NVidia GTX970 woes

[gavinc]

Hi Guys,
I haven't used CFS2 for quite some time but I recently decided to fire her up and go for a spin.

Major problem - I upgraded from my old 512MB NVidia card to a new GTX970 (4 GB RAM) card a few months ago.
CFS2 now doesn't allow me to enable hardware acceleration.

Does anyone have any idea how to get this old app running on a modern GPU or do I finally have to retire my CDs?

Thanks
Gavin

 

[UncleTgt]

Hi Gavin, welcome back.

This sounds like a Windows 7/8 permissions thing. Are you logged onto Windows with an account that has Administrator permissions?

But, you should be able to tick all the boxes, & that's what makes me think it's a user permission thing.

You can run CFS2 from a memory stick if you have to - it's when you install it into the "special protection" folders (like "program files") these newer Operating Systems really doesn't like software running that's constantly writing/updating the game cfg file, & I'm afraid CFS2 & the FS series does just that... quite often.

Avoid the default install location

Right click the shortcut & tick "run as Adminstrator" - this makes sure you have full read/write control

Set User Account Control as low as you're comfortable with - it'll only nag you

I'm using Nvidia Inspector to tweak the card settings, the GUI doesn't have enough options to get it looking at it's best.

Oh, & use the 4Gb patch for the program exe, it will allow the game to use all that extra RAM you now have access to.

Hope this helps.

 

[gavinc]

Hi,
Don't think it is permissions. I had no issues with HW acceleration with the old card installed.

I am on Windows 7 but installed into /CFS.

Might give Nvidia Inspector a go and see if I can tweak it that way.

Thanks
Gavin

 

[UncleTgt]

Hi Gavin,

I'm assuming CFS2 sees the card, & you can pick a screen resolution?

Another idea - did you try just editing your cfs2.cfg with notepad?

For example, this is all I have in one of my installs

[DISPLAY]
Device=NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
Mode=1920x1080x32
AntiAlias=1
HWTnL=1

Check if your flags are the same?

btw, always run in windowed mode, much more stable with the newer cards & OS

 

[gavinc]

Hi,
Yep it identifies the card and I can select a number of screen resolutions.

However (and I just realized this) they are all just the 16 bit screen resolutions, it isn't showing any 32 bit resolutions as available.

Haven't tried manually editing the config file yet. Next on my fun filled agenda

thanks
Gavin

 

[Ian Astill]

Just to confirm Gavinc

I recently moved to a new system with a GTX960 and this runs CFS2 really well (Windowed mode is a must though)

I don't see any reason why the 970 shouldn't work, Keep plodding away, it will most probably be a config issue

 

[dvslats]

Some hoops to jump through

Hi All,

This thread may be helpful.

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?37372-CFS2-widescreen-question

 

[Browncoat]

Gavin, I also have a GTX970, and here are my current settings in my CFS2.cfg file:

[DISPLAY]
Device=NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
Mode=1680x1050x32
AntiAlias=1
HWTnL=1
Disable=0

I found when I first installed the card that I had to manually enter my screen resolution and color for it to see anything other than 16 bit, and I had to change Disable=1 to Disable=0 for the card to work. I added in AntiAlias and MWTnL entries thanks to Uncle Tgt's post. I have also found that I need to run CFS2 in full screen mode for the card's Anti Aliasing, Anisotropic filtering, and Vsync (to eliminate tearing on my monitor) to take effect.

The GTX970 is an awesome card and totally worth the money, especially for more current gaming titles. Unfortunately CFS2 is a 15 year old piece of software that is gradually being phased in to digital unserviceability because of newer operating systems, display hardware, and display drivers. I am happy that the .cfg file can be hand edited to still get things to work. But how long that will last, who knows. I hope this helps you.

 

[gavinc]

Thanks for all the advice guys,

I'm on the road for a couple of days but when I get back I will try again.

Browncoat - glad to hear that you have it working so it must be something on my system.

Gavin

 

[kelticheart]

Do we really have to give fullscreen up forever?

...Windowed mode is a must though...

...truly there's no way to get back my beloved full-screen mode in Win 7/8?...

A friend of mine suggested installing a virtual machine running XP-Pro. Then install CFS2 in it with the entire OS dedicated to running it.

Did anyone around here try this approach?

Cheers!
KH

 

[gavinc]

A friend of mine suggested installing a virtual machine running XP-Pro. Then install CFS2 in it with the entire OS dedicated to running it.

Did anyone around here try this approach?

Hi Kelti,
I have an XP-Home Virtualbox image running in windows 7 (very useful for Win 7 unfriendly apps like MDLC) and I have installed CFS2. Only issue is that the video card hardware specs aren't echo'd to the VM so CFS2 thinks it has a basic video card, no hardware acceleration or enhanced graphics.

