New GeForce 6600 Help Needed!

[ardypilot]

Hi all,

I took my PC down to the local PC shop today and had a new MSI NX 6600 (NVIDIA GeForce 6600) video card installed and removed my old Geforce 5600.

When I got home and loaded up fs2004, I got an error message displayed saying one of the guages in the Airhead Decathon, which is the a/c for my default flight, was corrupt! I have no idea how/why this happened, but I edited the fs9.cfg to change my default flight and went ahead into the sim.

I turned off antialisasing off in the sim, and onto 4X on my graphics card, along with antiscoptic filtering:



When I took a flight with all my settings maxed out, I now get a good 25 fps in built up areas, but my screen flickers during the loading up bar screen- how can I fix this? I presume the guys at the computer shop put on the latest drivers and stuff, but I am not sure if they removed my old 5600 drivers, or if the new ones are confilcting with the old ones...

More importantly, I have lost all my sound! I have both a built in soundcard on my motherboard, and a addon PCI card, yet neither of them are showing up in my "Sounds and Audio Devices" in the control panel

Can anyone give me some tips/ hints/ pointers on what do to and any advice on how to get the best out my new gfx card?

Cheers,
Andrew

[Zöltuger]

firstly, i wouldn't assume they put the latest drivers on. stick the latest ones on first

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_91.31.html

that should solve the video card problem

presumably you're only using the PCI sound card? make sure the motherboard sound is disabled in the BIOS, it might have been reset by the installation and would now cause a conflict

[creator2003]

f u nzff beter and bigger thing asss holes

[Computer Medic]

Try a programme called DRIVER CLEANER. Do a google search for this.

You need to have ALL old video drivers removed before installing a new graphics card this is something I recommend and do for all new cards I install.

[ZK-MAT]

The AGP aperature setting in the BIOS relates to an amount of RAM memory your PC will allocate to 'assist' your AGP card - IF it needs it.

Set it too high (ie aperature at 256 megs with only 512 meg system RAM) and you could effectively only leave your PC with 256 RAM to run everything else during graphically intensive operations. This could result in your PC digging into too much of Virtual Memory (ie chugging away on your hard drive). The PC doesn't always use all you have set aside but could be an issue if your processor needs the RAM and starts using virtual memory.

I have a 256 meg card. I found setting my AGPP aperature to 128 resulted in better smoother performance in FS, most importantly it stopped any stutters when scenery loaded or my view changed.

Food for thought.

Tweak 3D info

BIOS guide

[Zöltuger]

The AGP aperature setting in the BIOS relates to an amount of RAM memory your PC will allocate to 'assist' your AGP card - IF it needs it.

yeah, this is something you should really leave as default unless you need it

[toprob]

Here's something you can try, because in my experience it is quite common that Windows just gets confused with interrupts etc when you change a graphics card.
Unplug everything you don't need -- basically everything except the mouse and keyboard. See if that fixes the flashing, which could be a symptom of messed up interrupt resources.
Then you should be able to plug stuff in one at a time, just remenber that if it ain't USB you may need to turn the computer off first.

[Codge]

This is all great advice,you guy's really know you're stuff,I've just learnt quite a bit.Now this probably won't help as you probably have some tweak to get around it but anyway here it is(my 10 cents,since there is no smaller currency now!)Always start your sim with a default aircraft and then change to your addon of choice in 'create a flight'.FS9 just doesn't like starting up with an addon loading.I know you said you changed your CFG to allow for this sort of thing,which logically should be fine,but FS9 does some pretty illogical things at times and has a mind of it's own after all you wouldn't take your girlfriend home to meet your wife,she has to first learn you have a girlfriend and come to terms with it and accept it.I think FS9 feels this way too and is a bit miffed when it's told its default aircraft have reached their 'use by date' and just aren't 'sexy' anymore.

[ZK-MAT]

.. after all you wouldn't take your girlfriend home to meet your wife,she has to first learn you have a girlfriend and come to terms with it and accept it. I think FS9 feels this way too and is a bit miffed when it's told its default aircraft have reached their 'use by date' and just aren't 'sexy' anymore.

ROFL, great analogy!!!!! I don't think my wife would ever come to terms with it. I would have to come to terms with sleeping on the couch, then having no money, forever....

[ardypilot]

Thanks all for your replys,

I pulled out my PCI sound card, and activated my onboard soundcard via the BIOS and now everything is sweet, except the sound sometimes stutters when I cycle through views in flightsim...

