GeForce 8800GTX - Major indoor lag!?

TSRJasonC · 05/03/2007 14:15:11

Actually.....

I just looked through the 158.22 driver release notes [Warning: PDF file] and saw something under the "Open Issues for the GeForce 8-series". There was a comment about F.E.A.R: Extraction Point experiencing "poor performance." That started the cogs clinking over in my head.

Who developed F.E.A.R.? Monolith.

Who originally developed The Matrix Online? Monolith.

Do both games use the same game engine? Not exactly, but they are both "LithTech" engine derivatives. I would not be surprised if there's something in the LithTech engine that is not quite compatible with the GeForce 8x00 series cards... or vice versa.

Vampyress · 05/03/2007 15:33:41

All good progress! Keep going! You guys rock!

Beachhead · 05/03/2007 20:50:53

Latest update: 158.22 do not fix the problem. Havn't tried the 3rd party drivers yet.

TSRJasonC · 05/04/2007 18:55:21

Thanks for the information, Beachhead. I will submit that to our compatibility lab.

I still think that the issue may be rooted somewhere deep down into the LithTech engine, but I could be wrong.

Out of pure curiosity: did you install the game from CD or use the game installer from our knowledge base? I wonder if the issue is caused by something from the CD installation.

Beachhead · 05/04/2007 19:04:54

The first time i installed from the CD's. I reformatted again, and then installed it from the trial version installer.

Macenzie · 05/07/2007 22:40:57

Nice to see some progress here. SMILEY

Keep up the good work, I'm sure a solution is within reach.

Beachhead · 05/11/2007 17:36:15

This issue is still not repaired. Have the SOE labs done any additional testing? Their first response was incorrect and this needs to be investigated further. We can't simply keep waiting for nvidia to do something, we could be waiting for a very long time.

TSRJasonC · 05/14/2007 15:28:08

Unfortunately, I don't have any updates on this issue. The Compatibility Lab hasn't found any leads on this, yet. I'll post again when I hear any updates.

Reliquary · 05/17/2007 01:05:35

Bah... I reactivated my account after 6 months away and I run SMACK into this issue. I'm running dual 8800's in SLI. This makes the game unplayable. Thanks for the tips so far... Nothing has helped. I'm going to have to deactivate again. I cant play like this. Maybe I'll try again in 6 months if new drivers come out from nVidea. Keep at it!

Pyroclasam · 05/17/2007 16:39:33

Just thought I would add to the convo, the 8600 GT is doing the same thing to me.

Beachhead · 05/17/2007 22:37:52

Ah, so it's the entire 8000 series of cards, not just the 8800 series.

Macenzie · 05/18/2007 00:17:32

Reliquary wrote:

I'm running dual 8800's in SLI.

Dude! Is that much power even necessary? SMILEY

Pyroclasam · 05/27/2007 11:43:34

This has probably been mentioned before in the thread, however I don't seem to get this issue inside of clubs, mostly inside of lobbies of high-rise buildings and mission zones.

Someone earlier pointed out that their FPS drops to 1 when walking towards a door in any mission zone, so I think certain types of doors could be causing the issue here.

For instance, I was fine while in club duality but while in the lobby of the building and heading for the elavator I was getting the good ole 1 fps issue.

Bayamos · 05/29/2007 15:42:29

Guess I should stay away from the 8000 series when I buy a new card...

Tytanya_MxO · 06/14/2007 05:59:16

Sadly my prized purchase of late was a 8800gtx, never expected any problems with MxO of all things =/ t is good outside but hardly great my old ati x850 was as good and indoors it was far better - Is there any sign of a fix or work around?

Ezer · 06/14/2007 13:08:38

Is this going to be fixed? I am building a new system and wanted this video card for it, but not if it wont work indoors in mxo. Has anyone had any luck in fixing this lately?

TSRJasonC · 06/14/2007 14:30:09

Just to let folks know, this issue is still being investigated and I don't have any other "tips" to try out yet SMILEY

Has anyone tried the latest NGO drivers from guru3d.com yet? I've heard a few good things from the Vanguard players about those particular drivers in comparisson to the official nVidia drivers.

phi · 06/14/2007 18:32:12

So it looks like there is something about the traversible bridging surfaces with doorways or the way the drivers deal badly with culable surfaces that are causing this.

Or it could just be optimsed occluded surfaces calculations that are backfiring.

