8800GT Problems - Programs not recognising it?

[Black Panther]

I've got two friends on another forum who've also got the 8800GT. Since I have an 8800GT as well I had been trying to help them with their problems by sharing my settings and brainstorming with them, but so far we haven't solved anything. So I thought I'd post here so as to get your valuable opinion. :)

Friend (1)'s Rig:
Q6600 2.4gHz (stock)
ASUS P5N32-E SLI
4 GB DDR-800 RAM
Two Asus EN8800GT 512MB cards in SLI (vanilla)
169.02 ForceWare driver
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

GPU-Z Screenshot (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/meta-phil/GPU-Z.png). Note that his SLi is disabled. Also he gets a 3dmark06 score of 12K which is too low for Sli. (Probably that's a problem in itself apart from this problem? Because my other friend further below has the same problem and he got one 8800GT.)

The problem: He installed 2 x Asus EN8800GT on his Vista machine, mostly to play Oblivion. HDR lighting doesn't work, and "Shadows on Grass" and "Shadow Filtering" options in video menu are grey'd out.
Also, the other shadow options in Oblivion while not being greyed out, they simply don't work.
When he tries to enable HDR he gets this in the game: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/meta-phil/HDR.jpg
He changed his driver to the 169.25 (cleaning up the previous one with CCleaner) but the problem remained.

He never had any previous gpu driver on his current computer so driver leftovers arent supposed to be the issue.

And his 2 8800GTs work perfectly fine with all other games which include:

1-World of Warcraft
2-EVE Online
3-Crysis with all settings maxed at Very High

I assume that since a game like Crysis works it excludes a defective card or unstable driver?

The problem is not only with the Oblivion game. He downloaded Rivatuner 2.06 - it also doesn't recognize the card, and in the 'Shader' options, he can force Shader Model 1.0 or 2.0, but there is no option to force 3.0. Seems consistent with the idea that the ability of the 8800GT to support shader model 3.0 is not recognized.

He did monitor the temperatures with rivatuner though and during Crysis gameplay BOTH cards heated up, so that means the Sli is working?

Directly quoting him: "GPU-Z says SLI isnt enabled, but it is, and it detects both cards (i can select them in the little drop-down at the bottom of the GPU-Z window). Also SLI is enabled in 3DMark06's Forceware profile, but its set as "Nvidia recommends: Single GPU" (i never understood how you can use a single GPU and call it SLI but whatever) and i get 12k-13k marks. Then i selected AFR1 as the SLI mode, and i get 8700 marks. Riiiiight... I do a quick google, and i see that people with a similar system as mine (same CPU, two 8800GTs, same amount of RAM, etc) are happily fluttering close to 20k marks!"


Friend (2)'s Rig: --- No SLI this time but exactly the same problems!
Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz (stock)
4Gb RAM
Windows Vista™ Ultimate
1 x Asus EN8800GT (vanilla)
GPU-Z screenshot (http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/Siryath/Untitled23.jpg) (magnify to view)

He has got exactly the same problems as the other guy. Rivatuner doesn't recognise the card, can't force shaders 3.0.
Shadow options in Oblivion are greyed out, and those which aren't don't work (it's as if Oblivion is thinking that it is an old graphics card?) and when he enables HDR he just gets a light blue picture with only the HUD showing and no graphics at all, as per link above. Pretty much similar specs to the other one but he only has one GT.



Any thoughts?

[erocker]

Check the device manager for any old or missing drivers for anything. Just an opinion, but Sli and Vista are horrible.

[TUngsten]

also, in Oblivion, I'm pretty sure you can't run AA and HDR simultaneously on a Nvidia card

[Black Panther]

also, in Oblivion, I'm pretty sure you can't run AA and HDR simultaneously on a Nvidia card

You can on any of the the 8xxx series, even on my previous 8600. All you have to do is to go into the nvidia control panel and set the AA preference (eg 2x or 4x etc) there and make it to override applications. Then in the Oblivion video panel you choose HDR + no AA. You'll get the HDR plus the whatever AA setting you forced through the nvidia control panel.

Just to make it clear though, my friends don't have a problem with enabling AA+HDR. Because they can't even have HDR running solo! Their problem is that when they enable HDR correctly through the game video options they get a pale blue picture with the user-interface only showing like this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/meta-phil/HDR.jpg And to top it all their shadows options are either greyed out or they don't work at all. Like this: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/meta-phil/Options.jpg

Believe me it's pretty frustrating - me too I bought my GT to be able to max out Oblivion (and I do with heavy texture packs still getting 50+ fps) and other games like Crysis. It's frustrating to spend that money realizing that you cannot! Furthermore, these guys cannot just decide to rma their cards... Crysis for example works perfectly for them.... Oblivion doesn't.... Rivatuner either.....

