Nvidia Video Driver Question!

Hey,

I have an Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti 500 with 64 mb video ram. Recently I have been noticing that the newer games, when they are running, they pause for around 5 seconds (where the screen freezes) and then starts up again as if nothing happened. This is really annoying.

I think this is a driver problem. (if not pls correct me.) I have the newest nvidia drivers, and I think they might be causing this problem as they are optimised for the newest cards.

I want to load older drivers i.e the drivers before the newest ones. Is this ok to do? Will it affect my computer in any way?
How do i go about installing them..do i just download from net and install them...or do i delete these new drivers and then install the older ones.

If i hafta delete the new drivers is it a simple case of going to add remove prgs in control panel and getting rid of them?

Thank you for all the help you can give me.

What newer games? When you say "recently", do you mean that these same games used to work with no stutter, or that as you've bought new games, they stutter whereas your older games don't? You might just be lagging because you're trying to run too much on an older card.
Going back to older drivers shouldn't be a problem, just uninstall the current drivers and restart, so windows loads its default drivers, then install the new (old) drivers.

yeah thanks,,
umm by newer games i mean the one's that are just released such fifa06, serious sam II.
however, some new games dont stutter like this..call of duty 2 demo dosent stutter it runs smooth, brothers in arms: earned in blood dosent stutter...

also im pretty sure my card can handle it, because when its running it runs smoothly. Then it randomly freezes, and starts up as if nothing happened.
Fifa 06, needs 32mb video ram minimum, i have 64.
installing older drivers didnt work, in fact it became much worse.

"Made it worse" how? More stutter? Back to the new drivers then. Be sure to uninstall all of the old stuff first. Have you tried turning down the graphics settings a step or two?

'made it worse' meaning it went a lot slower. and basically froze the instant i started the game. Objects in serious sam appeared with like rectangular blobs..it was all messed up. Yeah i got back now to regular new drivers.
Yeah, i have tried turning down the grpahics, not just a step or two, but by a lot.
SSII runs in 800 x 600, ive run it lower resolutions the problem still persists.
It's just really annoying....

What are the rest of your system specs? Does the hesitation happen in the same places every time, or totally random? It could be some loading behind the scenes.

hi, thanx for replying...
my system specs are

Dell Dimension 8200 - Windows Xp Home SP2
Pentium 4 - 1.8 GHZ
GeForce 3 Ti 500 64 mb video ram
80 gig hard drive
768 mb of ram

and yes the stoppages are random, although after the first stop, they tend to get more frequent. Nowadays, the game dosent even come back, once it hangs it stays like that, until i have to restart.

Uninstall REALPLAYER just delete the file & everything.that should do it!!!!!!!!! Seriosly

I dont have realplayer on my computer. thx for the resply though, and yes I'm sure its some small thing just like this thats interfering with my performance.

The fact that they are getting more frequent after the first sounds like it has to do with and overheating problem with the card itself. Check your case temps. Maybe the new games are causing too much stress, and causing heat, you may have to put an aftermarket fan on there.

yeah that could be the problem, because recently i had the same cpu problem where my cpu usage would shoot upto 100%. i relaised the fan had been placed in the wrong direction, and not over the heat sink. When i did place it over the heatsink, it was fine.

Yea, in that case, run it with the case open, and see if it's better, then with a fan in front of the opening. If this is the case, look for an aftermarket fan to mount on there.

ok i will try this. thank you.

hey i didnt open up the comp as yet but noticed something intresting. even the older games like call of duty 1 dosent seem to run properly. It stops and hangs..also something else i have noticed is that there are these weird shimmering dots across my screen when playing games?

if it cant even run the older games properly? is there some interference with gfx card? because im quite sure its not overheating as it cant even handle older games.

The "shimmering dots" are artifacts, and do suggest overheating. Even older games will make the card work, and could overheat it if that is the problem. Have you moved or bumped the computer/card recently? That could have shifted the heatsink. Or if there is a fan on the card, is it running? Again, try running with the computer box open and running a fan at it.