PC Woes!

[doncaster40]

I dont think you have an operating system problem with the driver they normally wont allow you to install them even if this is the case. As someone previously mentioned the latest drivers from nvidia have lots of other things added into to them that older versions didnt neccessarily have and in all truth this is probably why your system resources are lower.As I mentioned in previous posts using a driver cleaner and reseating the card and running with default settings then installing known drivers has always worked for me. (I install new drivers bi monthly) As for driver finders I steer well clear of them and only install from trusted sites eg nvidia.com. BTW nvidia forum is good for asking on they have a lot of input there.Good luck!

[jan38]

About the stuttering sound and/or graphics problems might and emphasize the word MIGHT here, have something to do with Vista/Windows 7 MMCSS service.
MMCSS stands for "MultiMedia Class Schedular Service".
There has been some debate over this service which resides inside Vista and also Windows 7 (32 and 64).
I've looked up some interesting blog about this service by Mark Russinovich (works at microsoft and made tools like Process Explorer, procmon and all kinds of tools which were formerly known as Sysinternals tools).
This is a very technical read, but still very interesting and also pictures to make it clear.

The link for Mark Russinovich Blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinov ... 33290.aspx

There is also a link on the steam forum regarding this MMCSS service which might give you stuttering sound and/or graphics:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... ?t=1043281

This is very advanced stuff and make sure you make a backup first if you plan on changing registry settings
Try to google for more info about it, but the documentation or explanations usually end up very technical.


Anyway, interesting read still.

[Kromaatikse]

That MMCSS whatsit has precisely two effects:

1) It boosts the priority of a "multimedia application" to ensure smooth playback. If that multimedia application isn't actually doing anything, this has zero effect.

2) It limits network performance to prevent the network interrupt from disrupting said playback. If you aren't doing anything with the network, this again has zero effect.

So, when running Railworks, you usually aren't also playing a video on the same machine, nor does Railworks depend on the network. Therefore, disabling MMCSS will have no effect.

[jan38]

ok, if it is only for video playback then I stand corrected.
But it might still improve graphics in general in combination with sound.
This simulator does not play video, but still the service needs to give priority to the one or the other.

Also in the second link I put up , it did improve for some the gameplay/fps for various games and not only video playback in a mm app.

And usually I'm doing both or run a browser in the background or another app is using network. But overall it might not be noticable.
Anyway, my intention was good and fortunately I used the word 'might'. Seems to do some people good and some not.

[Kromaatikse]

Also in the second link I put up, it did improve for some the gameplay/fps for various games...

Multiplayer games. The ones that do depend on high-volume, low-latency network traffic.

[y2flexy]

i'm still baffled by mine, as i've said my problem occurs through normal running of the PC, before even considering going on RW3! I'm gonna nag on the Nvidia forums I think, thanks so far for all the help!!

(it's funny, with my macbook dying thursday completely, i walked into the apple store today and they've offered to replace the logic board for free even though it's 2 years out of warranty.. I wish PC's got this sort of customer service!)

[Kromaatikse]

It is indeed an odd one - but some LCD TVs are known to behave very strangely when used as computer monitors.

Sometimes even displays which look primarily like computer monitors and have no built-in tuner are designed as and behave like LCD TVs - including the one I use. The major quirk of mine is that it has a slightly broken EDID extension which interacts badly with my 8800GT, unless I hack the Registry to force it to ignore that extension. This causes the 8800GT to black out the "overscan" area, even though it contains useful information on a computer desktop, and even though that area is perfectly visible on the display! With the Registry hack in place, no problem.

A similar EDID bug could very easily afflict your TV.

[y2flexy]

thing is, it was working perfectly! all up till i done the driver update, and since i've have my ram sucked dry, none of it makes sense