivers, especially 5.14+ - the problem seems to be fixed.
If you are having problems with the i820, and you are using SDRAM memory, you will probably need to get your motherboard and memory replaced, for free, by Intel. See this page for more details:
http://www.intel.com/support/mth/
Contact your manufacturer for an updated Video BIOS. Creative will certainly be able to supply you with a Video BIOS to fix this problem.
There is a beta driver from VIA that should fix lockups. You can read more about it, download it and find out how to install it at the following website:
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/00q2/000508/kx133-01.html
There is a solution for the AGP disabled problem available at the following website:
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/00q2/000417/kx133-04.html
Make sure that you installed the VIA AGP driver in 'Turbo' mode - otherwise you will be restricted to AGP1X only.
In addition, make sure you read the 'How can I enable AGP4X in the 5.16+ driver sets on my VIA 133A or VIA KX133 chipset motherboard?' question.
Try changing the 'Video Cacheing Mode' setting in your BIOS to UC (Uncacheable) as opposed to UCWC (Uncacheable, Write Combining).
Try installing the latest BIOS update for your motherboard. You can get help with finding out what BIOS you need and instructions as to how to flash it at Wim's BIOS page
Try installing the latest NVIDIA reference drivers. Drivers 5.16+ may fix this problem.
Try installing the latest VIA AGP drivers.
Try changing the AGP Aperture size in your BIOS to another value.
Try using the registry key mentioned in the 'How can I enable AGP4X in the 5.16+ driver sets on my VIA 133A or VIA KX133 chipset motherboard?' question with the 5.16+ drivers.
Try disabling the Windows startup logo by either using TweakUI (in the Boot tab, uncheck 'Display splash screen while booting') or editing the c:\msdos.sys file (don't forget to turn off the read only attribute first) and putting 'Logo=0' in the '[Options]' section.
Boot to Windows as normal, and once Windows is fully loaded, hold the left SHIFT key and click start, shutdown, then restart. Once you see the message 'Windows is restarting...' you can let go of the SHIFT key. You will now have the correct amount of video and texture memory and will be able to run the 64MB texture text in 3DMark2000 and you will be able to set the AGP aperture size to 256 without crashing.
Unfortunately you will need to perform this step each time you boot up your PC. There is no other known fix.
Try going into Safe Mode and go to Control Panel / System. Remove all monitor devices listed and let Windows redetect the monitor when it restarts.
Try changing your refresh rate. See the 'How can I set the refresh rate above 60hz?' question for more details.
If you have no monitor drivers for your monitor, select 'Plug and Play Monitor' from the (Standard monitor types) section of the monitor drivers list.
This may be caused by a lack of power. Try removing some other devices from your system (e.g. fans, CD-ROM drives, PCI cards) and see if it helps. If it does help, upgrade your power supply.
Try forcing AGP1X. Read the 'How can I force AGP1X to be used instead of AGP2X or AGP4X?' question for more information.
If you have this problems with Quake 3 Arena, make sure you read the 'I get flickering textures in Quake 3 Arena and Windows 9x. How can I fix it?' question first.
If you have this problems with Half-Life, make sure you read the 'I get visual problems with Half-Life. How can I fix them?' question first.
Try upgrading your Video BIOS to the latest version. You might want to read the 'Where can I get the latest NVIDIA Flash BIOS and which should I use?' question.
Driver versions 3.67 and above should fix this problem for some people: however, if they don't help, here are some other solutions:
Try changing your AGP Aperture to another value (keep it above 16 as setting it at or below 16 will disable AGP).
Try installing the latest BIOS update for your motherboard. You can get help with finding out what BIOS you need and instructions as to how to flash it at Wim's BIOS page
Try connecting your CPU fan to another socket on the motherboard.
Try reseating all of the components on your motherboard (including power leads and the GeForce).
Try turning up the I/O voltage of the motherboard in the BIOS by a small amount.
Try taking out all but one of your memory chips, if you have more than one. Also try taking out extra drives, fans and cards. If this solves the problem, try another power supply that is more powerful (300 watts is a good power level to try).
Try switching on AGP Turbo, turning up the bus speed, or setting your AGP ratio to 1:1, (in that order) - this will put extra strain on the card, but it seems to fix the problem for some people.
After trying the above, try turning up the bus speed above 100 and setting the AGP ratio to 1:1.
Try forcing AGP1X. Read the 'How can I force AGP1X to be used instead of AGP2X or AGP4X?' question for more information.
Try turning down the AGP Aperture to 16 or below, if your motherboard supports it. This will disable AGP, but may fix your problem. You can also use DXDiag to disable AGP.
If you have a Reelmagic Hollywood Plus or another DVD decoder card, try taking it out and seeing if that helps. An motherboard that supports ATA66 may also cause these problems in some cases. If this does seem to be the problem, take the DVD card out immediately because some people appear to have actually had their GeForce damaged somehow.
Try reflashing the video card's BIOS with the BIOS supplied from the CD by copying the BIOS files to your hard drive, rebooting, pressing F8 on the Starting Windows 9x screen and selecting 'Safe Mode Command Prompt' and then running the utility. The version is the same as the version currently on your card but it may fix the problem.
These are polygon junctions. You should only be worried if these occur without overclocking.
The following may help to reduce your problem:
If you are playing with a Quake engine based game, try the console command:
Reset all of the options in the GeForce control panel to default.
Try underclocking your card.
Try going into 32 bit colour mode instead of 16 bit.
Replace your card if you can. It is most likely that it is defective.
Try installing the latest BIOS update for your motherboard. You can get help with finding out what BIOS you need and instructions as to how to flash it at Wim's BIOS page
If you have a Super Socket 7 motherboard, the registry fix in the 'I have instability problems with my Super Socket 7 motherboard. How can I fix them?' question may help.
Try enabling the 1MB memory hole between 15-16MB in your BIOS.
Try putting the following program in your Startup folder. It sets the CPU-to-PCI Bridge latency timer to 0. You can download the program here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/mvp3_latency12.zip.
Try disabling DMA transfers on all of your drives. You can do this under the System control panel by opening each drive in turn and disabling DMA under the 'Settings' tab. This will reduce your drive's performance but may fix the problem.
Try installing the latest reference drivers. The 5.22+ drivers fix many problems with TV cards and may make the steps below unnecessary.
The following instructions were provided by Bill Ball from Creative Labs, who got them from NVIDIA:
Open the Display properties.
Go to Settings, Advanced, GeForce/TNT/TNT2/TNT2Ultra, Additional Properties, Overlay Color Control.
You can make adjustments or just hit the Default button and hit OK.
Close the Display properties.
The point of this seemingly useless maneuver is that it creates a registry key that you will need IF you have not opened the Overlay Color Control sheet before. If you have, then just skip the above step.
Run Regedit and locate this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\000#\NVIDIA\DirectDraw
Note: You may have several display entries numbered successively. Usually the last one is the active one, but if you have several that refer to other graphics cards no longer installed, you may want to delete them or run any uninstall for those cards. If you have several referring to your current card and can't figure out which is active, you may want to reboot into Safe Mode, go into Device Manager and remove ALL display driver entries and reboot to reinstall the drivers once.
In the active DirectDraw key create a new DWORD entry called VideoBusMasterMode and give it a value of 1.
Close regedit and reboot
Try the TV card application. NVIDIA says this fixes the ATI TV Wonder and they believe it will fix the Hauppauge and other cards.
If not, run regedit again and look for this entry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\000#\NVIDIA\DirectDraw\OverlayMode
If this does not help, and you have a card based on the Brooktree BT848 chipset, you can disable Overlay mode until a fix is found by going into the following registry key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\bt848\Force Primary
and changing the default value from 0 to 1.
