smithpd on 8/5/2007 at 03:07
Quote Posted by Bikerdude
What you doing up at this hour?
My last post was at 19:39 Mountain time (that's New Mexico, USA), before dinner. Night night. :)
Hit Deity on 22/7/2007 at 21:31
See solution at the end of this post..it works, but not well.<strike>I'm confused. I've got a BFG 7950GT PCI-e card and I can't get anything but software rendering to work via the safe_texture_manager fix.</strike>
smithpd said:
Quote:
The 7000 series video card will play all versions Thief. T2 and T3 are no problem other than the usual bad sky.
I'll take bad sky and NO T1 at this point to play at anything above 1024x768 resolution on mine.
Currently, I've got the 94.24 nforce drivers installed, dated 4/19/2007 (driver file version in Control Panel is 6.14.10.9424). I've tried 91.28 (card not recognized), 91.29 (card not recognized), 91.31 (card not recognized), 93.71, and 94.24. None worked to get hardware rendering (resolutions above 1024x768 without using safe_texture_manager). How did you get this working, smithpd? It just keeps crashing for me.
I even replaced my 7950 GT with an older 6600 and it still wouldn't work without crashing when I tried to take out safe_texture_manager. I give up.
I am also somewhat confused by the above installation instructions. Those links above still point to specific files, so I'm assuming they're still pointing the ones smithpd is referring to in his post. Ok, so I download both and the first one looks and acts just like Peter says. It extracts to a folder (in 84.56), and inside is a modified .inf along with all the setup files. Peter says to disregard that .inf file, so I do. But then he says to get the new .inf file from the second link driver file. But it doesn't save them, it only extracts to a temp folder. I wait for the installer to pause, and I grab the nv4_disp.inf file from the temp folder and copy it over to my 84.56 folder, but the that doesn't work either.
I'm stuck at this point. I'm going to try manually installing the 84.56 folder again.
Aha!! That got it. Tried it again and kept pointing the installation routine back and forth between the two directories (84.56 and Windows\System32) until it finally found all the files it needed.
Now, it works, except for the fact that the game is waaaaayy too fast and I've found no way to slow it down.
I'd be curious to know if smithpd has the "happy Garrett on speed" problem that I have right now.
See this thread: (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=827700#post827700)
Gothik on 26/7/2007 at 01:45
Has anyone else tried the
beta official 162.18 drivers? I downloaded them recently as Maxis claim they have fixed the Nvidia crash error with The Sims 2 (symptoms include black screen, game locking up forcing a hard reboot of the computer, game crashes etc). Well, I've tried them as my girlfriend is addicted to the Sims 2 and we were suffering from the Nvidia crash with that game. The drivers seem to have cured it completely.
So, just as a thought, I decided to reinstall Thief Gold, which had previously been giving me black screens and crashing in general for months.
And lo and behold the game runs again on my Geforce 6600. I should add, I'm using the D3D fixed exe to run the game as safe_texture_manager does not seem to work, even with these drivers. And trying to force FSAA on in the control panel also causes the game to crash (but I can live with that).
You can download them from (
http://http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_162.18.html) Nvidia They support the majority of cards from the Geforce FX, 6xxx and 7xxx ranges.
So maybe there is hope for us yet in future official driver releases from Nvidia and we won't need to downgrade to be able to play Thief properly.
Hit Deity on 27/7/2007 at 01:28
Geee-zus what a huge jump in Forceware versions!! I just downloaded the newest drivers from eVGA (my card manufacturer) and from NVIDIA, and the latest version as of 7/22/07 was 94.24, dated 4/19/07, right? Now it's 162.18, dated 7/26/07. Isn't that a rather large update?
Maybe I'm just mistaken...
I'll be the guinea pig and try them, I guess.
smithpd on 28/7/2007 at 01:37
Quote Posted by Hit Deity
Now, it works, except for the fact that the game is waaaaayy too fast and I've found no way to slow it down.
I'd be curious to know if smithpd has the "happy Garrett on speed" problem that I have right now.
Copied from PM and edited, for the record:
That happened to me, too. The way-too-fast thing can be fixed by setting Vertical Sync ON on in the G71 tab of driver (old style control panel). Better yet, I have mine set to Application Controlled. That works for me.
Let me know if that works.
Hit Deity on 29/7/2007 at 17:16
I tried both VSync on and off (thought I did), and while there was a little improvement with it On, it would have still been unlikely that I could get used to Garrett lurching forward off of things like ledges.
I couldn't get it to work to my satisfaction.
