Nvidea help needed.

[pawn]

I recently bought an Asus Geforce 7600GS for my main client, mostly because it's the only off the shelf AGP card I could find locally capable of HD playback and without a fan. This is to replace the ATI X1600 Pro I also recently bought that was too loud for my family room (fan), but gave acceptable HD playback.

Based on posts I read in this forum, I expected very positive results with the Nvidea Purevideo filters. My experience has not been that great.

The first problem I am having is with the Nvidea drivers themselves. The control panel takes (quite literally) 5 minutes to load, and then any changes I make to video controls (brightness, contrast, etc.) take (quite literally) 20 seconds to be ackowledged. This is a big problem because of the trouble I'm having with the Purevideo decoders (see below). This only happens with the new control panel interface. The "classic" view works as expected, but doesn't fix the decoder problem below, and it doesn't have all of the features.

I have uninstalled the drivers that came with the card (version 9147) and installed two different versions available from Asus' web site (versions 9371 and 9424), but for whatever reason, I could not get DXVA to work with these versions (and the problem didn't go away anyway) and have reverted to the original drivers.

The second problem is with the Purevideo decoders (version 4.02-185). Basically, it looked like crap when I first ran it. Very dark and all kinds of magnified, washed out colour; especially red. The settings from the Nvidea system tray icon work, but all relative to how bad the playback is. That is, still bad. *But*, once I go into the Nvidea control panel and touch one of the sliders for the display settings (i.e., just touch "brightness" without moving it), the proper display settings engage and everything looks great and HD playback is very good. But this doesn't stick: after stopping playback and watching something else, I have to go to the control panel and "touch" something again. Based on posts on this forum, I tried various combinations of uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers and filters in different order (this is the only reason the filter display controls work at all). Also,I have tried both checking and unchecking the "Apply to all viceo technologies" checkbox in the Nvidea control panel.

It's important to note that this *only* happens with the Prevideo decoder. All other decoders, especially the Sonic Cinemaster decoders I normally use are not afflicted by this. Sadly, the Geforce 7600 is not up to the task of displaying HD with the Sonic filter (it generally displays fine but freezes every 5 minutes or so - easily fixed by a quick FF or RW). For what it's worth, the ATI X1600 Pro worked fine with all DXVA capable filters. I think the Nvideo card is heavily dependent on something proprietary in the Purevideo filters, which is disappointing. I'd go back to the ATI card if it wasn't for the fan. For the same mid-range pricepoint, it's clearly a superior card.

I have no idea what to try next. Is there a newer version of Purevideo? I bought it last week, which seems to me would make my version fairly new. I screwed around for hours and hours with the Nvidea drivers and don't care to keep wasting time without some advice. I have to say, one of the reasons I finally jumped ship was the idea that maybe Nvidea drivers were better than the so-so ATI drivers I've become used to. Boy has that opinion changed in a hurry.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

KJ

[pawn]

In case anyone cares (it doesn't look like anyone did , I finally got the Purevideo decoder to cooperate (DXVA and settings stick) after several tries at installing/reinstalling the driver and decoders. The driver is still useless in the new control panel mode, but no biggie.

I have to say, after hearing all of the hype about Purevideo, I'm disappointed in the video quality. Sonic had a much better colour interpretation, IMO.

[MeInMaui]

Many times residual bits and pieces of previous drivers can wreak havoc on your system. I would recommend uninstalling your video drivers (both ATI and Nvidia) and then using something like Driver Cleaner to remove any remnants of both the ATI and Nvidia drivers. Then you can install the Nvidia drivers after a reboot. HTH

Aloha,
Mike

[pawn]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Many times residual bits and pieces of previous drivers can wreak havoc on your system. I would recommend uninstalling your video drivers (both ATI and Nvidia) and then using something like Driver Cleaner to remove any remnants of both the ATI and Nvidia drivers. Then you can install the Nvidia drivers after a reboot. HTH

Aloha,
Mike

Thanks. Years ago I learned a process that definitively removes drivers, involving booting into safe mode, deleting dll's from system32, inf files, registry settings, etc. I really believe it's a bug with the latest Purevideo decoders (as evidenced by other posters on this forum). I've never seen the tool you mentioned, but I'll be sure to give it a try.

Thanks again.