More Awesome Than You!

What a pain in the patooty! My next video card will NOT be an Nvidia if I want to continue to play Sims 2! Could someone tell me what the latest most stable (rolls around laughing at the word stable) driver is for use with a 128MB Nvidia FX5200 card. I absolutely fear doing a driver update without getting some feedback first. Thanks so much. Tracy
My system specs are as follows:

P4 2.2ghz
80GB hard drive (50 gb free)
Nvidia FX5200 128mb Driver version 78.01
1024 mb RAM

Hmmm, I think actually the problem you're having with playing the sims 2 2 isn't the video card driver, but the fact you have a FX5200.  You need a new card, not new drivers.

Try a 6600 if you have an AGP slot or a 6800 as they're dropping in price, or a 7600 which comes in AGP I believe.

Also what's your processor?  That will have a huge effect also.

The sims 2 is a resource hog, you really can't play smoothly with most any high end system (I mean TOTALLY SMOOTH), but something stronger than a FX5200 will be a big improvement.  If that's not an option try more RAM, how much have you?

I can still play fine with my old MX4000.  I did recently update the drivers, but I really don't know much about it either.

Granted, I'd love a new card, but since I have only a PCI port, that's not really an option right now either.

I had great luck with the 77.77 version drivers with my FX5200.

I use Fx5200 as well and i have no problems at all with the 71.84 drivers.
I just turn off vsync in the video card properties and the performance is great.

my processor is an athlon XP 2400+ and i have 768 Mb of RAM

Pinhead, what does turning off vsync do? and how do I turn it off? Thanks

Yetyak, What are your system specs and do you have vsync on or off? Thanks

I was using an FX5600 256 AGP card with the 81.95 drivers with zero problems. Upgraded to a 7600gs 256 pci express with production drivers 8.3.9 and had occasional blinking issues, deleted groups.cache and have had no further problems.

Friend has 6600gt 128 AGP and was having terrible problems with shearing went to the 81.95 drivers also and deleted groups.cache and its been working fine since.

seems delelting the groups.cache on a semi-regular basis can help alot.

vsync is the Vertical Syncronization of your monitor.
I'm not an expert in this part, but if i turn it off will not be too slow when moving around
the camera in the game or zooming.

You can adjust this property here:
right click in your desktop
select Nvidia/"Monitor Model Name" (mine is Samsung Syncmaster)
When a NVIDIA window open up, select "Performance and Quality Configurations" (sorry, my version is in portuguese)
In the box at the middle (Driver Global Configurations) has some options of quality and performance. Highlight the Vertical Syncronization and uncheck
the box setted as "Controlled by Application". Move the slider to "Off" and click "apply" and "ok".

anyway, is just a small improvement, but make my game less slow when moving the camera. :)
I don't recommend changing and forcing other properties there, since the game already have some good
performance adjustments and may forcing 2 times the same option (like smoothing edges/anti-aliasing and such..)
will make the game really slow.
let the other options as it is when you install the driver.

I didn't do anything with vsync, don't remember ever hearing that term before....I had that card in 2 different computers, the first one had a 750 mhz P3 with 768 MB ram and the second one had a 3.0 ghz P4 with 1 then 2 GB ram.  That video card was an upgrade from a MX 440, so it was a fabulous difference.

( Thanks for the vsync lesson, pinhead, now I know what it is.  And it was nothing I ever messed with.)

I'm not sure what driver version I'm on at home, but I have the same video card on a lower end processor and I'm not having any problems at all.  It actually runs better on my home machine than it does on my laptop, which has a better CPU and more memory (same graphic chipset, but in the GO flavor).

i know that the game has a cheat to turn off vsync using the cheat box, but i never tried since I'm forcing this
in the driver config.

the cheat is:

vsync off
vsync on

description by maxis: "vsync [on|off] Enables/disables vertical sync - can improve performance, but will sometimes cause visual artifacts if off"

but i don't know if has the same effect since i never tried. :)

anyway, the cheat will take effect only if the driver property of vertical sync is setted as "controlled by application", of course.

sadly, this "friend" did get a bluescreen/hourglass issue last night :(

I'm going to try deleting groups.cache again.

Stay away from the 8.x drivers from Nvidia's site. They are truly evil (this is from experience with two different cards/machines).

The 7 series drivers work just fine.

I haven't been able to play for a few day now because of the blue screen problem. Here is another post about this at MTS2.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=117748&c=1&page=5&pp=25
I had 78.01 installed for NL and it worked great. But after OFB I had graphical artifacts like the picks on the MTS2 thread. I have tried the newest drivers and now I get the blue screen of death with the hour glass. I am still trying to test older drivers. People have tried everything to reinstalling to reformatting. If anyone has any other ideas that would be great.

