Thread: Nvidia Video Cards and Windows Vista    

There have been too many threads/problems circulating about FPS and lag problems with Nvidia video cards and FFXI.

Nvidia video cards are very good video cards, but they are known to have trouble getting along with FFXI.

Most of the time, the reason you are having severe FPS and lag problems with a Nvidia video card is because you are running the game on Windows Vista (32 or 64 bit).

You must understand that Windows Vista is still very new in its release and is VERY bugged. Most video card drivers for Nvidia and Vista are still very early in development and in beta.

You will find that most of your problems will be fixed by "downgrading" from Windows Vista to Windows XP (any version). The Nvidia drivers for Windows XP work very well with FFXI. The only times you will lag out a lot is when you are in the presence of many avatars or standing on certain kinds of telepoints.

The problem cannot be fixed by tweaking and playing around with the Nvidia control panel. It's very likely that they will release Vista drivers that will fix the FPS and lag problems with FFXI, but no one knows when that will be. Nvidia customer support doesn't seem to be very sure either.

Originally Posted by Daahan

You will find that most of your problems will be fixed by "Upgrading" from Windows Vista to Windows XP (any version).

Fixed for accuracy >.>

That's why I put it in "" Popeh.

I knew there was more than I initially suspected behind that line >.>

Originally Posted by Snowknight26

Originally Posted by Daahan

You must understand that Windows Vista is still very new in its release and is VERY bugged.

The OS isn't 'bugged'. If anything doesn't work right, its the drivers for Vista. Blame NVIDIA, not Microsoft.

I got BSOD'd when trying to use regedit under user privileges on a machine running only the drivers included with Vista... so yeah, it is.

Besides, I've yet to see a MS product that isn't bugged (actually, a soft with no bugs is quite hard to find), and Vista has many. Networking and file operation are horrible, for example, and I doubt you can blame those on the drivers.

Originally Posted by Snowknight26

Because this thread is about regedit or those networking/file issues you're talking about..

I'm not the one who said that Vista didn't have bugs...

http://www.news.com/The-XP-alternative- ... 09481.html

Article on Microsoft offering Windows XP 'downgrades' for certain PC's that come with Vista pre-installed.

Putting my situation in here as well

Basically what everyone has said is true from my experience. Upgraded to an 8800 GTX from my 1950XT 512MB (ATI) under Vista Ultimate x64. Framerates in FFXI (with or without windower, doesn't make any difference) have been cut in half in heavily populated areas and it's getting to the point of being unplayable

Just putting it out there, nvidia+vista+ffxi = bad framerates, regardless of your hardware specs (I'm running a Q6600 @ 3.2, 4GB DDR2-800)

Guess i'll just have to get used to it, because I like vista more than XP, aesthetically speaking and in terms of software stability. I've yet to encounter a single hard crash on this since i upgraded from XP

Originally Posted by Vyvian

It can still have device driver stop errors, I had one on my video card.

I have almost the identical system as you, 8800 gts, 4gb of ram, just an amd 6000+ (3.0ghz), and it doesn't lag at all.
The more accurate statement would be nvidia/intel/vista/ffxi is a bad combo.

This almost makes me wonder, it seems like everyone who had a Q-anything intel processor complains about lag in ffxi, are the vista drivers for the quadprocessor messed up? Or perhaps ffxi is just so old it doesn't like being played across 4 cores.

well you can set the affinity to one core, and the lag is still there, and also as I said in one of my previous posts, I had the exact same OS/Hardware setup prior to upgrading my videocard from ATI to Nvidia and the only difference was with the ATI card.. my framerates were for the most part perfect, and simply changing to the 8800 GTX caused a lot of framerate issues. same processor, same OS

I even used driver cleaner to remove all the old ATI components that are generally left behind after using the uninstall feature

So i don't think the vista drivers for intel quad core chips is the issue here

Current trouble ticket I have open with Nvidia.

