Egads there is so much information scattered everywhere...

its making my head hurt.


GS GT GTS(512) are the only 65nm chips


The times when the cards were released starts to show a trend but I can't focus on it...


I'm hitting a wall here.

List reordered by release date...


GeForce 8800 GTX 768 - Bug after "hours"

GeForce 8800 GTS 320 - Bugged - Afker

GeForce 8800 GTS 640 - Bugged - Fyrie

GeForce 8600 GT 256 - Bugged?

GeForce 8600 GT 512 - Bugged?

GeForce 8600 GTS 256 - Betting on Bugged

GeForce 8600 GTS 512 - Bugged - Tao

GeForce 8800 Ultra 786 - Bugged - VI


GeForce 8800 GT 256 - Betting No Bug

GeForce 8800 GT 512 - No Bug - GondorB & Others.

GeForce 8800 GT 1024 - Betting No Bug

GeForce 8800 GTS 512 - Betting No Bug

GeForce 8800 GS 384 - Betting No Bug

GeForce 8800 GS 768 - Betting No Bug


Yeah I see a pattern...

 

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I can confirm that the XFX 8600GT is also bugged and I have tried installing old drivers and changing options in the nVidia control panel which didn't do jack. All these years and when I finally get a card with good performance at high resolutions it ends us being buggy...typical.

Tiger - how much ram on the card? it doesn't matter alot just for the sake of my build list which we should prolly post on the Turbine boards and let people know not to bother trying to play AC with these cards? Look earlier in the thread... I posted a 8500 that I saw on sale on the interwebs was like 30AR... and with the new cheat sheet I have we can semi safely recommended which 8 series you can buy and not get screwed.


but I think what we have here is anything using the older sized gpu is gonna fail, the question is can we find a way to make it liveable with minor tweaks and fixes of maybe an extra case fan or slot fan or replacement GPU cooler...


The bug does not appear on the 65nm gpu I am willing to make this bold statement, I think.


This brings us back to some original ideas I've seen discounted in other threads.

What if the cooler isn't enough for the larger gpu?


Fyrie this prolly runs against everything in your soul, but what happens if you point a box fan at your exposed graphics card? Does the card support the "newer" tech of making itself dumber to beat a heat level, I saw this in one of the drivers once and was intrested by it. If its reporting the wrong temp and running to hot... you end up with graphics corrpution sorta like what we see in all the screenies. Lets assume the "evil" cards always report the wrong temp, what happens when you find a way to make the temp become lower or lower the tolerance in the driver.


Mind you a new GPU cooler isn't suggested for everyone but you can get a decent one for alot less than a new video card, and if I am right about the temp being to high you'll actually be saving yourself the hassle of your card eating itself over time from running to hot to long. So Fyrie my faithful guinea pig... we await your report


I was reading some other stuff about it not working in some "older" slots etc... that will be the next course of exploration if this proves to be wrong, but I has a feeling about this.


wubbie

 

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If you think it's heat related, I'll admit I'm extremely skeptical. As I wrote in the guru 3d post I've clocked the card down to GPU Core @ 144 MHz /GPU Mem @ 209 MHz. Playing AC in an 800x600 window I saw the bug. The card was at 49c.


As I sit here and type with my card at stock values, the card is running at 64c.


However, I will do as you ask and report back.

Ah sorry my card has 256 MB of memory. I also doubt that it's a heating problem as my card has a quite a large Zalman fan on it (though it is overclocked by default!).


http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?XFX-86GTXZ

I just opened my case and pointed a Holmes "Blizzard" fan at my card. I underclocked the card down to the minimum. I managed to get the core down to 43c, but the flickering was still there playing in an 800x600 window. Also for what it's worth, my Linux install is reporting roughly the same temps when idle and when playing. Under linux the card tends to hover around 70c while I'm playing without issue.

List reordered by release date note the spiffy break between bugged not bugged...


GeForce 8800 GTX 768 - Bug after "hours"

GeForce 8800 GTS 320 - Bugged - Afker

GeForce 8800 GTS 640 - Bugged - Fyrie

GeForce 8600 GT 256 - Bugged - Tigerblue

GeForce 8600 GT 512 - Bugged?

GeForce 8600 GTS 256 - Betting on Bugged not 65nm

GeForce 8600 GTS 512 - Bugged - Tao

GeForce 8800 Ultra 786 - Bugged - VI


GeForce 8800 GT 256 - Betting No Bug

GeForce 8800 GT 512 - No Bug - GondorB & Others.

GeForce 8800 GT 1024 - Betting No Bug

GeForce 8800 GTS 512 - Betting No Bug

GeForce 8800 GS 384 - Betting No Bug

GeForce 8800 GS 768 - Betting No Bug


Fyrie - Well it was an idea, but the idea of the big fan failing as well as a Zalman fan not being able to do it takes heat back off the table. It was a shot in the dark, but sometimes you need to recover the basics...