Finally, if all else fails, try loading two copies of your TV card application. The second instance of the application may not show the problem. This may be the only way to fix the problem in Windows 2000.
Have you got Windows 95? You must have OSR2 and the USB supplement installed.
Upgrade to Windows 98.
Try the following instructions:
Click Start / Run.
Type "win.ini" (without quotes) and press OK.
Search for a line that says "DVA=0" (without quotes).
Add a semicolon (;) before the DVA (The line should now look like this: ";DVA=0" (without quotes))
Save and close the file
If you find this causes more problems, just take out the semicolon. The setting refers to Direct Video Access - apart from that very little is known about it, but it should not cause any problems when enabled.
Note that not everyone has this line, and if there is none you'll have to try another solution.
If you have a Tyan Trinity 400 motherboard, try reverting to the BIOS revision 1.0.
Try forcing AGP1X. Read the 'How can I force AGP1X to be used instead of AGP2X or AGP4X?' question for more information.
Try downloading and installing the iopagelock.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/iopagelock.reg
The problem might be fixed by the fix mentioned in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article here.
This is a known issue with Windows 9x, due to the way in which it accesses memory. Because Windows 2000 uses the NT style of accessing memory, the problem does not occur. The problem only turns up with the GeForce because it is one of the first cards to to be 100% true AGP (most other cards still address memory via the PCI bus because developers can design the cards to be cheaper that way). Thanks to Anthony McDowell for explaining this problem to me!
This is a 'feature' of Windows 2000 - it uses ACPI in such a way that all devices share the same IRQ, usually 9 or 11. If you don't have problems, then leave it alone, but if you do get problems, use one of the procedures below:
Disable P&P OS and ACPI in your BIOS, if you can - if the option is not available try installing the latest BIOS update for your motherboard. You can get help with finding out what BIOS you need and instructions as to how to flash it at Wim's BIOS page
Reboot. Go to Control Panel - Hardware and double click on My Computer in the hardware manager.
You'll see ACPI - get into its properties and click to install another driver. When prompted, look under the Microsoft section and install the "Standard PC" driver.
Reboot. At this point Win2k will try and reinstall all devices on your system so install any drivers you are prompted for (have them all handy) and reboot. Finalise any drivers you may be prompted for on the 2nd boot and reboot again.
With all your drivers re-installed, take a look in hardware manager - and every device should have its own IRQ.
Be warned that this method is discouraged by Microsoft - see the note at the bottom of this Knowledge Base article.
You can press F7 during the portion of setup that displays the message to press F6 for adding SCSI drivers. This configures Setup to not try ACPI machine types. By doing so, you are not required to edit a file.
If for some reason the above procedure doesn't work, follow the following procedure, provided by Aaron Dierking, to disable ACPI from the outset.
Copy the i386 directory off the Windows 2000 CD onto your hard drive.
Go into the i386 directory on your HDD and find the txtsetup.sif. Open it with notepad.
Find the [ACPIOptions] section in the file. Below will be a setting for ACPIEnable - set it to 0.
Install Windows 2000 using your hard drive copy.
It is possible that this problem only turns up after recovering from your monitor's power saving mode. Try rebooting.
Try changing the 'Monitor timing' in 'Other options' in the NVIDIA control panel to first GTF and then DMT.
Try changing the refresh rate.
Try manually adding the following switch to your pstrip.ini in PowerStrip 2.62:
[Options]
ClkDeviation=n
where n is an integer between 5 and 1000. If set, the PowerStrip will post-process all mode changes in search of a close, but hopefully more stable refresh rate. A lower n is more likely to reduce jitter but also likely to vary more from the desired refresh rate. Try a value of 250 and work downwards until you arrive at something suitable.
You can download a demo of PowerStrip at the following website:
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/
It may be that your monitor does not have 75 ohm terminators on all unused D-subs and BNC inputs. Some monitors may have a (very small) switch on the back which will allow you to switch this on (one example is the Eizo Flexscan T562). It may have an infinity sign at one end and 75 ohm at the other end. Switch this to 75 ohm.
If you have BNC inputs to your monitor try buying a lead that will allow you to use them. They must be 75 ohm BNC cables.
Try using RF chokes on the monitor cable.
Try using an external VGA signal amplifier between your GeForce and your monitor. There is information on such a buffer at the following website:
http://www.extron.com/product/product.asp?id=p-2da2plus
Be warned, however, that these buffers are expensive!
It could be a dodgy card. Try replacing it if it's still under warranty.
Try another monitor and cable. This issue seems to turn up especially with Trinitron and DiamondTron monitors, and unfortunately there is no current fix.
Try going into the troubleshooting tab of the advanced settings of your video card (Windows 2000) or System Control Panel / Performance / Graphics (Windows NT4) and setting the Hardware Acceleration slider one notch down. This may also make your system faster and more stable.
This may occur in Windows 2000 when the mouse pointer shadow is enabled. Disable it by going into Control Panel / Mouse / Pointer and deactivating the mouse shadow.
You may also need to reset your mouse pointer scheme to 'None' in Control Panel / Mouse / Pointer.
If you have a USB mouse that can be moved to PS/2, try using the PS/2 port instead. It may fix the problem without having to perform any of the above solutions.
You can disable certain features that cause problems with Super Socket 7 motherboards using the ss7compat1.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/ss7compat1.reg
If you still get problems, you can disable even more features using the ss7compat2.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/ss7compat2.reg
You can reenable all features again using the ss7compatoff.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/ss7compatoff.reg
If these files don't seem to have any effect, you may have to edit them in Notepad and change the 0000 to 0001, or another value. Take a look at the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display key using regedit and find out which number your graphics card is using.
This registry tweak may not work in the 5.xx drivers.
There are a number of causes of this:
Are you overclocking either the GeForce or your processor? If you are, try clocking back to normal, leaving the case lid off and underclocking and see if it fixes the problem. If it does, you need more cooling.
Have you assigned an IRQ to VGA in your BIOS? If not, do so.
Have you got an IRQ conflict with the GeForce and another card? The only device that can have the same IRQ is the 'IRQ Holder for PCI Steering'. If so, try moving the card to another slot (in particular avoid the first PCI slot as this frequently is forced to share an IRQ with the AGP slot) or assigning a different IRQ to that slot in the BIOS.
Are you running a virus checker in the background? Try disabling it.
Other things to try:
Try turning the 'Hardware acceleration' slider in the System Control Panel's Performance / Graphics section down one notch. This may also increase performance!
Try installing the latest AGP drivers for your motherboard chipset if you haven't got an Intel motherboard.
Try installing the latest (leaked) drivers.
Try changing your AGP Aperture to another value (keep it above 16 as setting it at or below 16 will disable AGP).
Try installing the latest BIOS update for your motherboard. You can get help with finding out what BIOS you need and instructions as to how to flash it at Wim's BIOS page
Try installing the latest Video BIOS update for your GeForce. You could also try using an NVIDIA reference BIOS (if you are feeling brave): see the 'Where can I get the latest NVIDIA Flash BIOS and which should I use?' question.
Make sure that old drivers are cleaned out by using the method described in the question: 'How can I completely uninstall old NVIDIA or Creative Labs GeForce drivers?'.
If you are using CAS3 memory at CAS2 or in any other way running memory over specifications, try resetting it back to defaults.
Try installing the Intel chipset drivers from:
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/driver.htm
for all versions of Windows 9x.
If you have an 'AGP Driving Control' setting in your BIOS, try switching it to 'BA' or another value instead of 'Auto'.
If you have a VIA chipset, try enabling AGP4X. Read the 'How can I enable AGP4X in the 5.16+ driver sets on my VIA 133A or VIA KX133 chipset motherboard?' question. You may also want to try disabling AGP4X in your BIOS and using the viaagp4xoff.reg registry file mentioned in the above question.
