Curse

Zodiak · Jun 20, 2007, 01:56 PM // 13:56

Hello friends,

I havent been able to play for a while now, about a month.

Recently I just invested a considerable amount in getting two EVGA 8800 Ultra 760mb video cards that I created a SLI setup with.

When time came to test my video cards, i tried Guildwars. Everything was fine when I loaded in town, but then as I was moving around I experienced something odd. As I was moving, every X frame, lets say every 400th frame or so (400/60= about every 6-7 seconds) would skip a frame and create this frame skipping effect.

I also had 1 flickering texture but that didnt reoccur yet, though it happened alot with my old 7600 which died at some point, hence me getting 2x 8800 Ultra Video Cards.

As you may guess, I am very angry to get such a problem with the investment I made to get top quality video and gameplay.

Can anyone recommend something that could solve this problem?

Guildwars
1680x1050
Default (60Hz)
4xAA
All settings on High

LG L226WTX LCD
22 inch display
3000:1 Contrast ratio
5MS Responce

Logitech G15 LCD Keyboard
Logitech G5 Laser Mouse

Antec Nine Hundred Gamer PC Case
AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core Processor 3800+
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
Kingston 1024mb (2x512mb) DDR333 Memory
2x EVGA 8800 Ultra 768mb Video Cards in SLI formation
OCZ 1010w GameXStreme Power Supply
VIA Onboard Audo
Windows XP SP2
Official Nvidia 158.22 Drivers
60gb Western Digital Hard Drive
200gb Western Digital Hard Drive
200gb Western Digital Hard Drive

Yanman.be · Jun 20, 2007, 04:11 PM // 16:11

The frame that skips would be black?

Zodiak · Jun 20, 2007, 05:31 PM // 17:31

No not quite,

Its just like watching television and it would pause for a milisecond and resume to the next frame.

the frame doesnt appear black, its just so incredibly annoying.

I monitor all my temperatures and my video cards are running at peak effeciancy.

scrinner · Jun 20, 2007, 08:04 PM // 20:04

Whats your drivers and OS?

Vista just got SLI with the latest Nvidia driver (The beta one) so i would wait for a few more drivers before most of the bugs get kinked out. If its Xp, then im not sure what to do.

Zodiak · Jun 20, 2007, 11:34 PM // 23:34

Hello,

Guess im not used to asking for help on boards lol.

Antec Nine Hundred Gamer PC Case
AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core Processor 3800+
ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
Kingston 1024mb (2x512mb) DDR333 Memory
2x EVGA 8800 Ultra 768mb Video Cards in SLI formation
OCZ 1010w GameXStreme Power Supply
VIA Onboard Audo
Windows XP SP2
Official Nvidia 158.22 Drivers
60gb Western Digital Hard Drive
200gb Western Digital Hard Drive
200gb Western Digital Hard Drive

scrinner · Jun 21, 2007, 01:28 AM // 01:28

Are teh cards inserted properly and is the sli chip thingy attached securely? I believe there was something about the A8N-SLI board and that Sli chip but i truly dont remember now. Besides that have you tried your cards on another computer?

EternalTempest · Jun 21, 2007, 03:55 AM // 03:55

What is the computer power supply watts and who is the manufacture (of the power supply)?

Quaker · Jun 21, 2007, 04:29 AM // 04:29

You could try removing one card and not running SLI, to see if that makes a difference. Unless you've got a 30 inch monitor, one 8800 is enough to run GW anyway.

Zodiak · Jun 21, 2007, 12:39 PM // 12:39

lol I am sorry friends, it always appears that I forget to write some information

My power supply is the OCZ 1010w GameXStream Power and I have 8 fans in my computer, so even though my video cards are known to run hot, they are quite cool.

I have the Antec Nine Hundred computer case and its quite nice. I have:

2x 120mm fans on the front of the case inside the hard drive cages that pull air in
1x 120mm fan on the back pulling hot air out
1x 200mm fan on the top of the case pulling air in
1x cpu fan
1x motherboard fan
2x VGA fans on my Video Cards

I cannot test the video cards in another computer as I dont have another unfortunatly.

The problem with the A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard is that if your video cards are considerably long, the first installed video card will overlap the small chipset fan on the Motherboard as far as I know, if you know something else please let me know.

The video card SLI jumper card is installed in the SLI side in and my computer recognises the setup as a SLI formation.

The reason I chose to purchase two of the EVGA 8800 Ultra video cards is basically for more demanding games to come, guildwars would more then happily work with only 1 of course

Incidently, I was talking to a friend of mine how it was boring that because of the DVI connection on LCD monitors, that the FPS get capped at 60fps, then I went into the Nvidia Control Panel and manual set the VSYNC to Force OFF and things seem somewhat better.

However, disabling VSYNC from guildwars did nothing.

Anyone know about this?

zenboy23 · Jun 21, 2007, 12:53 PM // 12:53

well, im no expert but i seriously think your processor and 1gb ram is severely bottlenecking the abilities of your graphics cards. you have formula one bridgestone tyres on a normal family car. invest in some ram 1st though.

Zodiak · Jun 21, 2007, 01:06 PM // 13:06

Yes I fully understand

The video cards I ordered cannot reach their full potial with the current hardware I have. However, they were the most expensive part to replace (from my old dead video card). Upgrading ram is not worth it since even though my Motherboard is only about 1-2 years old, at the time, DDR2 was not out, hense it does not support it, and I seriously dont want to spend another 500$ to max out outdated ram.

My CPU should also go as its the now older socket 939 AMD X2 processor and should also be replaced.

Aswel as my hard drives, they are still old ATA100 EIDE hard drives. I was lookign for four new 500gb SATA2 Hard Drives to create a Raid 0+1 array yet I dont have the money right now and not that experienced with Raid.

