Timeshift - won't work without BETA drivers?
Spalls Hurgenson
lackluster FPS on the market, Timeshift.
After it installs, it warns me that my current video-card drivers
aren't optimal and may cause crashes. Well, this is a typical warning
and by and large one I've been able to ignore. I plunge on ahead with
the old drivers.
I muck about in options a bit, and then start a new game. Bam! Instant
BSOD. I haven't seen one of those in a while. It's obviously
driver-related, since it mentions the nv4_disp driver.
"Oh well," I think to myself, "it's been a while since I've last
updated my video-card drivers anyway." I head on over to nvidia.com
(after the reboot, of course) and get the latest drivers. Another
reboot and I'm running the latest and greatest drivers for my nvidia
card.
I start up Timeshift. I get the warning *again* about how I have
incompatible video-card drivers. But I can safely ignore that, right?
After all, I have the lastest-and-greatest.
Nope, instant BSOD again.
Reboot. Start Timeshift one more time. It warns me to get better
drivers; I take the hint and click the button. I'm led to a website
where I can download the drivers.
Drivers clearly marked "beta".
I laugh; surely they aren't serious. But some browsing of various
forums seems to back this up; Timeshift will not run with the current
WHQL drivers released by nvidia. Its beta or nothing.
(Beta drivers, incidentally, that don't seem to be too highly regarded
by many forum participants)
Look, I don't mind installing drivers in general. But this really
annoyed me. It's one thing to suggest users get new drivers for
increased performance, but when a game a) BSODs consistently on the
older drivers and b) requires BETA drivers just to run, I don't
consider this a problem with the drivers. This is a bug in the game*;
one that should have been fixed before it was released to the stores.
This game is a lemon. If I have to do special voodoo magic to get it
to run, it's the game that is at fault. It's the game that is broken.
Pointing a finger at the video-card is just Sierra trying to pass the
buck on their own shoddy programming.
I'm taking it back tomorrow. It'll be a battle to get the store to
accept an opened package but I'm a frequent customer and I've done
this before, so I expect I'll succeed. But for those less lucky in
such negotiations, let me strongly recommend that you hold off
purchasing Timeshift until they patch this game up.
* okay, maybe its root cause is because of a bad implementation in the
driver; I can't say. But I've not had any problems with the drivers
previous to this so obviously its something that can be worked around.
Ant
with my GeForce 7950GT KO card in Windows XP Pro. SP2 (all updates). I
agree it is stupid to use prerelease drivers. NVIDIA and new games seem
to be have conflict with each other. I think we will need to get used to
this new annoying behavior for newest games. :( Maybe this will die down
after Christmas when less new games are released.
On 10/31/2007 8:26 PM PT, Spalls Hurgenson typed:
--
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I'll just crush him like an ant." --Mr. Burns, The Simpsons ("Blood
Feud" Episode 7F22)
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John Adams
> <snip>
> FYI,
> I played the Timeshift demo with the beta drivers with no problem.
> You did uninstall the old drivers first before installing the newer
> drivers, correct?
> Legion
His complaint is that he is forced to use beta drivers and 0nly beta
drivers. I'll make sure not to buy Timeshift but Crysis also requires
beta drivers too so I expect the full version will also.
Andrew
wrote:
>Look, I don't mind installing drivers in general. But this really
>annoyed me. It's one thing to suggest users get new drivers for
>increased performance, but when a game a) BSODs consistently on the
>older drivers and b) requires BETA drivers just to run, I don't
>consider this a problem with the drivers. This is a bug in the game*;
>one that should have been fixed before it was released to the stores.
How many years have you been gaming on PC's? Is this really the first
time you have ever had to use a beta driver?
You better make the same rant about Crysis as that needs the latest
beta NVidia drivers too. They work just fine for me.
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> You better make the same rant about Crysis as that needs the latest
> beta NVidia drivers too.
the demo doesn't. i'm still using drivers from august.
--
"(HL2) Ep2 is non linear .... multiple ways to achieve the same goals"
-Walter Mitty
Spalls Hurgenson
Crysis ran fine on the old drivers.
Spalls Hurgenson
>On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:26:11 GMT, Spalls Hurgenson <yoi...@ebalu.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Look, I don't mind installing drivers in general. But this really
>>annoyed me. It's one thing to suggest users get new drivers for
>>increased performance, but when a game a) BSODs consistently on the
>>older drivers and b) requires BETA drivers just to run, I don't
>>consider this a problem with the drivers. This is a bug in the game*;
>>one that should have been fixed before it was released to the stores.