It is possible that this is caused by bus collisions. Try following these steps provided by William Ball from Creative Labs:
Disable non-essential add-in devices except video one at a time in Device Manager. For example:
See if lock up behavior is resolved. If not, physically remove the add-in cards and run the game again.
Once you get a stable platform, start re-installing/re-enabling devices.
If you have an LX based motherboard or an early revision of your motherboard, read the 'What's all this with the GeForce and early motherboards?' question in this FAQ.
If you think that your motherboard is not supplying your GeForce with enough power, try the tip mentioned on this web page:
http://www.systemlogic.net/articles/00/8/agpstability/
The page provides instructions on how to power your GeForce's fan from the motherboard, reducing the power required by the GeForce.
If you have an Athlon motherboard, read the 'What's all this with the GeForce and the Athlon?' question in this FAQ.
If you have Super Socket 7 based motherboard, read the 'I have instability problems with my Super Socket 7 motherboard. How can I fix them?' question in this FAQ.
If you have an Athlon motherboard, try disabling Super Bypass in your BIOS setup or using the Chipid program available here:
http://www.slota.com/files/chipid.zip
If you have an Asus card and are running the SmartDoctor utility, try disabling it.
If your network card has a boot BIOS and the ability to disable it, try disabling it.
Try disabling Advanced Power Management in the System Control Panel.
Try connecting your CPU fan to another socket on the motherboard.
Try reseating all of the components on your motherboard (including power leads and the GeForce).
Try turning up the I/O voltage of the motherboard in the BIOS by a small amount if your BIOS supports it.
Try switching on AGP Turbo, turning up the Front Side Bus speed slightly, or setting your AGP ratio to 1:1 (in that order) - this will put extra strain on the card, but it seems to fix the problem for some people.
If you have memory that isn't rated for the Front Side Bus speed that you are running at, or if you have unbranded (low quality) memory, you might want to try replacing or taking out the slower / unbranded memory and see if it fixes your problem.
It is possible that your power supply is not supplying enough power to the components in your system (the GeForce is quite power hungry). Try temporarily unplugging any extra cards, drives, fans and DIMMS that you have and see if that helps. If it does, you will need to get a more powerful power supply - 300W is a good level to aim at.
If you are using CAS3 memory, and can get access to some CAS2 memory, try using that instead (you will have to set your BIOS to use CAS2).
Try disabling AGP Fast Writes. Read the 'How can I disable AGP Fast Writes?' question for more information.
Try forcing AGP1X. Read the 'How can I force AGP1X to be used instead of AGP2X or AGP4X?' question for more information.
If you have enabled AGP sidebanding with AGP Wizard or with an updated Video BIOS, try disabling it again. This may help, but will reduce performance slightly.
Try turning down the AGP Aperture to 16 or below, if your motherboard supports it. This will disable AGP, which will reduce performance slightly, but may fix your problem. You can also use DXDiag to disable AGP.
The GeForce has stability problems when using Athlon motherboards based on AMD's chipset and AGP2X, due to 'poor filtering on the AGP strobe line'. AMD have released a new version of their motherboard chipset which fixes this problem and this is now being implemented into motherboards. NVIDIA have released drivers (3.62 onwards) that will disable AGP2X if an Athlon motherboard with an AMD chipset is detected.
However, some system configurations do not display this instability, and on these motherboards you can use the athlon2xon.reg registry file to force AGP2X - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/athlon2xon.reg
This will enable the AGP2X support no matter what motherboard and chip you have. Creative have also released a utility which enables you to force AGP2X support on any motherboard - see the 'What is the status of AGP sidebanding in the latest drivers?' question in this FAQ for more details.
If you have problems after enabling this, you will have to manually remove the registry key:
Run Regedit.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\System.
Delete the value named 'EnableIrongate2x'.
WARNING: The registry file may not work if you have a 64MB Prophet II card. It seems that AGP2X is disabled in the video BIOS for Athlons with that card. In addition you may not be able to use AGP2X if you have the Athlon AGP sidebanding hack enabled as well in the 5.xx drivers.
I received the following information from from Louis-Philippe Dubrule:
For the Irongate based motherboards (AMD's 750 chipset), in order to be able to use AGP2X reliably you need one that has the 751 IronGate Stepping 5 chipset (or later). One sign of this is if the board supports the "SuperBypass" function or not.You should always be able to use AGP2X if your motherboard is based on another non-AMD IronGate chipset, such as the Via KX133.
However, it is still possible that you will not be able to enable AGP2X on a Stepping 5+ motherboard.
The 5.22+ drivers may help AGP2X instability problems for Athlon users.
Don't worry yourself too much about being able to enable AGP2X as the performance increase from AGP1X to AGP2X is only minimal, and even then the increase is only significant in games that have to use AGP memory in order to run - most games can simply load all their textures into the on board video RAM, in which case you will only see a speedup when the textures are loaded initially at the start of the game.
All users with AMD chipset based motherboards should also install AMD's latest AGP Miniport Driver. You can get download it at the following webpage:
http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/bin/
Some early LX, BX and Via 133 motherboards do not meet the AGP specification, which means that they do not supply enough power to the GeForce card. In the case of the LX and BX motherboards this is because they use linear voltage regulators which do not supply enough power. This can cause instability problems. It also appears that it can cause TV-OUT to stop working (see the 'TV-OUT is greyed out on my TV-OUT capable GeForce. How can I fix it?' question). Unfortunately the only way to see if your motherboard will work is to try it out, or ask if anyone has your motherboard and can successfully use the GeForce on it. It is also possible that a BIOS update will be able to fix this problem.
It seems that the GeForce2 does not have this problem because it uses a 0.18 micron architecture that requires less power.
If your motherboard supports being able to increase the I/O voltage of the motherboard in the BIOS, you can also increase this value slightly to fix the problem.
Since the LX motherboards are the ones which have the problem most, below there is a list of LX motherboards that WILL work with the GeForce (although it's not definitive). Below that is a list of LX, BX and Via 133 motherboards that MAY exhibit problems - if you can add to any of these lists, please email me.
LX motherboards that can support the GeForce:
LX motherboards that cannot support the GeForce:
BX motherboards that cannot support the GeForce:
Via Apollo Pro motherboard that cannot support the GeForce:
Via 133 motherboards that cannot support the GeForce:
Yes, so long as you have the revision which have 'Voodoo3' jumpers. If you close these jumpers (put a jumper block over them) the card should work. If it does not have these jumpers, the motherboard does not meet the AGP specification - see the 'What's all this with the GeForce and early LX / BX / Via 133 motherboards?' question for more information.
This is a table of the revisions that do or do not have the 'Voodoo3' jumpers, kindly provided by Clay Pot:
| Model | Version | Jumper? | Jumper location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6BA | 2.9 and below | No | |
| 3.0 and above | Yes | JP11, JP12 | |
| 6BXC | 1.9 and below | No | |
| 2.0 and above | Yes | JP12, JP13 | |
| 6BXE | 1.9 and below | No | |
| 2.0 and above | Yes | JP18, JP19 | |
| BX2000(+) | 1.0 | No | |
| 1.1 and above | Yes | JP20, JP21 |
If you have a 6BXA, you will have to replace the board for a later revision, as there are no revisions with the 'Voodoo3' jumper.
If you have any of the other boards, you can perform some rewiring - see the 'How can I get my Abit LX6, Asus P2L97 or Gigabyte 6BXC, 6BXE or BX2000 working with the GeForce?' question.
You may get lockups with these motherboards due to the fact that they may not operate according to the AGP specification - see the 'What's all this with the GeForce and early LX / BX / Via 133 motherboards?' question for more information. You may not get this problem with your motherboard however - if your card is operating properly there is no need to perform the following step!
There are some websites that have details as to how to get the motherboards working, with some rewiring... of course, this will invalidate your motherboard's warranty - use it as a last resort only!
