Curse

Jenneh · Jun 20, 2006, 01:50 AM // 01:50

Hey, I just got a new compu with a better graphics card (nVIDIA GeForce 6100), and even though the graphics run amazingly, I get these really weird glitches every now and then. Sometimes, my skill bar will go to such a high contrast that I can't even see it, or my character's hair will disappear...but the most annoying glitches are the ones where my character's armor will go completely silver, and when (and this one bothers me most) my inventory goes blank.

Like, every single time I spawn with my ele, her armor will glitch out. EVERY time. And every time I open my inventory, it will be fine until I click on something. This happens at merchants, too, all the graphics for the items don't appear. I tried lowering the graphics, lowering the resolution and changing the Anti-Aliasing to none, but nothing helps!! I hope there is an easy solution for this which doesn't involve buying another graphics card :X

1nfamouz · Jun 20, 2006, 02:28 AM // 02:28

that video card sucksbtw , and it's probaly the drivers

Lurid · Jun 20, 2006, 05:03 AM // 05:03

I'm not 100% on this, but imo its either the drivers for your graphics, or the amount of ram that you have. How much ram does your system have? Does this issue happen say...right after you zone into a town / outpost?

Jenneh · Jun 20, 2006, 05:57 AM // 05:57

I'm not entirely sure how to change or fix the graphics drivers, but I don't think it's the RAM...I have 1GB of DDR.

Scorpion Boy · Jun 20, 2006, 06:17 AM // 06:17

Does it disappears after a while?

Kaguya · Jun 20, 2006, 06:43 AM // 06:43

The silver armor thing is pretty much related to way too old graphic card, the game is trying to give instructions that the card doesn't understand, leaving certain effects missing. Or just the drivers are too old.

The inventory bug.. I think I have read about it earlier, but no clue where. Prolly updating the drivers will solve it.

Driver update is pretty simple, go to www.nvidia.com, select 'Download Drivers' from the menu bar up, and from the trio of menus select 'Graphics Driver -> GeForce and TNT2 -> Windows XP / 2000' (assuming you are using either XP or 2K) and hit on go.

You should find yourself from the page of the latest driver, in this case http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_84.21.html

Then hit download, and wait. After it has been downloaded, run the file and follow the onscreen instructions. The computer should restart once or twice and then the new driver should be functional.

Other tricks you might want to try, is adding switches -dx8 and -noshaders which forces GW to run on DirectX8 instead of 9, and noshader might resolve some shader related problems.

How to do the switch thing:

The 'D:\Guild Wars'-part of course might be different for you, probably 'C:\Program Files\Guild Wars' if you installed with the default settings, but just add the -dx8 and -noshaders after the shortcut as shown in the picture.

kvndoom · Jun 20, 2006, 06:56 AM // 06:56

No, it's the drivers. I've toyed around with beta drivers before and gotten the same effects, to the letter- crystalline armor, inventory items disppearing, occasional "checkerboard" ground textures. Download and install the latest WHQL's and you'll probably be fine. The 6100 is a true DX9 GPU so I wouldn't run it in DX8 mode unless nothing else worked.

Jenneh · Jun 20, 2006, 07:51 AM // 07:51

Ok, I'm just installing the driver now....I'm pretty sure that is the problem.

The weird thing is, is that my old computer had a WAY WORSE graphics card (I couldn't even tell you what the piece of crap was) than this one, and I never had those problems. Sure, I couldn't play on the highest graphics setting, but I at least could see the armor and inventory items properly...

Anyway, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[EDIT:] Oh, perfect, the driver did just the trick ^^ I really appreciate it! Now I can actually see what item my mouse is hovering over!! Thanks a lot guys ^^ (specifically Kaguya ;D)

Kaguya · Jun 20, 2006, 07:56 AM // 07:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jenneh

The weird thing is, is that my old computer had a WAY WORSE graphics card (I couldn't even tell you what the piece of crap was) than this one, and I never had those problems. Sure, I couldn't play on the highest graphics setting, but I at least could see the armor and inventory items properly...

Vidcard drivers play a huge role in performance, too old/too new version of the driver might not work with game X, but works fine with game Y.

For example, back in my ATi days, Knights of the Old Republic had _massive_ lag in certain maps, and perfect performance in others. After downgrading the drivers back a year worth or so, the problem vanished. Problem was that some other games didn't work that well, effectively making me swap drivers when I wanted to play some other game :P

Haven't had that much problems with nVidia luckily, tho there have been some reports of version this and that not working as good as some older one. Suppose that's the reason (atleast used to) people say that you shouldn't update your drivers unless there are problems with the current ones.