The PC shop told me they had cleaned out my old drivers and loaded the latest ones, but I am guessing they where the ones of the included CD, not the latest ones from the net, so I will download the 40mb driver from http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_91.31.html as Zöltuger suggested. Just a few questions though- are these the very latest? Are they for the NX6600? It says it is for "Windows XP/2000 32-bit" how do I know if my system is 32 bit

I have also noticed that whenever I get my GPS up on the screen, it is usually in black and white. I then hit the "terr" button to get the green land and blue water image on the screen which is easier to understand.

This used to work fine, but now when I do this, my aircraft outline on the GPS turns to a white colour (before it was black), and then the the whole GPS changes back to black and white after a few seconds.

Also, my FSNAV takes ages to load. When I hit the F9 key, the fsnav screen still appears, but it loads each airport symbol individually where are before they all loaded at once. Before it took about 5 seconds to load, now it takes like 2 minutes, and everything has to reload each time I zoom or change the location I am centred on (in fsnav)

Anyone know why this is happening and how I can fix it?

Any help at all will be much appreciated,
Cheers,
Andrew

[Blackmagic]

Hi Andrew

Ok when I got my A6600GT installed it was a absoluate pigs ear in fact I ended up getting a replacement as the fan was Faulty! Which did not help.

Still with the thing installed I got the same problem as you described

Also, my FSNAV takes ages to load. When I hit the F9 key, the fsnav screen still appears, but it loads each airport symbol individually where are before they all loaded at once. Before it took about 5 seconds to load, now it takes like 2 minutes, and everything has to reload each time I zoom or change the location I am centred on (in fsnav)

This was the most annoying thing of the whole FS set up despite following Koorbys tips in VOZ which I decide where the cause of the problems.

I ended up Turning Anti Aliasing OFF in the Nvidia control panel as that has cured the problem described above. Switch it on and bang slow FSnav loading. Why this causes a problem I do not know but I do know I am still using the drivers that came with the installCD as I was warned that some updated drivers can cause problems with certain PC configs in the hardware.

[Zöltuger]

Just a few questions though- are these the very latest? Are they for the NX6600? It says it is for "Windows XP/2000 32-bit" how do I know if my system is 32 bit

1. to find the latest nvidia drivers, go here, click graphics driver GeForce and TNT your operating system (i assumed you were using XP). that link has the latest version of drivers. they're for all GeForce cards, so mine could use it (being a 6800GS) and so can yours.


2. unless you're running 64-bit vista or xp, you'll be running 32-bit.


3. to check the driver version, right click the desktop properties settings advanced adapter properties driver
there it will tell you the driver version. (mine is 8.4.2.1)
you should be able to tell whether the tech guys added the version on the CD or downloaded it from the net- CD version will probably be 6.x.x.x or 7.x.x.x whereas if its new it should be 8.x.x.x or 9.x.x.x

[ardypilot]

My driver version is "9.1.3.1" after downloading the latest driver from the nvidia website- thanks for the link.

Even though I am fully updated, I am still getting lots of flickering in the loading screen, and even worse fps than I was with my FX5600...

Also, my sound is cutting out every now and then, after I removed my PCI sound card and swapped to my onboard (Asus P4V533-MX) "VIA AC'97 Enhanced Audio Controller" so does anyone know where I could find the latest update for that?

[creator2003]

jus t wondering is your agp set to 8x out in the bios settings ?this sounds like you are running 4x out it could still be set at 4x this would lower the performance i know there is nothing wrong with that card ..and the fan is going and has never be run at its full speed as my motherboard was 4x out on old pc so was never run at 8x also the clock on it was never touched
this sound strange to me it was never like that even running at 4x out have a look in the bios and check all the settings in the agp menu and look to see if its at 4x or 8x setting ..
mike

[Zenith]

Try what BM said first turn OFF Anti Aliasing in the Graphics Card First! In plain English leave it as it was in default mode when installed.

Microsoft Flightsim is one of the MOST Frame rate and CPU hungry games on the Market and whatthe guys at the shop would have done would have used a benchmark to set up your system.

Sounds like from what you have said is YOU have been fiddling around with what was set up in a foolish belief you knew better and have messed up your settings.

If it aint broke dont fix it as the saying goes!

Two choices either clear your brain of any preconceived notions you know what your doing or go back to the shop who installed the card and admit to messing things up. Then tell them exactly what you want the card to do and they IF any good should be able to figure that out.

Sorry this sounded rude butsometimes you have to look at things from a differant perspective.

[ardypilot]

Help needed no longer.

My mobo is not 8x compatable.

Thanks for the help all the same.