6800 ultra problems

sl problems
since sl does not have a tech section i will post it here,

since i got my new video card my avie textures a really messed up can somebody help me that has the same card here are my system specs.

amd 2600+
1024 mb ram
msi kt400a board
nvidia 6800 ultra 250 mb

i have updated my mother board drivers and run the new nvidia drivers all games on my computer work fine only sl gets messed up if change outfits then my avie looks bad textured

Blimey. In about eight hours' time I was going off to my local computer store to buy a 6800 GT.

I'd better wait to see what sort of answers you get.

I would recommend these steps:

* Remove any personal files in the second life program folder if you stored any there.
* Uninstall second life.
* Reinstall second life.
* Try some clothes

If they still are broken:
* Put on the broken clothes
* Go into appearance mode
* Change 1 slider by 1 for any and all broken parts
* Press Save All
* Press Close

Something in that should help fix it.

Oh well, I'm going to take a chance. I'm just off now to buy one. I'll let you know what happens.

does anyone else have problems with these kind of cards?

No, I've been using mine for some time now, and it has behaved perfectly in second life.

I would check your power supply; that is sometimes the culprit when high-quality video cards don't work properly.

when i got my card i changed my main power unit from 300 too 400 watt the card has 2 powercords direct from the mian power unit

OK - I'll tell you my experience.

I bought a 5950 card about six months ago, from ebay. To my dismay, when I tried it in sl, after about five minutes of use my av became somewhat cubist in nature. No, not cubist, not even surreal. Something like Francis Bacon.

I told the seller about my problem and he suggested that I should try a better power supply. So I went to my local computer shop, and they provided me with a 450 watt power unit.

Unfortunately I had the same problems. The buyer graciously took the card back, and said he was going to contact the manufacturer.

So I put my old Geoforce 4 card back in. A few weeks later I had similar problems, and then lost video altogether. I took my computer to a better shop, a bit further away, and they told me that the 450w unit I had bought was rubbish. They sold me a 350w unit, saying that it was the built quality which was the important thing, not the rated wattage. Since then everything has worked perfectly. I was a bit worried about the 6800 GT card, because I felt that was pushing it, but there have been no problems, despite the fact that I now have an Audigy Platinum sound card, which has its own power input.

Not saying that's your problem - just offering it as an example of what can happen.

thanks it sure something to look into, playing sl now isnt as much fun as it was i have to keep the same outfit on or else my avie gets messed up if i wear something else, i know its not the card it self i tested it and far cry at the highest setting and never seen anything like it fast and very high detailed grafics, i will call the computer store and she what they say about my 400w power unit i really hope thats it , thanks for the tip

What brand is your power supply?

its a Q TEC 400w

i still have the same problems, when my avie is messed up i need a linden to go on my acount to fix believe me this isnt fun to play sl like this, i have done all i could updated all kind of drivers nividia and via chipset drivers, does anyone of you have problems with the forceware driver 61.77 ? soemtimes i get a windows driver error with it, when i go to the mircosoft info site that tells you why the crash info it tells me to go back to 61.76 driver can anyone tell me if they have this problem or give me a clue

Nightmare, check the BIOS on the card - I've got a 6800 Ultra and the BIOS it shipped to me was... poor, shall we say.
Alot of owners are having to reflash the firmware to get them to work and work well.
I'm not at the machine atm, but AFAIK I'm using the 61.77 drivers and the latest nForce drivers and it's all good.
Only bug is that "ripple water" doesn't work, but that's not really a problem.

Again, recheck your card BIOS, check the BIOS update forums for the card manufacturer, especially if it's a green Nvidia reference board with the mermaid on the HSF.

In case it's relevant, my kit specs follow:

AthlonXP 3200+
DFI Lanparty Ultra II A m/b
1G RAM
Jeantech 400W PSU.

I'm not using dedicated power lines from the PSU, though I'm using the splitters included with the pack, one power line from my casefan power line and one from my optical drives power line. No glitches thus far after the GPU BIOS updates.

Night... All your video card can mess up is what YOU see. If your avatar's apearance is messed up for everyone else, enough that a Linden has to fix something, then it's not your video card doing it. Your card can't screw up what other people see.