I've still been researching on it and what chunk size i should use. I read alot about Smaller tasks = larger chunk size and Larger tasks = smaller chunk size

Quaker · Jun 21, 2007, 02:03 PM // 14:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiak

The reason I chose to purchase two of the EVGA 8800 Ultra video cards is basically for more demanding games to come, guildwars would more then happily work with only 1 of course

The reason I suggested trying it with only one card was to determine if the SLI setup was causing (or involved in) the problem - not to suggest you scrap the SLI altogether - duh.

Btw, flickering textures and other graphic glitches are often the sign of bad RAM on the video card. Maybe you just have a bad card. So, as above, try each card separately. If only one has problems - bingo!

swaaye · Jun 21, 2007, 08:49 PM // 20:49

RAID isn't worth the effort. I've read so many reviews of RAID setups and they never seem to help and they always seem to end badly for people. Get 4 gigs of RAM and maybe one of those 150 gig Raptors. The newer 7200 RPM drives are nearly matching Raptors fairly often though and are so much quieter.

lord_shar · Jun 21, 2007, 09:21 PM // 21:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zodiak

...<SNIP>...

Incidently, I was talking to a friend of mine how it was boring that because of the DVI connection on LCD monitors, that the FPS get capped at 60fps, then I went into the Nvidia Control Panel and manual set the VSYNC to Force OFF and things seem somewhat better.

However, disabling VSYNC from guildwars did nothing.

Anyone know about this?

DVI is capped at 60hz, so as long as you're going through the DVI cable, you'll still hit the 60hz cap. There's a good reason for this: Higher refresh rates kills LCD's sooner with no real benefits. I've reposted the explanation many times, but here's the link covering the details:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10167975

Quote:

Originally Posted by lord_shar

DVI is capped at 60hz because LCD pixels have a finite # of color mode switchability before they go bad. The higher your vertical refresh setting, the faster you hit your display's pixel switching limits. Most LCD's will run 5+ years at 60hz no problem, but forcing unncessarily high refresh rates will toast your LCD much sooner. I'm sure newer versions have much better life span, but why take the chance?

LCD's don't have pixel strobe fade problems like CRT's, so they don't need high refresh rates to maintain image clarity and smoothness without flicker. LCD pixels have constant luminance, so if they are set to a certain color, they stay at that color until instructed to change. CRT's, on the other hand, immediately start losing pixel luminance after being set to the desired color. Therefore, CRT pixels require faster refresh strobes to maintain a static image. This is why CRT's flicker horribly at < 72hz, while LCD's have no such problems at 60hz.

From an LCD performance perspective, average pixel response time is more important for less flicker and faster image updates.

Additional note: I don't normally recommend buying cutting edge hardware unless your current application (GW in this case) absolutely needs it. Hardware and technology are always improving, while corresponding prices for them always go down. By the time the next killer title comes out (GW2?), your present 8800SLI set-up may no longer be able to run the app as well as a more-current video card offering.

Lurid · Jun 21, 2007, 10:20 PM // 22:20

Enable V Sync.

Zodiak · Jun 22, 2007, 12:31 PM // 12:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lurid

Enable V Sync.

lol I just disabled VSYNC from my message above, dont know if you saw that. Now I dont know if VSYNC itself is responsible for my problem, but Forcing it off through the Nvidia control panel seems to have made the problem disapear as far as I can tell or something.

As far as the choice of video cards, it was a mixed decision. I DID want to be able to run all of the most demanding games on true ultra high settings such as Oblivion, STALKER, the upcomming titles like CRYSIS, Hellgate London, etc.

The other part of my decision is that although they are not true OpenGL cards, I do use them to work in 3D CAD softwares and they do help alot

Third part is... well, I've never had a great video card, and I like saying "I CAN FEEL THE POWER!!" lol.

swaaye · Jun 22, 2007, 09:24 PM // 21:24

I saw some benchies of Quadros vs. SLI 7800s a while back. The slowest Quadro was faster than the SLI setup cuz the GeForce drivers don't accelerate some of the critical functions of those pro apps. But using a low end Quadro for games would be just like a low-end GeForce, so no go with that.

Lonesamurai · Jun 23, 2007, 08:02 AM // 08:02

Ok, apart from the motherboard and Graphics cards (of which may be TOO powerful for lil old GW), I'm running the same spec as you:

Manufacturer:
MSI AM2 K9N NEO-F, NF550, S AM2, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667/800/400, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX
Processor:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
Memory:
2046MB RAM
Hard Drive:
400 GB Total (2 x 200 Gb)
Video Card:
256MB Palit 7600GT Sonic, PCI-E(x16), Mem 1500MHz, GPU 575MHz, 12Pipes, D-Sub/Dual Link DVI/HDTV SLI
Monitor:
Generic Non-PnP Monitor
Sound Card:
Realtek HD Audio output
Speakers/Headphones:
4Gamers 2.1 Stereo Desk Speakers
Operating System:
Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6000) (6000.vista_rtm.061101-2205)

I would recommend getting that extra gig of Ram though, as it frees up that particular bottleneck... however, your CPU is fine (as its the same as i use) and will be fine for a while to come as the graphics cards will take a lot of the brunt of the games off it... hell, I'm looking at a single 8800 soon for myself

However, the phrase, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely!", actually applies to computer parts and programs as they get more powerful and complex (which I found quite strange) and it could be as simple as being the SLI set up being to much for lil old GW

scrinner · Jun 23, 2007, 03:50 PM // 15:50

Check your display settings and see what your monitors refresh rate is set at. If its not one that is native to your monitor that might be the problem with Vsync your having. My monitor natively supports 60 hz and cannot go above it and yes, it is an lcd.