Symmetric · 06/17/2007 23:15:28

TSRJasonC wrote:

Has anyone tried the latest NGO drivers from guru3d.com yet?

Yes, they don't make any difference, unfortunately.

ShiXinFeng · 06/19/2007 16:08:51

Tytanya_MxO wrote:

Sadly my prized purchase of late was a 8800gtx, never expected any problems with MxO of all things =/ t is good outside but hardly great my old ati x850 was as good and indoors it was far better - Is there any sign of a fix or work around?

Tytanya, what drivers did you use for your x850? I have the x850XT plat. and the catalyst drivers suck on my *cough*dell*cough*.

TSRJasonC · 06/19/2007 16:20:40

Shi+Xin+Feng wrote:

what drivers did you use for your x850? I have the x850XT plat. and the catalyst drivers suck on my *cough*dell*cough*.

I used the Catalyst 6.2 driver on my X850 XT PE. Seemed to run fine until the video card overheated and destroyed itself.

Tytanya_MxO · 06/20/2007 14:39:03

Shi+Xin+Feng wrote:

Tytanya_MxO wrote:
Sadly my prized purchase of late was a 8800gtx, never expected any problems with MxO of all things =/ t is good outside but hardly great my old ati x850 was as good and indoors it was far better - Is there any sign of a fix or work around?

Tytanya, what drivers did you use for your x850? I have the x850XT plat. and the catalyst drivers suck on my *cough*dell*cough*.

I have been using 6.12 the last of the version 6 drivers, works pretty well even at 1920x1200...unfortunately my monitor seems to have issues with the 7 series drivers but supposedly they boost performance further..... Dell XPS 3.6Ghz and 2Gb of ram perhaps do more than their fair share, certainly the extra gig of ram made a significant difference when I installed it.

ShiXinFeng · 06/22/2007 07:31:49

lol, overheating...

maybe I should stop OC'ing the vid card everytime I load MxO.

Seriously though, I am going nuts. After 4 duels: lag. 6 Missions: Lag. PvP for 5 minutes:lag. Bazman Useropts.cfg 1.0: major lag! And now, when set to highest detail, everyone's name is see-through. The background shows through the tag. . . SMILEY

Here's my system:

Dell 8300 Windows XP Home
80GB HDD
3.0Gz P4 w/533 FSB
3GB PC400 DDR
X850Xt PE Sapphire 6.12 catalyst dvr
Comcast Broadband 6MB d/l - 384K u/l

I really shouldn't be having these problems, right? Or should I just quit whining?

Tytanya_MxO · 06/26/2007 04:47:28

Shi+Xin+Feng wrote:

lol, overheating...
maybe I should stop OC'ing the vid card everytime I load MxO.
Seriously though, I am going nuts. After 4 duels: lag. 6 Missions: Lag. PvP for 5 minutes:lag. Bazman Useropts.cfg 1.0: major lag! And now, when set to highest detail, everyone's name is see-through. The background shows through the tag. . .
Here's my system:
Dell 8300 Windows XP Home
80GB HDD
3.0Gz P4 w/533 FSB
3GB PC400 DDR
X850Xt PE Sapphire 6.12 catalyst dvr
Comcast Broadband 6MB d/l - 384K u/l
I really shouldn't be having these problems, right? Or should I just quit whining?

I am not suffereing with the same lag problems as you, but I get that issue with the name tags whenever I activate any of the cards graphical tweak overrides - set everything to 'let the application decide' for Anti-Aliasing, Anitrophyphy...etc and it works fine.

phi · 06/26/2007 05:12:30

You can still use the useropts file to set 14x or 16 AA so don't despair SMILEY

Synapse777 · 06/28/2007 12:14:23

I saw this thread too late.. :/ I too wanted to update for a uber mxo experience after my Gt6600 which worked fiiiiine burned... now I'm in lagland with you Beachhead.

Synapse777 · 06/28/2007 19:19:57

Try to mission in Eshean and tell me what you get there? I dont lag in those mission area's at all...? howcome? were they added later to the
game? I will not sleep before this... oh wait, I will sleep before a fix is found, won't I? Hm, alright then. BUT let's find a fix, please.

ZaneZavin · 06/30/2007 09:02:52

Upgrading to a new pc with vista and 8800, which probably means lots of bad things for me as far as mxo goes.

