NVIDIA
Graphics cards are widely (& rightly) regarded by most people as
being the most technologically advanced Graphics cards you can buy for
Gaming today. They are also one of the more configurable Graphics cards
around, with literally dozens of settings available to set in the
Drivers, some selectable in Display Properties, others via the registry
or 3rd party Applications.
This guide will take you through
using one such utility to configure your NVIDIA Graphics card as well as
other troubleshooting/BIOS information to get it all running stably.
Drivers/Troubleshooting/
BIOS Settings
Initially you should
ensure you have the latest Drivers installed for your Graphics Card. You
can find links to Manufacturers of such Graphics Cards on our
Drivers
page, although should you wish to stick with reference Drivers then
go to NVIDIA
Driver page instead. To a lesser extent you may also want to check
into getting any available BIOS update for the Graphics card, although
these only fix certain issues.
Be sure you have
installed Microsoft’s have
DirectX
8.1 as well.
It is also highly
important to have the latest Drivers for your Motherboard installed as
well, particularly the AGP Drivers (If you have an AGP Graphics card of
course). You can find links to updated Motherboard Chipset Drivers on
OS
Updates. Installing any available BIOS update for your Motherboard
may also be of some help.
In the system BIOS it is
recommended to disable the following settings, if available -
Hidden
refresh, VGA palette snoop, DAC snoop
& any Caching/Shadowing options, e.g. Video BIOS Shadowing. The Video Memory Caching
Mode should be set to UC (UnCacheable) rather
than UCSW (UnCacheable Speculative Write-combining)
also.
For further information/tips check out the
GeForce
FAQ, which covers other potential issues/queries you may have or
contact your Manufacturer for Technical support.
Configuration
Utilities
For
adjusting NVIDIA Driver settings I’d recommend using one of the many 3rd
party Applications available to do so. These will not only give you
access to all the settings available (Or at least far more than the
Drivers display) but are usually a bit more convenient to use as well.
I’d
recommend downloading
& using NVMax as in my opinion is the best one out there (Though
lacking in Help, but this Guide should cover all that ;)).
Select
the system tab then the AGP option from the drop-down
menu.
AGP
Transfer Mode.
You’d probably be best off leaving this set to Auto, though if
having problems it might be worthwhile specifying the AGP mode you have
set in the BIOS, e.g. 4X.
Fast-writes.
In an ideal world Fast writes support is a great thing to have Ticked
– it allows the CPU to send data to the Graphics card without having
to go through RAM, making it a far more optimal approach. That said in
reality most benchmarks done on this have shown it to be of little
actual benefit, in some cases performing slower, not mention on other
systems it causes stability problems. As a result you might want to run
a few benchmarks before choosing whether or not to leave this enabled or
not. When Grayed out Fast-writes support will be automatically
determined, though should you wish to force it be sure to Tick
this option & be sure you have set 4X AGP & enabled Fast Writes
in your BIOS. NOTE – On some systems this can cause stability
problems.
Side
band addressing.
Side band addressing (SBA) enables AGP to use 8 extra (Side band)
address lines in addition to the 32 main ones to transmit requests for
data, which should further improve AGP performance. Those of you with
PCI Graphics cards can ignore this option, or even Untick it
altogether. When Grayed out SBA support will be automatically
determined, though should you wish to force it be sure to Tick
this option. NOTE – On some systems this can cause stability problems.
VIA
4X AGP.
If you have a motherboard with a VIA Northbridge & wish to use AGP
4X be sure to Tick this option, although if you have already
installed the latest VIA
4-in-1 Driver (Or separately available AGP Driver) you can ignore
this option, as can those with motherboards that don’t feature a VIA
Northbridge.
VIA
side band addressing.
Those with older motherboards with a VIA Northbridge might find that if
the previous Side band addressing option fails to correctly
enable SBA, you should try also Ticking this option. Those with
new VIA Northbridge supporting motherboards should ignore this option,
as may those with motherboards that don’t feature an older VIA
Northbridge.
AMD
2X AGP.
Similar to the VIA 4X AGP option this will be of most use to
those with older motherboards &/or Drivers. Should you have an old
AMD Athlon supporting motherboards that use the AMD 750 Chipset &
are only able to use 1X AGP then Ticking this option should allow
you to safely use 2X AGP on such systems. Those with non-AMD Athlon (Or
newer ones) motherboards can ignore this option.
AMD
side band addressing.
Those with older AMD Athlon supporting motherboards & find they
cannot enable SBA support should find that Ticking this will
enable such support correctly (Newer Drivers may also fix this too).
Those with newer AMD Athlon motherboards, or non-AMD CPU systems can
ignore this option.
NVIDIA
Graphics cards are widely (& rightly) regarded by most people as
being the most technologically advanced Graphics cards you can buy for
Gaming today. They are also one of the more configurable Graphics cards
around, with literally dozens of settings available to set in the
Drivers, some selectable in Display Properties, others via the registry
or 3rd party Applications.