The rewiring will mean that the linear voltage regulator that causes the problems is bypassed. The instructions may be for getting a Voodoo3 or TNT to work - however, the same solution will also work for the GeForce.
If this solution messes up your system, it's your problem.
The fix for the Abit LX6 is available here:
http://hem.fyristorg.com/redtop/
The Asus P2L97 only has this problem in revision 1.05 and any earlier revisions.
The fix for the Asus P2L97 is available here:
http://www.asus.com.tw/products/Techref/Misc/rivatnt-rework.html
For the Gigabyte motherboards, you may only need to set some jumpers - see the 'Will my Gigabyte 6BA, 6BXC, 6BXE or BX2000 work with the GeForce?' question in this FAQ. Otherwise, each of the pages on this German website has one picture of the motherboard, and one picture of the underside of the motherboard and the pins you must connect.
All three of these solutions have been confirmed to work, and there is a page up with some English instructions here:
http://www.cyberwizards.com.au/~leppy/6bxe/bypass.htm
The fix for the BX2000 is available here:
http://www.nickles.de/artikel/html/27.htm
The fix for the 6BXC is available here:
http://www.nickles.de/artikel/html/29.htm
The fix for the 6BXE is available here:
http://www.nickles.de/artikel/html/28.htm
Thanks to Markus Weissmann who told me about this solution from Creative Labs:
The Asus K7M has a jumper for selecting the I/O-voltage, which is set to 3.4V by default. Set this to 3.31V (since this is the 'official' voltage for video cards). On the K7M this jumper is on the upper right side, a jumper-block with 4 pins.
This is also true of the Abit BE6-II, which is set to have an I/O voltage of 3.5V by default. Try changing this to 3.31V.
This information was mailed to me by a Creative representative, and the information is straight from Asus:
This problem was not found with systems built with 133MHz FSB CPUs. Neither was it observed with other AGP 4X capable graphics controllers such as the Matrox G400 and S3 Savage4. But for a 100MHz/100MHz CPU FSB/SDRAM configuration, the problem would only occur in AGP 4X mode and some P3C-2000 motherboards. To fix it, enable the reserved test mode by moving the JP5 jumper to the 2-3 pins on the motherboard whenever applicable. The test mode is designed to increase the noise margin and most systems were proved in our lab to workaround this problem in the test mode. If the test mode can not solve this problem, please contact us directly.
It is also possible to fix this with an extra capacitor on the motherboard, and as such in the later production versions of the board there is no longer a problem. You can tell if your board has been altered if it's version number is '1.12.' - the dot at the end of the version number indicates that it has been fixed (and of course any versions after '1.12.' will have been fixed too).
Try disabling USB in your BIOS if you don't use it. It may help solve your problems.
These instructions were written by Daniel Cowdery (dcowdery@nwlink.com):
The following is a step by step manual to prepare your Asus P5A Motherboard for the GeForce. If followed exactly these should work. Do not overclock with this card! . The P5A, especially in the older revisions, creates AGP noise feedback when overclocking the board. There is no fix for this (other than a new motherboard).
Download and install the following files:
BIOS upgrade:
ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/BIOS/Socket_7/ALI_Chipset/ALI_V/P5A/1010__02.zip
"AFLASH" utility used to upgrade to the above 10102 BIOS file (both must be placed on a bootable 3.5 floppy disk):
ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/flash/aflash.exe
From the following website:
http://www.ali.com.tw/eng/support/driver.shtml
download and install the latest version of the following files:
Extras - caution
Alter the hardware to adjust the voltage of your motherboard. Note that this step may not be necessary for some people - try out the card at this point and if you still have problems, then do this step.
You must alter two jumper settings - VIO1 (set AGP voltage to 3.6) and OFTEST (10% voltage increase across the board):
VIO1 is directly right of the DIMM chipset if your CPU were at the top of the board, IO and serial ports facing left. OFTEST is directly below the VID jumpers. The VID jumpers are located to the right of the VIO jumpers. A diagram is provided below. Place jumpers on the "*" indicated bridge.
D
I - VIO1-
M *1 1
M *2 2 -VID (ignore)-
- 3 3 123
C 123
H -BF (ignore)- 123
I 123 123
P 123
S 123
- -OFTEST-
*1
*2
Make sure your GeForce is running the latest drivers.
Make sure your card is fully seated in the AGP slot.
Use the coolbits.reg registry file to enable them - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/coolbits.reg
and the overclocking panel and VSYNC options will appear in the display control panel.
This only applies to Windows 9x drivers.
For Windows 2000 driver versions 5.13 and later, use the coolbitsw2k.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/coolbitsw2k.reg
Coolbits appears to be disabled in the 3.75 and 3.76 driver sets. However, you can safely use the 3.72 nvcpl.dll file with these driver sets and still use Coolbits. If you have not got a copy of the 3.72 drivers, you can download just the nvcpl.dll file here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/372nvcpl.zip
Coolbits works in 3.77+ driver sets.
Coolbits only works in Windows 9x driver sets.
For Windows 2000 driver versions 5.13 and later, use the coolbitsw2k.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/coolbitsw2k.reg
If you are using the latest Creative driver sets, and cannot alter the core speed, add a DWord value named GrfxClock to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display\0000\DEFAULT
with a value of your choice (the value must be in hexadecimal. You can use Calculator in scientific mode to convert between hex and decimal).
The range of overclocking available on the NVIDIA reference drivers by default is larger than the default range of the Creative drivers.
In the Creative drivers you can alter the range of the overclocking slider by double clicking on the end of the slider.
You can use the following file, provided by Juris "3Dman" Perkons to alter the range of the NVIDIA control panel's overclocking slider:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/gespeed.zip
DDR memory is nominally clocked at twice the speed of SDR memory: therefore it is possible to overclock higher.
You can overclock the card using the NVIDIA drivers as described in the 'How can I enable the overclocking utility in NVIDIA's drivers?' question in this FAQ for a speed boost: however this may harm stability.
This tip to improve stability was taken from the following page, where you can read more information on it:
http://members.prestige.net/geforce/Settings.htm
Try turning the 'Hardware acceleration' slider in the System Control Panel's Performance / Graphics section down one notch.
Here is a tip for a speed increase from BJ:
Right-click on My Computer icon on your Desktop, then left-click on Properties. Navigate to Device Manager and double-click on Computer. Under "View Resources" you will find a list of IRQs, each with description of the device that's using it. Note the IRQ number used by your GeForce.
Navigate to Start > Run and type sysedit. Find the [386enh] Section in the System.ini file and add irq[n]=4096 under it, where [n] is the IRQ number of your GeForce and 4096 is the amount of RAM you want to reserve in bytes (e.g. "irq10=4096"). I recommend using 4096, however you can experiment with different values if you want. Save changes in the file, exit and reboot for changes to take effect.
The following page has all of the official NVIDIA GeForce demos available for download, including source code:
http://www.nvidia.com/marketing/developer/devrel.nsf/TechnicalDemosFrame?OpenPage
There are a number of driver sets that you can use:
Firstly, there are Creative's driver sets.
These are available on Creative's site, and although they may be out of date they have been more extensively tested and have a more advanced control panel that looks better, allows one click access, and has the AGP options from AGP Wizard built in.
Currently they are based on NVIDIA's 5.30 reference drivers and are available from:
http://ftp.ctlsg.creaf.com/files/creative/drivers/3db/tntaw9x.exe
You must also download the BlasterControl application, currently at version 4.03 (second release), from:
http://ftp.ctlsg.creaf.com/files/creative/drivers/3db/bcsetup.exe
In addition, Creative now supply FastTrax drivers that are basically the NVIDIA reference drivers with a more advanced control panel that allows one click access and has the AGP options from AGP Wizard built in. They are not tested like the official driver sets are - however, they are more up to date. Note that they are not currently available for Windows 2000, and you should not uninstall your previous driver set before installing them.
