nVidia Forceware v190.xx = problems for Doomsday
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This may be unique to Vista/Win7 64-bit and/or AMD AM2+ architectures.
Many users around the interwebs have been having problems with the 190.xx series of nVidia Forceware drivers. Most seem to be 64-bit Vista/Win7 users, and report slowdowns and even crashes in popular games such as Fallout 3.
I was one of these people and had nothing but trouble in Doomsday performance, particularly with all models enabled, on the latest Forceware drivers at time of writing this thread. I tried it all in the nVidia Control Panel - disabled PhysX acceleration and Threaded Optimization, even set everything to its highest performance settings. But lots of models on screen and particles from torches was completely ruining my performance randomly. I had to reload the textures via Control Panel at times too, and the Mipmapping and Smart Filtering Options? Hah - forget it, JC!
I rolled back to 186.18 drivers, the latest WHQL signed drivers for 64-bit Windows 7 (and Vista) that seem to be stable. Not everyone is experiencing these performance issues and instability, but if you are running 190.xx and don't mind testing it out, try rolling back to the 186.18 drivers.
Now i'm back on 1680x1050 with everything on absolute max, including all models and decorations from the Resource Pack, and FSAA x8. Smooooooooooooooooooth and no hitching (as long as all preloading is enabled in the Doomsday Control Panel).
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H v1.0 (2 PCI, 3 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Video, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394); Chipset: AMD 780G (AMD Hammer)
CPU: DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2800 MHz (11 x 255) 5400+ [Stock is 2600MHz, i.e. a light overclock]
RAM: Effective Clock @ 801 MHz, DDR2 Dual Channel (2x 1GB sticks), 5-5-5-15 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS) [Not overclocked]
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT (512 MB) PCI-E x16 v2.0 [Not overclocked]
APU: Realtek ALC889A @ ATI SB700 - High Definition Audio Controller
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (WinNT v6.1 Build 7600)
P.S. I was about to return my videocard too, It's really strange that this was a driver issue. I was hearing physical buzzing from the Voltage Regulators on the video card when my Aero-enabled interface was getting lots of screen updates, and occassionally the kernel driver stopped responding too! (Screen corrupts, goes black for a few seconds, then restores with Aero disabled and an Alert in the System Tray). These problems all seem to be gone, and 3DMark Vantage even gave me a higher score (like - an extra thousand!). Hope someone finds this thread useful.
This may be unique to Vista/Win7 64-bit and/or AMD AM2+ architectures.
Many users around the interwebs have been having problems with the 190.xx series of nVidia Forceware drivers. Most seem to be 64-bit Vista/Win7 users, and report slowdowns and even crashes in popular games such as Fallout 3.
I was one of these people and had nothing but trouble in Doomsday performance, particularly with all models enabled, on the latest Forceware drivers at time of writing this thread. I tried it all in the nVidia Control Panel - disabled PhysX acceleration and Threaded Optimization, even set everything to its highest performance settings. But lots of models on screen and particles from torches was completely ruining my performance randomly. I had to reload the textures via Control Panel at times too, and the Mipmapping and Smart Filtering Options? Hah - forget it, JC!
I rolled back to 186.18 drivers, the latest WHQL signed drivers for 64-bit Windows 7 (and Vista) that seem to be stable. Not everyone is experiencing these performance issues and instability, but if you are running 190.xx and don't mind testing it out, try rolling back to the 186.18 drivers.
Now i'm back on 1680x1050 with everything on absolute max, including all models and decorations from the Resource Pack, and FSAA x8. Smooooooooooooooooooth and no hitching (as long as all preloading is enabled in the Doomsday Control Panel).
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H v1.0 (2 PCI, 3 PCI-E x1, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR2 DIMM, Audio, Video, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394); Chipset: AMD 780G (AMD Hammer)
CPU: DualCore AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2800 MHz (11 x 255) 5400+ [Stock is 2600MHz, i.e. a light overclock]
RAM: Effective Clock @ 801 MHz, DDR2 Dual Channel (2x 1GB sticks), 5-5-5-15 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS) [Not overclocked]
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT (512 MB) PCI-E x16 v2.0 [Not overclocked]
APU: Realtek ALC889A @ ATI SB700 - High Definition Audio Controller
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (WinNT v6.1 Build 7600)
P.S. I was about to return my videocard too, It's really strange that this was a driver issue. I was hearing physical buzzing from the Voltage Regulators on the video card when my Aero-enabled interface was getting lots of screen updates, and occassionally the kernel driver stopped responding too! (Screen corrupts, goes black for a few seconds, then restores with Aero disabled and an Alert in the System Tray). These problems all seem to be gone, and 3DMark Vantage even gave me a higher score (like - an extra thousand!). Hope someone finds this thread useful.