OK for basic testing of converted models but not for daily use.

Gavin

 

[bearcat241]

Hi Kelti,
I have an XP-Home Virtualbox image running in windows 7 (very useful for Win 7 unfriendly apps like MDLC) and I have installed CFS2. Only issue is that the video card hardware specs aren't echo'd to the VM so CFS2 thinks it has a basic video card, no hardware acceleration or enhanced graphics.

OK for basic testing of converted models but not for daily use.

Gavin

Exactly why i personally dumped the VM setup and have eternally adopted dual booting with XP, mainly for the sake of my beloved legacy sims and gaming. I want everything running normal in original operating system compatibility without the all the extra combobulations. Even though these legacy programs were originally designed for the Win98 platform, XP still does a marvelous job of accommodation as the the last truly compatible system for most of them.

 

[Maxstuka]

I has a old, Sapphire ATI hd 6790 1gb, all the game running nice. Not problems with compression textures, no problems with nothing.

 

[gavinc]

Update

Hi,
Well manually editing the csf2.cfg file with Browncoats cfg entries seems to do the trick. Although I noticed that if I go into the setting screen when I come out the Disable=0 entry is reset to Disable=1.

BC - for your dual boot I assume you are using some variant of GRUB. Were you able to set it up without having to re-install both OS's? I have a spare 200 Gb drive sitting around so I could create a dedicated drive for Win XP and CFS2 but I don't want to have to completely re-build my Win 7 FSX install. (Yeah I know I could go on the interweb thing and find out for myself - this is easier )

thanks
Gavin

 

[kelticheart]

Hi Kelti,
I have an XP-Home Virtualbox image running in windows 7 (very useful for Win 7 unfriendly apps like MDLC) and I have installed CFS2. Only issue is that the video card hardware specs aren't echo'd to the VM so CFS2 thinks it has a basic video card, no hardware acceleration or enhanced graphics.

OK for basic testing of converted models but not for daily use. Gavin

..........Yet I am glad to read you are resolving your issues...

Exactly why i personally dumped the VM setup and have eternally adopted dual booting with XP, mainly for the sake of my beloved legacy sims and gaming. I want everything running normal in original operating system compatibility without the all the extra combobulations. Even though these legacy programs were originally designed for the Win98 platform, XP still does a marvelous job of accommodation as the the last truly compatible system for most of them.

Any type of nowadays 64-bit hware and Win7 would work with dual booting? No problems with running 32-bit CFS2? I've always used AMD-based pc's.

Thank you!
KH

 

[bearcat241]

Gavin,

I'm not familiar with the term "GRUB". But to answer your other question, you would do better to re-partition your current system drive and add a new 100GB D: drive there for installing XP. With Windows OS's, pre-Win7 platforms should always be on the primary drive. Is their native environment. The extra drive can then be reserved for moving your sims and games to for protection against system viral infections and system drive failures, or it can be deployed as an additional storage drive.

The only problems i can foresee is that with dual booting Windows systems, the most recently installed OS becomes the default primary system. So XP will become the default automatically during the boot sequence and you'll have to standby to manually select Win7 during the boot process. There are some proggies that will let you change this sequence permanently within Win7, like EasyBCD, which edits the hidden boot.ini and bootmgr files so that the first installation is restored as the default. Maybe this is what you referred to as GRUB?

Another problem is that the native System Restore application in your chosen secondary system stops saving restore points. So you may have to install some type of third party program that saves backup or restore points for you independently. In my configuration XP is my active default and i seldom use the secondary Win7 for anything, so i have no concerns about restore points within it yet.

The third hassle will be downloading all the essential XP updates, if you can find them anymore without Microsoft support.

 

[bearcat241]

Any type of nowadays 64-bit hware and Win7 would work with dual booting?

Any HW with 64bit capability is also 32bit capable to begin with, so it would naturally adapt to your XP 32bit without any issues. The 64-bit architecture of your Win7 system is contained within its separate partition, which it has nothing to do with your XP partition. In the past i ran XP/x86 and and Win7/x64 in D-boot with no 32bit vs 64bit hardware issues between the two separate systems which shared the same HW. The architecture used by a system's hardware is determined only at the software level by the user's choice of system shell - am i gonna install Windows 32bit or Windows 64bit? Modern dual compatible HW doesn't care either way, so it operates well in both environments as designed. I now run XPSP3/x86 and W7/x32 for more legacy program flexibility between both systems. The only tradeoff i get is the lower max RAM usage limitation of Win7 x32 vs the higher usage of x64. This is minor to me since i don't use my W7 that much anyway.