Feedback for Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT?

[JuliaSet]

Santa arrived early and I'm itching to install the new toy tomorrow morning.

Whats the scoop on this model and the better driver for this model.. I'm running WinXP-Pro and dont want to see Vista for a few years.

Ah.... im drooling in the box! I've had issues with the nvidia 7600 locking up on me and really want to get into SCS and make big cities.. see the textures.. etc.

Any feedback before I load this "puppy?"

Julia

[FomarTHain]

Santa arrived early and I'm itching to install the new toy tomorrow morning.

Whats the scoop on this model and the better driver for this model.. I'm running WinXP-Pro and don't want to see Vista for a few years.

Ah.... I'm drooling in the box! I've had issues with the nvidia 7600 locking up on me and really want to get into SCS and make big cities.. see the textures.. etc.

Any feedback before I load this "puppy?"

Julia

Well its gonna look great so congrats there .:D

I am running with the latest driver version 163.75 with a 8800 GTX with XP pro and am getting smooth performance. As with most city builders the larger the city gets the more lag you get but I bet that is more processor than graphics card.

I play with about every option turned on though I don't turn on reflections except for screenshots as I notice a performance hit there. It's slight but enough that I don't like it.

I have experienced no lock ups though I still receive the run time C++ error sometimes and all the time if the city is big.

Enjoy!::p

[JuliaSet]

The graphics are great, but I still have the lockup bug. Hopefully this will be resolved soon. I never locked up in C4.. might have been slower on my big cities, but never a lockup.

[Keith]

Lockups are often caused by memory conflicts. You may want to run a memory test. Memtest86+ (http://www.memtest.org/)

TSR programs can also cause lockups. Disable any "terminate stay resident" programs you have. Instant messaging, screen/power savers, virus scanners, etc. all fall under this type of heading.

Microsoft also has a free program you can download:

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp (http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp)

[JRGJD]

I have an 8500 GT 256 MB, and the game looks great, but I still get lockups just like the ones you are describing. I have the problem "localized" to whenever I challenge the video card just a little too much, like wild camera angle swings, or scrolling across the city too fast. But somethimes it just locks up when I'm not even touching the mouse.

Most of the problems increase with the size of the city. I just finished one with 30K pop (got the final 3 trophies!!) that was kicking me out about every 5 minutes. Most aggravating :mad: BUT I got the trophies. I may have been trying to do too much, though.

So, SCS runs fine on an 8500 GT, with those caveats. C4 is fine too, but don't turn the graphics up all the way or it will lag some. The good news is that CotN looks excellent and runs very smoothly. :cool:

Using driver 7.15.11.6218

[JuliaSet]

I used the scan and you can see what kind of problems I had. Here is a sampler:

Some of them are issues with Windoze, ATI drivers leftovers.. from looooong gone hardware (the drive was transported to newer computers) The ATI removal tool did not really remove all traces of ATI on the drive.

THen there is the dreaded Norton! I am expecting Keith to respond about this issue.

At one time I had a Kodak digital camera, which really messed up with my drive.. I've hunted everything down, removed the program and go barebones with downloads.. it was chock full of spyware and trouble.

I'd troulbes installing Nero as my CD_Rom RW..

THen there are hundreds of problems with old Civilization versions, special installs where I'd be testing that game for 4 years in all of its xpacks.

There are registries for the various unused language packs that come with various programs.

There were plenty of .NET framwork files too... grr..

Anyway, I have removed these 1206 problems and am off to see how the game responds. I had started a fresh city, crashed.. opened my email to find that Keith had replied, so started to clean up the computer.

Right now I have rebooted the computer after the fixes and will try the saved game again.

[JuliaSet]

here are a few more of the problems that were found. Not a whole list tho, but a sampler.

[PsYChoWaTrMelon]

yeah the 163.75 works wonders or the 169.04 beta ... tho
not much change. i have a MSI 8800 Ultra and well like ForTHain,
have it all the way up. tho i recommend that if you play at your
monitors Native resolution I.E. if it says your LCD or CRT monitor
Supports 1280 x1024 then play that and don't have Anti Aliasing
on as it is not needed for native resolutions to look good. I must
also say that i just turn shadows off along with reflections. With
this pratice i play at 1650x1080 and have seen cities of 80k+ tho
only 4400-5900 workers. beforeturning AA and shadows off i would
hit 53k with 1500-2200 workers and BOOOOM death lol.


*Edit try map apron off and no reflections.* as for the other errors
i can't say much as well i have had no problems tho i have TONS
and i mean TONS of friends who have.

[JuliaSet]

Many thanks to Keith for his registry hoover.

My computer feels less sticky. I even had a full hour of SCS wihtout a lockup. Eventually I did have to return to a saved game, but it was quite a bit less than before the cleaning.

I'd turned off Norton, did not pick any email or play YIM messenger during play, which I always do when playing other games. That did help, but its no cure for the lockups. I think this will give me less frequency in lockups.

I wanted to post a thank you to Keith for his suggestion. It has been a long time since I've seen something help me stay in the game longer. I will continue trying various ways to improve my SCS game play.

Thanks Keith!!

[Keith]

A good registry scan and clean is always helpful. I'm glad you got it running. ;)