can't play games on new i7 920, gtx295 comp HELP!

on my brand new new i7 920 gtx295, i have tried to play three games and all fail. one game said my video adapter memory is too small (it was zero) and allowed for only awful low end graphics. i tried empire total war and medieval2 and both games lock up fairly quickly when i start-basically it looks like anytime i try to use high end graphics (lots of troops, anti aliasing, shadows,etc) , the game locks up.

I would ASSUME that such a high end computer would be able to play high end graphics. it appears that my gtx295 drivers are updated. why would i be getting the video adapter memory error (is that graphics card related?)?

also does vista have its own antivirus and firewall protections or do i need to buy mcafee?

if you give advice, please be VERY detailed and specific about how to resolve the issue, since i am a complete newbie and need directions (I also know nothing of vista 64)

thanks

You might have a bad graphics card, but it could be a bad set of drivers. After all, Nvidia has a driver for every game that ever beared the Nvidia logo

"Driver XXX.XX gives you a 10 FPS boost in Y game! (it breaks all other games completely, but we don't care, do we?)"

Errr, anyway, try changing drivers.

on my brand new new i7 920 gtx295, i have tried to play three games and all fail. one game said my video adapter memory is too small (it was zero) and allowed for only awful low end graphics. i tried empire total war and medieval2 and both games lock up fairly quickly when i start-basically it looks like anytime i try to use high end graphics (lots of troops, anti aliasing, shadows,etc) , the game locks up.

I would ASSUME that such a high end computer would be able to play high end graphics. it appears that my gtx295 drivers are updated. why would i be getting the video adapter memory error (is that graphics card related?)?

also does vista have its own antivirus and firewall protections or do i need to buy mcafee?

if you give advice, please be VERY detailed and specific about how to resolve the issue, since i am a complete newbie and need directions (I also know nothing of vista 64)

thanks

ket222

If the GTX295, which is a dual-gpu card, is set for SLI (as I assume it is by default (can it even be run in single gpu mode?)) that could explain the low performance of the total war games. CA does apparently not optimize their games for SLI, I had to uninstall E:TW couldn't get it to run properly in either SLI or single, bad performance and graphical corruption.

luminous light,

I looked at your link and it appears to be for windows7, which i don't have. can i use it if i have vista 64, or can you direct me to a link for downloading the driver for vista 64 please? this driver is for my gtx295 graphics card, or vista , or the i7 920 by the way?i think each of you mean the graphics card, just want to check

which driver are all of you talking about and can you please direct me to the right link? (I did go to the nvidia website and tried to download the driver for my graphics card, but it said that mine was already updated and didn't need to download)

thanks

whoops. I saw 64 bit and thought it was vista.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_185.85_whql.html

If that doesn't work then manually uninstall the driver by going into device manager and uninstall the display adapter.

When installing your display drivers you will want to:

1st go into device manager and unistall your current display drivers

2nd reboot into safe mode and run driver sweeper and select Nvidia - Display then hit clean

3rd reboot agian and install the new drivers that you downloaded.

sorry to be dense about this, but are you saying I should go to the link above and download it only AFTER removing my present driver? is that really necessary or can i just download it over what i have currently (much preferred as i'm not sure how to do those removal steps that you said without more details)

i assume that although i went to the gtx295 nvidia page and they said i dont need to download up to date drivers, that the link above is different and I still need to do despite this? thanks

just bought an ibuypower computer

any other thoughts please, esp related to my second list of questions?

any other thoughts please, esp related to my second list of questions?

ket222

I don't know anything about Vista... just WinXP. But WinXP has no Antivius program built in, it only has firewall protection. I suspect Vista is the same way. Most people use AVG virus protection... cause it's free for home use, but not all games like it. I think Securom has problems with it... or *had* problems. I kinda uninstalled it a long time ago; because it was giving me a headache. Have been risking it for about a year now... Heh... lucky so far.

As for your video card... Sounds a lot like the Video Card is using the default VGA driver which lacks all 3d function.... Again I don't know anything about vista, but this is what I would do on my WinXP to see. Inside the Start button in "Run..". Open that and type dxdiag. Then go to the display tab, and see if the DirectX feature button looking things all say enabled. If they are blanked out and/or say disabled, then the Nvidia drivers didn't take and you are on the generic 2D-VGA drivers.

On WinXP... the plug and play wizard thing can cause that mix up to happen. Don't know about Vista. With WinXP you must cancel out of that annoying wizard of new hardware detected and install via the provided disk... or downloaded driver, executable.

(if dxdiag says enabled... then I can only guess that the card is DOA... The video card uses a different chip for 3d games than 2d, so it's not uncommon for you to go in windows and have everything display fine, then when activating a game you get problems.)

sorry to be dense about this, but are you saying I should go to the link above and download it only AFTER removing my present driver? is that really necessary or can i just download it over what i have currently (much preferred as i'm not sure how to do those removal steps that you said without more details)

i assume that although i went to the gtx295 nvidia page and they said i dont need to download up to date drivers, that the link above is different and I still need to do despite this? thanks

ket222

Its better to uninstall the old drivers and run driver sweeper or something similar before installing new drivers. You run into less problems that way. What I do when new drivers come out is download them here to my desktop where I can get at them easy, then go into my device manager, click on display adapters, open up the properties on my card listed there then click on uninstall on the driver tab.

Then re-boot the computer but go into safe mode by hitting F8 as it boots up. In safe mode I open up the driver sweeper program looks like this when open:

Just check the Nvidia - Display box then click on clean. After that close it and reboot your computer. Then just find the driver you downloaded to your desktop or whereever else and double click on it and let it do its thing.

If the GTX295, which is a dual-gpu card, is set for SLI (as I assume it is by default (can it even be run in single gpu mode?)) that could explain the low performance of the total war games. CA does apparently not optimize their games for SLI, I had to uninstall E:TW couldn't get it to run properly in either SLI or single, bad performance and graphical corruption.

cfwin

That is right. GTX295 is dual card with only 896MB memory but advertised as 1792MB . Unfortunately that is the way Nividia wish to push it when only 896Mb will show up for games and many people fall for the marketing crap.

wow core i7 920 and gtx 295 you must be raking in the cash.:D