NVidia graphics driver problems

[dancerchris]

I have been having the occasional snap-crackle-pop independent of buffer size and finally used the DPC Latency Checker to trace down my problems. I am using a Desktop with a decent setup and a TI firewire card with a Presonus firepod. According to what I can figure out is when my graphics card (NVidia GeForce 8600 GT - fanless) is disabled everything is great! But with it enabled I have to reduce the graphics setting to something at or below 1280x1024 or the audio gapping comes back. This sucks becuase I recently upgraded my monitor to a 24" widescreen and was running at 1920x1080 native (just for LIVE no less). The wierd thing is if I have the DPC Latency Checker in the foreground I can run at the high res.

Has anyone had a similar problem with their graphics driver and solved the problems? I know some of the laptops have had issues but that was with the PowerMizer feature that is not enabled on a desktop card.

Thanks

[Donnie]

Have you tried resetting/deleting your ableton preferences file? That can often fix random pops and clicks. Graphics card drivers updated to the latest version?

[ark]

Two thoughts: (1) You might try downloading the latest drivers from nvidia.com if you have not already done so; (2) The NVIDIA system has lots of "extra features" for multiple desktops and stuff like that. You might try disabling them while you're running Live.

Oh yeah, you might also try sending a support request to NVIDIA. My experience is that they've been pretty good about answering them.

[gjm]

Yes I had the same problem on my Q6600, P5Q deluxe XP3 desk top. I had to replace the Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT graphics card with an Asus Nvidia EN7200GS. All DPC spikes gone. Some people have reported mixed success with some of the 8000 series cards with problems solved when tweaking the hardware accelerator option.

[dancerchris]

I've got the latest driver 196.21 (happened with earlier versions too.) I messed with the 3D settings shutting them all down for use with live and still no luck. Just reducing res seems to help.

I might try the config file. Where is that?

[Vibrations]

I had a lot of graphical problems with Live 8.
My solution was reducing the color quality of my Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT to 16 Bit.
Now it works.

[Donnie]

I might try the config file. Where is that?

Select "Get support" from the help menu and then click the link "Show preferences folder"

[stutter]

I was going to point to Powermizer, since I know some people had an issue with that. Not going to help though.

The known issue with those Nvidia's was that when downclocking they caused huge dpc spikes (search dpc latency geforce / nvidia / video / or something along those lines to find out). The solution was (I think) to install rivatuner and force the 3d acceleration to a constant setting. Not a problem I've had myself, but one I remember which sounds like it might be related to your issue.

p.s.

running at 1920x1080 native (just for LIVE no less). The wierd thing is if I have the DPC Latency Checker in the foreground I can run at the high res.

1920*1080 is great, and the DPC latency checker thing is bizarre

[dancerchris]

I was going to point to Powermizer, since I know some people had an issue with that. Not going to help though.

The known issue with those Nvidia's was that when downclocking they caused huge dpc spikes (search dpc latency geforce / nvidia / video / or something along those lines to find out). The solution was (I think) to install rivatuner and force the 3d acceleration to a constant setting. Not a problem I've had myself, but one I remember which sounds like it might be related to your issue.

Yeah as I mentioned in my first post I looked into the PowerMizer but since I have a desktop system it's not a proplem.

Are you implying that the downclocking occurs even on the desktop setups? I tried looking into this but couldn't see where to impliment it. I tried rivatuner and the downclocking is greyed out.

Thanks

[stutter]

I don't know whether the downclocking occurs for you, but I don't think it's only caused by powermizer - it's an energy saving thing, which is understandable.

Anyway, to check if it works for you... hang on...
this might not be correct, it's from memory, and looking at the Rivatuner window (if I'm wrong, google)
(Rivatuner 2.24)

- Open Rivatuner
- [Power User] tab
- open Rivatuner\NVIDIA\Overclocking
- Set EnablePerfLevelForcing to 1 (i.e. dbl-click to the right of it, type in 1, Enter)
- [Main] tab
- the bit where it lists your driver/forceware, click the triangle to show various icons, click the first one to get up the Overclocking page
- Select whatever you want, and Force Poerformance whatever is somewhere in the middle.


Give that a go, probably won't fix it, in which case you've ruled something out.

[adventurepants_]

I had exactly the same issue on a quad core desktop, TI firewire card, NV 8800GT, and a Presonus Firebox.

The issue on my setup is as far as I could tell is that the GPU and TI card were sharing an IRQ. I worked around the problem on XP by disabling hardware acceleration, so the above tips might help. I didnt spend a lot of time trying to work it out as I dont look at the screen that often anyway.

Once I installed Win7, the problem did not reoccur.

[stutter]

exactly the same issue ... GPU and TI card were sharing an IRQ. I worked around the problem on XP by disabling hardware acceleration ... Once I installed Win7, the problem did not reoccur.

that last part is not something I would have expected to see after Vista. No reason to upgrade, but I'm thinking it might be less painful than I expect if I do.

Just in case you don't know:
Device Manager\View\Resource by Type to check irq conflicts. Unfortunately on xp you can't do much about it.

[rikhyray]

1. The 8xxx series have design/material fault, with time/heat the composite part split, sometimes instant sometimes slow death. So could be related to it.
2. Nvidia has a lot of useless, for us, utilities. For example on all notebooks (not sure about desktops) scanning if you did attached external monitor - doing it every couple of seconds, causes dramatic DPC spikes. Disable everything Nvidia in autostart, does not affect performance, you can still do everything manually

[chris vine]

^^
Yep rikhray is right, lots of useless nvidia stuff can mess up stuff. This site helped me out a while back when I had probs

http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_8.html

[dancerchris]

Well I found a decent fix!!!

Pulling down the graphics "Hardware Acceleration" slider just one notch fixed the problems. The funny thing is that this is usually for when your moving the mouse and changing the graphics. This fixed all of my pops and crackles. I'm down to 10.7 ms total latency (including 87 samples compensation) and it's clean as a whistle.

I would suggest this for anyone who has pops or crackles when they're opening/closing windows or menus or pushing buttons. Heck it solved the ones I had even for simple playback.

c