[{JNT}Raptor]

Both systems having Identical Issue.....Both systems have Identical Video Cards......that puts them at the front of possible reasons....both rigs using Vista.....possible Issue 2.(No flames please...just stating similarity)...I'm on XP x64.

I cannot force shader 3.0 through RivaTuner 2.06 either.....but I don't have any Issues at all with any games I have and run(Oblivion/UT3/Hellgate/Crysis/Overlord/SOF3).....so dunno If thats an Issue.

My moneys on card Incompatibility....dunno why....but....It's the strongest Similarity between the 2 rigs.

Hope It helps. :)

[bud951]

BlackPanther, can I ask uou something that doesnt apply to your issue? Are your two 8800GT's being recognized as an SLI setup? Mine are not for some reason. In both Vista 32 and XP. Have you ran 3dmark to confirm you are getting a boost from SLI? Info is appreciated and good luck with your issue.

[Black Panther]

BlackPanther, can I ask uou something that doesnt apply to your issue? Are your two 8800GT's being recognized as an SLI setup? Mine are not for some reason. In both Vista 32 and XP. Have you ran 3dmark to confirm you are getting a boost from SLI? Info is appreciated and good luck with your issue.

Actually it's not mine but the problem is of 2 friends (see first post :) )

One has SLI, the other one hasn't.

And yes the one who has SLI isn't getting it recognized. He ran 3Dmark06 and got 12K which definitely means SLI isn't working. Also, on GPU-Z he gets "SLI disabled".

I had been thinking it was because of Vista not supporting the drivers... but you say you have the same problem even under XP! :ohwell:

I'm on XP x64.

I cannot force shader 3.0 through RivaTuner 2.06 either.....but I don't have any Issues at all with any games I have and run(Oblivion/UT3/Hellgate/Crysis/Overlord/SOF3).....

{JNT}Raptor -- what driver version are you using?
Also, my friends can also run Crysis and other games. It's when they try to enable HDR that there's a big problem. Are you playing Oblivion successfully with the HDR setting on?

[pepsi71ocean]

Friend 1

IMO...The CPU is bottlenecking, from what i know, I have a q6600, and i found out that raising my cpu to 3Ghz made things imporve. Infact if you are running them in sli, i think that you need a higher cpu speed. Try (300x9) and if they're G0 stepping then the voltages should be good. Does he have the sli bridge installed?

EDIT: What are his temptures for his GFX cards?

[Black Panther]

Check the device manager for any old or missing drivers for anything. Just an opinion, but Sli and Vista are horrible.

The device manager did yield something!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/meta-phil/devicemanager.png

However, to quote my friend who has the problem:

"BlackPanther:
I found something interesting in the device manager! It says it didnt start some "related device driver". I did what it said (to click the driver tab and click on driver details) but it just shows a list of files which i am not qualified to extract any information from"

:confused:

"heres the list of files i was talking about. The two cards are identical in the device manager. Sorry for the crappy image, the window wasn't stretchable so i had to take multiple screenshots and glue them in paint."


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/meta-phil/driverdetails.png


Edit: By the way just for reference, if anyone wants to have a look at the thread where my friends are posting it is here (http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=793144&st=0&start=0). It is a tad long (4 pages) that's why I thought of summarizing it.
Originally 3 people had the problem. One solved it by making a driver change... only to have the problem re-surface again yesterday I think. So that means a driver change isn't the issue here?

[{JNT}Raptor]

{JNT}Raptor -- what driver version are you using?
Also, my friends can also run Crysis and other games. It's when they try to enable HDR that there's a big problem. Are you playing Oblivion successfully with the HDR setting on?


I'm on driver 169.21.

If they are having An Issue with HDR....It's gotta be card related....or Card/Mobo related....Seeing If they both have the Device manager Quirk Is Important In tracking the cause....If they both have the same Issue...then It's the cards not acting right with the Mobo....or the cards simply have a flaw.

Stupid Question time.....have they tried drivers from the ASUS site Instead of the standard Nvidia ones?

Hope It helps. :)

[erocker]

Forcing AA in the control panel will give you problems and there are no way around them, period. Set it to default. Right click on the drivers in question and "Update Driver". Direct the installer to your forceware driver file and see if that works. If that doesn't work uninstall your dispay drivers. Restart. You need to go into the registry.. follow these instructions:

Click Start>Run>type: regedit. Backup your registry by clicking File>Export and save to your desktop. Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE there are folders named "software". Look in each folder named "software" under HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE for anything Nvidia (excluding chipset drivers if applicable) and delete them. Close the registry.

Next search out your My Documents folder, your system drive, and Program Files folder for anything else Nvidia related.

Then go to your system drive and open the Windows folder>opend Temp folder and delete everything you can in there. Go back to the open Windows folder and opend the prefetch folder and delete everything in there.

Restart. Install new drivers.