AMD Athlon xp
1700+ 1.5gh
RAM 1025 gigs
Graphics Card: GeForce FX 5700 LE with 256mb
Direct X 9.0

Has anybody ever seen a Maxoid respond to the Nvidia issues in any way? What do they have to say?" MAXIS!!??,  Please at least let us know that you are doing something about this issue." Its obviously quite widespread.

I have the GeForce3 Ti200 and I am still using the 6.14 series....my graphics should be crap really but they aren't! I don't know why.

I have the FX5200 , 256MB and I am using the 81.98 driver and mine works allright.

I've finally found an 8-series driver which works good.
83.62

I also have a GeForce FX 5200 and had some issues, which I fixed when I followed another Simmer's recommendation and backpedaled to driver version 7.7.7.7.  Works fine now, though I do plan to upgrade sometime soon to a spiffier card.

Yeah, the 8 series was causing video resets which, at times, would last up to 5 minutes. I suspect it also lead to the demise of my MX440 after which I purchased a 6200.

Now, I assumed the 8 series were no good for me because I was using an older card so I installed them for the newer 6200 card. No dice. Video resets and poor performance. Rolling back to 7 series drivers does the trick.

I am using the fx5500 with the 84.21 drivers and it is running quite well, though I am going to try that vsync thing to see if it makes any difference. I have very densely packed downtowns, and it lags in neighborhood view...that is obviously my fault for insisting that every occupiable space has a building  of some sort on it  :D

Edit: disabling vsync made it really choppy. I guess it doesn't work for me.

nvidia geforce fx5700

I'm using 6.14 as a driver - there's an older thread around where Dr Beast was very helpful, but I just kept going back and back till I found  a driver that didn't misbehave. If you have an older card, often the newer drivers add no functionality to your card so you might as well go back a few steps.

I only have a PCI slot but am getting a Radeon card as soon as I can afford it.

Ok, our systems are not too different. I've got P4 2.6ghz and more gb in my hard drive.  I am currently using 81.98 with no problems.  I would strongly recommend  you back up your files before messing with the drivers as some people have reported they had to uninstall & the reinstall the laatest EP to get it to clue into the new drivers being present. Having said that, just do as witch suggested and play around with it until you get a driver that it least problematic.

btw I am planning on getting a new video card later this year and found DrBeast's suggestions on another thread v. useful

GEForce 6200 AGP 256Mb card with the 78.1 drivers and no problems.

LOL just to add further confusion I rolled back to 71.89 for fx5600/256MB because that suited Civ4 better. Since adding OFB the TS2 has never looked better.

I'm using a Geforce 6200 with the latest drivers.  My game works fine with it, but there were problems with the loading screens until I updated my nForce 2 drivers.  Now it loads very smoothly.

Had something interesting happen last night. I had never gotten the blue screen/hourglass thing, until last night. I have been playing a week with not owning/operating a business, It was about 2 minutes after I Opened a home businiess and bingo, blue scsreen/hourglass crap. When you buy/open a business, new coding kicks in to manage said business. Wondering if anyone else might have noticed this as the point where issues began for them.

all eps installed and patched

XP3200+ Venice 2.0ghz
geforce 7600gs 256 pci express
1g memory
Asus A8N5X mainboard with Nforce 4
Win2k

Just seemed kind of odd that I went a week with no issues, and the minute I open a business and kick the management tool in, I get the blue screen deal.

I have opened a number of business both home and community and not had any problems that way.

well crap lol. Hasn't happened again, so maybe it was a fluke? Who the hell knows...damn game/video companies anyway.

Yes, I've had this same problem...For some reason it seems to happen when there are more people on the lot, or when you've got a lot going on, be it customers or even something as simple as moving the camera around too fast.
I hate this issue, and I'll never buy another Geforce because of it.  My card, however, is quite new, so it will be awhile before I purchase another one.  Hopefully before then it will be addressed.  I've written to Maxis about it, and most of the reps have no clue, lol.  There's only one, named Angela B. who MIGHT be compentent enough to help me at some point. It seems that the reps have no idea that this problem even exists..
But, no matter which driver I use (and I've gone back a lot) this problem exists.  Only it manifests itself in different ways.  The 8 series totally freezes up the game and gives me the blue screen, and if I continue playing it after that has happened it eventually reboots me machine.  With the series 7 drivers, I can play a bit longer, but the game eventually crashes (weird pulsating type freeze) which locks up my whole system.
Another thing to note...With the 8 series, when I get the evil blue screen, once I"ve quit the sims and done other graphics intensive things, I usually have to restart my system due to artifacts that continue to exist.
The seriously sucks.  I hope more people will continue to try contacting ea and nvidia so that they can no longer avoid us. heehee

Does your screen kinda shake and then leave artifacts all over the screen like from any dialog boxes? But run in the background anyway unless you pause it? And can you still save?

That's what happens to me with the 7 drivers, and with the 8 drivers, i get the bluescreen/hourglass problem.

