nVidia GeForce 6800 & Pentium D problem

[SCShell]

Hi there,
Well, I got my new system working and Revit performs really poorly. (Along with Corel 11, WordPerfect.)

Revit has blurry icons for toolbar buttons which are inactive, all schedules turn from grey to black (and then black to grey) in a slow "wave" pattern and the mouse freezes until it's done changing color whenever the cursor touches or crosses them, the image is very blurry until I start zooming in. It does help to un-check the "overlay planes" to improve screen clarity which also helps the schedules to not have a wave. Selecting open GL doesn't seem to affect any of these problems.

WordPerfect has red/purple highlights when typing text by the way.

Gateway has replaced the video card already and nothing has helped. Any ideas.
I am off to Phoenix Saturday for the weekend; but, any help would be appreciated.

Specs:
Pentium D 820 dual core, with hyper threading (2.8GHz 800MHz FSB 2MB cache)
2048MB 533MHz Dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM (4-512 MB modules)
nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra w/ 256MB DDR3 Dual DVI
2 older 19" Gateway LCD monitors. (Maybe a monitor issue?)

I have not tried any other drivers or direct x since that is over my blond head and I don't even have a clue what that stuff means. lol.

Thanks in advance!
Steve

[GuyR]

It's not that hard. It sounds like driver problems.

Download and install the following, in this order:

DirectX:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0a9b6820-bfbb-4799-9908-d418cdeac197&DisplayLang=en

videocard driver removal, detonator destroyer. Run this before installing new drivers:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=202#download

Now install these video card drivers:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1168#download

And see how that works Optionally, some of Rivatuners presets may help as well:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163

HTH,

It's honestly not that hard, just takes some time.

Guy

[Wes Macaulay]

Thanks for posting this info Guy. I'll be very interested to see the results. I hate it when I see someone who's using Revit without OpenGL on.

[Mr Spot]

Sounds more like a monitor issue, with regards to the waving of colours??? I've noticed this on one of the LCD monitors in our office... I since retired it as it was giving people headaches.

Have you tried it on a different monitor? Best bet to eliminate this possibility would be to test it on a CRT monitor.

[iru69]

It's not that hard. It sounds like driver problems.

Download and install the following, in this order:...
It does sound like a driver issue, however a couple of things about diving into some of that stuff right off the bat.

DirectX 9.0c is part of Windows XP sp2, which would have come preinstalled with a brand new system - however, I was under the impression that neither Word Perfect nor Revit use DirectX anyway (?).

Using Add/Remove Programs under the Control Panel should adequately remove old drivers. I'd be a little nervous relying on an ancient utility like Detonator Destroyer (that was not designed for Windows XP) to remove drivers.

Most likely, all the graphics card tuning needed is available with the standard ForceWare drivers. You may need to adjust these or change the profile to a different one, such as "CAD". The Rivatuner utility is mostly used by gamers to overclock their graphics card or fine tune certain games (mostly having to do with DirectX). This may be a key utility, but you kind of have to know what all those settings do...

Steve might want to just start by getting the latest driver directly from nVidia's website (ForceWare 78.01 at the time of this post) and installing that (after uninstalling any existing nVidia ForceWare drivers usings Add/Remove Programs).

I'm not discounting the utilities - they may be the key to getting things working, but may be difficult to use for someone not real experienced with hardware.


Sounds more like a monitor issue, with regards to the waving of colours???
This was my first reaction as well, but monitor problems generally don't happen in just a couple of applications.

Steve, do the screens look fine when running other applications (surfing the web, email, etc.) or does it always look crummy? When you run Revit, the problems start immediately, but when you quit Revit, the problems go away and the screens look fine? Do your old monitors have DVI (white connector) or are you using VGA (blue connector) to DVI adapters? If you're sure the problems only occur when using Revit or Word Perfect, then it's probably not the monitors. Also, if those are the only two programs that have display problems, keep in mind that the Word Perfect issue may be a red herring and completely unrelated to the Revit issue.

[GuyR]

DirectX 9.0c is part of Windows XP sp2, DirectX anyway (?).

Fair enough... Still haven't installed XP2 ;-)


Using Add/Remove Programs under the Control Panel should adequately remove old drivers.

Add/remove in general isn't very good at removing drivers. You need to be very careful installing new drivers that you are selecting the latest. Hence the utility.


The Rivatuner utility is mostly used by gamers to overclock their graphics card or fine tune certain games

Rivatuner started out as software that gave access to undocumented software switches. Primarily softquadro. It has a number of presets for different software including solidworks, Inventor. I found the solidworks presets made a previously unstable system stable.