Currently they are based on NVIDIA's 5.32 reference drivers and are available from:
http://www.clok.creaf.com/creative/beta/FastTrax.exe
The official FastTrax website is here:
http://www.americas.creative.com/graphics/fasttrax/
Secondly, there are NVIDIA's reference drivers.
There are generally a few versions available: one (or two) official versions and some leaked versions that are not officially supported but may be faster or have more features than the official drivers (and may also be slower and have less features).
Detonator (pre 5.22) drivers
Detonator 2 (pre 6.18) drivers
6.18 - These drivers are the official drivers for all boards, and are available at NVIDIA's site:
http://www.nvidia.com/Products/OpenDrvDwn.nsf/windows
These drivers have a new control panel with more FSAA information and Direct3D VSYNC options.
These drivers should improve game performance in general.
These drivers will especially improve NFS5 performance.
If these drivers cause crashing for you, try disabling AGP Fast Writes. You can read more about this in the 'How can I disable AGP Fast Writes?' question.
Which set should you use? If you can't live without the BlasterControl, stick with Creative's drivers. Otherwise use the NVIDIA drivers. It's really up to you if you use the latest leaked drivers or not - you'll have to benchmark them on your system to see if they have any advantages.
There are a number of driver sets that you can use:
Firstly, there are Creative's driver sets.
These are available on Creative's site, and although they may be out of date they have been more extensively tested and have a more advanced control panel that looks better, allows one click access, and has the AGP options from AGP Wizard built in.
Currently they are based on NVIDIA's 5.30 reference drivers and are available from:
http://ftp.ctlsg.creaf.com/files/creative/drivers/3db/tntaw2k.exe
You must also download the BlasterControl application, currently at version 4.03 (second release), from:
http://ftp.ctlsg.creaf.com/files/creative/drivers/3db/bcsetup.exe
Secondly, there are NVIDIA's reference drivers.
There are generally a few versions available: one (or two) official versions and some leaked versions that are not officially supported but may be faster or have more features than the official drivers (and may also be slower and have less features).
Note that it seems that all Windows 2000 drivers have the following issues at the moment:
Detonator (pre 5.22) drivers
Detonator 2 (pre 6.18) drivers
6.18 - These drivers are the official drivers for all boards, and are available at NVIDIA's site:
http://www.nvidia.com/Products/OpenDrvDwn.nsf/windows
These drivers have a new control panel with more FSAA information and Direct3D VSYNC options.
These drivers should improve game performance in general.
These drivers may help to improve stability on VIA chipset motherboards.
Which set should you use? If you can't live without the BlasterControl, stick with Creative's drivers. Otherwise use the NVIDIA drivers. It's really up to you if you use the latest leaked drivers or not - you'll have to benchmark them on your system to see if they have any advantages.
There are a number of driver sets that you can use:
Firstly, there are Creative's driver sets.
These are available on Creative's site, and although they may be out of date they have been more extensively tested and have a more advanced control panel that looks better, allows one click access, and has the AGP options from AGP Wizard built in.
Currently they are based on NVIDIA's 5.30 reference drivers and are available from:
http://ftp.ctlsg.creaf.com/files/creative/drivers/3db/tntant4.exe
You must also download the BlasterControl application, currently at version 4.03 (second release), from:
http://ftp.ctlsg.creaf.com/files/creative/drivers/3db/bcsetup.exe
Secondly, there are NVIDIA's reference drivers.
There are generally a few versions available: one (or two) official versions and some leaked versions that are not officially supported but may be faster or have more features than the official drivers (and may also be slower and have less features).
Detonator (pre 5.22) drivers
Detonator 2 (pre 6.18) drivers
6.18 - These drivers are the official drivers for all boards, and are available at NVIDIA's site:
http://www.nvidia.com/Products/OpenDrvDwn.nsf/windows
These drivers have a new control panel with more FSAA information and Direct3D VSYNC options.
These drivers should improve game performance in general.
Which set should you use? If you can't live without the BlasterControl, stick with Creative's drivers. Otherwise use the NVIDIA drivers. It's really up to you if you use the latest leaked drivers or not - you'll have to benchmark them on your system to see if they have any advantages.
The following information was provided by ixxe.
It seems that NVIDIA have some bugs in their RPM installer so it is best to get the tarballs (they work better anyway). You will need the following files for a non-RPM based installation:
They are all available at NVIDIA's site:
http://www.nvidia.com/Products/OpenDrvDwn.nsf/xfree86_40Downloadmain?OpenPage
Note that you must be logged in as root to install XFree86 and NVIDIA's drivers:
Make sure that you have at least XFree86 4.0. If you dont, download the precompiled binarys from the following website:
http://www.xfree86.org
Go into the directory where you downloaded XFree86 and type:
sh Xinstall.sh
and follow the onscreen instructions.
Run xf86config and choose 'NVIDIA GeForce'.
Unzip the NVIDIA kernel driver by typing:
tar zxvf NVIDIA_kernel-0.9-4.tar.gz
Because most Linux 3D graphics systems are based on Mesa (3dfx cards) we have to remove some files - specifically, the following files may cause problems:
Now install the Nvidia GLX. Type:
tar zxvf NVIDIA_GLX-0.9-4.xfree401.tar.gz
Go to the Nvidia_GLX dir created by tar and type:
make
The drivers are installed - now we only have to tell the X server that we want to use the drivers. Edit the xf86config file by typing:
pico /etc/X11/XF86Config
Search through the file for the following line and remove the #:
# load glx
Search through the file again for the following line and change "nv" to "nvidia":
Driver "nv"
Thats it. Enjoy!
If you have any problem installing read the NVIDIA FAQ.
If you have installed XFree86 4.0 but screen locks when you start, make sure you installed the right version of Nvidia_GLX.
No, there are no GeForce specific drivers for BeOS. However, you can use the VESA compatible mode as all GeForce cards are VESA 2.0 compliant. Unfortunately you will not get OpenGL support with the default VESA drivers.
The following tip was provided by Tane Piper of Crytek Studios:
Download VESA Accepted from the following site:
http://bebits.bebits.com/app/1105
and it will allow you to select a VESA mode permenantly without having to go into the boot menu each time.
The 5.xx versions of the drivers support S3TC in OpenGL and Full Scene Anti-Aliasing (in OpenGL, and in Direct3D as well in the 5.22+ drivers). However, for some people they also cause lockups when they load Windows, so that some people simply cannot use them yet. They are also faster than the 3.xx drivers in most cases.
If you want to know if your system will be able to use the 5.xx drivers, just test them yourself. They won't harm your system if they don't work.
Make sure your GeForce is not sharing an IRQ with any other devices. If you find that it is, try either moving the device into another PCI slot, or reassigning the PCI IRQs in the BIOS. In particular, the first PCI slot is frequently forced to share an IRQ with the AGP slot.
This is the standard advice from Creative on removing old drivers:
Run any uninstall from Add/Remove Programs. These frequently are not totally thorough but should be done anyway.
After you reboot, delete these files if found:
In C:\Windows\System: nv*.*, bc*.*, bls*.*, 3dbg*.* (the latter 3 only apply to Creative drivers)
In C:\Windows\Inf: drvdata.bin, drvidx.bin, 3dbg*.inf, nv*.inf
In C:\Windows\Inf\Other: 3dbg*.inf, nv*.inf
Run regedit and delete the following:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Creative Tech\Blaster Control 4.0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\Device\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\Blaster Control 4.0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Controls Folder\Device\shellex\PropertySheetHandlers\NVTweak
(look under Controls Folder\Display as well as Device keys here for Blaster Control or NVTweak keys)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
(look for bcdetect or NVInitialize entries on the right side and delete them but not the whole Run key. Also, check the RunOnce key for the same entries)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OpenGLdrivers
(delete the RIVATNT entry on the right side)
There are a number of methods:
Some BIOSes support forcing AGP1X in the BIOS setup.
