What is the last reliable Nvidia card for all versions of Thief?

[Hit Deity]

I tried both VSync on and off (thought I did), and while there was a little improvement with it On, it would have still been unlikely that I could get used to Garrett lurching forward off of things like ledges.

I couldn't get it to work to my satisfaction.

Also, just for the record, it was nice having Hardware Acceleration active again, but I was still stuck at 1024x768 resolution, since my flatscreen monitor is a native 1440x900 (1024x768 was the highest I could use on it).

After I get everything set back up under Windows XP Pro, I'll let you know some more. Right now, I'm waiting for it after my 320GB hard drive completely fnarked itself up when I got 137GB of data on it. XP Home didn't support large harddrives over 137GB, so I had "tricked" it into recognizing the whole 320GB with a virtual driver. Good thing I backed up my .mis files two days before - woohoo!!!

[smithpd]

I just found some drivers that work better than my customized driver set, described earlier in this thread. I will modify my first post accordingly, tomorrow perhaps.

To cut to the chase, the improved drivers are posted here.

These drivers do everything I have been wanting for my 7950GT, right out of the box, so to speak.

84.56 version supports T1 (Thief Gold) and T2. 9xxx and above, when used with the 7950GT, do not play T1. Get BSOD with T1, but T2 works.

7950GT is supported (but probably not higher). Most 84.56 versions do not support the 7950GT.

SLI (running two video cards to get better performance) is supported. My custom drivers do not support SLI.

It uses the old Nvidia interface, not the new control panel.

Details

I stumbled on these drivers while trying to solve a new problem with SLI. A week ago I bought a second 7950GT as a spare because I noticed that the supplies are drying up very fast. The entire 7900 series seems to be drying up because I guess Nvidia sees it as a dying market. To duplicate my existing card for possible SLI use, I searched high and low and finally found one on e-bay. The last of the Mohicans. So, tonight I was trying to make SLI work with my two 7950GT cards. I found that SLI did not work with the modified drivers I had installed -- there is no place in the control panel to select SLI, but there should be. Riva Tuner 2.2 was no help.

The first thing I did was install a recent driver (162.18) to make sure SLI worked. It did, but T1 again went into the dumpster.

Then I did a Google search on "84.56 7950GT SLI", and I came across the above site. Downloaded the drivers called "84.56_mod2.exe" and did a virus check. It is a self extracting archive. It extracts into a folder, and from there you can run setup.exe. Bingo. The INF file is there in plain sight.

Anyway, it supported the 7950GT as advertised. On installation it detected the SLI configuration and gave me the choice to immediately set it to SLI mode, just as the newer drivers did. After installation, I checked first that it worked with Thief Gold, and it did. Then I checked my 3DMark06 score, and it had increased from 5383 to 8860. The highest score recorded for 75 similar configurations was 9053, so I am pleased.

T1, T2, and Far Cry worked in SLI mode with no problem. I don't have TDS installed. T1 and T2 run at the normal, regulated speed with Vertical Sync at "application controlled."

Motherboard: MSI P6N SLI Premium
Chipset: Nvidia Nforce 650i
Video cards: 2 ea. XFX GeForce 7950GT PCI-E, model PVT71JYHE9
OS: XP Pro, SP2

[Bikerdude]

Very tasty Mr smith!

Your near the 3Dm06 of a 8800GTS. And your not far off my 8800GTX@621/1080 score of 12501. That said my old voltmodded (7900GT@670core/960mem/Delta30) would do 7011.

I reckon if you o/c both of those 7950GT's you should crack the 9000-10000 mark, spanking a 8800GTS....But I suggest if you have the space to buy a Zalman 700cu vga heatsink kit for both cards - quieter and cooler and will allow a tad more o/c headroom.

biker

ps. the 84.56 driver is a faster driver interms of raw speed in 3Dmark and games for the Geforce 7 series...!!!

[oltraver]

SmithPD-

I love you. Your last suggestion did it for me on T1 using a 7950GT!

Yes! Yes! Frickin' Yes! (Back to Thievin'...)

-P

[smithpd]

I reckon if you o/c both of those 7950GT's you should crack the 9000-10000 mark, spanking a 8800GTS....But I suggest if you have the space to buy a Zalman 700cu vga heatsink kit for both cards - quieter and cooler and will allow a tad more o/c headroom.

Thanks for the suggestion, Biker. But my cards are passively cooled, using heat pipes and radiators, no fan. They run cool and quiet, and they look cool.



Also I probably will never OC these puppies. My main concern is that they last as long as I play Thief, which could be quite a long time.

[Bikerdude]

Also I probably will never OC these puppies. My main concern is that they last as long as I play Thief, which could be quite a long time.

Well I recon a nice quiet 120mm fan will sit on top of both of the aluminium cooler/s, to keep things nice and cool...

biker

nb. ive just upgraded to a nice shiney Asus P5N32-E, nForce 680i, 3x pci-e slot motherboard, got space on there for another 8800gtx and a pci-e_5900 for playing thief :-)

[Hit Deity]

I guess I shall try them too. I even found an old GeForce FX5500 and installed it, but after about 30 to 40 minutes of playing, crash again, with the D3D error. That was with the 162.18 drivers from 6/29/07.

I'll let you know how the 84.56 versions do...

[Hit Deity]

For the record, those 84.56 drivers appear to work. I don't get the crash with the "D3D not reporting texture memory..." error and not using safe_texture_manager, but at the moment, I don't have an easy way to check the resolution limit problem with another monitor. My LCD is "stuck" at 1440x900, so I can't check anything above 1024x768 on it with the supported Thief2 resolutions.

In a "side by side" comparison of image quality between the 84.56 and 162.18 drivers, alas, the newer ones (162.18) seem to look better. But, mind you, I was comparing them from memory as I could not remember the key combo for a screenshot ingame and I don't have Dromed installed to try screen_dumps from there. A true test will involve some higher resolutions, because honestly, my LCD at any other resolution than its native 1440x900 sucks ass.

So, I think we're making progress anyway. I'll try to snag a monitor from one of my kids on my next day off of work and do a screenie test for further confirmation.

[smithpd]

I have finally been able to do an A-B comparison between the 7950GT (which looks like all 6xxx and 7xxx cards) and an 8000 series card. The 7950GT has bad sky, and certain susceptible dark textures are rendered badly. Most textures are OK. I can ignore these problems. The 8000 cards render all dark textures badly, so they are a real mess. Here are the latest screen shots comparing the two.