Update: swapped in the gtx8800 ultra, 3dmark ran fine, did 5 loops , no problems, FSX runs fine as well. So, wether we have a a problem with the old card , i cant say, perhaps FSX vista 64 and newer graphics card technology dont mix as well as older technology?Anyway, meantime, carrying on doing some test flying.......

Update: swapped in the gtx8800 ultra, 3dmark ran fine, did 5 loops , no problems, FSX runs fine as well. So, wether we have a a problem with the old card , i cant say, perhaps FSX vista 64 and newer graphics card technology dont mix as well as older technology?Anyway, meantime, carrying on doing some test flying.......

Hi MarkI am not at home so you will need to bear with the lags in getting back to you.I see there has been some kind of discovery made here. You passed the stability test which is good so we have made progress in that area. The readout above is looking good and better than I anticipated. We may not need to rework tRD (Performance Level) as I expected it to be 8 and not 7. However that is an area we can still try tweaking.. but not until we get the next issue resolved.You are now stable but the fact 3DMark would not run may be presenting a clue to another issue you may have been seeing with your video card. A combination of being unstable in the clock, poor memory stability and a hardware problem with the video card are all in line with every symptom you have seen thus far.In order for 3DMark to run it must be the latest patched version and you need to make sure you have the DirectX updates installed that are required for it to run. Since the 8800 is running 3DMark, I must assume you do. At this point I need to know what drivers you are using and if you are using Nhancer with them, and if so, what version of Nhancer.It is possible you may have had a borked driver install with the other card however I would like to know what driver you are using for the 8800 and what driver you were using with the newer card

Hi Nick, what I did was this:Swapped out the GTX280, put in the 8800GTX. I did not uninstall my drivers (182.50). When i booted, it asked me to install drivers, so I installed 182.50 drivers again ( without having uninstalled them) I thought it was strange at the time, as the drivers were allready on my system, but perhaps because it was new hardware, the system automatically asked for them ( anyway, what do I know!!) Drivers installed fine, card seems to be running fine. BTW, I went on the OCCT forum and there is a new beta of tjhe programme which includes a revised graphics test. Here is the link to my posts: http://www.ocbase.com/forum/viewtopic.php?...&p=235#p235 I have run this and the card is fine, no errors reported, as well as the 5 loops of 3dmark. I was able to run 3dmark before on the old card so I think the refusal to run now may be symptomatic of trouble with my GTX280, dont you? I am also runningthe very latest version of enhancer, as far as I know, it does not run at start up. I just set my FSX settings as you advised in your guide.Let me know what other info you want, thx, Mark

I am starting to think you do have an issue with the 280 as well Mark. It would certainly account for much of what you have been reportingSince we seem to have a stable system now, go ahead and use for a day or so and lets see what happens. If it remains stable then you can try something here to boost perf and see if it remains stableIn the MEMSET interface... see the line that says PERFORMANCE LEVEL?Drop it to 6 and click APPLYDo not SAVE for startup this is a testNOTE: If the system locks instantly, its not a problem.. just hard reboot and it will clear. If the system remains stable, try it with PL set to 6 and see if it remains stable. You must reset that to 6 on every reboot. If that is (or is not stable) let me know

Will do Nick, will report in tomorrow. BTW, if I press save in memetest if it is stable, will that mean that I dont have to run it each time i boot? Was does it do out of interest? I like to know these things!!BTW, you asked earlier if all 4 cores were 100% loaded during test, they were. I think I am going to RMA the card and take it from there. If stable over the next few days, how much higher do you think we can get the chip? 3.5 ? Have a great weekend, speaksoon, and thx for the help. Best, Mark

Will do Nick, will report in tomorrow. BTW, if I press save in memetest if it is stable, will that mean that I dont have to run it each time i boot? Was does it do out of interest? I like to know these things!!BTW, you asked earlier if all 4 cores were 100% loaded during test, they were. I think I am going to RMA the card and take it from there. If stable over the next few days, how much higher do you think we can get the chip? 3.5 ? Have a great weekend, speaksoon, and thx for the help. Best, Mark

Yes Mark .. SAVE means you do not have to reset on each boot but please do not do that till it is 100% know you are stable.. you may start crashing on boot with it like that and you must reset from safe mode to clear it.. so dont save anythingWe still need to see if we can get the memory running timing spec too.One step at a time. Just run PL6 for a while and lets see how it doesI have a feeling you have a defective from warp and/or placement of the heat sink on that card Mark.. it was a known issue with the 280 and it was known for damaging the memory chips from excessive heat since they can not be monitored for temp. And it they would offer you a 285 as a replacement.. take it as they will run coolerWe cant get your CPU any higher Mark. At least not running DDR3 1600 on solid timing which is also critical to perf. Remember to increase CPU speed you must increase CPU FREQUENCY and when you do, memory speed increases with it... the memory will start becoming unstable. So in order to go faster you need a CPU with a multiplier of 9x instead of 8... or we try DDR3 1800 with the other memory which pushes the FSB up to 450 (3.6GHz)

Hi Nick, one quick question- any idea why my O&O defrag is only showing my G drive on the GUI? I cant anything in the help or any buttons to make my other drives appear. They were showing last time I used it....... theres always something with computers isnt there?!!!