If you have a Creative card you can use AGP Wizard. Read more about this in the 'What is the status of AGP sidebanding in the latest drivers?' question.
You can use the forceagp1xon.reg registry file to force AGP1X - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/forceagp1xon.reg
If you want to go back to auto detection of the AGP rate, you can use the forceagp1xoff.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/forceagp1xoff.reg
Finally, you can use PowerStrip.
Note that forcing AGP1X from AGP2X or AGP4X may help with some problems such as instability, but will reduce performance slightly in certain 3D applications.
There are a number of methods:
Some BIOSes support disabling AGP Fast Writes in the BIOS setup.
If you have a Creative card you can use AGP Wizard. Read more about this in the 'What is the status of AGP sidebanding in the latest drivers?' question.
You can use the fwoff.reg registry file to disable AGP Fast Writes - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/fwoff.reg
If you ever want to switch Fast Writes back on, you can use the fwon.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/fwon.reg
Disabling Fast Writes may help with instability problems but may also cause 3D applications to run slower.
They are all currently disabled, although soon there should be drivers released that will support them.
If you have a Creative card, there is a utility called AGP Wizard that will allow you to enable sidebanding as well as Fast Writes and switch between AGP1X/2X/4X. It will not work on any other card because it checks the Video BIOS to see if you have a Creative card. You do not have to have Creative drivers installed. It is available here:
http://ftp.ctlsg.creaf.com/files/creative/drivers/3db/agpwizard.exe
In addition, the Creative official drivers and FastTrax drivers have the functionality of AGP Wizard built in.
The sidebanding registry hack (involving the DISABLEAGPSIDEBAND key) that is being spread around is fake and does not work.
In the 3.69 and later drivers you can use the athlonsbaon.reg registry file to enable sidebanding on Athlon motherboards only - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/athlonsbaon.reg
If you have problems after enabling this, use the athlonsbaoff.reg registry file to disable it again - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/athlonsbaoff.reg
WARNING: The registry file may not work if you have a 64MB Prophet II card. It seems that AGP sidebanding is disabled in the video BIOS for Athlons with that card. In addition you may not be able to use AGP Sidebanding if you have the Athlon AGP2X hack enabled as well in the 5.xx drivers.
If you really like living dangerously, it is possible to use a program called BIOSMOD to change your BIOS file before you flash it so that sidebanding is enabled. However, this will invalidate your warranty, and could in theory mess up your card. Don't email me or your manufacturer's technical support for more information or if it messes up your card!
If that hasn't scared you off, take a look at this page:
http://zoiah.m3dzone.com/
under the BIOSMOD / Tutorials / How to disable/enable SBA (Sideband addressing) on a GeForce section.
Once again, this is for experienced users only.
The very latest (5.13 onwards) drivers have an FSAA option for both Direct3D and OpenGL in the control panel, and they should both work. However, in the 5.14 drivers OpenGL FSAA is broken, as only a quarter of the screen is displayed, and the Direct3D force anti-aliasing option does not work with all programs. The 5.16+ drivers fix OpenGL FSAA, and the 5.22+ drvers fix Direct3D force FSAA.
Thanks to 5150Joker for creating these registry files in the first place.
You can change the quality of the Direct3D FSAA in the control panel: however, it is also possible to alter the quality of the OpenGL FSAA (in the 5.22+ drivers).
There are three levels of quality: high, medium and low. By default the quality is low.
The following files are for Windows 9x.
You can switch to high quality using the fsaahigh.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/fsaahigh.reg
You can switch to medium quality using the fsaamed.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/fsaamed.reg
You can switch back to low quality using the fsaalow.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/fsaalow.reg
The following files are for Windows 2000.
You can switch to high quality using the fsaahighw2k.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/fsaahighw2k.reg
You can switch to medium quality using the fsaamed.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/fsaamedw2k.reg
You can switch back to low quality using the fsaalow.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/fsaaloww2k.reg
If these files don't seem to have any effect, you may have to edit them in Notepad and change the 0000 to 0001, or another value. Take a look at the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display key using regedit and find out which number your graphics card is using.
If you want Direct3D FSAA in the 5.14+ Windows 2000 drivers, follow the following instructions, provided by the creator of the Creative Tweaker:
Just merge this file to your registry and you'll have D3D FSAA in your games. If you want to modify the quality of FSAA just edit the .reg file and find this line:
"D3d_ANTIALIASQUALITY"=hex:07,00,00,00
Now, 07 is the maximum quality. If you want less put the suitable number instead of 07 (legal values are 01-07) save the file and merge.
Also your registry keys could be different and so ControlSet001 could be ControlSet002 and so on, so replace as needed.
Props to hood.robin for noticing this registry key!
In the 5.08 drivers and later, you can force anti-aliasing in OpenGL only using the fsaaon.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/fsaaon.reg
However, this will cause your framerate to drop by about half - to disable it again use the fsaaoff.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/fsaaoff.reg
Anti-alasing will only work on resolutions of 1280x1024 and below in 16-bit colour and 1152x864 in 32-bit colour.
If these files don't seem to have any effect, you may have to edit them in Notepad and change the 0000 to 0001, or another value. Take a look at the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\Display key using regedit and find out which number your graphics card is using.
It seems that AGP4X may be disabled because of issues with AGP4X, VIA chipsets and the GeForce2. The registry file below may cause problems if you have a GeForce2.
Many thanks to PJ who discovered this registry key.
In the 5.16 and later drivers in Windows 9x you can use the viaagp4xon.reg registry file to enable AGP4X on VIA 133A or VIA KX133 motherboards only - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/viaagp4xon.reg
If you have problems after enabling this, use the viaagp4xoff.reg registry file to disable it again - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/viaagp4xoff.reg
Many thanks to Joe Meheski who discovered this registry key.
In the 5.16 and later drivers in Windows 2000 you can use the viaagp4xonw2k.reg registry file to enable AGP4X on VIA 133A or VIA KX133 motherboards only - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/viaagp4xonw2k.reg
If you have problems after enabling this, use the viaagp4xoffw2k.reg registry file to disable it again - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/viaagp4xoffw2k.reg
You may need the VIA 4.03 AGP drivers installed to use the above file.
You may also need to read the 'I have a VIA chipset based motherboard and I can't get AGP2X or AGP4X working. How can I fix it?' question.
Marge sets whether the panel is enabled or not, and the rest are all to do with the actual values and ranges of the overclocking sliders.
Make sure that you have the latest drivers installed for your monitor.
For Windows 9x, use hztool to adjust the rates manually to the ones you use. Note that the official Creative Labs drivers do not have this issue.
For Quake 3 Arena you can simply type the following commands at the console:
For Direct3D games in Windows 2000, run DXDiag, click on 'More Help', click 'Override...' and type in your desired refresh rate.
For OpenGL games in Windows 2000, follow the following instructions from Scott's Hardware Scene:
Click on Start / Run and type 'Regedt32' and click on OK
Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE in Local Machine, click on System
Click on CurrentControlSet
Click on Services
Click on nv4
Click on Device0
Double click on NV10_Modes (if you have a GeForce SDR card), NV10DDR_Modes (if you have a GeForce DDR card), NV15_Modes (if you have a GeForce 2 SDR card) or NV15DDR_Modes (if you have a GeForce 2 DDR card) on the right hand side
Edit the corresponding setting for the given colour-depth, and resolution
For example, to set 800x600 @ 16 bit colour, go to the entry:
16 800 600 60 70 72 75 85 100 120 0
Here '16' is for the colour depth, '800 600' is for the resolution, and the next 7 settings are the monitor refresh rates. Do not remove the trailing zero!