Okies here is the dirty part I skimmed... credit to the wikipedia...


"Shortly after the release, an incompatibility issue with older PCI Express 1.0a motherboards was unmasked. When using the PCI Express 2.0 compliant 8800GT in motherboards with PCI Express 1.0a slots, the card would not produce any display image, but the computer would often boot (with the fan spinning at a constant 100%). Some mainboard (Motherboard) chipsets had a workaround, which was to re-flash the graphics card's bios with an older GEN1 BIOS (which effectively made it into a PCI Express 1.0 card, not being able to utilize the PCIE 2.0 functions. but since the card itself could not even utilize the full capacity of the regular PCIE 1.0 slots, there was no noticeable performance reduction). A workaround to this is to flash the BIOS of the motherboard to the latest version. The flashing of the BIOS, however, voided the warranties of most cards thus making it a less-than-optimum way of getting the card to work properly. In relation to this compatibility issue, the high numbers of DOA (Dead On Arrival - cards that are broken out of the box)(As much as 13-15%) were believed to be inaccurate. When it was revealed that the G92 8800GT and 8800GTS 512Mb were going to be designed with PCI Express 2.0 connections, NVIDIA claimed that all cards would have full Backwards-Compatibility, but they completely failed to mentioned that this was only true for PCI Express 1.1 motherboards. The source for the BIOS-flash did not come from NVIDIA or any of their partners, but rather ASRock, a mainboard producer, who mentioned the fix in one of their motherboard FAQ's. ASUSTek, which produces their own versions of the 8800GT, posted a newer version of their 8800GT BIOS on their website, but did not mention that it fixed this issue. As of the date of this article (Dec 26 2007) there has not been any official word on this issue from either NVIDIA or any of their partners."


So we are looking at BIOS on cards and on MB's...

I think we are well out of the elements here.


What we do have however is proof of what cards have this problem for sure and some ideas about why, but no real way to test or repair them I don't think. Getting people to update MB bios's is one thing but video cards bios is a whole area I am scared of.


Rather than posting on Nvidia's boards and such, maybe it will take people finding a single tech support address and bringing all of this up. You paid ALOT for your video cards, and well AC isn't exactly rocket science. You get x amount of support from the company, and maybe its time to call the card defective. Its supposed to let you do what you want. It fails to provide the desired outcome and Nvdia has not provided any resolution of any sort. So what is Nvidia prepared to do to keep you as a customer? They sold you a card that works 95% of the time, are they going to give you a 5% rebate?


The worst Nvidia can do is tell you to go away, but hopefully they will actually ACT on this problem. If your card is recently purchased, return it for something else. If your cards still under warranty start annoying Nvidia directly rather than in message boards. Get them to fix it or make it right with the consumer. We've reached the end of what I can think of or offer to help. Hopefully we can find owners of the last few 8 series we don't know the bug status on and finish the list, but I am willing to bet the bug will be where I predicted and not where I predicted it to be.


I'm sorry I was unable to make this better.

Now its Nvidia's turn, make them fix it or make it right.

If someone gets a real tech support email please post it here, if everyone who suffered thru this problem all step up at once its harder for them to ignore. Your power lies in not giving up and sticking together. Tell the tech you email that there are dozens of people with this same problem who are tired of not getting help. Stand up be counted and maybe just maybe you can play AC again...


again I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it all better.

wubbie

 

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Wubbie, I do appreciate the ideas you've come up with. Even though a few of us felt like heat wasn't an issue, it was a good idea to actually prove it. As a programmer in my professional life, I've been burned by not ruling out things that I felt were "obviously not a problem" but ended up being a problem.... meaning sometimes I've missed simple errors by failing to rule them out. I think your desire to be thorough has been extremely helpful.


I need to ponder some of the details in the rest of your post to see if any ideas pop up.

I found a bug report form on nVidia's website, but I could only find one for the Vista OS. Still, it may be a good way of getting them to look at the issue if enough people post a report.


https://surveys.nvidia.com/index.jsp?pi=7498eac864dc1950c8f09e040b4a437a

I know this is a nVidia investigation and I have tried 2 brand new 8600 GT 256 cards myself with both flickering in the sky.


Reason for me to try a Radeon one, specs:


ATI Radeon HD 2900 GT, PCI Express x16, Memory Size 256 MB, DDR3.


This card gives nice pictures and no flickering, but ...... it has moments of big lag like landing on a drop, going into heavy graphic areas (i.e. mansion) and wall and ring spells. The rest of the game it handles rather normal. My older card a Radeon 800x/850x (128 vid mem) handled AC in an exellent way.


Like I said in another post, it looks like the newer cards (build to handle Vista), and with at least 256 vid memory, give problems. It seems something is missing on those cards, by nVidia this and by Radeon that. Have they kissed the older systems and games already goodbye?