>
>How many years have you been gaming on PC's? Is this really the first
>time you have ever had to use a beta driver?
Actually, yes. This is the first time I've been *required* to use a
beta driver.
It's not the first time I installed a beta driver. Back in the day, I
used to upgrade drivers on (what seemed) a daily basis. If a new
driver was released, I installed it. After all, it might result in a
.0001% framerate increase!
But these days, I stick only to the official releases, and don't even
install all of those; I do two or three driver upgrades a year. This
practice has worked very well for me; I might be missing out on a
minor framerate increase for a few games, but all my games work
without problems.
My prior experience with using beta drivers was very mixed; some were
great; fast and feature-rich. Other versions were terrible; buggy,
slow, and full of incompatibilities. While going only with "release"
drivers is no insurance against any problems, they usually are more
stable.
Forcing users to use beta drivers is irresponsible. Even if the fault
ultimately lies in the driver code, the fact is that if Timeshift is
the only game to cause such a BSOD, I point the finger at Timeshift,
not nvidia. As evidenced by hundreds of other developers, its a
problem that can be worked around. But instead of patching their game
to a working state, they require users to put untested drivers on
their machine. In this regard, I consider Timeshift to be a lemon;
broken on release.
Sleepy
"Spalls Hurgenson" <yoi...@ebalu.com> wrote in message
news:uqgii3hvkf8ajumku...@4ax.com...
I tried the demo with a 7900GS and the required BETA drivers- it played
fine.
I now have a X1950Pro and the full game crashes frequently when I try to
change options and click the 'apply' button. It shouldnt have been released
in this state.
Ant
I did too, but I got a couple more FPS with the last beta driver. Some
people got more.
--
"Why eat ants when an uncle will do?" --Tymoutta Aardvarka of Sarcastica
Ant
Agreed. I can tell you TimeShift (demo) does require a newer driver
(beta as I type this). Crysis demo is a little faster with the newer
drivers.
--
"The little ant at its hole is full of courage." --African
yaugin
> This game is a lemon. If I have to do special voodoo magic to get it
> to run, it's the game that is at fault. It's the game that is broken.
> Pointing a finger at the video-card is just Sierra trying to pass the
> buck on their own shoddy programming.
>
> * okay, maybe its root cause is because of a bad implementation in the
> driver; I can't say. But I've not had any problems with the drivers
> previous to this so obviously its something that can be worked around.
Or no other games you play have tried to use certain calls before.
Without further info, we just don't know. If it was the fault of the
game, similar errors should happen on ATI cards also. Granted, given
enough effort and communication with nvidia, perhaps a workaround or a
fixed driver could have been released before the game's launch so that
this problem didn't require a beta driver to fix. But whose
responsibility should it be to ensure that a driver doesn't cause a
blue screen? The manufacturer, or every game developer?
At any rate, the fact that "everything worked until now" is not proof
that the latest game is a cock-up. This has been used before to deny
all sorts of intermittent problems. Regardless of how sloppy a game's
programming might be, shouldn't the rest of your system perform
according to specifications? Sometimes it takes bad programming to
test the real limits of your system. I think in the coming days it
will be more likely that people will thank Timeshift for exposing yet
more of the ridiculous crappiness of nvidia's recent drivers. To wit,
I believe part of the Windows NT architecture makes it so that
applications can never crash the system -- but bad drivers still can.
Even if the game is making some bad calls to the driver, the driver
should be returning errors instead of putting the system into some
invalid state.
Andrew
wrote:
>Actually, yes. This is the first time I've been *required* to use a
>beta driver.
NVidia brought out new beta drivers for Bioshock before release as
well IIRC. It has been a pretty routine occurrence for the last few
years, the beta NVidia drivers have always been fine for me.
Trimble
users.
... The VISTA drivers have only v. recently got up to the XP quality.
I've played the Timeshift , Crysis & most recent Demos as well as Bioshock
full
mostly on 'last months' drivers in XP & have not had any problems with
a 8800GTX.
(\__/)
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ANT...@zimage.com
>>beta driver.
>
> NVidia brought out new beta drivers for Bioshock before release as
> well IIRC. It has been a pretty routine occurrence for the last few
> years, the beta NVidia drivers have always been fine for me.
You are correct on that. I recall that too. I have had a bad upgrade and
I had to uninstall and reinstall the driver to fix it.
--
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