Mysterious observations from KRS

[Acorncomputer]

James

I have the same graphics card as you but I am definitely using the latest driver and have done so for some time. Try updating.

Geoff Potter

[Retro]

Hi,
The driver I am using is the one that came with the machine. I had some bad experiences with NVidia drivers on my previous machines. The latest driver at the time caused major problems in general and actually slowed down the performance of the card on my last 2 machines. It also caused some games to stop working on the one of the machines. So my attitude has been if the programs work leave it alone. This seems to be a problem with drivers in general. The latest set for a webcam I had on this machine caused a major error which stopped the half the programs from working or even loading and produced a fatal error in the OS which meant having to do a destructive recovery back to factory state. This involved 2 weeks work to get the machine back to where I was before with Programs and Peripherals all working again. The latest drivers for the Assus Dolphin Tuner Card also corrupted the Media Centre on the machine fortunately I got away with returning to the old drivers without having to do any recoveries. Everytime I have installed new drivers for anything on this machine it seems to cause problems somewhere else. I sometimes wonder if these companies ever test their drivers properly or just wait for people to complain. The Drivers are the reason why the machine can communicate with its peripherals and if they are flawed then all hell can break lose. I wish I had only a machine with XP on it. If you look at the MCE newsgroups you will find that the Media Centre on both XP and Vista causes a whole load of problems that would not occur with just the basic OS. Some of the Media Centre Microsoft updates for security and supposed improvements usually result in fixes being issued to combat problems they cause elsewhere and some are best left uninstalled.
Regards James.

[CaptScarlet]

Whist what you say about updating drivers can be true and its true that if its not broke don't fix it is not a bad way to operate ( generally ) you must admit that at the moment something isn't right with your PC. I agree finding the right graphics driver can be difficult at times depending upon the type of card you have and the game or program you are using.

In these cases its a matter of testing various drivers to find the right one ( which could be a whql or beta driver ) and sometimes the right driver will be a older one but don't forget that the reason for the graphic driver updates is to increase performance, stability, fix bugs and support new games ( not always achieved though ) but sometimes new drivers can break older games. To find the best driver in these circumstances its best to read others experiences with the various releases and two good forums for that are -

http://forums.guru3d.com/ and
http://www.driverheaven.net/forum.php

Having said all that your graphics driver is very old and could do with updating but what to try first.
From what Ive read the 93.71 drivers are meant to quite good but it you should perhaps start with the latest which is 169.21 official or 169.44 beta and see if it works with what games etc you use. If they dont then its a matter of working out what next to try. Thats why I put you on to the driver cleaner program as it will help in the case of changing drivers to find the best one for your PC.

But in the end the decision is yours.

John

[Retro]

Thanks for your advice and the links. I will have a play around with some newer drivers and see what happens. Is there anything else you have noticed in my screenshots that may need adjustment to get a better performance from the GPU. I think most of the settings are probably Default?
The other point I made about the PCI and PCI E settings in the Bios Setup. I have been told that the Bios should recognise the Card as PCI Express and set itself accordingly. If it has set to PCI this could mean a fault has developed in the GPU Card. presumably a PCI connection would be slower than PCI Express and AGP.
Regards James.

[CaptScarlet]

Thanks for your advice and the links. I will have a play around with some newer drivers and see what happens. Is there anything else you have noticed in my screenshots that may need adjustment to get a better performance from the GPU. I think most of the settings are probably Default?
The other point I made about the PCI and PCI E settings in the Bios Setup. I have been told that the Bios should recognise the Card as PCI Express and set itself accordingly. If it has set to PCI this could mean a fault has developed in the GPU Card. presumably a PCI connection would be slower than PCI Express and AGP.
Regards James.

I wouldn't think the Pci or Pci-e setting would be the problem unless you have changed something in the bios . To be honest I am not used to that control panel as I have only used the latest ones since I got my 8800gts a year ago and the new control panel is quite different but as you said it looks like you have all the settings at default so the first thing would be to try a latter driver and see if it improves ( or not ).

John

[AndiS]

James, I am also a very, very conservative user, rarely ever installing something unless I am forced to, but maybe now you are forced to, and with several years between your driver and the last one, you should certainly find a version which is stable and a few years younger.

Just be sure to make backups and use that cleaner tool and the other stuff as recommended by the gurus. I spend some weeks reading hardware forums which I never frequent normally before buying my latest machine, and it did pay off.

[Retro]

Thanks John and Andi. Sorry about the late reply. I have been in contact with PC Performance Tech Guy's and they have decided that my GPU is faulty. They sent me another one but it was only the 256mb version so I complained and apparently they are currently deciding which card to send me. They have to replace it according to the contract with either the same card or a better one and the 512mb version is no longer available.
Although they say it is the card and not the program causing the problem I am still able to get full speed and no stuttering with everything maxed out on FS9, Silent Hunter 3 and The Sims2 with all EP's up to and including Seasons.They are performing as they have always done. So I await the replacement Card to test the theory.
Regards James.

