NVIDIA40.72-WHQL drivers –some more “grist” for Simon Evans

[nigelgrant]

Like other simmers I am always tweaking to try and get better performance. I have followed Simon Evans’ various instructions with great appreciation and respect. Simon, here are some more findings for your data bank.

I tried the 40.71 and 40.72 drivers on my GEForce2Ti and I had lots of black screen and computer crashes. I reverted to the 20 and 30 series using the Detonator Destroyer, and eventually settled with the 30.82, only problem was with the new MelJet 747’s, which immediately black-screened or froze in spot plane view. Otherwise the 30.82 did well for me.

The 40.72 WHQL came out, they were for Windows98 so I was tempted to retry them. I installed them through the control panel, display, settings etc procedure, I did not use Detonator Destroyer nor the program that eliminated any 30 series files. The installation was very straightforward and FS is running well, the picture is good and I find I can now fly the MelJet 747’s. Maybe the NVIDIA quality control is higher with an official and WHQL release, as opposed to a beta release.

The only problem I have is with the ATC sound, it is very laboured and sometimes stutters, and is obviously in distress! Does anyone have the same experience and any idea of a cure. I have searched the forum but this ATC problem has not been reported.

Nigel
Vancouver

[Simon Evans]

Assuming you still have the sound acceleration slider turned down a notch (under dxdiag) to `basic acceleration`, I wonder whether resources are being channelled efficiently by your system?

It does seem that the 40.xx drivers can allow greater visual quality and introduce new features, but at what cost, I wonder?

Ultimately, better performance in one place must cost performance somewhere else, all other things being equal. Or is it simply that FS2002 is reaching the limits of tweaking within the constraints of the game engine..?

I reckon we must be getting to the limits of that coding, or else MS would never countenance a re-write of the game engine for the next edition...

Simon Evans

[mith]

This might not be your problem, but I too had recent ATC problems. Mine just quit working all together. Problem started when I did an XP window update (from MS) that messed up my .wav file media player. I tried downloading the newest media player to no avail.... had to reinstall Windows XP and call MS for another activation number... was a pain.

My point is... try and play some wav files outside the game just to make sure it's your sim and not your media player. Hopefully it's only your game and not your computer's media player.

good luck

[Barryward12345]

>It does seem that the 40.xx
>drivers can allow greater visual
>quality and introduce new features,
>but at what cost, I
>wonder?

Simon

I currently have the 30.82 drivers installed in my P3-1000, Geforce 2 Mx system -- considering the system in totality, I am quite happy with its' performance. I have most sliders set fairly high and get away with it -- It doesn't like big cities like London though!! :)

Back to the drivers-- after installing the 30.82 drivers, I thought I got an improved framerate but also discovered a "problem" which apparently is quite common. It involves a "corrupted" section of the 2D panel -- the corruption showing up as a kind of colour distortion. This distortion co-incides with the black part of the screen underneath the panel. The size of this black part is determined by the {VIEW} settings in the Panel.cfg file -- typically [Default View]
SIZE_X=8191
SIZE_Y=2500

This corruption happens when the 2d screen is in full screen mode with AA selected and there is text on the screen like the "Brakes" or "Framerates " messages. Once the text goes, clicking once on the panel kills the corruption.

The way around this corruption is to operate in 32 bit mode, or turn AA off or stretch the forward VIEW . All of these "fixes" have a negative impact on framerates.

It would be nice to get some input on this problem -- just how many people have it, is it a symptom of some combination of hardware and drivers, etc?

Thanks

Barry

[nigelgrant]

Thx for all your comments, I have not yet resolved the problem, I downloaded the latest drivers from Creative for my Soundblaster, cut back the Direct Sound to basic, checked my wave files outside of FS and they were fine. Does anyone know where the sound files are for ATC, they might be worth re-installing? It seems to be worst when the demands on the computer are high, detailed scenery, heavy aircraft textures, 50% AI traffic, and etc.

I have had the odd black-out in very heavy scenery areas but the MelJet747's are still flying.

Other than reinstalling ATC sound files I am not going to get into too much hassle at this time since in the next day or so I am going to upgrade to a GEForce4 card, probably the Albatron Ti4200P which has got a raving review at 3DGuru, then I will probably have to do a clean install of Windows98 and reformat my C partition (I have had two CPU's and two mbo's since the last clean install!) Then a clean install of FS2k2 ( but I will have saved all my add-on aircraft and scenery files)

regards
Nigel
Vancouver

My System:

AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (30.82drv)
Gigabyte GA 7VRX mobo
VisionTek Xtasy GEForce 2Ti 64MB video card
512MB DDR RAM
IBM 40GB 7200rpm hard drive
Maxtor 20GB 7200rpm hard drive
SB128 sound card
CHProducts PCI yoke and pedals
Windows 98FE updated
Two case fans – one suck, one blow

[schoorel]

Hi Nigel,

I've experienced quite the same thing and have posted a message concerning this phenomenon myself, today.

I will try to keep you informed on any tweak that does the job for me, but for the moment I'm completely in the dark.

Marc Schoorel

[christianholmes]

Hi, Any chance either or you are using PCI video cards? If AGP, is your sound card adjacent to your video card? AGP shares it's resources with the top PCI card, with a heavy demand on both the sound card, and the video card, chances are you could be using more bandwidth than the bus supports. Also, how old is the SB128 sound card? I had problems with an AWE64 card pausing flight sim every time it needed to load a sound. Went away when I bought an SBlive card.