HTH,

Guy

[iru69]

Fair enough...
Right... I was really trying to be careful not to dismiss anything you were saying - as I said, your suggestions may be the key - just making sure Steve proceeded with caution. It's obvious that you have a good bit of experience with this stuff, but if you don't know what you're doing, it can over-complicate things or even make them worse.

[SCShell]

Hey there,
Thank you everybody for your responses. I just got in and the first thing I am going to do is swap monitors. I only have the problems with the two programs, so I doubt this will help. (yes, all my monitors are DVI connected and have the latest drivers installed.)

I will contact Revit support to see if any of the settings in the graphic card need to be modified before downloading/removing anything.

We will see.
Steve

[BWG]

Little bit off topic, but the Pentium D 820s are not hyperthreaded. You can't get that without the extreme edition dual cores.

[Wes Macaulay]

DirectX 9.0c is part of Windows XP sp2, which would have come preinstalled with a brand new system - however, I was under the impression that neither Word Perfect nor Revit use DirectX anyway (?).A lot of the nVidia drivers seem to make use of DirectX. So if you don't have DirectX 9 installed, the driver might not work properly with Revit. Best to install it -- grab it from www.microsoft.com/directx (http://www.microsoft.com/directx)

[SCShell]

Hey there,
A little update. And, thank you all.
I just posted on the "general" forum about fonts on screen (transparent vs opaque).
If I can live with the font issue, the machine appears to be working fine with open GL and overlay planes checked.

The only other issue I can see is that the tools are still really blurred (non-readable) when not on. (greyed out) But, when active, they look fine.

A little weird.
I did install the latest driver from the website (thanks Irusun) and direct X 9.0 (thanks Wes) They don't seem to make a difference however.

I think that I will call support and ask them what's up.

Thanks
Steve

[iru69]

Hey there,
A little update. And, thank you all...

So, the other day, you were describing wavy lines, etc... how did all that go away?

Did you try Guy's suggestions yet (he was actually first to suggest DirectX and drivers as well)?

What would be kind of interesting is if you posted a high-quality screenshot of Revit running showing all the problems (toolbars, transparent text, etc.).

[Wes Macaulay]

Steve, try turning overlay planes OFF. That may improve your text problems.

[SCShell]

Hey Wes,
Turning overlay planes off is what makes the "wave" when touching schedules and making titlesheets flicker. (Even though the transparent fonts look good with it off)

I added to your post in "graphic cards that work with open GL on"
Thanks for all your help Wes
Steve

[SCShell]

So, the other day, you were describing wavy lines, etc... how did all that go away?

Did you try Guy's suggestions yet (he was actually first to suggest DirectX and drivers as well)?

What would be kind of interesting is if you posted a high-quality screenshot of Revit running showing all the problems (toolbars, transparent text, etc.).

Hey there,
The wave went away with overlay planes enabled; however, transparent fonts all look bad that way.

In the meantime, Gateway is sending me a new ATI FireGL V7100 (256MB DDR 3 SDRAM)
Based on Wes' post on a different thread, this card should work great. We'll see.

DirectX 9.0 made no difference by the way.

Oh, and Revit support told me that they are preparing a 9.0 goodie to include a list of graphic cards that work well maybe. He did say that they have had a lot of calls and issues with the nVidia GeForce cards.

If I could live with opaque text and fuzzy (non-active) tool bar icons, I would have continued using the nVidia card. But, add Corel's WordPerfect's issue, I wanted to change cards.
(Corel told me that there were issues with LCD screens and certain graphic cards. We tried a few things, but it still looks pretty bad with letters changing colors as you type.)

Here's hoping that the new card works
Steve

[iru69]

From Scott Hopkin's post (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=2927&page=2) a few weeks ago:

This problem will most likely not be fixed in the next release, Revit Building 8.1, as well. However, development is working on a major project to better integrate graphics cards in Revit Building 9.0.

...and now:


Oh, and Revit support told me that they are preparing a 9.0 goodie to include a list of graphic cards that work well maybe.

Well, I hope their "major project" to fix this mess isn't a "list of graphics cards that work".

That would be unacceptable.

[Scott Hopkins]

After having spoken again with Revit support, I am told that the factory isn't planning on doing much to correct graphic card issues in Revit 9.0. The Factory party line is that Revit has a "perfect" implementation of OpenGL standards and that the graphics card manufacturers are at fault for any technical difficulties you may be having. Because everything is perfect on their end, they aren't actually planning any fixes to Revit. The planned 9.0 "graphics upgrade" is simply a list of all the cards that work well with Revit. Someone from the factory please correct me if I have got this wrong.

