Sound/Visual/Games

[d3fin3d]

Hey all,

I'm running Windows Vista PR-1. Thus far, it looks pretty amazing (havn't
seen any previous versions).

But I've run into some issues whilst running Quake 3 Arena. There seems to
be very little audio options for my sound card (Soundblaster Live! Value!).
I can't seem to specifiy headphone mode, nor tweak the sound to fit my
needs. Is there any way to install a decent driver for my Soundblaser under
Vista?

With the default drivers that come with the PR, quake seems to not be able
to get past 60 fps, unless looking at a wall, whilst with XP, it happily ran
at 125 FPS solid. I've tried getting the latest drivers from Nvidia (as my
card is the Geforce 6800 GT), but the installation of the vista specific
drivers resulted in a installation crash which caused the screen to go
permanently black (until I ran safe mode and removed the installed drivers
and ran the default ones from the PR installation). The OS was still running
in the background, but the card couldnt cope with the new nvidia drivers.
Maybe they were beta2 specific?

And lastly, the game was running very very dark, like the brightness was way
down. Would this be as a result of not having Nvidia specific drivers
installed?

Other than this, and the 3d sitch mode occasionally not activating, it looks
like a great system.

 

[Beck]

Hey all,

I'm running Windows Vista PR-1. Thus far, it looks pretty amazing (havn't
seen any previous versions).

But I've run into some issues whilst running Quake 3 Arena. There seems to
be very little audio options for my sound card (Soundblaster Live!
Value!). I can't seem to specifiy headphone mode, nor tweak the sound to
fit my needs. Is there any way to install a decent driver for my
Soundblaser under Vista?

With the default drivers that come with the PR, quake seems to not be able
to get past 60 fps, unless looking at a wall, whilst with XP, it happily
ran at 125 FPS solid. I've tried getting the latest drivers from Nvidia
(as my card is the Geforce 6800 GT), but the installation of the vista
specific drivers resulted in a installation crash which caused the screen
to go permanently black (until I ran safe mode and removed the installed
drivers and ran the default ones from the PR installation). The OS was
still running in the background, but the card couldnt cope with the new
nvidia drivers. Maybe they were beta2 specific?

And lastly, the game was running very very dark, like the brightness was
way down. Would this be as a result of not having Nvidia specific drivers
installed?

Other than this, and the 3d sitch mode occasionally not activating, it
looks like a great system.

Have you tried going to the manufacturers websites for new drivers?

 

[d3fin3d]

Have you tried going to the manufacturers websites for new drivers?

Yeah, I've tried going to the manufacturers site, and Nvidias Vista specific
drivers (x86/32bit) are, as mentioned above, causing the system to not
display anything on screen after installation. Perhaps those drivers are for
the Beta 2 version.

Also, the Cretive site only has drivers for 2000/XP right now, and when I
tried to install them, it said it could not find a the relevant card it was
installing drivers for (i know the card is in, and model/make of the card).
So I can't even begin to install the Creative Soundblaster Live! Value!
drivers.

All the above to be expected with such a new OS?

 

[Beck]

Yeah, I've tried going to the manufacturers site, and Nvidias Vista
specific drivers (x86/32bit) are, as mentioned above, causing the system
to not display anything on screen after installation. Perhaps those
drivers are for the Beta 2 version.

Also, the Cretive site only has drivers for 2000/XP right now, and when I
tried to install them, it said it could not find a the relevant card it
was installing drivers for (i know the card is in, and model/make of the
card). So I can't even begin to install the Creative Soundblaster Live!
Value! drivers.

All the above to be expected with such a new OS?

Yes unfortunately it is down to the manufacturers to supply the drivers and
some companies are a bit slower than others. TBH I don't really blame them,
there's not much point in putting out beta drivers because they are beta and
lots of versions, they are more likely to release them when it has been
released properly.
Your best bet if you want to use Vista is to dual boot with XP. Continue to
play your games on XP and use Vista for other things until the drivers are
sorted.

 

[d3fin3d]

Yes unfortunately it is down to the manufacturers to supply the drivers
and some companies are a bit slower than others. TBH I don't really blame
them, there's not much point in putting out beta drivers because they are
beta and lots of versions, they are more likely to release them when it
has been released properly.
Your best bet if you want to use Vista is to dual boot with XP. Continue
to play your games on XP and use Vista for other things until the drivers
are sorted.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing thus far. No way am I going to use this as
a primary OS. By the way, any idea why the weather gadget isn't working
anymore? It says 'service unavalable' where the gadget is.

 

[Beck]

Yeah, that's what I've been doing thus far. No way am I going to use this
as a primary OS. By the way, any idea why the weather gadget isn't working
anymore? It says 'service unavalable' where the gadget is.

Have you gone in gadget properties and set your area for weather?
The gadget I think relies on an external website to provide the information
live, its also possible that the website is down.