YAY, I believe 've finally fixed it!!!!!
I played for a few hours this evening, and NO problems whatsoever.  Not even the slightest bit of graphical problems. The game runs more smoothly than ever before, as the newer versions were quite sluggish for me, along with constantly locking up with the blue screen, and spawning strange pixelated artifacts.  None of that happened this evening, and I tested it out on my largest, most poly-intensive lot I have.  I tested it for hours in businesses with large quantities of objects to try pushing it to the limits.  I ran it in 1680x1050 (I have a widescreen) and it never even hiccupped. I was barely even able to run it in 1280x1024 with the 7 and 8 series of drivers.
What I finally did was do a clean install of the drivers I was using, and then reverted WAY back to my driver that came on a cd with my geforce 6200.

Here's the exact version in case anyone would like to try it out for themselves.  You should be able to find it on the nvidia site, or perhaps on nzone.
Driver Version: 6.14.00.10.7644

Hope it helps someone else.  It was a disaster of an issue, and now I am positive that it was the driver.  I think it's very important, before you downgrade, to uninstall the nvidia program using  add/remove in your control panel, and then download "driver cleaner" and do a clean up of your nvidia files.  That way you can be sure that you're running on a completely clean version of the driver with no remnants of the evil newer versions.
I'd be really interested to know if this helps anyone else, so be sure and let us know if you decide to try it out.
Good luck!

Thats sounds really hopeful RabidAngel. If you don't mind, could tell me what Nvidia card you have and what your system specs are? If you do get anymore problems please let us know. I'll wait and watch for a bit just to be sure. Hope you have found it.

I did exactly as RabidAngel did, took everything off backing up and uninstalling all games, cleaned it all up and put the driver on before putting OfB and the others back on.
I'd previously cleaned the drivers but them going on *before* OfB was the only thing that worked for me.
I'm using the 84.21 driver because it was the best out of all of them. Someone at the MTS2 thread had a link to lots of other drivers and I only tried the 8 series but found this one was better than the rest of those.

Mine's been fine for about two and a bit weeks, it was a nightmare before and pretty much unplayable, but I had a crash last night on a home business lot that had two residents and three customers at the time.
I've just changed the Vsync setting and will check mine out in a bit.
I don't think there's an 'answer yet'...some things are working awhile for some and others are still having a bad time with it all.

Mine's a GeForce 6600GT 128MB that was new in January and had been fine with Nightlife.
AMD Athlon 2600+
I've got 2x120GB hard drives
250GB RAM
A Realtek AC'97 soundcard

I bought a new tower with four fans to keep its temperature down. My old Radeon 9600Pr0 ran at 52C, this ran at between 58C and 68C but with the new tower is between 45C and 55C.
I've still got some things that the texture is way off on but I cleaned up all my downloads and the things that took over a Maxis mesh, and I've just got a dodgy woo hoo graphic glitch left now.
It's all better than before though.
I can play now and I couldn't then....

Edit: Changing the Vsync seems to have worked!
No weird graphic with the woo hoo this time and no choppiness so far but the game has only been on a few minutes. 
So thank you Pinhead for that suggestion!

Hi Braveheart :)
I've tested overall around 8 hours and so far, no problems at all!
That is surely a record for me.  It used to happen within the first hour, and then continuously until I had to completely reboot my system.
It certainly can't hurt you to try it out, and it will save you lots of headaches if it ends up working.
Hope that helps, and if you decide to wait on installing, I'll surely keep you updated.  But, I really believe that this has finally fixed my issue.  My game was completely unplayable with the 8 series drivers, and the seven series were BETTER, but still would lock up eventually.  It just took a little longer with the 7 series drivers.  As far as this 6 series driver went, I played the game for at least 4 hours (in a row!), pushing it by using all sorts of large poly items, and graphics itensive things.  I have eveything within the game set to the highest level, and not a hiccup. It's certainly worth a try for you.


Here are my specs for you.   

 Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
           Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Sony Corporation
       System Model: PCV-RS421(UC)
               BIOS: BIOS Date: 08/08/03 10:45:15 Ver: 08.00.08
          Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz (2 CPUs)
             Memory: 1024MB RAM
          Page File: 262MB used, 2664MB available
        Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
    DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
     DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

And Display specs

Display Devices
---------------
        Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 6200
     Manufacturer: NVIDIA
        Chip type: GeForce 6200
         DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
       Device Key:
   Display Memory: 256.0 MB
     Current Mode: 1680 x 1050 (32 bit) (60Hz)
          Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
  Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200
      Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
   Driver Version: 6.14.0010.7644 (English)
      DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
 Driver Date/Size: 3/30/2005 11:48:00, 3848320 bytes

Hey,
I promised I'd give an update...
I have had no issues whatsoever for days now, playing quite a bit.  So, for sure, my problem is fixed.  Another thing I can suggest if using the driver I mentioned doesn't work for you is to try installing the driver that came on the cd with your card.  That's how I installed this working driver, and everything was fixed.  It was a retail driver, not a beta, that came with my cd.
Let me know if that helps if you get around to playing with it more.
Best of luck.
-RabidAngel

Reporting in again, I can confirm I'm using the 81.98 Nvidia drivers.  However, I'm having some problems probably also related to using it with nForce 2 drivers.  Now, once in a while, it'll create many artefacts on the screen which is only fixed by a restart.  This is a rare occurence, but it's happened twice so far so I know it's related to my graphics setup.

