M17x r1 Boarderlands Issue

Greetings all,
I haven't been able to create my own threads in so long that I almost forgot how lol. Anyway, I thought I would start by asking how common my issue is.

My Video Configuration:
GTX260 SLI

If I use driver A00 and play boarderlands, everything is normal. If I try any current video driver, including any directly from Nvidia, I get random black bars/objects that flash on the screen. They don't really affect game play, but it's distracting enough to disturb. It's almost as if there are random black textures that are popping through the rendered background.

I would have considered it a hardware issue except for the fact that the problem occured on both my old M17x and my replacement one. Any and all help appreciated.

Thanks,
Gabe

 

Where have you been man?

No there's nothing wrong with your cards,the problem is that the Verde drivers don't get along with the m17x nVidia cards. There are a few options though:

1. you can install the P06 beta drivers off Dell support & drivers site
2. install a modded driver version from HERE (make sure you read the instructions)
3. disable PCIeGen2 in BIOS (will force your cards to run at 8x instead of letting the drivers push their bandwith to 16x) and install a verde version.

read some threads here, it's a known issue.

cheers

 

Hi katalin_2003,
Thanks for the info. I do read the forum on a regular basis (even when I wasn't allowed to create threads as a retailer). I guess I was hoping for an easy fix rather than disabling or modifying. That's the number one thing that has never changed about the Alienware brand.

Also, I believe I did try the beta drivers in the past and it resulted in the same issue. Maybe by forcing the cards to 8x, I'll see a difference.

There are two games that It's pretty noticeable on:

1. Borderlands
2. Last Remnant

Thanks,
Gabe

 

make sure you clean the older drivers before you install new ones.
After uninstall reboot in Safe Mode and run CCleaner to clean your registry,there are a lot of stuff that remain after the Control Panel uninstall and can affect the performance of the "new" installed version(in this case P06 beta or the modded ones).
yes forcing them to 8x you should get less lockups as the drivers won't try to push your cards further.

 

Hi katalin_2003,
Thanks for all the advice. I'm very familiar with ccleaner and all the technical tricks of the trade. CCleaner isn't always good to use on an Nvidia chipset based system. Sometimes it tries to remove more than video driver registry entries. I have never really had the system lock up. All the issues are simply with quallity of play.

To date, I think I've restored the system 50 times over in an attempt to get that "desired" gameplay.... and I'm convinced that it simply does not exist. You can tweak and adjust for a few games while others suffer.

Thanks,
Gabe

 

This is weird, it's been some weeks since I last played this game (which is spelled Borderlands btw ) and have never seen this.

Are you sure you have the latest patch?

 

Oops... I guess I should have check the spelling lol. The issue is most visible when your driving one of the cars. You see random black bars/objects kind of flash around the screen. It resembles some kind of 3d object that's either popping out of the background or somehow showing through the on screen display of the game. I'm not sure you'd see it on the 280s, but technicially you should since it's just a step above the 260s I'm running.

As far as the patch, I never really checked. I usually get the updates as steam pushes them. I'll check and see.

Thanks,
Gabe

 

I think its just 'normal' if you can call it that Gabe. I see the exact same thing on occasion in other titles (Bad Company 2 being one) on all NV based systems - lappies or desktops. Try bumping your in-game settings down a notch and see if it helps...