Video lag after vista install

[conceptartist]

Hello,
I recently did a clean install of Vista64 Home premium.
I spent some time installing all of my drivers, and making sure all of the windows updates were installed. Everything seems to be running fine, including Photoshop, which is the primary use of the computer.
However since I loaded vista, all of my video lags very badly. The sound seems to work fine, but the video frame rate is down to nothing.
I cannot play any games on it right now. COD4 will load, and I will hear sound, but I will not get any video. And even older games like Guild Wars wont play. The video on guild wars was very laggy, and sharded.

I have 6gigs of ram, and dual 6800 video cards. I didn't have these problems when I was running xp, so I am thinking there is something I forgot to do, or didn't know to do.

If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it.

 

[lordbob75]

Hello Conceptartist,

Do you mean dual NVidia 6800s? I know that there can be problems with dual cards set up in non SLI.
I would recommend taking out one card and seeing if it is better or worse. However, as a permenant fix, I recommend a newer, better video card (only one) such as a 9500 or up to the newer 280s.

~Lordbob

 

[conceptartist]

I do have them set up for SLI. I have a 680i motherboard if that helps.

I will say that I had some problems downloading and reinstalling the drivers for the video cards. For awhile it kept giving me an error that said something like "cannot run 32bit uninstall on 64 bit system."

I uninstalled one of the video cards from the device manager, and then reinstalled it. After that the drivers seemed to update fine.

I do intend to one day soon upgrade the video cards. But I have to file one of those money request forms with the wife. Im also fearful that the problem is something else, and even when I update the video cards, Ill still have the lag issue.

 

[lordbob75]

Well, I definately think it is your cards. They are rather old, though they should still have 64 bit support. Check the NVidia site for them.

~Lordbob

 

[Day24]

It might be the cards, and a way to check that is to simply take one out, run the computer with one for a while and see if you have any problems, then switch the cards around and run it with that one for a while and see if that gives you any problems.
If neither of those runs gives you any problems, then it's not the cards, OR something is wrong with the SLI bridge or something else in the SLI setup.

To be honest though, it is far more likely, from your story, that something is wrong with your drivers. If at all possible, do a system restore to before you installed the drivers, and completely start over again. It kinda sounds like you tried to install 32 bit drivers on a 64 bit system.
If you can't do a system restore, try to completely uninstall the drivers. Download new drivers from either the site of the manufacturer of your videocard, or the nvidia site, but make sure you get the 64 bit drivers!!!!

Then do a COMPLETE reinstall of those drivers.

OH.... just to be on the safe side, I would do the exact same thing for your chipset.... and make sure you uninstall both videocard drivers and chipset drivers before you start to install them again....and install the chipset first. Make sure that the chipset is also the 64 bit version of that driver!!!!!!

By the way, have you checked whether both cards are still correctly installed? physically I mean.... something can always happen to knock them loose.... or a fan can always stop working....there could be too much dust in the fans so one of the cards may overheat... or one of the extra powercords to the cards may have popped loose, that sort of thing.... or the SLI bridge might not be connected correctly anymore... or the little thing on your motherboard might not completely be set to SLI anymore.... you never know...and it takes all of 10 minutes to check it all....can't hurt....