I have found the 81.98 to be the most stable of the 70 and 80 series for the widest variety of games. Don't know what Nvidia fucked up in all the other ones but, take oblivion for example, try to play it on a 6800 with any other driver, including the beta driver that is made for oblivion (yeah I know its beta), and you get all kinds of problems. But the 81.98, other than the memory leak the game has I get no problems.

For TS2 the 77.77 or 81.98 seem to be the best. I haven't tried the newest release or beta release with TS2 though, and considering how shitty they ran other games, I won't be for a long time.

I have an nVidia GeForce 5700 and I've been using the 77.77 driver for about a year.  My system specs (wait for it) are P4 1.7 gHz with 1.5 GB of RAM -- yes, my game really does load quickly and run properly, with one exception (video, and the details follow).  I have not experienced the "Endless Hourglass of Ennui"™ that others have reported, and I've never had the system lock up or crash when I scroll the neighbourhood.

The problems are the weird animations and artifacts.  The animation problems are always outstretched arms and disconnected heads; the artifacts are white and yellow areas on the screen and usually with no ability to interact with the game controls (not even via the keyboard).  Once the animation problems start they don't continue:  I see them for a short time, then they'll go away for several minutes.  Sometimes within a single lot they won't occur again, and sometimes on other lots they never occur.  The same holds true for the artifacts.  This happened very rarely with NL (perhaps 3 sessions in the last 8 months), and at least once in every session with OFB.

There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to when and where this occurs:  large houses with lots of objects; small houses with fewer objects; 5 family members; 1 family member; whatever.  They can occur after playing a lot for only 2 or 3 minutes, or after 15 minutes, or not at all.  They don't necessarily occur on the same lots during different play sessions, either:  one smaller house had big problems with both issues the other day, but yesterday I played this lot for about an hour (real time, of course) and had no problems.   

I have a short list of possible causes, but even before reading the threads here and at MTS2 my drivers were at the top.  Oddly, what fixes the problem temporarily is to Alt+Tab to desktop, wait for the game to minimise, then maximise the game again.  That allows me at least to save the game, and often the problems don't return.  I will try another driver from the recommendations above and report back.

It's definitely the driver agcons.
I had the same problem while using the 7 and 8 version drivers.
I'm sticking with 6.14.00.10.7644 as it runs more smoothly than anything else I've tried. No artifacts, no crashes or blue screens and it can handle much bigger lots.  I'm happy once again. :)

I gave up on nvidia, I was using drivers from 2004 to play the game without graphical glitches. I had a 5700Q something with 256MB onboard video RAM, should have been capable of running the sims without problems. I also had an nvidia chipset on my mainboard and had some problems with the 'active armour' and IDE drivers. This seems to be well documented on the Internet as causing problems for some people.

I believe there is something in the sims game core that does not agree with nvidia.

I'm now playing with a Radeon card and have had no problems so far in the fortnight or so that I've had it.

Yesterday I downloaded the new 9 series driver (9.3.1.1) released on the first of this month (still in Beta) and although I did have one blue screen yesterday(after several hours play), I haven't had one today.  This driver is twice the size of my previous 8-series one as it apparently has various extra bits & pieces, but I haven't found them yet.  Having tried it out for 24 hours, I must say that I can see noticeable improvements.  The first thing I noticed on entering the neighbourhood was how much bluer the water was and when I started playing, the speed was greatly increased.  Also, whereas before it would take ages to scroll through the various hairstyles and so on when changing appearance (esp. custom ones), now they appear instantly (and I mean instantly).  Well worth giving this one a try, especially if like me your pc will let you upgrade a driver but not downgrade it.

I used the 7.7.7.7. drivers for a long time, but after getting a new harddrive, I ended up with the 8.1.9.8. that my husband installed, and apart from some minor graphical glitches occasionally, that version seems to have been working quite well, so I kept them.

That's the version that came with my computer when I bought it and although it was OK at first, very soon it was blue-screening all the time.  I then upgraded to 8.4.2.1 and that got so bad that it was blue-screening constantly, without a break.  Chances are this one will go the same way, they all seem to start OK then go off, but we'll see.  Played again for a few hours this evening and no blue screens, so keeping my fingers crossed.