Thief 2 and ddfix problems with NVIDIA cards under Windows 7, on ATI cards OK - by Kaloian
Kaloian on 26/8/2011 at 21:07
Because my post turned out to be too long I give first a short summary of the problem: While using Windows 7 and ddfix, Thief 1 and 2 show corrupted in game text, menus and maps with NVIDIA cards but everything is fine with ATI cards on the same computer.
Now some more detailed description:
First of all I would like to apologies for creating a new thread on issue already discussed in older threads. The reason for this is that I am really desperate and the old tread look pretty much dead.
I am playing Thief 1 and 2 for more than 10 years now and I like very much both the original games and many of the fan missions. That is why I was very happy when the ddfix appeared and made the Thief games looking very nice again on modern machines. Big thanks to all people involved in the development of the ddfix.
Everything was fine until about half year ago when I moved to Windows 7. All of the sudden I realized that under Windows 7 the text in the load screens, menus, maps and in-game readables looks blurry or dithered. Naturally my first reaction was to search the TTLG forums for a solution of the problem. Soon enough I found that another taffer, Dahenjo, have the same problem but although several people tried to help him there was still not clear solution. Dahenjo has described the problem in great details and also put screenshots here:
(
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125853&page=6)
I contacted him and by comparing our systems we tried to narrow the source of the problem. He has already described our systems in another post ((
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125853&p=2080282&viewfull=1)) but I will repeat the info here:
My system:
Asus P7P55D Pro motherboard
Intel Core i5 750 CPU
Kingston PC3-10700(667 MHz) DDR3 RAM (2x2GB)
MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
EIZO 22" LCD monitor
Win7 32-bit
Dahenjo’s system - Thief problem on Win7 but not XP:
Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3
Phenom II X4 940 3GHz (AM2+)
2x2GB OCZ Platinum DDR2
XFX GeForce 9800 GTX+ or EVGA GeForce GTX 460
Auria 24" 1080p LCD/TV (using VGA) or ASUS VE248H 24" 1080p LCD/LED (using DVI)
XP Pro 32-bit/Win7 64-bit dual boot
As you can see we have very different system with the only similarity being the NVIDIA card. Initially we thought that the problem can not be (only) NVIDIA related, but few weeks ago Dahenjo updated to a new system with an on board ATI card:
ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3
Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz (AM3)
2x4GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3
integrated Radeon HD 4250
ASUS VE248H 24" 1080p LCD/LED (using DVI)
Win7 64-bit
And the Thief was working perfectly again with the on board graphics. However, when he tried to use his old NVIDIA cards (9800 GTX or 460 GTX) on the new system the same problem with the text appeared again under Windows 7. That is why he bought a new Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 card and now plays happily Thief with perfect quality:D.
Following his example I recently borrowed an ATI Radeon HD6570 card and guest what… the Thief 1 and 2 were running perfectly under windows 7.
To summaries we have tried two very different configurations (an AMD and an Intel based) with all together 3 NVIDIA and 3 ATI cards. In all cases we have the problem with the corrupted text in Thief 1 and 2 under Windows 7, but everything was fine when using ATI cards. So we think that the problem may be related to some miscommunication between the NVIDIA Windows 7 drivers and the ddfix.
May be it is something very simple and Jermy or somebody else who knows better the ddfix can help us solve it.
I really like to play Thief in nice quality again, but moving to ATI is not an easy option for me after I bought recently an Nvidia 3D vision active shutter glasses and Nvidia 3D vision compatible beamer.
Thank you very much for reading this long post and please help me if you can
Kaloian
Nathan on 28/8/2011 at 23:01
What version of ddfix are you using?
What drivers are you using for the NVIDIA cards?
Kaloian on 29/8/2011 at 19:41
Quote Posted by Nathan
What version of ddfix are you using?
What drivers are you using for the NVIDIA cards?
Thank you for the response. We tried basically all combination of ddfix version and
NVIDIA drivers. From the older ddfix that do not include the widescreen support automatically,
to the newest 1.5.11. The problem was always there. The same goes for the Nvidia drivers,
I tried the very first windows 7 drivers that supported GTX 460 cards to the new 275.33 driver.
Interestingly enough, with the same driver versions but for Windows XP the Thief is working just fine.
So I am not sure what is wrong, but probably it is related to the Windows 7 drivers. I have the feeling that the rescaling of the text to the higher screen resolution is somehow not working properly.
Nathan on 30/8/2011 at 09:37
Did you try multiple resolutions or just widescreen ones like 1920X1080? What about something like 1024X768?
Your Thief 2 copy is one from original Eidos/LGS cd's right?
It does seem that the Windows 7 drivers are causing a problem. I remember reading somewhere that some people installed older drivers from Windows Vista onto Windows 7 and got Thief to work. You might look into trying this and see if you get the same result.
Kaloian on 30/8/2011 at 20:29
I tried various resolutions e.g. 1024X768, but the text problem is always there.
And yes my Thief 2 copy is original Eidos/LGS, or at least i hope so. I bought the game from amazon.co.uk and this is a double sided dvd from "Sold out software" with Thief 1/Thief 2 on each side.
Anyway the game is running perfectly on XP.
I do not really like the idea of using old Vista drivers on Windows 7. Even if this make Thief working fine
this will not be a good and stable solution for my other games and applications.
I guest the problem is that the text is upscaled using simple pixel rescaling instead of "smart" rescaling.