Remove all the monitor frequencies that you do not want. The drivers will default to the lowest setting listed for the given resolution
You can use the tvoutw2k.reg registry file to enable TV-OUT in Windows 2000 - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/tvoutw2k.reg
The TVTool program has been recently updated to work with Windows 2000 and will allow you to enable TV-OUT without a reboot. You can read more about it in the 'How can I make the TV-OUT display stretch to the full size of my TV, and generally tweak TV-OUT?' question.
Thanks to Roger Sheppard for this suggestion:
The GeForce needs to see a real 75 ohms AV input. However, not all TVs have this, and some have a switch labelled 'Terminate' next to the AV inputs to turn the 75 ohms off to allow more than one TV to be connected. If you are having this problem, especially with a smaller or portable TV, then try another TV to see if this is a problem, or check for a 'Terminate' switch.
According to Asus this may also be a problem caused by motherboards using a linear voltage regulator that does not supply enough voltage to the GeForce, and therefore there is not enough voltage to maintain TV-OUT. Read the 'What's all this with the GeForce and early motherboards?' question for more information and possible fixes.
Download TVTool, available at the following website:
http://home.wtal.de/electronic/index_e.htm
There is more information and support for TV-OUT available at the following website:
http://www.stereovision.net/toxicx/tvout.htm
There is a list being compiled here:
http://www.daytonsmisc.com/geforce.htm
If you have any games not currently included on the list that do / do not work, email the author:
sal@ispchannel.com
Make sure that you have the latest game patch and latest drivers for your GeForce.
If you have WinDVD, read and apply the fix mentioned in the 'When I try to play MPEG files with Windows Media Player I get out-of-sync sound/green bars/too large playback. I have WinDVD installed. How can I fix it?' question.
Unfortunately in the current drivers there are some issues with Dagoth Moor Zoological Gardens. There is no current known fix.
Make sure Fog Table Emulation is switched on in the Direct3D section of the NVIDIA control panel, as outlined in the DMZG FAQ.
Try switching to the 3.68 drivers - it may be a case of T&L being messed up by out of date drivers. If these drivers still don't help then try 3.53 drivers.
There is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article about some problems here.
Install the latest patch from Microsoft:
http://www.3dfiles.com/patches/midtownmadness.shtml
To fix stuttering graphics, install the latest drivers. Drivers 5.13+ will fix this problem.
If you get graphic corruption, switch off the pedestrians (this should be fixed by the patch mentioned above).
This is a known bug and NVIDIA are looking into it.
Try NVIDIA's latest (leaked) reference drivers. In particular 6.18 may help with speed and instability problems.
Make sure that the Direct3D settings in the display control panel are set to defaults.
Try setting your Windows colour depth to 16-bit colour instead of 32-bit.
If you get lockups, try the following tips, in the Options/Graphics/Advanced Settings dialog:
Glâ–“ide works best with the GeForce. You can download it from:
http://www.n64emu.com
Setting the texture alignment in the NVIDIA control panel to 0 may help the problem.
Install the latest patch for Final Fantasy 8.
The US English version is available here:
ftp://ftp.ea.com/pub/ea/patches/ff8/FF8SqeaNVPatch.zip
The UK English version is available here:
ftp://ftp.eidos.de/pub/uk/final_fantasy_8/patches/FF8EidosEngNVPatch.zip
The French version is available here:
ftp://ftp.eidos.de/pub/fr/final_fantasy_8/patches/FF8EidosFreNVPatch.zip
The German version is available here:
ftp://ftp.eidos.de/pub/de/final_fantasy_8/Patches/FF8EidosGerNVPatch.zip
The Spanish version is available here:
ftp://ftp.eidos.de/pub/es/final_fantasy_8/patches/FF8EidosSpaNVPatch.zip
The Italian version is available here:
ftp://ftp.eidos.de/pub/it/final_fantasy_8/FF8EidosItaNVPatch.zip
The 5.22+ drivers fix many problems with Armada.
There is more information on these problems and possible solutions on the following page:
http://www.activision.com/support/faq/448.html
Try installing the Direct3D Beta patch for Deus Ex. You can download it here - instructions for installation are included in the file:
http://www.deusex.com/downloads/dxd3d.zip
If this does not help, this may be caused by having both 32-bit colour and high texture detail enabled. Disable one of these to fix the problem for now.
Install the latest patch and run Messiah with the -p command line switch.
If you want to use T&L support, currently you must set 'Character Texture Resolution (AGP)' to 'Medium'.
Make sure you have the latest patch for Half-Life.
Make sure you have the very latest drivers installed. The 5.13+ drivers fix the missing textures problem, the 5.16+ drivers fix problems with flashing in shadowy areas and the 5.22+ drivers fix problems with slow loading times.
Make sure you run Half-Life at a resolution below the current desktop resolution.
Try changing the Buffer Flipping Mode in the NVIDIA OpenGL control panel to 'Block Transfer'.
If you get blurry text in Direct3D mode, try moving the Texture Alignment slider in Advanced Direct3D options in the control panel applet to the 0 position.
If you're using OpenGL (recommended), try using Direct3D, and vice versa.
Try flashing your GeForce card's Video BIOS with the latest version (you may have to use the NVIDIA reference BIOS). This may fix problems with green pixels being displyed instead of grey. You may want to read the 'Where can I get the latest NVIDIA Flash BIOS and which should I use?' question in this FAQ.
This problem only occurs when you enable the console using the -console command line switch.
You can fix it by changing the Buffer Flipping Mode in the NVIDIA OpenGL control panel to 'Block Transfer'.
Download the following file and put it in your Quake/Id1 directory:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/pak2.pak
The above file was created with idGamma - you can download it and make a file with different settings if you want. It is available here:
http://www.g256.com/idgamma/
You can also try using the unofficial GLQuake update which also adds features like fog and smoother animation. It is available here:
http://www.quake3stuff.com/glquake/
If you find that players are visible one frame and then not visible the next at certain points in the game, there are a few possible solutions:
Go into the control panel's OpenGL settings and set 'Buffer flipping mode' to 'Use block transfer'.
Go into the control panel's OpenGL settings and set 'Vertical Sync' to 'Always Off'.
Make sure you play Quake 1 with the same resolution as your desktop. This means that if you are running your desktop at 1024x768 at 32 bpp, start Quake up with this command line:
glqwcl.exe -width 1024 -height 768 -bpp 32
You can also try right-clicking on the task bar, selecting Properties and unchecking 'Always on top'.
Type these three commands at the console:
If you don't like these settings, try:
You need to limit your framerate - the GeForce is too fast and is causing your system to be swamped. Use the following console command:
where x is a value around which your framerate will be limited to. Try values from 30 to 60.
Firstly, adjust all settings to High Quality in the menu options of Quake 3 Arena, and then set Geometry Detail to High and Texture Detail to the extreme right hand side.
These settings were suggested by John Carmack in order to make the best use of the GeForce - type them in the console:
If you want to undo these settings, just select a geometry detail level inside the game.
If you want to undo these settings, set cg_shadows back to 1.
However, the shadows options may slow you down quite significantly - they're not recommended if you're into huge 20 player frag fests!
Thanks to lazerus and BankZ on the BP6.com messageboard for this solution:
Change your Quake 3 shortcut to read the following:
start /realtime C:\Program Files\Quake III Arena\quake3.exe +set r_smp 1
If you have installed Quake 3 in an alternative directory you should of course alter this to fit.
Turn down the texture colour depth to 16-bit or slide the texture detail slider down one notch. There's not quite enough memory to store all the textures in the video memory on certain levels, such as Q3DM6, Q3DM9, Q3DM11 and Q3DM15.
