Nvidia drivers and gaming

[tomster2300]

Do drivers make that much of difference in gameplay? I installed COD2 today for the first time in a year or so, and the game runs much slower than I remember it running.

The only things different with my computer is a change from 1 gig of DDR 400 ram to 1.5 gigs of DDR 333 (the DDR 400 ram has underclocked itself to run with the DDR 333), and an update to nvidia's current drivers for my 6800 GT (forceware version 94.24)

All the games I've tried so far have actually gained a performance boost from the ram change, so I'm wondering if it might be due to drivers?

[pam123]

Anything in the Release Notes ?

[tomster2300]

I don't know. Do you think I ought to go back and get some older drivers?

If the same driver package is used for the 6xxx and 7xxx line of cards, could older ones actually be better optimized for a 6xxx card?

[tomster2300]

The game is dropping down to 20 fps now when playing at 1280x1024 with no AA on. I clicked the optimal graphics button in the menu (which dropped it down to 800x600) and it only ran in the mid 30's.

This used to be silky smooth with the only slight slowdown coming when looking through thick smoke (and it wasn't even bad then).

Any ideas as to what could be the problem?

[pam123]

I don't know if you've checked out any video card forums lately but nVidia has been having driver problems (It's also got Vista problems and they're related.)
You signature shows a dual boot, I'd put COD2 in the XP partition and go back to the older drivers.

[tomster2300]

I divide my 40 gig up into two partitions, one for vista and one for xp. I put all my games on my 250 gig drive so they're separate when I need to reformat and redo any of the OS's. Do you think this could be a problem? It's always worked well before.

I run all my games in xp. Also, what drivers do you think I ought to roll back to?

[tomster2300]

I installed the 77.72 drivers and everything is better. I'm only getting 20-30 fps, but it's a very smooth play compared to the choppy 20 fps I was getting with the 94.24 drivers.

EDIT: It's still lagging badly when you have to view a large portion of the map and defend yourself from a mass attack. It didn't used to do this before.

Do you think the game simply ran better with the gig of DDR400?

[wolfie]

try running it in dx7

wolfie

[tomster2300]

I've tried running it in dx 9 and in auto mode, and it as above. Putting it in dx 7 gave me a constant 55-80+ fps. What happened, and do you think it was running in this mode before?

[wolfie]

for some reason with cod2 most people have to run it in dx7 or you do get the lag you are getting, unlees u have a top notch computer. this game been broken from day one it came out, hopefully with cod4 coming out they have fixed most of it.

[rtwjunkie]

Something else you might want to consider is that if you have 1.5 Gigs of RAM instead of the previous 1Gig, chances are you have an odd number of RAM sticks. If that's the case, I don't think you're running memory in dual-channel anymore, which will certainly slow down your gameplay.

[tomster2300]

Originally Posted by rtwjunkie Something else you might want to consider is that if you have 1.5 Gigs of RAM instead of the previous 1Gig, chances are you have an odd number of RAM sticks. If that's the case, I don't think you're running memory in dual-channel anymore, which will certainly slow down your gameplay.

Unfortunately my nforce2 board was the x version, which didn't support dual channel. I'd definitely be running it in dual channel if I could though.