Could it be related to the fact that the Nvidia drivers for Windows 7 support directX 10 and 11 while the
drivers under XP support only directX 9?
Dahenjo on 30/8/2011 at 23:59
I originally posted about this problem in the 'Thief 2 on Windows 7' thread with screenshots (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125853&p=2044911&viewfull=1#post2044911) here and (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125853&p=2045286&viewfull=1#post2045286) here.
I did try pre-Win7/Vista and early Win7 drivers but the same distortion always remained. Also did test installs with fresh Win7 + latest basic drivers (mobo, sound, video only) + fresh Thief 1/2 + every DDFix version from 1.4.4 to 1.5.11 with no change whatsoever. Thief 2 is original 2000 version. As Kaloian said, the same version NVIDIA drivers were perfect in XP but had the problem in Win7 on the same computer. I believe we have both tried every logical thing we could think of in troubleshooting this issue.
Standard vs widescreen resolutions made no difference, but if I disabled DDFix (swap back to original Thief EXE + edit cam.cfg to a standard game resolution) the text became normal (problem completely went away) in the loading screens, although running the game itself was graphically unplayable. This seems to indicate that DirectX 11 can run the game without the problem, and it's from something related to how DDFix changes things.
I know that the Win7 graphics subsystem architecture was revamped in fairly major ways from XP's, including DirectX implementation. Hard-core techie types can watch this (
http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/yochay/windows-7-graphics-architecture-overview-part-1) 3-part interview on the subject with a senior Microsoft architect.
@Nathan - if you play Thief, is it on a comparable/modern system to ours with a NVIDIA card without this problem? If so, we'd be interested to see your full specs.
Nathan on 31/8/2011 at 11:07
Quote:
@Nathan - if you play Thief, is it on a comparable/modern system to ours with a NVIDIA card without this problem? If so, we'd be interested to see your full specs.
The system I use to play Thief has an ATI card so I don't have the problem. One of my friends has Windows 7 64 bit and a GTX 460 in his system. He lives a ways away but he will be back around my area in October. I'll ask him if I can install Thief 2 on his system and do some testing with ddfix.
You probably already do this but I thought I'd ask anyway: When you put the NVIDIA cards into your system are you making sure to disable the onboard video card?
Also, you could try an even older version of ddfix like 1.3.11 (
http://timeslip.users.sourceforge.net/ddfix.html) here.
Again I will see if my friend will let me use his system for testing in October. If for some reason one of the older ddfix versions works maybe we can narrow down the problem and get it fixed.
Dahenjo on 31/8/2011 at 16:36
Thanks, Nathan, that would be helpful. We need to find out if it's every NVIDIA card or if not, what is different on the systems where Thief looks normal.
Quote Posted by Nathan
You probably already do this but I thought I'd ask anyway: When you put the NVIDIA cards into your system are you making sure to disable the onboard video card?
Yes, of course. Though semi-retired now I've worked in IT since early 90s, setup & troubleshooted countless PCs including all my own self-built, and worked corporate help desks and higher levels of support, but am not much of a programmer.
Sorry I misspoke there, and see I do have 1.3.11 which I now recall finding more recently (but still a couple months ago before upgrading) and definitely trying too. I think if the issue was widespread (more people tend to have NVIDIA cards than ATI these days) and there was some really obscure setting or driver version needed to avoid this particular problem for everyone moving to Win7, there would be many more posts here about it.
Nathan on 31/8/2011 at 23:14
This problem does seem like it is very rare. My cousin is also going to build a new system very soon and he will be using a GTX 550 I believe so I will test it out on that too to see what it looks like.
Have you tried ddfix 1.1.1? I can't seem to find a copy of it or the source code to it or version 1.2.7. If we could try 1.1.1 on your systems (the ddfix with the least amount of code) we might be able to narrow down what ddfix is doing to cause the problem. Though directx programming is not something I am familiar with I would be happy to have a look through the source code (if I could only find it) and look for what could be causing the problem.
The only other thing I can think of to try (and I'm grasping at straws here) is to try installing DirectX 9. I know my friend has Windows 7 64 bit ultimate and he had to install DirectX 9 in order to get Shogun: Total War to work right as somehow some files from DirectX 9 were needed. Again this probably won't solve the problem but it's the only thing I can think of.
Kaloian on 3/9/2011 at 17:12
Dear Nathan and Dahenjo,
Thank you very much for your efforts to solve this annoying problem
Actually, it seems that the Nathan hit the hidden switch :D by suggesting to try ddfix 1.1.1
I just did that and guest what. The text is fine. I can make it only up to 1280x1024
and when i tried to use the widescreen patch although it said successfully patched the resolutions stays 1280x1024 and the game crashes after showing first the menu screen and the objectives screen. The widescreen patch reported some problems with the Thief2.exe size, may be it is because I am using the no CD patched Thief2. exe. When I uninstall the widescreen patch the game runs nice at 1280x1024
So this is the first time i succeed to make the text in the menu screens and maps of Thief to look normal under Windows 7.
So what have change between versions ddfix1.1.1 and the new versions that makes the problem?
May be you have an idea because I really do not know. I know that with this old version you need to run the ddfixGUI.exe and change the resolution there, while in the new versions it is enough to change it in the cam file, but I have no idea how the communication with DirectX and so on works in the different versions.
So I think we did an important step forward an I am looking forward for any new ideas and suggestions.
