Sparkle 8800GTS and Guild Wars

Hey everyone. I get really bad problems with Guild Wars when I try to play for extended periods with my 8800GTS.

System is as follows:

Antec Smartpower 2.0 500W PSU
P4 3.2Ghz Prescott
1GB Corsair XMS RAM (not sure what model/serial)
DFI S775 975X/G Infinity Conroe Motherboard
2x Hiatchi Deskstar 80GB SATA HDDs
LG DVD-RAM Combo Drive

It isn't artefacting as such, but large patches of a single colour, very angular that take up a good portion of the screen and flicker on and off.

I don't have problems in other games (oblivion, CS:S, HL2, WoW etc.) and it only happens after I play for a while (half an hour-one hour).

I have the latest updates for all drivers and everything.

Your guild is called Overclockers Australia and you cannot fix this on your own . DW, I'm a tech noob myself

Can't say I wasn't waiting for that, but I was hoping for a somewhat useful reply with it.

I am good with some aspects of computers, I don't believe it is a hardware problem and driver troubleshooting isn't my strong point.

In the future, useful replies ONLY. Please.

latest nvidia driver does that to me. my card is old so i ca use 6x.xx lol

Sounds like an overheating problem. Have you checked the temperature levels when the problem occurs?

You have a 8800GTS and only 1GB of RAM?

Anyway, it does sound like overheating. Clean the dust out of the fan (but, assuming it's so new; you won't have much ...) If you have another PCI card next to the 8800GTS, move it away so more air can reach the card.

Normally around 55-70 degrees celcius.

Guild Wars maybe pushing you card further then those other games are in different ways.

Are you overclocking your graphics card? Because if you are it maybe worth reducing the overclocked settings a bit.

For a start, you only have a 500W PSU which is the minimum required for the 8800GTS, the recommended is 600W+. Maybe that is causing some grief as those 8800GTS's seriously draw some power.

I've just entered your details into a PSU calculator and it comes back as you need at least 450W with the components you mentioned. Now throw in all the stuff you didn't mention and that could easily push it up over the limit.

Try downgrading the Drivers.

Did you even read the thread??? The ops said this:

So what you posted was a waste of time. ^^

Not overclocking yet, I'll check out the PSU idea. Sounds like that's the best bet at the moment.

If anyone comes up with other ideas let me know.

Thanks.

Did u even undestood what I sad? DOWN grading. Using an older version of the driver.

I think he understood that and also comprehended what I said which was "upgraded to the latest drivers", meaning, I have used older drivers as well. Which I have.

The thing is, there's only a few sets of official drivers with support for the 8800 series of cards, and the earlier ones caused more problems than it's worth. The latest release is by far the most stable.

Just something I've only just realised, I only seem to have this problem in the RoT and northern areas of Elona. Really odd.

Agree with Azagoth about power supply.

I've found GW is sensitive with over clocking the video card (and keeping the heat in check). In original guildwars, crystal dessert was always quarkey with even slightly over clocked settings. Other areas were fine when I tried OC the video card.

The other thing it could be if your not over clocking, is maybe corrupted graphics in the gw.dat file?

Back you your gw.dat file, and let it re-download enough of the game (as it demands) and go to that zone. If it works, you most likely have to re-install the game if same issue, just restore your backed up gw.dat file.

i had a lot of problems with my 8800gts right after i bought it (xfx, but they all the same). the problem was the drivers. its not enought just to install the latest one, you have to clear out all the old ones and reinstall the drivers.

heres a good guide http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=67799

it also help to have the program drivercleaner pro 1.5 (freeware)
http://www.drivercleaner.net/

after i cleaned and isntalled latest drivers (97.92) evry game works ok.
(im running dualboot with vista and it works ok also drivers 100.30)
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=32

I think the PSU is just fine.

I don't.

I also agree the PSU is bare minimum for that system. It's very possible that the PSU is working at close to it's maximum output levels and overheating itself. Once a PSU gets hot it's efficiency drops creating lower levels of avaialble power. Not having enough power can manifest itself in very strange behaviors.

What makes you say that? Do you have a 8800GTS running on a 500W PSU or are you just guessing? Or have you been around to the OP's house and examined the PSU with a multimeter to check it's functioning correctly?

As for what it says on the box, it says OXO on buses but they don't sell it.

No. Have you?

I don't have the card, I'm currently looking to buy a system with it, so I looked up a few links:
http://forums.slizone.com/index.php?showtopic=405
600W PSU running 2 cards in SLI. You claim 600+W is recommended for one.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1133846
Some other info, one quote mentioning the 8800GTS running on 400W PSU fine.

An 8800 can run on less than 400W, but, people shouldn't take a chance on that with a $700 video card. Plus, when you add in HD's, CD, Sound, Network, floppy, processor, etc. and a marginal 400w power supply isn't going to cut it.

A better power supply is a wise item to check. If he has a friend with a good one, it only takes a little while to test it. Or, If he plans on keeping the rig for a while a new power supply from a good company is a very good investment anyways, esspecially when you have some expensive high end components.

1 capictor shorts, sends too much voltage to card = $700 flushed

OK, good luck. I look forward to helping you out at a later date when you post about how your new 8800 isn't working correctly "for some reason"!

600W running two 8800's? I just wondered if you'd noticed the fact that those dual 8800's aren't actually being used. You can easily tell this by the fact that all four DVI sockets are unused and clearly visible. Here's a question for you, how much more power do you think they'll consume if they're actually being used in a graphics intensive game? I also guess I should mention that the thing isn't even cased, so all the little additions to the power usage aren't taken into account either.

Actually, I'd like to see the temps of that system once it's encased in whatever case will take it and allow sufficient airflow.

