Really Pi$$ed at Nvidia

So, every since around driver release 290 or so, I began to notice something odd happening. Some games of mine wouldn't work anymore at 1080p. At first I thought it was a fluke, but then it just got worse with each new driver release.

My monitor is a now-many-years-old Westinghouse 1080p 16:9 monitor, 37". No tuner at all. Its just a big monitor with speakers. And for years it has worked flawlessly.

But around 290xxx from Nvidia, when I'd go to fire up certain games, instead of 1080p...I'd get.....diagonal lines of gibberish! Ok, just imagine the old days of trying to tune in a TV station, you'd see like just diagonal lines of static and pixels and so forth until the picture came into view (yes I'm talking the old old days of rabbit ears, kids)......that is sorta what I am looking at. Its as though the card is sending my monitor a signal that is out of sync or something.

SO I posted over on Nvidias web forums "Guys what gives, with each driver release the situation gets worse, 1080p no longer works!"......but nobody viewed and nobody responded.

So.....now I am effectively STUCK at driver release 285, the last release before things started going screwy. It doesn't have anything to do with overclocks on my card or running MSI Afterburner or anything like that, games simply start up but don't render correctly...as though the monitor and the card are saying "Ok, you're a 1080p monitor" and then the display just goes completely screwy.

I tried to do a screenshot...no luck since I had to reset the computer to get the graphics back to viewable. right now on my desktop everything is fine. But if I try to launch a game? SLAM....if I run the game at say 1600x1200?? No problem, works fine...just doesn't work at my monitors native resolution of 1080p anymore.

Has *ANYONE* Heard of this happening to other people before? I use a straight shot DVI to DVI1.....and if I try using the other DVI port on my video card it thinks my monitor is "monitor 2"....so I'm using the right DVI output port and the only DVI input on my display that will accept and display 1080p.

So i am sad and annoyed...I'm losing out on tons of performance....and I have YET to find a suitable 37" replacement for this monitor, is it just that the EDID in this display is so old that the newer nvidia drivers are doing something differently, causing it to screw up? I don't know but, I'm really kind of pissed.




I should note: That the "effect" seems to be associated with trying to send my monitor a signal at 59hz. When I add a custom resolution of 1920x1080 at 59hz the screen goes screwy, just like it does on games. When I click on nvidia properties it says its driving my monitor at 1080p, 60hz. however when I click on Windows 7 "Change Resolution" it says my monitor is displaying at 59hz. I can check 60hz and click APPLY but as soon as I go back to the screen again, it says its running at 59Hz. Ugh.......I have this sinking feeling that modern drivers are just doing something differently that causes these old displays to go wacky


UPDATE: its my monitor......plugged another monitor in and it runs fine at 1080p with all the same cables, etc.

I guess I'm going to have to do the EDID hack on my Westinghouse and create a custom entry in the registry and see if that gets me back into business...if not....i have no idea what is going on..and maybe its time to retire the old bastard.

PS: using a 25" Monitor IS A PAINFUL EXPERIENCE I couldn't live with less than 32"........

I'm still pissed at Nvidia because my monitor's EDID hasn't changed........but nvidias drivers have. What are they doing now that is causing my old monitor to freak out....don't know......the EDID hack is a last ditch effort, I'll try later.

I just got Assassins Creed to work. How? By going into the CFG file and telling it to display at 59Hz instead of 60hz.

I tried to do the same thing for DIRT3 with no luck at all.

This is truly blowing my mind.......

I also did the "Force EDID Override" info for my monitor...with no difference. Remember now, my monitor works *fine* at Nvidia driver 285.xx and below. Above that, things go screwy....my monitor hasn't changed, Nividia's drivers have.

I wish I knew a better place to get the word out, this has to be affecting others....

Let me restate what I know at this time:

At 285.xx, I never had to touch anything....everything "just worked". I cannot recall if Nvidia was running my display at 59 or 60 at desktop but now it only shows 60hz as available at 1920x1080p. Also note that my desktop, web browsing, watching HD video...its *all fine*....its gaming....gaming is what is killing me. My GPU isn't fried.....so.......I'm really at a total loss.

Post 285....290...293, including the 301 beta's I am running now.....many games either do not work or require me to TINKER in the CFG's. I only *just* discovered that Assassins Creed would work if I changed the frequency from 60 to 59. I mean that was me doing a "lets try this" dumb luck thing, I was in there and saw the HZ setting and said "Hmmm...what if I put in 59".

BOOM it boots up and works. "wow I can do this for every game!". Dirt3...no dice. Now I'm looking for games that don't work to see if there is a CFG I can try to fix.

So....this is a freakin mess.


I don't want to run a tiny 25 or 27" monitor, so I'd likely have to go and buy a new 37 or 42" display......

I didn't try that, however I DO believe...in either the Windows or the Nvidia software, that I could (or used to be able to) put either 59hz or 60hz in the drop down window, but if I put 59hz in and applied it...nothing would change...but as soon as I left the window and went back, it would revert back to 60hz.

I'll try that, see what happens.

maybe something will explode!

