9800 gx2 + Vista 64 bit issues

JLuchinski

JLuchinski

Well-Known Member
I just bought a 9800 gx2 and I have Vista 64 bit and the drivers are being aPITA. The windows vga driver works just fine, but when I install the latest drivers and restart it doesn't give me the screen to get into the BIOS, my monitor stays in standby for about 5 minutes and then I just get a black screen and my mouse, that's it. I've read that Vista and 9800 gx2 drivers are plauged with problems. Any one have any ideas? Is there a good driver version? I un-installed my old 9400 gt drivers with Uninstall Tool as well, so as far as I know there's no conflict issues. TIA.
 
JLuchinski said:
I just bought a 9800 gx2 and I have Vista 64 bit and the drivers are being aPITA. The windows vga driver works just fine, but when I install the latest drivers and restart it doesn't give me the screen to get into the BIOS, my monitor stays in standby for about 5 minutes and then I just get a black screen and my mouse, that's it. I've read that Vista and 9800 gx2 drivers are plauged with problems. Any one have any ideas? Is there a good driver version? I un-installed my old 9400 gt drivers with Uninstall Tool as well, so as far as I know there's no conflict issues. TIA.
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Make sure the drivers are 64-bit, delete the nvidia folder and run driver sweeper.. The previous driver may have left fragments scattered around in which you need to delete manually.
 
Hey Rye, I was wondering what happened to you, welcome back. I did download the 64 bit drivers, and Uninstall Tools apparently got rid of the fragments. How does Windows 7 fare with drivers? I'm thinking about picking it up tomorrow. Anyways I'm shutting down for the evening, wicked lightning storm happening right now.
 
typically with seven, if you cant find a specific driver for it, grab a vista one, their pretty much the same thing and will typically work, used drivers for vista on my laptop, worked fairly well, tho driver support for 7 is very very very good as of now, i just think of it as Vista: Attempt Two
 
FuryRosewood said:
typically with seven, if you cant find a specific driver for it, grab a vista one, their pretty much the same thing and will typically work, used drivers for vista on my laptop, worked fairly well, tho driver support for 7 is very very very good as of now, i just think of it as Vista: Attempt Two
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He's running vista genius. Your post does not help him whatsoever.




OP- What are the drivers you downloaded?

Download and leave on the desktop the latest 257.21 drivers. DISCONNECT your internet connection. Uninstall current Nvidia drivers. Go into device manager and uninstall the 9800GX2 drivers. Reboot. Install new 257.21 drivers, hook internet back up and reboot. Done.

http://www.evga.com/support/drivers/
 
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Thanks a ton 87dtna, worked like a charm. But now my issue is the thing is running @ 72 degrees idle, and I've tried EVGA precision, Ntune and Nvidia System Tools but the fan speed control is disabled. Any way around this?
 
OK, so if I select GPU 2 then I can manually control the fan speed, still idles @ 60 degrees with the fan set to 100%. I still can't access my BIOS at startup and it no longer shows the windows start up screen, it just stays black until the desktop loads. Hopefully I can fix it.
 
60 degree's is a little warm at idle with 100% fan. You can try removing the shroud, good for around 5 degrees. My GX2's idled around 50c with 70-80% fan, no shrouds. Does it idle at the same 60c if you set the fan to like 70-80%? You may need to re-apply new thermal paste, and on a GX2 it's not fun. Just taking the shroud off is fun enough, try that to start. It's two halves, the lower half that comes off second is the pain getting the metal around the 8 pin connector to coem off without breaking. You have to slightly bend it, but without breaking it. If it breaks, not a huge deal though.

What key do you hit to enter your Bios? F2 or Delete? Whichever it is, as soon as your computer posts just keep tapping that key. DON'T hold in it, just keep tapping. See if that works.
Also, do you have a different monitor to try?
 
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With the fan at 80% it idles @ 68 degrees, and it's not that warm outside today either. I went out and picked up some arctic silver and will be taking it apart later on. There's alot of hot air blowing out the side and the back, so I don't think the dust is built up to bad. Thanks for the tips on taking the shroud off, I probably would of gotten pissed off and taken a hammer to it. And I tried tapping delete and F8, no luck. I looked a little into it and apparently some Asus boards have issues with 9800 GX2's. I'm going to try shoving my 9400 GT back in for Physx once I get things sorted out, hopefully that will magically fix something. I'm going to call Asus support and hopefully they can provide me with an answer.
 
Alright, took it apart and re-applied thermal paste. I thought this card was 2 chips on 1 board, not 2 separate cards in one case. Anyways I decided to leave the plastic casing off completly and I am now going on 1.5 hours with an idle temp of 55 and 58 degrees with the fan @ 70%, which is a huge improvement. Still a little louder then I would like. I was wondering why I couldn't find any aftermarket coolers for this card and I now know why. Either way all my games run pretty damn good, right up there with the GTX 285 I used to have.
 
Yup dual PCB's, there's a little SLI cable which I'm sure you found. Most gtx295's are the same way. The only Nvidia card with dual CPU's and single PCB is the gtx295 co-op (well the gtx275 co-op but the onboard gts250 is only for physX it doesn't have with graphics).

Yes I loved my 9800gx2's, great cards. I just sold both of mine (well I had 5 at one point :P ) and preordered a gtx460 1gb.

Glad to hear the temps came down. Mine usually ran at 50c, but sometimes you just get a hot card. Like I have two 8800gts 512mb's right now, with both at 60% fan one will idle at 40c the other would do ~52c. It's just like that sometimes I dunno why.

Yeah the only aftermarket solution is a water cooling block.
 
Nvidia just released the 258 drivers today, hopefully it fixes my problems, guess I'll find out in 10 minutes.
 
One other question, is there another program besides Driver Sweeper that works? It's still showing ATI crap on my system but it won't get rid of it. Also when I restart it loads up some ATI program as well, can't remember exactly what right now. I caught this with System Explorer, it never showed up in the Task Manager.
 
Well I got fed up with trying to fix the issues, so I got a GTX 275 for $100 and it works perfectly. Alot of people are selling there older cards and buying the 460's.
 
I would, but I have 100% feedback and don't want to take the chance of messing it up because of someone who has problems with it other then I have had. I got a local buyer coming to look at it tomorrow and he's bringing his system to test it, so hopefully that goes well.
 
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