nVidia drivers 163.44 and Vista 32/64 bit Hotfix

[ixnay 1]

From the good folks at Locker Gnome: http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus....g-vista

Quote[/b] ]Those who have been following the problems when using Vista for gaming are certainly aware of the memory problems being faced. Anyone using video cards with large memory caches (512 and up) have certainly hit the ceiling where games can do strange things without warning - and up until lately, without explanation.

The testers at AnandTech have been doing a series on this problem, and have noted when and where the problems occur, but until part 3 of the series have only been able to postulate what the root cause could be.

Now Microsoft is helping out, with the release of the above mentioned hotfix, which is not, as yet, available widely. While awaiting the widespread release, the reasons for the fix, and the cause of the memory grab by the operating system, not duplicated in Windows XP, have been given.

The Windows Display Driver Model, rewritten for Vista, is the culprit here. The explanation for the problem has to do with Microsoft making the memory management for the system video a part of the OS, and relieving applications from doing the management. The problem occurs when older games (at this point, nearly all of them)are used. The games are trying to manage memory, and setting aside a pool, while Vista is doing the same. The memory pool is doubled, and there is where the system runs out, and experiences strange behavior.

KB940105 will take care of this - but Microsoft also says that the fix is still ‘really hot’, as it is still in the process of change. It will be available for wide release soon, and testing shows it does alleviate some of the memory usage. Perhaps the further tweaking will bring memory usage in line with the same game’s memory footprint when used with XP.

Here's the AnandTech article (good read) : http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3060&p=1

Quote[/b] ]Microsoft has published knowledge base article 940105 on the matter, and with it has finalized a patch to reduce the high virtual address space usage of games under Vista. From this and our own developer sources, we can piece together the problem that was causing the high virtual address space issues under Vista.

As it turns out, our initial guess about the issue being related to memory allocations being limited to the 2GB of user space for security reasons was wrong, the issue is simpler than that. One of the features of the Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) is that video memory is no longer a limited-sharing resource that applications will often take complete sovereign control of; instead the WDDM offers virtualization of video memory so that all applications can use what they think is video memory without needing to actually care about what else is using it - in effect removing much of the work of video memory management from the application. From both a developer's and user's perspective this is great as it makes game/application development easier and multiple 3D accelerated applications get along better, but it came with a cost.

All of that virtualization requires address space to work with; Vista uses an application's 2GB user allocation of virtual address space for this purpose, scaling the amount of address space consumed by the WDDM with the amount of video memory actually used. This feature is ahead of its time however as games and applications written to the DirectX 9 and earlier standards didn't have the WDDM to take care of their memory management, so applications did it themselves. This required the application to also allocate some virtual address space to its management tasks, which is fine under XP.

However under Vista this results in the application and the WDDM effectively playing a game of chicken: both are consuming virtual address space out of the same 2GB pool and neither is aware of the other doing the exact same thing. Amusingly, given a big enough card (such as a 1GB Radeon X2900XT), it's theoretically possible to consume all 2GB of virtual address space under Vista with just the WDDM and the application each trying to manage the video memory, which would leave no further virtual address space for anything else the application needs to do. In practice, both the virtual address space allocations for the WDDM and the application video memory manager attempt to grow as needed, and ultimately crash the application as each starts passing 500MB+ of allocated virtual address space.

This obviously needed to be fixed, and for a multitude of reasons (such as Vista & XP application compatibility) such a fix needed to be handled by the operating system. That fix is KB940105, which is a change to how the WDDM handles its video memory management. Now the WDDM will not default to using its full memory management capabilities, and more importantly it will not be consuming virtual address space unless specifically told to by the application. This will significantly reduce the virtual address space usage of an application when video memory is the culprit, but at best it will only bring Vista down to the kind of virtual address space usage of XP.

Here are the fixes that you otherwise have to contact MS to get. They'll probably be made available later in the month on the KB article page... But for now...These folks have made them available to us. Download away!

Download the Vista 32-bit Hotfix:

http://thehotfixshare.net/board....le=2830

Download the Vista 64-bit Hotfix:

http://thehotfixshare.net/board....le=2840

===== NEW nVidia Drivers!! =====

Just in time for the new BioShock game, nVidia has released updated 163.44 drivers for XP and Vista. These fix TONS of issues with many games and could very well have some positive impacts on ArmA. They're at least certain to be more likely compatible/compliant with the above fix, anyhow.

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_rel70betadriver.html

[EDIT: Changed verbage to better reflect that there are indeed download links. You don't have to contact MS. Everything is here; Thank you, drive through.]

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Ta for the post mate.

For 8800GTX + 4GB users - I'll update this post with how ArmA runs under these new drivers.  

EDIT - No such luck - still FUBAR'd. Rolling back to 158.24.

[volkov956 0]

just takes someone to Upload it to some say Rapidshare or etc

[ixnay 1]

just takes someone to Upload it to some say Rapidshare or etc

upload what? I provided download links.

Do they not work now?

[Vassago 0]

I'll give these a shot right now.

Running a 8800GTS 320MB.

[Vegabond 0]

Still using 158.22, please give me updates.. Xp users wise Currently running on 8800 GTS with no problems except for looking at bushes (I know its shaders)

[smellyjelly 0]

I installed this over my old drivers.