UPDATE:
I created a custom resolution with the default timings at 59.940, and it produced the completely screwed up screen I am used to seeing. When I set it to AUTOMATIC timings and tried to create a resolution of 1080p at 59hz, it did the same thing.

So something very, very strange is going on.........particularly because ASSASSINS CREED wouldn't run at 60hz, but when I manually changed the configuration file to run at 1920 x 1080 at 59hz, it displays properly. Man this one has me stumped :P

....................ok I have no idea how to even check that.

I BUT I WILL SAY THIS......if I go into WINDOWS CHANGE RESOLUTION, and I choose ADVANCED PROPERTIES it shows my display running at 59hz. If i choose 60 and apply it, screen flickers and it says do you want to keep this setting and I go "Yes, of course, 60Hz is what I want".

I choose ok.

I close the window.

I open the window again. Its back set at 59.

Problem is I shouldn't need it. Also for like a few years Nvidia's drivers allow you to set custom resolutions and timings, which is the same thing that Powerstrip allowed you to do, its been largely left behind (from the days when we were using it to get our PC's to display on our 1080i TV sets)

WEIRD THINGS ARE AFOOT......example. I can run Red Faction Armageddon DX9 without issue, I can't run it using DX10/11 mode.

BLUR - Runs fine.
SHANK - nope
NFS SHIFT 2 - Runs Fine
SABOTEUR - Runs Fine

Dirt3 still wont run in any mode, I will see if it boots at a lower resolution.

I posted over on HardOCP forum...we'll see. Although I am somewhat pleased to find that more games are working than NOT working. I can play games like SHANK at lower resolution, i don't even care...just wish I knew what was going on :P

I'm going to Google this immediately.......thank you

Guess what kids.......that may have been something to it. I created a new custom resolution of 1916x1080, and turned off scaling. Then, I forced Dirt3 to run at 1916x1080....and its workin.

No idea about performance yet however but at least it worked. So now if I have a game at 1080p that won't start, I'll try to force the 1916x1080p resolution and see if that fixes it.

Still a colossal pain but at least its functional....thanks so much for cluing me into the 24hz thing, I'm not sure if its completely related but.....we shall see.

Thanks Jason......do you recall how you checked to see which mode you were running in? I thought that RGB was the only available option when running via DVI. I do not, actually, have dual displays connected at this time although I have in the past (I set it up so that way I could output to my 55" set or my projector via HDMI to DVI for the PJ or DVI) but that hasn't been used in some time.

Oh and I posted this over on the NVIDIA forums (and over on the HardOCP forums too), last time I got ignored completely on Nvidia.....we'll see about this time.

However, the "set a custom resolution of 1916x1080@60hz" trick seems to be working at the moment..Shank and Dirt3 both work...the two that refused to work at all before...if I set my desktop to that with no scaling I lose 4 pixels, 2 on either side it seems, impossible to notice....but games appear to be running at full 1920x1080. If they aren't. with no scaling I'm not noticing 4 pixels if missing picture.

At some point you have to accept that your equipment wont be supported...for me I am blaming my monitor...its old, it has image retention in the neutral gray colors, but I have yet to find a suitable replacement. I tried a Westinghouse 32" 1080p which sucked. I'd consider one of the new Panasonic LED's as I hear they have about as much input lag as this set likely does (very low, mouse movement appears instantaneous).....but I think for now, I'm just going to go back to the earlier drivers.

I'll lose some performance, but after mucking about with the 310 betas I've discovered two things:

Adaptive Vsync is nice, but doesn't appear to affect much except for Skyrim (the only game in recent memory to give me fits with triple buffering and vsync), a game I basically just grew bored with and stopped playing.

FXAA is really only of major benefit in a world with lots of sprites (aka: vegetation outdoors)......I tried several games with it on and off and found that mostly I just didn't see the benefit compared to, say, running real AA. Its like a last resort if your computer can't handle straight CS or MSAA with transparency turned on.

*sigh*

PS: SHIFT2 doesn't work at all for me with the 310's...no matter what I put into the xml config file it fails on me when it goes to actually race, the menus and such work fine...I was deceived! :P

I TAKE IT BACK...SHIFT2 doesn't work at all now, under any driver...something got hosed. @*$&%&@(@( EA Junk... :P Re-installing :P

My Shift2 failure appears to be related to a PhysX corruption after installing beta drivers then going back. I think that happened to me with mafia II as well....

I'd get a better monitor, if I could find one...and I can't. Spending $500 or $600 for a 37" TV that has better contrast is kind of a lateral move to me....every TV seems to have one issue or another, its frustrating....there are "large format" monitors by they seem to be universally overpriced, although some of them come with super tiny bezels..which *is* attractive to me.

...as has always been the way. "Soundblaster...NO WAIT, Soundblaster Pro...NO WAIT, unsupported....Soundblaster 16...WAIT no drivers...back to Soundblaster Pro...." etc

I went back to the 285's....now everything is working again...I'm losing some performance but I'll just deal for now. Its extra performance I'm largely not missing. I'll try the next qualified release and see if anythings changed.