Good luck.

[the.raven]

I've got two friends on another forum who've also got the 8800GT. Since I have an 8800GT as well I had been trying to help them with their problems by sharing my settings and brainstorming with them, but so far we haven't solved anything. So I thought I'd post here so as to get your valuable opinion. :)

Friend (1)'s Rig:
Q6600 2.4gHz (stock)
ASUS P5N32-E SLI
4 GB DDR-800 RAM
Two Asus EN8800GT 512MB cards in SLI (vanilla)
169.02 ForceWare driver
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

GPU-Z Screenshot (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/meta-phil/GPU-Z.png). Note that his SLi is disabled. Also he gets a 3dmark06 score of 12K which is too low for Sli. (Probably that's a problem in itself apart from this problem? Because my other friend further below has the same problem and he got one 8800GT.)

The problem: He installed 2 x Asus EN8800GT on his Vista machine, mostly to play Oblivion. HDR lighting doesn't work, and "Shadows on Grass" and "Shadow Filtering" options in video menu are grey'd out.
Also, the other shadow options in Oblivion while not being greyed out, they simply don't work.
When he tries to enable HDR he gets this in the game: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/meta-phil/HDR.jpg
He changed his driver to the 169.25 (cleaning up the previous one with CCleaner) but the problem remained.

He never had any previous gpu driver on his current computer so driver leftovers arent supposed to be the issue.

And his 2 8800GTs work perfectly fine with all other games which include:

1-World of Warcraft
2-EVE Online
3-Crysis with all settings maxed at Very High

I assume that since a game like Crysis works it excludes a defective card or unstable driver?

The problem is not only with the Oblivion game. He downloaded Rivatuner 2.06 - it also doesn't recognize the card, and in the 'Shader' options, he can force Shader Model 1.0 or 2.0, but there is no option to force 3.0. Seems consistent with the idea that the ability of the 8800GT to support shader model 3.0 is not recognized.

He did monitor the temperatures with rivatuner though and during Crysis gameplay BOTH cards heated up, so that means the Sli is working?

Directly quoting him: "GPU-Z says SLI isnt enabled, but it is, and it detects both cards (i can select them in the little drop-down at the bottom of the GPU-Z window). Also SLI is enabled in 3DMark06's Forceware profile, but its set as "Nvidia recommends: Single GPU" (i never understood how you can use a single GPU and call it SLI but whatever) and i get 12k-13k marks. Then i selected AFR1 as the SLI mode, and i get 8700 marks. Riiiiight... I do a quick google, and i see that people with a similar system as mine (same CPU, two 8800GTs, same amount of RAM, etc) are happily fluttering close to 20k marks!"


Friend (2)'s Rig: --- No SLI this time but exactly the same problems!
Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz (stock)
4Gb RAM
Windows Vista™ Ultimate
1 x Asus EN8800GT (vanilla)
GPU-Z screenshot (http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg98/Siryath/Untitled23.jpg) (magnify to view)

He has got exactly the same problems as the other guy. Rivatuner doesn't recognise the card, can't force shaders 3.0.
Shadow options in Oblivion are greyed out, and those which aren't don't work (it's as if Oblivion is thinking that it is an old graphics card?) and when he enables HDR he just gets a light blue picture with only the HUD showing and no graphics at all, as per link above. Pretty much similar specs to the other one but he only has one GT.



Any thoughts?

OMG! I have the asus en8800gt and that is the exact problem i have!

[worldcitizen]

I have the same card and Vista with the same issue.

I uninstalled my drivers and allowed Windows to install the native drivers for the card and then after a reboot I was able to play Oblivion with HDR turned ON as well as shadows in grass etc enabled.

I haven't tried installing Asus or Nvidia drivers again but the problem occured when I had Nvidia drivers installed and was solved by uninstalling them and using Vista's native drivers.

I might now try installing Asus drivers and see if HDR works or not with them but HDR in Oblivion does NOT work with the latest NIVIDA drivers.

One thing that's settled and that is that the cards are NOT defective.

[worldcitizen]

Asus 8800GT

Oblivion HDR works perfectly with this card but only with the Asus drivers which I just installed and tested.

It didn't work with the Nvidia drivers for me but I may have not cleaned the drivers up properly as I just installed the Nvidia drivers over the Asus. But after uninstalling the Nvidia drivers as well as all Asus programs (smart doc & game OSD) and then allowing Vista to 1st detect & install the native Vista drivers and THEN installing the Asus drivers I found it all works perfectly especially Bioshock!! I played it yesterday but never got such great graphics until I properly installed the Asus drivers just now.

In other words a clean install of the Asus drivers fixed all these problems for me. It seems Nvidia's so called 'unified drivers' are not all that 'unified' and some graphics cards appear to not work properly without the manufacturers drivers.


Hope this helps.