What EXACTLY is the problem?

(And I'm planning on getting a 6800 GT or Ultra soon, depending on availablity.)

thanks i have checked my bios 5.40.02.10.14 , where can i find updates for it?

hi tiger the problem is not only i see it but others see it also, my avie textures of outfit are just messed up the face of my avie gets 4 sets of teeth, and other do see it, i have a pic of it in my sl inventory if you want to see it im me and i will sent it to you

Okay, if other people are seeing it, then it's not your video card, it's a problem with your avatar.

All your video card does is render the data SL sends to your computer. If your avatar is getting distorted, and nobody else's is, AND other people can see your distorted avatar in-world, that means that everyone is seeing the same thing, and that it's a problem on the server, not on your end.

Edit: Okay, it was pointed out to me that you did, in fact, say "textures" in the above post. So yeah, if it's not the actual avatar geometry being deformed, only the textures, that means it's a problem with your computer. What brand of PSU do you have?

Actually, video card issues can potentially corrupt what other people see.

We generate the textures that other people see by using the video card to composite them together, and then read them back.

So if there's data corruption on your video card or when transferring data back and forth over the AGP bus, this could result in corrupted textures that other users can see.

This used to be a problem on ATI, so we had a fallback path that didn't use the video card for compositing, although it was much slower.

One way to tell if this is what's happening is if other people can see you OK (or you can see yourself OK) when you're customizing appearance. If that's the case, then it's probably corruption due to the video card.

I don't know anything about the video card BIOS issues - it IS possible that that could be causing the corruption as well. But we HAVE had many people have problems go away after fixing driver, power, and cooling issues.

- Doug

its a bit strange that games that need alot more then sl from a video card work well here doom 3 i have on ultra settings and it runs pefect so the only problem i have is on sl, where i cant change outfits or take a screen shots those are messed up, i have updated everything and reinstalled sl i a i have no clue what to do now

nightmare.

Doug Linden: <after fixing driver, power, and cooling issues>>

Have you checked all of these?

Word is that the 6800 Ultras were rushed out to market, most of them are still reference boards from Nvidia's factories instead of being independantly-built cards from places like Gainward, XFX, etc.
As a result the resellers are having to rush out their customised BIOSes for hardware that isn't theirs and... well, some of them aren't very good at it.



Nightmare, if you still want to flash the card BIOS (bear in mind it's a procedure which carries with it a non-zero element of risk) check the support forums and download areas of the rebadger for your card. If you want to go cross-manufacturer, then the Gainward latest BIOSes work on most Ultras, as do the XFX ones. But check the original sites first.

i am not sure if i am going mess with the bios of the card, and selador i updated all my drivers , and have no cooling problem the only thing i am checking if the powerunit is a problem, and i hope nvidia will bring out a new driver soon

As I'm still researching which brand of repackaged 6800 Ultra I want to buy, I've done a lot of reading. The specs say you need a 450 watt power supply. That is not neccessarily the case... You can probably get away with less. BUT if you have a cheap power supply, that could be the cause of a lot of problems.

Also, I think you mentioned your card had two power leads. (Some do, some doen't.) If so, make sure they are plugged into separate branches out of the power supply, and not chained together on the same branch.

Is yours a double-wide model? There are a few thinner versions around. I don't know if heating will be a problem with them or not. Either way, giving the card as much room in your case is always a good idea for heat regulation.

I'm currently leaning towards the BFG 6800 Ultra OC ($499 at Best Buy) which has a replased heatsink and is factory overclocked. (Bundle sucks, though.) Reviews report that further overclocking is doable as well.


As for Doom 3 running great and SL having problems... Remember that every polygon in Doom has been "greased" for fast speed, and a lot of the flash and sparkle (or shadows and grit, as the case may be) is added with shader effects. In SL, any Joe Omega can plop prims down with no regard to efficiency, and there ARE no shader effects. (At least none of the cool ones like specular hilights or parallax bump mapping.)

the two power leads one is for the cooling and the other one is for the main system of the card as writen in the manual of the card, i have the club 3d version its not as big as the 5900 series

It's probably power. What make and model of power supply do you have?