1. Since how long are you facing this issue and was it working without any issues before?
This was not an issue until I've upgraded from my ATI Radeon 1950XT PCI-E card, to the 8800 GTX.


2. Are you facing this issue with only this particular game or with other games as well?
Final Fantasy XI is the only game I'm experiencing issues with.

3. Have you updated the latest patches for the game/s from the game developers?
Final Fantasy XI requires you to always have the most updated software, as it checks & autoupdates on every log-in. It doesn't have a similar update system to World of Warcraft, where you download patches manually. Everything is updated automatically.

4. What are the different resolutions you have tried?
640x480, 800x480, 800x600, 1000x625, 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x720, 1440x900

5. Have you tried any other driver version apart from this 163.71? If yes, please let me know the exact driver versions.
I've tried driver version 163.71 only.

Please understand that there are threads on numerous message boards with Final Fantasy XI players experiencing the same problems as I am. That is, after changing from _____ brand of videocard, to nvidia while using Windows Vista (32bit/x64), experience extreme slowdowns and framerate issues.

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=23702

It seems to be an issue with the Nvidia forceware drivers & Windows Vista.

will post more if I get any clear answers from them

First, I would like to share few details on frame rates. Frame rates are always application specific and not the graphics card specific. Any applications FPS does not depends on the graphics card for its performance, all it depends is on the application as, and how much is the FPS supported by the application. Suppose if the game supports somewhere near 80FPS, the graphics card will help the FPS to enhance its smoothness and it will help it in improving its quality and improve the FPS. So, even if you upgrade to any graphics card it will not improve its FPS, however it improves the performance, speed and quality of the game.

However, to troubleshoot the issue and to check if it is limited to this particular driver, let us try with a driver version 163.76 or 163.69. Please follow the steps to install the driver one after the other with the same steps, but with their respective driver links:

1) To avoid download issues, if you are running any 3rd party download utilities, please disable them as they are known for occasionally causing errors with the downloads.

2) Please, download and save the graphic card driver on the desktop by visiting the page at the following link and clicking the Primary Download Site under US English.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_163.69.html

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_163.75.html

3) Uninstall the existing driver by uninstalling the NVIDIA Display Drivers from Add/Remove programs and restart the computer. Please click the link below for the steps to uninstall the graphics driver.

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nvid ... p_faqid=10

4) Please, uninstall the existing driver using a driver cleaner. Please click the link below to download a driver cleaner, which is a free utility.

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1655

5) Install the driver by double clicking on the saved driver icon on the desktop and follow the instructions. After installing, restart the computer.

Please let me know if either of the drivers has helped you in resolving the issue.

Regards,
NVIDIA Customer Care

I responded to this email trying to make my situation more clear to them, basically saying:

ATI Card + Vista + FFXI: No problem.
Nvidia Card + Vista + FFXI: Incredibly low FPS.

Probably not going to get anywhere with these people, but at least I hope it puts the fact that there IS an issue that needs to be resolved, out there in their system...

My response btw:

Yes, I understand how framerates work and what they're a representation of. However, what I'm trying to convey with this trouble ticket is that my framerates are literally half of what they were with my ATI card. For example, in a heavily populated area with many players gathered together (~40 or more in a small area), my framerates would drop to around 19-20 with the 1950XT radeon card. Now, with the 8800 GTX my framerates dip into the 7-8 frames/second range, making the game completely unplayable. I tried the two driver versions you mentioned and the problems still persist. I even substituted my old ATI card into my machine to see if it was a software bug with the game, and the performance problems disappeared.

This leads me (and many who are having the exact same issue) to believe that it's a driver issue with Nvidia Graphics Cards & Windows Vista. Nobody seems to be having this problem under Windows XP and Nvidia Graphics Cards.

Any other information would be appreciated, thanks for your time.

honestly, if maybe more of us here would submit trouble tickets into their system, perhaps this issue might actually get resolved, i just feel as if not many people have notified nvidia about these problems (most likely attributed to the low amount of people who play this game, as well as Vista not being an incredibly popular OS and having a low installed base right now)