The joy of a 7900GT...not

Dangit..... I have to rewrite my post.... (lagged out of the internet????). Anyways, major points:

Get 3rd party drivers (that you can trust) for all of your cards. I always do that, regardless of card type or manufacturer (previously Nvidia, currently ATI). Worth it.

Have you tried using cooling (liquid or otherwise) for your cards? May help

ATI cards aren't always crap, as you claim. Main difference btw Nvidia and ATI is style of gpu (Nvidia=shader heavy). (ATI's 1800 series was quite far ahead of Nvidia's 6800's, if I remember correctly, but that fluctuates every now and then)

Haven't checked into this thread in quite a while.

"3rd-party drivers" (Omega Drivers) are still based upon what gets released by NVIDIA/ATI. In Linux, you either use the proprietary drivers that are released or get to suffer by not having hardware acceleration in X.

I'm not insane enough to try watercooling. I did, however, use a NV Silencer 5 Rev. 3 on the first 7900GT CO (N563) because the stock fan was LOUD AND WOULD NEVER EVER EVER EVER SHUT OFF. Not really an issue with cooling, though (see the HardOCP article) - the card that I slapped the NV Silencer on ran cold and it still ended up going back to eVGA.

I'm not claiming that the cards are crap, I'm saying that the drivers are crap. Please read what I said. I'd gladly buy a card developed by the guys up north if the (win32/Linux) driver thing wasn't such a big deal. If there were open-source (Linux) drivers that provided hardware acceleration for newer cards, you can be sure I'd pick one of fine, fine products. This isn't brand loyalty - this is buying a product doesn't suck and won't cause me to rage™.

Still in constant communication with eVGA about stuff...fun fun.

The problem is REALLY easy to fix, no need for ANY 3rd party programs.

If you go to the website http://www.slizone.com/page/slizone_downloads.html, which is one of the main nvidia website, you'll see there are several drivers available for download.

Don't get a beta driver and it will work fine. That means the latest and greatest driver to use is 84.21. I'm using it now and I was able to restore Guild Wars to the highest video settings....No more crashes, No more problems.

Down With BETA drivers!

Trust me, I've tried every version of ForceWare under the sun that you can think of, beta or not, WHQL or not, running DriverCleaner to ensure a clean installation. It's not a driver issue, the problem is the card itself. (Read the HardOCP article in my first post).

The "latest" WHQL'd, non-beta ForceWare is actually 91.31. The part about "greatest," though, I'm not so sure. (I went back to good 'ole 84.21 after running into a few problems - Guild Wars did run with the new release, though.)

I just bought a brand new professionally built PC that has this video card in it. 91.31 is the driver they had on it, and Guild Wars didn't work with it. 84.21 works now, but I hate this card.

<3 the title lol. im happy with my 6800GT. almost for 2 years now. time flies by quick :/ anyway, i heard lots of ppl having probs with the new 91.31 driver. i havent installed and dont plan to. the ones im using right now is 84.21 and they work great.

Uh huh...

Nvidia cards are NOT all bad, and 3rd party? EVGA is the BEST, heck, they sent him 4 cards, even bumped him up to a KO edition. EVGA sent him his first exchange in a week, if that isn't service, tell me what is?

Don't be a fanboy, and don't say something unless you know what you are talking about. Uh huh, 3rd party EVGA, all though it isn't always their fault, Nvidia cards are all bad.

The NVIDIA CHIPSETS ARE NOT BAD.

(most frustrating post of the day)