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Community => Games & Programming => Topic started by: Spanky on Thursday, September 16, 2010, 18:17:06 PM

Title: Nvidia Graphics and Windows Vista/7
Post by: Spanky on Thursday, September 16, 2010, 18:17:06 PM
I just thought I would share something I've known for a bit. The other day I was trying to get a game to run properly (Mirrors Edge in triple-wide) and it seemed like no matter what I did, it ran fine but with shitty FPS. I knew I had run it fine prior but some configs got messed up so I just kinda gave up. Since I wanted to play Mirrors Edge and got nothing but problems, I gave up and settled for a different game: Splinter Cell Conviction. Except, when I loaded the game, the FPS was also terrible. This is an instant clue for me since I've been there and done that; my graphics card crashed. One of the cool things in Vista & 7 is that instead of tossing you a BSOD, Windows can attempt to recover a crashed driver. I don't know why specifically but whenever that happens with an nVidia card and newer drivers, the clocks on the card revert to a safe value (maybe for overclocking crashing?) which is something like 300mhz or 200mhz for the core. A simple restart puts your clocks back to normal but I thought I would share this in case anyone had weird issues ever.

*EDIT*
Depending on what you're doing, you may see an error like this:
(https://aao25.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdl.dropbox.com%2Fu%2F464376%2Fheadshot%2Fgpu_crash.png&hash=dd0d7deef6e6e1c4b5ea6276ca8a485e)
Although something was freaking out (probably cuz of the beta driver) and mine kept crashing every 5-15 seconds or so just now and it didn't revert the clocks to the 2D settings. If you ever come across this, check GPU-Z in the Sensors tab and see what your clocks are.
Title: Re: Nvidia Graphics and Windows Vista/7
Post by: Spanky on Thursday, September 16, 2010, 19:42:20 PM
Added an image that may or may not be helpful.
Title: Re: Nvidia Graphics and Windows Vista/7
Post by: Alex on Thursday, September 16, 2010, 19:52:27 PM
my display drivers did that a lot with my 8800GTS 512. It would crash the game I was playing. I wasn't getting lower than usual FPS though.
Title: Re: Nvidia Graphics and Windows Vista/7
Post by: Spanky on Thursday, September 16, 2010, 20:07:07 PM
In my experiences, it never crashed the game, it would just stall out for a few seconds while the OS recovered the driver then FPS would take a dive.
Title: Re: Nvidia Graphics and Windows Vista/7
Post by: Alex on Thursday, September 16, 2010, 20:50:38 PM
In my experiences, it never crashed the game, it would just stall out for a few seconds while the OS recovered the driver then FPS would take a dive.
My game would crash and then I would get that message when I was back at the desktop. It only happened when I played taxing games like Crysis though.
Title: Re: Nvidia Graphics and Windows Vista/7
Post by: Spanky on Thursday, September 16, 2010, 20:53:16 PM
Yea, I guess it could depend on the game and how it handles a graphics stall like that while the driver is recovered. I don't think I've ever had it happen on Crysis.