Railworks America

I've been having blue screen crashes for the last few days and wonder if it might have something to do with recently updating the video card drivers (I've got a GeForce 675M) to version 335.23. Has anyone else had problems? I'm going to try rolling it back to the previous version, 331.82.

EDIT: That didn't work - straight after rolling back to 331.82 and rebooting, I tried to start TS2014 but it went to the BSOD before even reaching the main menu!
Now I'll try 307.17, after uninstalling the existing drivers, even though it's a version from December 2012, because that's the version recommended by Alienware (Dell) on their support website.

EDIT2: Version 307.17 seems to be working better, for now anyway. However, my frame rates have dropped like a stone.

EDIT3: OK, forget what Dell say. I installed 334.89 (the latest WHQL driver from NVidia before 335.23) and my frame rates are back to normal. I hope this one doesn't crash.

Are you having fun talking to yourself? I just looked and on this machine (GTX550ti) I am all the way back on 311.06. I'm pretty sure I'm on the 332.21 on my other machine up North.

See other thread down a ways about drivers.
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=10893

buzz456 wrote:!*roll-laugh*! Are you having fun talking to yourself? I just looked and on this machine (GTX550ti) I am all the way back on 311.06. I'm pretty sure I'm on the 332.21 on my other machine up North.

See other thread down a ways about drivers.
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=10893

Yeah, I ended up using the thread as a notepad and memory aid for myself

Googling, I found some posts that seemed to cast doubt on these latest 335.23 drivers (in relation to other games). I just hope it's not my video card that's gone for a Burton, again.

Not to make you nervous or anything but just because I like to cause myself problems I just installed the 335.23 driver and it runs fine on my machine and I think doing one of those high speed passes in my super sonic jet over the route I'm working on it definitely propagates scenery faster.

buzz456 wrote:Not to make you nervous or anything but just because I like to cause myself problems I just installed the 335.23 driver and it runs fine on my machine and I think doing one of those high speed passes in my super sonic jet over the route I'm working on it definitely propagates scenery faster.

Interesting!

I think my computer dislikes the hot weather here in Madrid.

Mike, I think rolling back etc doesn't do much good with the current Nvidia driver families.
I fully endorse a clean install of any Nvidia driver. I mean a manual uninstall from Programs and Features, then going into C: and manually deleting the Nvidia folders. I've noticed some strange behavior when using Nvidia's "Clean Install" option more than 3 times and rolling back doesn't seem to fully reinstall things.

The Nvidia folders keep getting bloated over time, telling me, that their "Clean Install" isn't working correctly anymore.
When a person used the Clean Install option a few years back, the main Nvidia folder didn't keep getting larger and larger, but something has changed.
I'm running good on 331.820

All of that being said. When is the last time you cleaned things out and applied some new thermal paste on CPU and GPU's? It needs to be done occasionally, especially when overclocked.

Thanks Eric - I've done a complete uninstall of the drivers and installed 334.89 from scratch, and so far (touch wood!) it seems to be working.

The last time new thermal paste was applied was last summer, when the Dell technician replaced the motherboard, keyboard and 675M (all for free too! ... I have nothing but good things to say about Dell's technical support). I watched him taking everything apart but it looked very complicated, so I wouldn't dare to try it myself. I'd rather call them and let them do it. I do give the radiator grills a clean now and then with compressed air (and making sure I blow the dust out instead of further in). I installed TechPowerUp GPU-Z to monitor the temperatures and it looks like the GPU idles at about 52 degrees C, and doesn't rise much above 60 degrees after a few minutes in the game (I don't spend much time in Railworks - only long enough to test things).

I've been running the 332.21's for some time now, no issues at all. Mike, you may want to try MSI Afterburner and turn up the GPU's fan speed. http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

MY GTX670 runs 39c idle (room temp now kinda hot, about 27c), gaming in the low~mid 40c, but running Folding @ Home, the GPU hits 58c easy, at 100% usage. Without "Afterburner", my video card would have melted a long time ago.

arizonachris wrote:I've been running the 332.21's for some time now, no issues at all. Mike, you may want to try MSI Afterburner and turn up the GPU's fan speed. http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

MY GTX670 runs 39c idle (room temp now kinda hot, about 27c), gaming in the low~mid 40c, but running Folding @ Home, the GPU hits 58c easy, at 100% usage. Without "Afterburner", my video card would have melted a long time ago.

I did wonder about the fan, but GPU-Z says it's running at 100%.

I get up to 65c during Railworks play, but I'm running 2x2SSAA with 2014. When I run my backup of TS 2013, it stays around 50 - 55C. I think because I only run 2013 at 8X MSAA.

Idle is a bit warmer since I turned off speed stepping for the overclock, but it still stays around 33-36c. I'm just using a cheap Cooler Master Hyper TX3 cooler on the CPU.
From what I'm reading, that is good for a Ivy Bridge CPU.

Ericmopar wrote:I get up to 65c during Railworks play, but I'm running 2x2SSAA with 2024. When I run my backup of TS 2013, it stays around 50 - 55C. I think because I only run 2013 at 8X MSAA.

Idle is a bit warmer since I turned off speed stepping for the overclock, but it still stays around 33-36c. I'm just using a cheap Cooler Master Hyper TX3 cooler on the CPU.
From what I'm reading, that is good for a Ivy Bridge CPU.

I'll have to check with Alienware to see what they expect for the temperatures. The technician said the way the heat dissipation is set up in this laptop is a marvel of engineering.

It seems my clean install wasn't so clean after all. I got more BSODs last night, so today I uninstalled the driver again, but the thing went and automatically installed the previous version. So I deleted that one too, from the device manager (choosing to delete the files) and after restarting, same thing again - it installed the version before that one. This happened about 6 times, going back to a driver from 2012! Eventually it installed a standard VGA driver and the 675M at last didn't show up in device manager. I then installed 334.89. I ran the MS Windows Experience programme again and my graphics rating has jumped from 6.7 to 7.4!! Plus, it's freed up about 4GB of disk space. Fingers crossed that it's cured the BSODs, so I can get on with finishing 844.

EDIT: Crashed as soon as I tried to start a scenario. Even the Alienware PC Checkup video test crashes to a blue screen when it gets to the 675M. I'll try with 332.21.

What does the blue screen say?

Does it give you the address space where it faulted?

PapaXpress wrote:What does the blue screen say?

Does it give you the address space where it faulted?

I'll have to make a note of it, but the last time it happened, I remember a message saying something about failing to restart the graphics card after a timeout.

I've been pulling my hair out trying to do a "save as" of a model in 3DC - it wouldn't even bring up the dialog box and the view was really hard to rotate. I was using the 675M with 3DC. I've changed it to use the onboard Intel HD 4000, disabled the 675M and now I can carry on working in 3DC. I'm certain it's the 675M that's breaking down again. It seems to happen regularly once a year.

Just thought I'd tie off this thread by mentioning that I seem to have fixed the problem. All my previous attempts at clearing out the old drivers and doing a clean install had not in fact cleared out all the rubbish (from the registry, for example). Then I found a fantastic utility called Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) and that did the trick! After running that and then installing the latest drivers from NVidia, I've been able to increase my graphics settings and haven't had a BSOD since ... so it's back to work in earnest