[Wes Macaulay]

Hmm... well, let's hope that isn't the last word. I haven't been too happy to see that many new cards on the PCI Express format aren't working with OpenGL in Revit.

There may indeed be a spec for OpenGL that Waltham follows, and the fact that many card control panels list specific apps for compatibility reasons makes me lean towards the manufacturers having the greater responsibility. I don't know how it is with other apps, like Viz, Inventor or Maya.

That ANY Quadro card would not work with Revit's OpenGL system is a real shame. That new nVidia cards (which were normally a safe bet with Revit) should be a problem now is quite frustrating, especially if brands like Asus and Aopen don't work with their drivers. Having to resort to Rivatuner and Forceware drivers is too much to expect from the average user.

Bad-working video hardware is a majot pet peeve of mine, so I watch these posts with something that borders on obsession.

[GuyR]

Given we aren't privy to the inner workings of the Revit OpenGL solution. And given it seems to be nvidia cards that are causing the most problems for some people. How would we get the factory to talk to nvidia about the problem and therefore the solution (assuming it is a driver problem).

With the worldwide V8.1 release issue, emails to the top brass worked. Perhaps we should try the same again ;-)

Guy

[Steve_Stafford]

...The Factory party line is that Revit has a "perfect" implementation of OpenGL standards and that the graphics card manufacturers are at fault for any technical difficulties you may be having...A perfect implementation that doesn't "work" in the field is no better than one that isn't and doesn't. For my money...I'd scrap OpenGL support if it can't be more tolerant.

[iru69]

This is embarrassing. I don't want to jump on the Factory too hard yet, because so far, I haven't personally run into a card that flat out doesn't work with OpenGL (that would be six different graphic chips now), and I know a lot of problems are actually fixable if you have a little computer expertise (which I completely understand that users shouldn't need to have in order to use Revit).

That being said, my GF 6200 shows some of the same symptoms as Steve's GF 6800 Ultra (fuzzy grayed out toolbars, bad text display). And with R8.1, our Dell Quadro FX500 cards are showing glitches and error messages that have *never* been a problem before. Is this going to get worse with every release? When it hits R9.0, am I going to have to go buy new graphics cards for every computer that uses Revit in our office?

I don't care how frigging perfect their OpenGL implementation is. If it doesn't work with half the graphics cards on the market, what good does that do anyone. Make it less frigging perfect, so long as it works! Look, when you sell 30 million game titles a year, you have a little sway with the likes of nVidia and ATI. They issue driver updates all the time to fix glitches that occur in various games.

And that there's an Application Profiles in the display settings of any particular graphics card isn't very reassuring - it only means that someone tested some version of Revit with that driver. It doesn't mean there's any guarantee that it will still work with the next version of Revit.

[GuyR]

For my money...I'd scrap OpenGL support if it can't be more tolerant.

Kiss good by to any OSX version then. OpenGL is practically the standard for CAD/ games etc and it's cross platform. Solidworks/ Inventor/ MAX all use OpenGL they don't seem to be having the same problems. This shouldn't be such an issue....

If it was a Revit problem then why don't ATI cards seem to have such a problem? Either way the factory have an obligation to sort this out or at least tell us what cards to avoid. They are in the best position to comment, they wrote the code. They're also the only people with the knowledge to help nvidia isolate what is making this such a problem.

Guy

[SCShell]

Hey there,
Well, since I started 'this' thread......even though Wes really did on the other threads regarding graphic cards and open GL (pointing fingers already.....hmmmmm) I must add my 2 cents.

I guess I was lucky with my first machine and my introduction to Revit back in version 5.1 because my old ATI Radeon card worked liked a charm. (Still does too!) It made me a little upset when Revit Support would not give any opinion or recommendation as to which cards worked, or didn't work, when I was getting ready to order my new system since I knew that there were issues with certain cards and open GL after following Zoog's and AUGI forums regarding this.

It was extremely upsetting to now buy a new system and have the problems that I am having, just because of "compatibility" issues. (Especially when all of my "computer" friends said that the nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra was a great card! This really does need to be sorted out. I also believe that it is Autodesk's responsibility now. The buck stops there. Most of us are Architects or Designers. The program was written specifically for us. Not computer gurus! Most of this 'advanced' technical stuff is way over my head, and probably over most other Architect's. Heck, just designing a nice building and getting a permit is challenging enough. Now, add the learning curve for Revit and compound this with having to understand graphic card lingo.....ouch. That is a lot to ask.

I loved that Revit was soooooo intuitive when learning it. Now, maybe, the graphic card issue should be too. Just tell us what NOT to buy. That is pretty common these days.

