W7 and 8600GT

[Masterz1337]

So I recently upgraded to W7, and my graphics card has taken a crap on me. I'm getting 20 FPS in games where I was once getting in the 60s. Anyone have the same card and had to go get special drivers? I went and downloaded the latest drivers and it's still crap, Halo pics the card up as an unknown as well.

[Cortexian]

I never had problems with my 8800 GTX in Windows 7 64... Have you disabled the desktop composition/visual themes via the compatibility options for your games?

As for Halo, it see's most new GPUs as unknown now.

[Mr Buckshot]

I hope you didn't download Nvidia 275.33. It's been a nightmare for the high-end nvidia owners I know, mainly by causing low GPU usage on a lot of games and reducing them to IGP performance. Don't go beyond driver 270.61 (if you have to downgrade, download the standalone driver and clean install).

Also, no offence but 8600GT ain't cutting it nowadays. Keep an eye out of sales and in the range just above $100 and maybe $150 max, you should be able to find a nice card that can hit 1920x1080 nearly-maxed on all games.

[Cortexian]

I have 275.33 and it's fine...

[Mr Buckshot]

I have 275.33 and it's fine...

I suspect it's your PSU that's an advantage. Some lower-end PSUs that don't supply that much current on the 12V rail are resulting in the Fermi issues with driver 275.33. Been hearing plenty of stories of users upgrading from old lower-consumption cards like the 8800GT without changing the PSU, and then getting worse performance on their newer better cards. 270.61 fixed some issues but not all. BC2 performance is the most common problem from what I see on forums.

I only found this out after I returned a GTX 460 I bought to replace an 8800GT and then got a Radeon that wasn't hindered by my PSU. Could have saved the effort by just changing the psu =.=

[Masterz1337]

I'm going to try that now freelancer, and if it doesn't work I'm going to downgrade my drivers. I got a shitty PSU from radioshack when the one I bought for my PC came defective in the mail. I probably won't upgrade my graphics cards, I only play CE, and if I had $100 to spare I'd probably put it into my car, since I know my card is good enough for CE.

edit: Buckshot, you mind linking me to those drivers you use?

[Mr Buckshot]

64 bit right?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-270.61-whql-driver.html

if it's 32 bit: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-32bit-270.61-whql-driver.html

I'm using ATI now so I don't know if Halo will still have issues, but on my Radeon I seem to have the performance I expect at 1280x1024 maxed. The frames do get erratic if I try a widescreen resolution though, as the stock game doesn't actually do it properly without modding.

[Masterz1337]

I'm still having problems, I'm lucky if I can get above 40fps. I did notice Halo detects I only have 1gb of ram when I actually have three. This a W7 64 bit problem as well?

[seanthelawn]

I was getting horrible frames on Halo with my old card (9800GTX+) and I heard decals really eff with your frames on newer Nvidia cards so I turned off decals and it ran fine (I'm assuming you're having problems with more than just Halo though, otherwise this thread would be somewhere in the Halo section). Might as well try that and see if it at least fixes your frames in Halo.

[Masterz1337]

Doesn't help either :(. Halo's the only game I have, but I figured it was more of a W7 problem than halo.

[Cortexian]

Try disabling decals in Halo's settings.

GeForce 8XXX series cards and newer have issues with Halo and decals.

[chrisk123999]

I'm still having problems, I'm lucky if I can get above 40fps. I did notice Halo detects I only have 1gb of ram when I actually have three. This a W7 64 bit problem as well?

The 1.09 update set Halo to stop counting your RAM after 1 GB.

[Amit]

The 1.09 update set Halo to stop counting your RAM after 1 GB.

Who thought that was a good idea?

[chrisk123999]

It was a fix for the over 4 GB of ram error window people were getting on 64 bit computers. It can still use more then 1 GB of RAM if needed, not that Halo would ever need to use more then 1 GB...

[Masterz1337]

Mine does! How do you change it?

[Cortexian]

Halo will use it all automatically, it just doesn't register it in that hardware screen.