I set a few spawn points in the editor a recorded the fps before and after I updated the drivers. Overall, there may have been a small difference, but I would put those inside the margin of error.

A64 3000+

8800GTS 640mb

1 gig of ram

Windows XP

[Sevan 0]

I have been using the 163 drivers since they were beta some weeks ago. I can't solely attribute my recently stability in ArmA to the new drivers, because I'm also using the maxmem cheat, and extra cooling on the card, but I have not had a crash in weeks!

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Ah well, not working on 4GB + 8800GTX, so don't get thou helps up, lads. Keep the 158.18/24s on.

[ixnay 1]

Ah well, not working on 4GB + 8800GTX, so don't get thou helps up, lads. Keep the 158.18/24s on.

Sooo, you're running XP and 4GB of RAM? Is my assumption correct?

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Vista Ultimate 64, mate. Otherwise I wouldn't be here, would I?

[MATRA 0]

Damn these are the drivers to boost Bioshock, it means if I use them no ArmA for me.

[ixnay 1]

Vista Ultimate 64, mate.   Otherwise I wouldn't be here, would I?

Coulda been going for the XP 163.44's.. <shrug>.

Anyhow, sorry to hear that stuff didn't fix your 4GB problem  

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Heh, true true. Still mate, no problem, though I'll also be non-ArmAing if these are required for BioShock.

[ixnay 1]

Heh, true true. Still mate, no problem, though I'll also be non-ArmAing if these are required for BioShock.  

They're not *required* to play BioShock per se, but they increase the framerate dramatically.

Enjoy, sir

[themystic 0]

No go for me. It looks like I won't be playing ArmA for awhile.

[ixnay 1]

No go, as in you can't play ArmA at ALL now? The patch hosed your machine? Please elaborate.

[Vassago 0]

I saw a small improvement, though the haze and alpha (bush) problems still exist with the 8800's

running a BFG 8800GTS 320MB

[no use for a name 0]

I saw a small improvement, though the haze and alpha (bush) problems still exist with the 8800's

running a BFG 8800GTS 320MB

arrgg!! i have the same card and i was hoping it would fix these issues....

oh well, glad i didn't waste my timw

[bigdog632 0]

ok i just got the 8800GTX and got some error

cannot create memory surface dxt5 2048x2048(size 5636096B)

error code 8007000e

is this what was worked around with that maxmem thing?

ps i just got this card so dont hammer me if this is already addressed i havent looked through everything thanks:D

[CameronMcDonald 146]

That's it, mate. Use maxmem=512, or if you're like me, head all the way down to 256. It's the only way I can get the game to run for more than 5 minutes.

[CharveL 0]

I guess I'm the only one who saw an improvement from this hotfix.

First time I've been able to run reliably with decent framerates on anything except mostly low settings. Anything more than low (maybe normal) textures would see a gradual degradation in framerate with the harddrive thrashing away swapping textures. A flush helps and among some other tweaks (maxmem 512) I at least have kept from crashing.

After the hotfix I bumped up to high and found the same frames as low. Then I bumped AF from Normal to High with no loss. Postprocessing I decided to keep low as well as shaders as it gave more of a hit than I liked although this is more about the bush issue.

After trying a bunch more settings then going back I did notice the hard drive start working away again but not like before and I will have to test again tomorrow leaving textures at High and seeing what happens but I can tell you that things are looking better from my end.

Judging by that article there's room for improvement still, and I would guess there is more benefit for video cards over 512mb but the memory management fixes should help everyone to some degree. Keep in mind that if you are pushing the cpu too hard that is where your bottleneck is going to be and you may not see any improvement from the hotfix so turn your view distances down around 2000m and start with low everything then if you are stable start adding stuff starting with textures.

I'm going to remove the maxmem 512 command now and try again tomorrow. Now that it's stable I think that might possibly be what's causing the texture swapping hard drive activity. Worth a shot anyway.

dualcore 6600/8800GTS-640mb/2gb/SB x-fi/vista

[ixnay 1]

That's it, mate. Use maxmem=512, or if you're like me, head all the way down to 256. It's the only way I can get the game to run for more than 5 minutes.  

Weird, I can play for hours now with no -maxmem command at all

Perhaps it's the whole 4GB thing again. Sucks that you paid more and are having to deal with jumping through hoops in order for it to work; Bollocks imo.

[leonil 0]

I saw a small improvement, though the haze and alpha (bush) problems still exist with the 8800's

running a BFG 8800GTS 320MB

this hotfix and this news driver are aweson for me

before i have to play in medium and low hdr and i have 2 fps in bush

now i'm playing in high and i have 20 fps in bush

i have also removed the maxmem trick, and played 6h without any crash

c2d E4300@2,4 Ghz

2 Go 667Mhz Corsair

WinFast 8800GTS 320

Vista 32bit

[Cuzer 0]

leonil, how much ram are you using on your 32 bit Vista?

If you've had success I may go with this hotfix to see if it works, I've got the black menu screen load issue at the mo. I'm on version 1.08, latest Nvidia drivers (6222) 32 bit Vista with 4 x 1GB Ram strips

Cheers

Cuzer