That said though, in all my 25+ years of building, using and programming computers I have never once tested the reliability, stability and power consumption of anything when they're not in use. To accurately gauge the consumption you have to fire them up and put them to use.

I think the software (either GW or the nVidia drivers) is probably to blame somewhere, personally. I've also had some issues over the past few months with the video in Guild Wars (and am unable to reproduce these issues in other games, as far as I've been able to tell; nor do they make themselves apparent in such things as 3DMark or the such).

I don't have an 8800GTS but I do have another nVidia card which makes the driver possibility a very real one. Here are specs:

Raidmax Aurora 580W PSU
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
2GB DDR400 RAM, single channel (I believe one stick is Crucial and the other 3 are Kingston)
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard
WD 200GB IDE internal hard drive
WD 80GB hard drive connected via USB enclosure (has separate power brick)
LG Lightscribe DVD burner
Lite-On DVD-RW
Two eVGA GeForce 7600 GT's running in SLI
Turtle Beach Riviera PCI sound card
Intel PRO/1000 GT Gigabit Ethernet PCI card
ViewSonic VA912b 19" LCD monitor (using DVI)
Windows XP Pro SP2, fully updated

I run GW at 1280x1024 with max graphics settings.

Normally this works fine (I normally get from 40-60 fps depending on the detail level, though I do sometimes see significant framerate drops in heavily populated town/outpost districts which go away after changing district or zoning into guild hall/explorable/less populated outpost etc.). However, there are a few glitches I've noticed at times -

*1 Sometimes characters (more rarely objects) turn into white boxes. I then get Repairing Data Archive ... on restarting GW, after which things are OK.
*2 Sometimes a severe frame rate drop happens, even in lightly populated explorables where there is no apparent reason for this. It will not go away without restarting GW. Sometimes I get Repairing Data Archive after this, other times the frame rate comes back to life if I simply restart GW.
*3 On occasion I have even seen the system seize up entirely while playing GW. It happens very suddenly, first I stop moving (as if I am about to get an error 007) but unlike an error 007 situation I can't even rotate the camera. Keys do not respond. Only the mouse cursor moves (but clicking does nothing). Shortly after I will hear a 'beep' from the PC speaker and the mouse cursor stops moving as well. As far as I can tell I get a clean Windows shutdown however, since if I hold in the power button to turn off the PC then power the system up again, I do not get a "Windows wasn't shut down properly" message. This only ever happened to my knowledge when GW was fullscreen but I don't run it windowed often.
*4 On occasion, when running GW in fullscreen mode the mouse cursor would flicker rapidly (though seemed to function normally). If GW was then windowed, the flickering would stop, but it would come back if GW was re-maximized.

Problem 1 and most of the time 2 would clear themselves up just by restarting the GW application. Problem 4 required a system reboot - restarting GW would not help. Naturally problem 3 results in a system crash so a reboot is necessary there too.

I have not seen problems 3 or 4 in the past week or two, I wonder if they were related to bugs in GW itself (as I mentioned I am unable to reproduce similar problems in other games or in 3D stress tests). Problems 1 and 2 still manifest themselves on occasion though ... the first one appears to be a corruption of gw.dat (not sure why it corrupts, though, but is easily fixed by restarting GW and allowing it to repair the archive), the second one looks like it might SOMETIMES be such a corruption but other times I am unable to discern the cause at all as GW doesn't do anything unusual on restart.

Hard drive space is not an issue; GW resides on the 200GB drive, which has 125GB free space still. The RAM has been memtested. Again, other games do not exhibit problems.

Forceware drivers 91.47 WHQL, 92.91 beta, 93.71 WHQL, and 93.81 beta have all exhibited these issues (I tried reinstalling the drivers and using different versions while attempting to diagnose problem 3 and the incidence of that one at least did not change); in any case, I need to stay with 93.71 or later, as Neverwinter Nights 2 does not properly support SLI without at least that driver version ...

You say that you only get 40-60fps? You don't by any chance have V-Sync turned on do you? On this PC with a single 7900GS 512MB (510/1450) I get back at least 100fps but 95% of the time it's around the 160fps mark, dropping to 70ish in populated areas like Sunspear Sanctuary.

I don't have GW installed on my works PC though so I can't compare it, but I imagine that'd scream with it's 2 x 8800GTX 768MB cards.

Really? Where did they get these numbers from then?

8800GTS SLI @513/1584 stock
PC/Windows start up = 277.3W (1.286A)
Stressprime Orthos Small FFTs = 297.4W (1.314A)
3Dmark06 = 370.9W (1.629A)
PCMark05 = 322.4W (1.426A)

Those numbers are being pulled from a test system sitting out in the open. Put it in a typical case and use it normally. You'll need a few extra fans for cooling, have to run the audio and NIC subsytems and probably have some USB devices added on. Go ahead and try and run a 100% working setup with a barely adequate PSU, and you will most definately have issues. Any system upgrades will just kill it.

Basically, quit pulling shit out of your ass and posing it as advice.

Awww, you're so polite, man. I'm not advising anything. I'm just saying that if nVidia says that you need a 400W PSU with 26A on 12V for a typical system, then they probably have a reason to. And if 600W PSU can run two of these cards on full load, overclocked, then few fans in the case aren't going to change it.
Anyone can buy what they want, I'm just pointing out the fact that it's not completely necessary. And that the OP might be disappointed after finding out he just wasted money on PSU that doesn't make a difference. That's what happend to me 2 years ago when I built my computer and there was a problem with it - I was advised that the problem is weak PSU for sure. Well it wasn't and I wasted about 150 euro on a new PSU.