Also, just for the record, it was nice having Hardware Acceleration active again, but I was still stuck at 1024x768 resolution, since my flatscreen monitor is a native 1440x900 (1024x768 was the highest I could use on it).
After I get everything set back up under Windows XP Pro, I'll let you know some more. Right now, I'm waiting for it after my 320GB hard drive completely fnarked itself up when I got 137GB of data on it. XP Home didn't support large harddrives over 137GB, so I had "tricked" it into recognizing the whole 320GB with a virtual driver. Good thing I backed up my .mis files two days before - woohoo!!!
smithpd on 1/8/2007 at 07:01
I just found some drivers that work better than my customized driver set, described earlier in this thread. I will modify my first post accordingly, tomorrow perhaps.
To cut to the chase, the improved drivers are (
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=1744187&postcount=302) posted here.
These drivers do
everything I have been wanting for my 7950GT, right out of the box, so to speak. :D
84.56 version supports T1 (Thief Gold) and T2. 9xxx and above, when used with the 7950GT, do not play T1. Get BSOD with T1, but T2 works.
7950GT is supported (but probably not higher). Most 84.56 versions do not support the 7950GT.
SLI (running two video cards to get better performance) is supported. My custom drivers do not support SLI.
It uses the old Nvidia interface, not the new control panel.
DetailsI stumbled on these drivers while trying to solve a new problem with SLI. A week ago I bought a second 7950GT as a spare because I noticed that the supplies are drying up very fast. The entire 7900 series seems to be drying up because I guess Nvidia sees it as a dying market. To duplicate my existing card for possible SLI use, I searched high and low and finally found one on e-bay. The last of the Mohicans. So, tonight I was trying to make SLI work with my two 7950GT cards. I found that SLI did not work with the modified drivers I had installed -- there is no place in the control panel to select SLI, but there should be. Riva Tuner 2.2 was no help.
The first thing I did was install a recent driver (162.18) to make sure SLI worked. It did, but T1 again went into the dumpster. :(
Then I did a Google search on "84.56 7950GT SLI", and I came across the above site. Downloaded the drivers called "84.56_mod2.exe" and did a virus check. It is a self extracting archive. It extracts into a folder, and from there you can run setup.exe. Bingo. The INF file is there in plain sight.
Anyway, it supported the 7950GT as advertised. On installation it detected the SLI configuration and gave me the choice to immediately set it to SLI mode, just as the newer drivers did. After installation, I checked first that it worked with Thief Gold, and it did. Then I checked my 3DMark06 score, and it had increased from 5383 to 8860. The highest score recorded for 75 similar configurations was 9053, so I am pleased. :D
T1, T2, and Far Cry worked in SLI mode with no problem. I don't have TDS installed. T1 and T2 run at the normal, regulated speed with Vertical Sync at "application controlled."
Motherboard: MSI P6N SLI Premium
Chipset: Nvidia Nforce 650i
Video cards: 2 ea. XFX GeForce 7950GT PCI-E, model PVT71JYHE9
OS: XP Pro, SP2
bikerdude on 1/8/2007 at 08:11
Very tasty Mr smith!
Your near the 3Dm06 of a 8800GTS. And your not far off my 8800GTX@621/1080 score of 12501. That said my old voltmodded (7900GT@670core/960mem/Delta30) would do 7011.
I reckon if you o/c both of those 7950GT's you should crack the 9000-10000 mark, spanking a 8800GTS....But I suggest if you have the space to buy a Zalman 700cu vga heatsink kit for both cards - quieter and cooler and will allow a tad more o/c headroom.
biker
ps. the 84.56 driver is a faster driver interms of raw speed in 3Dmark and games for the Geforce 7 series...!!!
oltraver on 1/8/2007 at 22:51
SmithPD-
I love you. Your last suggestion did it for me on T1 using a 7950GT!
Yes! Yes! Frickin' Yes! (Back to Thievin'...)
-P
smithpd on 2/8/2007 at 05:37
Quote Posted by Bikerdude
I reckon if you o/c both of those 7950GT's you should crack the 9000-10000 mark, spanking a 8800GTS....But I suggest if you have the space to buy a Zalman 700cu vga heatsink kit for both cards - quieter and cooler and will allow a tad more o/c headroom.
Thanks for the suggestion, Biker.:) But my cards are passively cooled, using heat pipes and radiators, no fan. They run cool and quiet, and they look cool.
Inline Image:
http://home.comcast.net/~smithpd1/thief/XFX_7950GT.jpgAlso I probably will never OC these puppies. My main concern is that they last as long as I play Thief, which could be quite a long time.;)