[alexking]

Thanks for your advice and the links. I will have a play around with some newer drivers and see what happens. Is there anything else you have noticed in my screenshots that may need adjustment to get a better performance from the GPU. I think most of the settings are probably Default?
The other point I made about the PCI and PCI E settings in the Bios Setup. I have been told that the Bios should recognise the Card as PCI Express and set itself accordingly. If it has set to PCI this could mean a fault has developed in the GPU Card. presumably a PCI connection would be slower than PCI Express and AGP.
Regards James.

James, personally, I think your PCI ticked instead of PCI-e problem, is likely to be the "Init display first" value (AMI/Pheonix bios standard description) in your bios. As some manufacturers sometimes change the descriptions, yours may be labelled differently. This option is used only when you have a secondary GPU installed in a PCI/PCI-e slot and is used to determine which monitor is initialized first in such a setup.

Looking at your screenshots, it doesn't appear AA, AF or multisampling are enabled. I'm not aware RS has the ability to control AA, AF et al from within it's own environment, thus meaning your current application controlled configuration settings are not evoking these features.

Aside from hdd seek times, which can be reduced by using SATA drives with high levels of cache (and reduced further by using fast SATA drives in a raid 0 configuration), stuttering can also be caused due to mis-matched CPU and GPU combinations. Whilst you have a Pentium D, Your 7600GS is possibly being CPU limited due to either lack of bandwidth on the PCI-e bus (due to other high data items of hardware, tv capture card for instance), or lack of CPU L2 cache. If you are running low on disk space on the drive containing your pagefile (Windows default location is C:) you could also come across this issue as the system is trying to move data between CPU, RAM, GPU and HDD and falling short on space and free sectors to store/move the data on the HDD itself.

If it makes any difference, like others with higher spec machines, I get stuttering running a C2D e6850, 2GB OCZ Reaper and a 512mb G92 8800GTS on an Asus P5K Premium.

If this problem was PSU related, you'd be finding yourself in situations of system lockups/reboots when gaming or during periods of high usage. If you want to check how much power your current system needs from your PSU, input as many of your system details as you can into this - eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Lite v2.5.

As others have said, update your GPU drivers, but don't be tempted to download later drivers than 169.21 from Guru3D.com or indeed nVidia. These later drivers are only officially compatible with G92 GPU's on Ge9xxx cards only, and will likely cause more problems than they solve in your situation. As an example, driver 174.16 (only for 9xxx cards) caused frequent lockups/issues in COD4 on my machine. Reverting back to 169.21 solved these issues.

If the 169.21 drivers cause an incompatibility or cause you more problems, you can roll back to your previous driver from within the device manager. Should the 169.21 drivers create more problems, you could also try and install 162.65/162.67 from the nVidia driver archive and see if they improve matters.

[Retro]

James, personally, I think your PCI ticked instead of PCI-e problem, is likely to be the "Init display first" value (AMI/Pheonix bios standard description) in your bios. As some manufacturers sometimes change the descriptions, yours may be labelled differently. This option is used only when you have a secondary GPU installed in a PCI/PCI-e slot and is used to determine which monitor is initialized first in such a setup.

Looking at your screenshots, it doesn't appear AA, AF or multisampling are enabled. I'm not aware RS has the ability to control AA, AF et al from within it's own environment, thus meaning your current application controlled configuration settings are not evoking these features.

Aside from hdd seek times, which can be reduced by using SATA drives with high levels of cache (and reduced further by using fast SATA drives in a raid 0 configuration), stuttering can also be caused due to mis-matched CPU and GPU combinations. Whilst you have a Pentium D, Your 7600GS is possibly being CPU limited due to either lack of bandwidth on the PCI-e bus (due to other high data items of hardware, tv capture card for instance), or lack of CPU L2 cache. If you are running low on disk space on the drive containing your pagefile (Windows default location is C:) you could also come across this issue as the system is trying to move data between CPU, RAM, GPU and HDD and falling short on space and free sectors to store/move the data on the HDD itself.

If it makes any difference, like others with higher spec machines, I get stuttering running a C2D e6850, 2GB OCZ Reaper and a 512mb G92 8800GTS on an Asus P5K Premium.

If this problem was PSU related, you'd be finding yourself in situations of system lockups/reboots when gaming or during periods of high usage. If you want to check how much power your current system needs from your PSU, input as many of your system details as you can into this - eXtreme Power Supply Calculator Lite v2.5.

As others have said, update your GPU drivers, but don't be tempted to download later drivers than 169.21 from Guru3D.com or indeed nVidia. These later drivers are only officially compatible with G92 GPU's on Ge9xxx cards only, and will likely cause more problems than they solve in your situation. As an example, driver 174.16 (only for 9xxx cards) caused frequent lockups/issues in COD4 on my machine. Reverting back to 169.21 solved these issues.

If the 169.21 drivers cause an incompatibility or cause you more problems, you can roll back to your previous driver from within the device manager. Should the 169.21 drivers create more problems, you could also try and install 162.65/162.67 from the nVidia driver archive and see if they improve matters.