Hi Nick, while we are at it trying to ensure we are going in the righht direction here, you know i mentioned that i had tried using FSautostart, to shut down services during game and that I was concerned that possibley i had shut down something i should not have? Well, here is a list of what i have set that programmes successor to do. I have run this and it functions as it should, ( FSautostart did not, hence my worry) Hopefully you can see here what is running and what is not and wether if i use this programme in future ( I dont at the moment while trying to isolate this problem) it would be of value. You can set it to run track ir etc as well. If you need I can post screens of my services section as it is nowhere is my current services window status:Update, it was stable after changing the performance level to 6, I also ran OCCT for one hour, no problems, also no problems using the GPU test of OCCT on the 8800gtx card.And here is a screeny of my O&O problem:cheers, Mark

Mark,Try this: Place the mouse cursor over the top of the status window until the resize handle is shown. Drag down and you'll get your drives back.

Hi Nick, while we are at it trying to ensure we are going in the righht direction here, you know i mentioned that i had tried using FSautostart, to shut down services during game and that I was concerned that possibley i had shut down something i should not have? Well, here is a list of what i have set that programmes successor to do. I have run this and it functions as it should, ( FSautostart did not, hence my worry) Hopefully you can see here what is running and what is not and wether if i use this programme in future ( I dont at the moment while trying to isolate this problem) it would be of value. You can set it to run track ir etc as well. If you need I can post screens of my services section as it is now

Mark,You could use Nicks advice over here to go thru the list all by your self: http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/Ya...?num=1208959973You could at least have sorted your services list by status column so that the running services was at the top, which make the list easier to examine. But as I said, you may investigate the list yourself by help of Nicks post.

Excellent Ulf!! Thx very much, will do both of those things now, thx again, MarkBTW, just flew a test flight, everything was perfect, 1 hour flight, stormin frame rates, no graphics issues, all good.Edit, ULF, I just looked at that thread, i had already followed it exactly, so those services are as Nick advised. I wondered if there was other things not right, hence posting screeny of all the other services, to see if they were as should be. i could look on black viper, but everyone says that site sucks, so would rather heed the advice of guru Nick!!!BTW, the O&O tip worked a treat, thx

Edit, ULF, I just looked at that thread, i had already followed it exactly, so those services are as Nick advised. I wondered if there was other things not right, hence posting screeny of all the other services, to see if they were as should be. i could look on black viper, but everyone says that site sucks, so would rather heed the advice of guru Nick!!!

My advice is to let all other services be running. When flying FSX they will be inactive and if RAM is needed, they will be pushed out on the swapfile by Windows, freeing up physical RAM. Shutting down one service might result in side effects in Vista, which might degrade the performance. Let "normal" services be running. I don't use FSAutostart. I don't have any special service installed that need to be shut down prior to starting FSX.You don't need to stop the NOD32 services. You may exclude your FSX folder (and sub folders) from real time scanning in NOD32. Open up the Advanced setup form. Goto the Exclusions entry and add the path to your FSX folder.

I do not use mahcine gun programs to shut anything down.. I manually clean startup programs from MSCONFIG and in Vista a set of specific servicesSEARCH (AKA INDEXING)DEFENDERUACSYSTEM RESTOREHELP AND SUPPORTAERONothing elseMachine Gun shutdown programs can be more hassle than they provide in any perfJust keep testing using PL6 from MEMSET afetr boot... it it remains stable we will trim memory timing next

Understood Nick. I raised this as i wanted to make sure that you could see exactly what was turned on and off in my system, so you did not waste any of your time chasing down dead ends. I have not used the programme apart from the once, to make sure that all services i had turned off were restarted. At the moment, it should be as you see in the screenies, so hopefully, as you have not jumped on anything being wrong, I have not ballsed anything up by fiddling with the services. The sim has been working well and stably all weekend now, will fly another tonight and report back. thx, mark

Understood Nick. I raised this as i wanted to make sure that you could see exactly what was turned on and off in my system, so you did not waste any of your time chasing down dead ends. I have not used the programme apart from the once, to make sure that all services i had turned off were restarted. At the moment, it should be as you see in the screenies, so hopefully, as you have not jumped on anything being wrong, I have not ballsed anything up by fiddling with the services. The sim has been working well and stably all weekend now, will fly another tonight and report back. thx, mark

Sounds like things are looking up now MarkIts hard to see your lists but I am sure it is fine. The services that program shut down are restarted after.Just keep testing and if it continues to be stable we will finish up with trimming the memory and wait for your card to come back from RMA