Vista/nVidia 880 GTX video card

[happyj]

Is anyone running an 8800GTX video card on Vista Home Premium with good results. What drivers are you using and what are Trainz settings.

Thanks.

 

[johnwhelan]

There is a Microsoft hot fix for Vista for video cards that have more than 2 Mbs of memory especially applicable to the GTX.

Cheerio John

 

[happyj]

John Whelan

Thanks for that info. I already have the fix installed and seems to work fine.

I am more interested in finding the best drivers for that card operating on Vista Home Premium . Wouid like the NGO optimised drivers but they don't seem applicable to Vista as yet.

Cheers.

 

[johnwhelan]

Thanks for that info. I already have the fix installed and seems to work fine.

I am more interested in finding the best drivers for that card operating on Vista Home Premium . Wouid like the NGO optimised drivers but they don't seem applicable to Vista as yet.

Cheers.

If I recall correctly Vista has a security feature such that only registered drivers can be used. Might just be the 64 bit version but I think you'll find alturnative drivers very few and far between.

Cheerio John

 

[happyj]

John Whelan

Vista has so many security programs it is a real nightmare to run anything.

 

[johnwhelan]

Vista has so many security programs it is a real nightmare to run anything.

It's just a single program that has many features.

Cheerio John

 

[happyj]

John

Is there any way to turn the program off. It can be areal nuisance as it appears on starting up just about every program that I have installed on my computer.

Thanks'

 

[johnwhelan]

Is there any way to turn the program off. It can be areal nuisance as it appears on starting up just about every program that I have installed on my computer.

Thanks'

Sorry Vista itself is a single program and no there really isn't a way to turn off the security features and you can't stop it running as it is the basic operating system.

An alternative would be Linux and Wine to run Trainz. I'm uncertain how sucessful that would be though. To me Vista is a problem currently, it may settle down in time or Trainz or another sim may go Linux.

Cheerio John

 

[happyj]

Actually you can turn off the security programs in Vista. You have to be looged in as administrator, then click on control panel in the start menu. You have to be in Classic version of Control Panel.

Then click on User Accounts. Then click on "Turn User Account Control on or off".

Whether this will cause unforseen problems in security remains to be seen.

 

[johnwhelan]

Actually you can turn off the security programs in Vista. You have to be looged in as administrator, then click on control panel in the start menu. You have to be in Classic version of Control Panel.

Then click on User Accounts. Then click on "Turn User Account Control on or off".

Whether this will cause unforseen problems in security remains to be seen.

You can turn some features on or off but not the Vista program. It's the way you are using the word program that doesn't make sense to me. The entire Vista operating system is one program.

Cheerio John

 

[happyj]

What I was referring to specifically were the popups that appear when you launch TRS 2006 or many other programs requesting: a) a program needs your permissiom to continue; or b) an unidentified program wants access to your computer. These are part of "User Account Control".

I find this extra step annoying as the programs being launched are installed on my computer and I use them daily.

 

[llebrez]

My 8800GTX does not show the image quality of the "old" 7950. Somebody suggested to use Vista with the 8800 and everything will be fine. But I don't believe it: 8800 has no sharpness control, and 79XX does. This sharpnes control make the image very sharp indeed, and I have had to uninstall the 8800 and now I am using the 7950 . Performance? Well, today everybody uses the frame rate to measure the performance. But image quality is very importnant, and there is little difference between the 8800 and 79XX when it comes to frame rate and rendering. Any comments?

 

[jimisham]

llebrez:
In an earlier post you mentioned that the sharpenss control on the 8800GTX was 'grayed out'. I've got an 8800GTX and I can't find that control at all.
Onr thing I'd like to come up with an answer for, is the "shimmering " effect I see on power and telephone poles in the distance. It's really bad on the supports for the overheard wires in the Heath Banks Scenario.
Someone suggested I change the anti-aliasing to a higher setting on the card. It was at 4. I changed it to 16 and it made no difference.

 

[JCitron]

llebrez:
In an earlier post you mentioned that the sharpenss control on the 8800GTX was 'grayed out'. I've got an 8800GTX and I can't find that control at all.
Onr thing I'd like to come up with an answer for, is the "shimmering " effect I see on power and telephone poles in the distance. It's really bad on the supports for the overheard wires in the Heath Banks Scenario.
Someone suggested I change the anti-aliasing to a higher setting on the card. It was at 4. I changed it to 16 and it made no difference.

I'm using the 8800GTS under Vista 64-bit, and I was wondering about the same thing with wires, and other splines. Certain textures also glow funny as well. It's almost like seeing things through bright sunlight during the summer on a humid day.

I'm using the 158x driver that came out in May. The latest and greatest caused such a performance hit, and then crashed TRS2006 so bad that it couldn't launch properly. Going back to the 158x drivers solved my problem like night and day.

Microsoft did fix the problem with the NVIDIA drivers causing BSOD crashes that were next to impossible to repair, and also fixed the memory access so there is better performance with these cards.

John

 

[jimisham]

This computer originally came with VISTA, but I had problems with Trainz and other things, so I had someone remove VISTA and install XP.
My driver version is 6.14.10.9794 dated 2/23/2007.
I'd try other drivers, but I've read some people have had problems getting completely rid of the old driver. plus I'm real happy with the frame rate I have now. Which is what I was hoping for with the new computer.
I've also noticed this shimmering on what looks like the hand rails along the sides of the diesel engines.

 

[JCitron]

This computer originally came with VISTA, but I had problems with Trainz and other things, so I had someone remove VISTA and install XP.
My driver version is 6.14.10.9794 dated 2/23/2007.
I'd try other drivers, but I've read some people have had problems getting completely rid of the old driver. plus I'm real happy with the frame rate I have now. Which is what I was hoping for with the new computer.
I've also noticed this shimmering on what looks like the hand rails along the sides of the diesel engines.

You might want to try adjusting the anisitrophic filtering as well. This seems to help a little with the shimmering.

 

[jimisham]

Trying different settings of the Anisitrophic didn't make any noticable changes either. The filtering, which was set at 8X, I left at 16X.
I see there are 3 additional antialiasing settings. Gamma Correction, which is On; Mode, which is set to Overide; and Transparency, which is set to Off.

 

[happyj]

jmisham

You might try moving the poly level one notch or more to the right.

Cheers

 

[llebrez]

The sharpness control may show or not depending on the control pannel you have (on mine is grayed out). There is one in TV color settings at the bottom of my control panel menu. It does nothing for the image on Trainz. Consulting directly with Nvidia, the response is that whatever sharpness I get in a 79XX I should get using the super 8800. But in real world it is not! They say that it is a hardware matter. So, my $500 plus investemnt is inside of the box getting obsolete as times goes by. That the wires of the overhead don't show.. I saw this problem too, but is not so troublesome as the lower sharpness. Oh Boy! The 7950 looks as sharp as I have ever seen computer graphics anywhere.

 

[leader2302]

One solution could be to make a dual boot system by installing Windows XP as a second operating system. Then reinstall the programs in XP, such as Trainz, that you want to use while running XP. That way you can switch between Vista and XP during bootup, depending on program compatability.