So the PCI PCI E setting will make no difference because I have only one GPU.
How do I enable AA, AF or multisampling and what values should they be set at.
My Hard Drives are SATA and I have 53% of free space on my C Drive
I also have an Asustek Dolphin Hybrid TV Capture Card.
The stuttering is continuous whenever I run a train and everything stops for about a second or so when loading in major scenery areas
Sorry about my lack of Technical Knowledge but are you saying you do not think it is my GPU hardware at fault.
Thanks for the links I will take a look at them.
Regards James.

[alexking]

So the PCI PCI E setting will make no difference because I have only one GPU.

If i'm correct then no, setting that to PCI instead of PCI-e will make no difference whatsoever.

How do I enable AA, AF or multisampling and what values should they be set at.

For diagnosis, I'd suggest you leave AA (Anti-Aliasing), AF (Anisotropic Filtering) and multi sampling (not entirely sure which industry standard term this refers to) as they are currently - application controlled. In your case, all 3 of these (looking at your screenshots earlier in the thread) are turned off. AA, AF and multi sampling are purely visual enhancements. As such, they will further degrade your performance should you enable them.

My Hard Drives are SATA and I have 53% of free space on my C Drive

If this is the case, then I doubt pagefile access is causing your problems.

Testing a different GPU won't do any harm, but obviously as you're probably aware, testing a card with a lower spec than your current 512MB 7600GS card will not provide the same performance. Also, if you are offered an 8xxx/9xxx GPU, check the reference specs, or with a standard card model (not factory overclocked which some are) from a well known manufacturer (EVGA, Asus, BFG etc), to ensure you'll actually be getting a card that can provide similar/improved performance to the 7600GS. Also, be aware that if you're offered anything newer than an 8800GT/GTS (including the new 9600 GPU), it will be a PCI-e specification 2.0 card. This specification provides more performance compared to PCI-e 1.0, but does require a motherboard capable of supporting PCI-e 2.0, otherwise, such a card will run in a restricted and generally CPU limited mode. Also, 8xxx cards and above require a PCI-e power connector for the GPU itself.

I still have to stress, updating your GPU drivers may well improve your performance. Updating a driver is easier and less hassle than swapping a GPU

[Retro]

Thanks for the reply and the informative links. I have a greater understanding of how AA etc works now.
I would presume the PC Performance people will send a Card that will work with my machine. They have all the details of my computer spec on record. Not sure about the PCI E power connector. I am not sure if the 7600GS is powered from the slot or the machine PSU. Ultimately under the contract if they can't find a suitable card. The computer then becomes unrepareable and then either the whole machine must be replaced or parts inside to enable the fitting of a new card. They have decided the card is faulty so it is up to them to put it right. I have already informed them I will not accept the 256mb version they sent me in replacement. Out of interest the machine is a Hewlett Packard M-7480 uk.
Due to a lack of good independant computer retailers in my area I use the PC World store which is within 10 minutes walk from my home. The last excellent computer builder shut down about 5 years ago so PC World was my only option for my last 2 machines. I would normally have had a new machine by now but being retired means having to be a bit more careful with the money than when I was working.
Thanks for your help and advice, much appreciated
Kind Regards James.

[pgmetcalf]

I give the RS SDLC another 12 months max as people are struggling to make content. For a community to maintain a viable interest it has to evolve and that doesn't seem to be happening at the moment.

[Retro]

I also fully support Sly's theory, because the painted textures are stored in separate files for each tile, and these files are not exactly big. So the chances are considerable that the system saw this as a rare chance to reuse all the unused fragments on the disk for your texture information, and now the harddisk has a busy time.

Hi have just read this part again and another post by shadders it could make sense and Sniper is usually right from my experience. However I still cannot locate which folder the textures are in.

From shadders post.
"If you have the space, backup your install of RS to another drive in case things go wrong.
Then delete your route folder from your installed version using Windows Explorer (hold down the shift key, right click and click Delete with the shift key still held down). Now defrag your drive. Copy your route folder from your backup and try playing your route again."

Would moving just my my own route folder to another drive then doing the above work. I am unsure as to why I have to delete with the shift key pressed. Sorry if this should be obvious.
Regards James.

[tads1970]

Usually the box that your card came with will say something like 'Requires min of 500w power supply" to run,for example.If your card has a socket on it,then you can use a lead from your PSU,if you have one spare.If the card doesn't get the required power then normally it just underclocks itself resulting in poor performance.

Turn off all the stuff thats just eye candy,AA,AF,mipmaps ect these are just making your card work harder,hope you sort the problem out.If you want to defrag,dont use windows,Auslogics disk defrag is fast and free only takes 3 mins for my 120 gig SATA.

Daz

[Retro]

I give the RS SDLC another 12 months max as people are struggling to make content. For a community to maintain a viable interest it has to evolve and that doesn't seem to be happening at the moment.

I am wondering also. As most people will have gathered from my other posts. I have been and still am a strong supporter of KRS. But maybe some of the people who posted the opposite view may have a point. I have read a few posts today where problems are occuring which make Route Building a little more confusing and difficult than it should be. I am still not sure if it is my GPU that is causing the problem and I will not find out for at least another 5 to 7 days until PC Performance have decided and delivered a new Card. When I phoned today they are still deliberating on which card to send.
Regards James.