Switching the AGP Aperture size to 256 helped some people to reduce the problem in some levels. See the 'What should my AGP Aperture size be set to?' question for more information.
If you use the latest drivers then you do not have to do either of these things as S3TC support in OpenGL is implemented, which means that all the textures can fit in Video RAM.
This is a by-product of the S3TC support in the latest drivers. You can disable S3TC in Quake 3 Arena using the following console commands:
but be warned that this will cause the problems described in the 'On some levels in Quake 3 Arena I get severe slowdowns with all of the settings maxed out. How can I fix this?' question.
If you type in the following command to the console it may help to reduce the effects of S3TC on the sky:
Type the following command at the console:
and see if it helps.
You can also try the following:
This should mean that the brightness slider works as usual.
If that doesn't help, try typing the following commands at the console:
where x is a value from 2 to 3.
Install the latest drivers from NVIDIA. Driver versions 5.13+ fix this problem.
Type the following at the console:
Use the 3.76 drivers or later. These may fix the problem.
This solution was provided by Chas Profitt:
Delete your q3config.cfg file and let Quake 3 Arena rebuild it. You will lose all your settings but this may help!
If this doesn't help, enable VSYNC in the control panel and try typing:
at the console. This may slow you down.
The 6.11+ drivers may help with Unreal Tournament Direct3D performance.
Try disabling Precaching. Use the tilde key to bring up the console and then type in 'Preferences'. Select Renderer / Direct3D / Precache set it to False.
Here are a few tips from 3DSL:
First you will need to use the coolbits.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/coolbits.reg
Coolbits only works in Windows 9x drivers.
For Windows 2000 driver versions 5.13 and later, use the coolbitsw2k.reg registry file - available here:
http://www.geforcefaq.com/files/coolbitsw2k.reg
Use the latest NVIDIA reference drivers.
Download the latest patch for UT from:
http://unreal.epicgames.com
Run the game in D3D instead of OpenGL.
In Display Properties => NVIDIA Control Panel => Direct3D Settings => More Direct3D
Set 'PCI Texture Memory Size' to 63 (assuming you have 128MB of RAM).
There are a number of Direct3D interfaces for Unreal Tournament that you can try in order to get better performance:
The latest (4.25) patch includes a new d3ddrv.dll. Unfortunately if you install the 4.20 or 4.25 patch you cannot use pre 4.20 d3ddrv.dll files, unless you replace d3ddrv.int with a copy from a previous version of UT.
The 1.8b d3ddrv.dll which may help performance with the 4.25 patch is available here:
http://unreal.epicgames.com/files/d3d_18b/d3ddrv.dll
There is a 0.8 d3ddrv.dll, which includes a new 'UseLocalTextures' switch in the Direct3D preferences. Switching this to 'True' may speed up performance (it forces all textures to be loaded into video memory on the card only). It is available here:
http://unreal.epicgames.com/files/d3d_08/d3ddrv.dll
The 4.13 patch includes the 0.7 d3ddrv.dll. It is also available here:
http://unreal.epicgames.com/files/d3ddrv.dll
The 0.6 d3ddrv.dll may also be a good choice, available here:
http://unreal.epicgames.com/files/d3d_06/d3ddrv.dll
And if you find that the latest UT patch actually harms performance, try the d3ddrv.dll that was included with the 4.05b patch, available here:
http://unreal.epicgames.com/files/d3d_405b/d3ddrv.dll
All the files go in your UnrealTournament\System directory.
In addition there is an excellent Unreal Tournament tweak guide available here:
http://www.3dspotlight.net/tweaks/ut/
Perform the 'Disable vertical sync' instructions mentioned in the 'How can I speed up Unreal Tournament on my GeForce?' question.
You may also need to use the 0.8 d3ddrv.dll, as descrived in the 'How can I speed up Unreal Tournament on my GeForce?' question.
In the GeForce Direct3D options, reset the Texture Alignment back to 3.
Download the latest patch for UT from:
http://unreal.epicgames.com
This possible solution was provided by Jarhead:
Try uninstalling ALL Unreal engine based games and then reinstalling UT. If this helps, you can try uninstalling all Unreal games, then installing them one by one, but with UT last. The problem appears to be with UT using the original Unreal D3D engine instead of it's own vastly updated engine, and installing UT last will stop this if it is your problem - however, this solution doesn't work for everyone, and if it doesn't you'll have to turn off precaching until another solution is found.
If none of these help, read the 'My GeForce keeps on locking up. How can I fix it?' question in this FAQ. If this still doesn't help, it is very likely that the problem is with your motherboard - one motherboard in particular that shows this problem is the ASUS P3B-F. There is no current solution to this problem.
You can use any DVD software with the GeForce, but some software supports the GeForce's DVD acceleration features (Motion Compensation - MC) so that CPU utilisation is reduced while the DVD is playing.
PowerDVD 2.55 supports the GeForce's MC. A demo version can be downloaded at the following website, which now does support MC:
http://www.3dsl.com
WinDVD 2000 also supports GeForce MC, but you have to enable it in the registry. Go to:
http://www.inmatrix.com
to download DVD Genie, a program which will allow you to enable the MC support easily.
You can download a demo of WinDVD 2000 at this website:
http://www.intervideo.com
Select the 'Force Weave' option instead of 'Auto Select' in Configuration/Video/Video Mode.
Download the AGP Utility from the following page:
http://www.ali.com.tw/eng/support/driver.shtml
and set the following settings:
Yes, there is an update to take the WinDVD supplied to version 1.3.5 (this is equivalent to WinDVD 2000).
The US English patch is available here:
http://www.clok.creaf.com/creative/drivers/3db/wdvd135.exe
However, be warned that this patch disables S/PDIF support.
The UK English patch is available here:
ftp://ftp.europe.soundblaster.com/pub/creative/patches/wdvdeng.exe
The French patch is available here:
ftp://ftp.europe.soundblaster.com/pub/creative/patches/wdvdfrn.exe
The German patch is available here:
ftp://ftp.europe.soundblaster.com/pub/creative/patches/wdvdger.exe
The Spanish patch is available here:
ftp://ftp.europe.soundblaster.com/pub/creative/patches/wdvdspn.exe
The Italian patch is available here:
ftp://ftp.europe.soundblaster.com/pub/creative/patches/wdvdita.exe
The Dutch patch is available here:
ftp://ftp.europe.soundblaster.com/pub/creative/patches/wdvddut.exe
The Norwegan patch is available here:
ftp://ftp.europe.soundblaster.com/pub/creative/patches/wdvdnor.exe
This solution was provided by X-Default User-X:
What you have to do is rename, delete, or unregister (your choice) the two *.ax files in the Program Files\InterVideo directory. The files should be named:
You can unregister the files easily by using DVD Genie, available to download here:
http://www.inmatrix.com
These are DirectShow filters that allow Windows Media player to play DVDs (provided you know how to enable it via a registry hack) and MPEG2 VOB files. They were primarily designed for the few DVD games out there that use MPEG2 videos for their cut scenes. For some reason, they also take the task of playing regular MPEG1 files when the original filters that come with Windows Media Player 6.4 are more than adequate.
Registering/unregistering DirectShow filters will not affect WinDVD's ability to play DVD movies.
There is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article about the Expedia problem, which appears to also cover Autoroute, here.
Dynamic lighting is enabled in the 3.62 and above drivers, which looks much nicer but is slower. Look at the rockets in the helicopter demo - they light up the ground as they pass in 3.62+.
Try installing the 5.xx drivers.
Make sure you have as much main memory free as possible before running the test - disk caches and programmes running in the background may take up memory that the test requires.
Try setting the AGP Aperture size to 128MB or above (try 256MB) and see if that helps. You can find out to do this in the 'How can I change my AGP Aperture size?' question.
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