Kybutra · 06/30/2007 09:57:32

Did phi say it was a driver issue? MxO is probably at the very end of the list for games having problems with the 8800 series. darn you nvidia!

Symmetric · 07/03/2007 06:19:24

nVidia appears to be preparing a new beta version of the 8800 video drivers. They were up on their site very briefly, but were taken down due to installation problems.

Keep an eye on this page to see if the beta drivers are made available again: http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_d...betadriver.html

phi · 07/03/2007 07:56:56

Kybutra wrote:

Did phi say it was a driver issue? MxO is probably at the very end of the list for games having problems with the 8800 series. darn you nvidia!

The problem seems to stem from directX 9 based occluded surface culling (including when DX10 runs in backwards compatibility mode) - that's "calculating what to not draw because it's hidden" for you lay people.

It spends so much time calculating what to not draw (because indoors you have indoors and outdoors environments to draw, thanks to windows you can see out of) that it slows down. It would be faster if it just drew everything.

So yeah it seems to be a driver bug. New Beta drivers FTW.

Symmetric · 07/06/2007 09:54:09

New beta drivers are up at http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_162.18.html

Kybutra · 07/06/2007 18:34:56

Symmetric wrote:

New beta drivers are up at http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_162.18.html

doesn'tseem to fix the problem, I still lag indoor on Media Center.

XXT · 07/06/2007 21:48:32

I am on XP, some buildings that used to lag only a little do not now with the new driver. But, the really bad buildings still lag, but not as bad. I guess it was some progress.

Symmetric · 07/14/2007 05:03:43

Update, new drivers for Vista are available here: http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_d...betadriver.html

Unfortunately neither these drivers nor the latest beta version of the XP drivers appear to address the problem.

Symmetric · 07/15/2007 19:46:29

Are the people who are experiencing this problem only encountering it in Windows XP? Are there any Vista or even Win2K users here that are having the same problem, or can verify that they are not having this issue on their version?

I cringe at the thought of installing Vista, but I was wondering if it might be an issue with Nvidia's XP drivers only.

07/16/2007 01:47:32

Beachhead wrote:

this is the single most powerfull graphics card ever created

Nope the 8800 Ultra will give you more power ... =P

Tytanya_MxO · 07/16/2007 08:55:52

Symmetric wrote:

Are the people who are experiencing this problem only encountering it in Windows XP? Are there any Vista or even Win2K users here that are having the same problem, or can verify that they are not having this issue on their version?

I cringe at the thought of installing Vista, but I was wondering if it might be an issue with Nvidia's XP drivers only.

Vista has its own problems...which by and large means even if the problem of lag is cured you still wont be happy with the result (misplaced shadows, dropped textures, sneak turning the entire screen opaque etc..)

Sadly the most powerful graphics chips available 'the gamers choice' atm and the most up to date operating system dont seem to agree with MxO....

Symmetric · 07/16/2007 09:23:17

I've been scouring the Internets for more information, and some people are theorizing that the problem stems from a certain "door type" in the game. They are suggesting that certain buildings which do not include these doors do not cause any lag at all, but they did not specifically mention which buildings those are.

I'm doing some testing to see if that theory is correct. I wish I had more information to go by, as this problem does make the game unplayable. Any help from the MxO team's side of things would be appreciated, as this is affecting everyone who is using an 8800 series card.

Symmetric · 07/18/2007 05:52:01

Confirmed - there is no indoor lag when running the MxO client under Vista with the latest Nvidia drivers, though there is a host of other graphical glitches. It's something I can put up with since they're relatively minor in comparison to the entire indoor environment being completely unplayable.

I'm led to believe that this is mostly a driver issue due to the severity of the problem, and different platforms running different drivers are producing different results. There may still be an issue with the game client, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.

Tytanya_MxO · 07/18/2007 07:14:21

It's a bit more complex than that, in xp the indoor lag is reduced to a single spike as you go through the doors of many buildings, once inside things are fine........ that is with the exception of certain buildings, the easiest example is the bar directly ahead of the Appolyon NW HL, unplayably laggy inside that room yet I can go to Centre Park club Janus (a notoriously laggy room) and have no problems.... maybe certain objects are to blame, the pool tables always catch my eyes....