Here's to hoping that it all works out......soon!
Steve

[iru69]

Either way the factory have an obligation to sort this out or at least tell us what cards to avoid.

Just tell us what NOT to buy.
That's an acceptable short term solution until this gets fixed, but not a long term solution.

One application shouldn't dictate the brand of hardware you have to buy. I don't *like* ATI. I don't want to buy ATI graphics cards.

This wouldn't be any different than if you had to buy AMD Athlon CPUs because Revit suddenly didn't work so well with Intel Pentiums CPUs.

If you go down that road, you'll ultimately have only one "choice".

[SCShell]

Hey there,
Good point!

Steve

[Wes Macaulay]

One application shouldn't dictate the brand of hardware you have to buy. I don't *like* ATI. I don't want to buy ATI graphics cards.I didn't used to like ATI either. They caused ghosting in AutoCAD, and didn't always work well with Revit. These new FireGL cards, though... are awesome. If the product is good, you can like the company again. Unless you have an axe to grind against ATI?

[iru69]

Unless you have an axe to grind against ATI?
I've never really had a problem with there engineering... I don't like how they've treated the Linux community (I'm a big Linux/open source proponent). While nVidia refuses to open source their drivers, at least they've done a good job providing updated easy to install drivers on any Linux distro. ATI has essentially ignored Linux because they've seen Linux as a worthless market to cater to, and yet they've been unwilling to help out open source projects create fully working drivers. I don't like to support companies that don't support me. They've created a lot of bad blood among their customers... something not entirely unlike another company we know of...

I also like supporting a model like nVidia's where other companies are allowed to use the chipsets to make boards - I think it's good for competition and ultimately the customer. It follows what Intel and AMD have done (imagine if you could only buy an Intel motherboard with a Pentium).

Besides, their are practical matters to all this. Most OEMs do not (Dell, HP, etc.) offer a five tier choice of both nVidia and ATI graphics cards. I'm sure Steve will be happy with his FireGL v7100 - but that's an $800 card! Unless he plans to do a lot more with it than Revit, I'm not sure he's going to ever get the bang for the buck he paid for (and in no way am I trying to make Steve feel bad about his purchase). Or what if you already have an office full of computers with the "wrong" graphics card, i.e. works fine, just not "compatible" with Revit?

That doesn't mean I won't ever buy an ATI card again, or that they don't make decent cards... it's more of a principle thing - and I don't appreciate being forced into buying certain hardware. Being "forced" is not "choice".

[Wes Macaulay]

Yeah, I told Steve to try and get the V3100 -- that's a $200 card and we're very happy with it.

ATI does have other companies building cards with their chipsets, but we haven't seen how they perform with Revit yet...

[SCShell]

Hey there,
Don't worry. I don't feel bad about my purchase. I paid for an nVidia GeForce 9800 and they are "giving" me the ATI FireGL V7100 card as a replacement at no additional charge.
Gateway can be very reasonable, especially when I solved a tech issue with my new laptop that they could not solve. (Saying in a Homer voice...."tupid drivers!")

Thanks
Steve

[archjake]

Steve, How did your ATI V7100 work out for you?

[SCShell]

Steve, How did your ATI V7100 work out for you?
Hey Jake,
Well, it's a bit better than the others; however, it is still not as good as my original card in the old machine. It may be a Pentium D issue. I still have multiple colors in any program using black letters on a white screen. Revit still has blurry toolbars when not activated. I am trying to get Gateway to swap out my computer with an more traditional Pentium 4. We'll see what happens. But, I can at least use it.
I must say, at least it works with OpenGL on. With the screen optimize on, it is still bad with transparant fonts. (But, with it off, the schedules look and function very poorly.)

Steve

[Wes Macaulay]

I had forgotten that you were buying a laptop, Steve... my knowledge of video hardware for laptops is pretty thin at present, mostly because I haven't (and none of clients have either) bought a laptop recently.

I see that ATI have both AGP and PCI-E variants of their FireGL cards for laptops -- I would recommend the base models of these for Revit laptop users (Mobility V3100 and T2).

[iru69]

I had forgotten that you were buying a laptop...
Huh?


It may be a Pentium D issue.
I guess it's possible that it's a "Gateway" issue, but it's almost certainly not a Pentium D issue. You might want a P4 for other reasons (i.e. faster single processor).

It would be really interesting if you posted a high-res screenshot of the issues you're having so we could see how far from "normal" it looks.

[Wes Macaulay]

heh... cognitive dissonance, anyone? Sorry Steve -- you're not the guy getting the laptop; that was someone else.