Symmetric · 07/18/2007 08:36:14

Tytanya_MxO wrote:

It's a bit more complex than that, in xp the indoor lag is reduced to a single spike as you go through the doors of many buildings, once inside things are fine........ that is with the exception of certain buildings, the easiest example is the bar directly ahead of the Appolyon NW HL, unplayably laggy inside that room yet I can go to Centre Park club Janus (a notoriously laggy room) and have no problems.... maybe certain objects are to blame, the pool tables always catch my eyes....

Actually, I believe it's just facing doors that can cause the lag. That tells me there's a problem in drawing portals, where the area behind the door isn't being rendered properly, and the transparency layer in the door object itself isn't playing nice with the GPU.

-Mercidos- · 07/19/2007 01:01:52

From Techpowerup.com

Users with all kinds of setups have been reporting problems, affecting some GeForce 8800 cards, and particularly the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. According to users from NVIDIA, eVGA, NVNews, Rage3F and Guru of 3D forums, the problem causes random slowdowns, often halving frame rates until the user alt-tabs out of the game and back in again. The problem doesn't appear to be tied to any particular hardware configuration, Windows version, or display setting. NVIDIA Technical Marketing Director Nick Stam confirmed today that NVIDIA is aware of this issue, and new drivers will be released some time in July to fix the problem.

So I'd try alt-tabbing. Try looking for answers in places other than the MxO forums and they might reveal themselves.

Symmetric · 07/19/2007 04:23:07

Problem with that is the game's graphics become entirely corrupted when Alt-Tabbing to the desktop and back. This happens on XP and Vista.

Tytanya_MxO · 07/19/2007 05:01:14

Symmetric wrote:

Problem with that is the game's graphics become entirely corrupted when Alt-Tabbing to the desktop and back. This happens on XP and Vista.

Although this is true, if you alter the resolution in game the problems seem to sort themselves (I flip between 1920x1200 and 1920x1080 etc)

Symmetric · 07/20/2007 03:13:48

Desc1ple wrote:

So I'd try alt-tabbing. Same thing for that Mech Liaison on Recursion. Try looking for answers in places other than the MxO forums and they might reveal themselves.

Has anyone tried this yet? I don't really want to reinstall XP again just to try this out. :p

phi · 07/20/2007 04:00:47

Corrupted graphics after 'alt-tab'ing is a game issue. When you alt-tab out windows loads into memory, if the game doesn't expressly detect losing and gaining focus then it can't reload the textures. I suspect that with Vista's Aero interface using the 3d card quite heavily that this effect would only be magnified under Vista.

Basically, when you alt-tab out to Windows the game loses exclusive control of the video-memory. If the game doesn't re-load the textures it needs when you alt-tab back then there is no guarantee what will be in memory.

Symmetric · 07/20/2007 14:28:22

Phi, that wasn't what I was asking about. :p

As I quoted, it was recommended that the lag problem could be resolved by alt-tabbing out of the game and then back in again. I'm on Vista right now and don't want to reinstall XP to test this out, so if anyone with an 8800 can try it and see if it does indeed work, it would be most appreciated.

doctor_tiki · 07/23/2007 18:05:39

Symmetric wrote:

Phi, that wasn't what I was asking about. :p

As I quoted, it was recommended that the lag problem could be resolved by alt-tabbing out of the game and then back in again. I'm on Vista right now and don't want to reinstall XP to test this out, so if anyone with an 8800 can try it and see if it does indeed work, it would be most appreciated.

Here is an update on my situation. I run windows xp pro with dual 8800 GTX Cards and have this same problem, exactly as described above. (with the lag clearing up immediately after exiting the building)

I have tried alt-tabbing, swapping between windowed mode and fullscreen, swapping between sli mode/single, turning off/on every ingame graphic setting, and tried the past 4 released drivers (including the most current xp beta driver).

None of these have any effect for me.

Very frustrating for a new user. The game seems great but if this stays the way it is I won't be able to justify playing/continiung my subscription.

I have no performance problems with any other game and I have played just about every PC game you can think of on this box flawlessly.

Anyone who finds a temporary fix or the exact nature of the problem shout out so we can get this resolved! SMILEY

Tytanya_MxO · 07/24/2007 05:29:31

No it doesnt work and certain indoor areas are completely unplayable with the card...... By and large I am pretty underwhelmed with the 8800's as a whole, barely an improvement over my old x1950 and 3 times the cost so I am seriously thinking of going back to ATI.