Old Card, New Problems 6800 Ultra

beetlespin79 · October 28, 2017

I have 2 GeForce 6800 Ultra's, one by BFG and the other by Nvidia. Both are the same and to this topic, they both react the same way. Anyway, I have 3 different computers one running a core 2 quad q9550, another with an i5-4460 and another with a q6600.

The q6600 is running on a DDR2 platform, the q9550 and the core i5 are running on a DDR3 platform. All have Win7 x64 with 8GB of ram. Problem: The 6800 Ultra's would dramatically slow down windows 7 response in EVERYTHING. This includes viewing youtube videos, running windows media player to slowing down the actual time it takes for any program to load. No program would launch if it utilized the 6800 ultra's 3D features. This problem occurred across all 3 platforms.

I, sort of, found a solution or was able to get the PC, or all 3 to run by an accident. When building the q6600, i mistakenly put 4GB in the PC when I thought I was using 8GB! Checked the BIOS and windows, it only displayed actually 3GB. But both 6800 ultra's ran like a charm and all benchmarks and programs launched perfectly. No problems at all. When I removed the 4GB and used the (2 x 4GB) 8GB of ram, the video card problems returned. I tried using only 4GB of RAM on the core i5 and the q9550 and behold, the problems disappeared. The 6800 ultra's ran perfect with no other pc problems.

Conclusion: I have found out that using more than 4GB of memory (DDR4, DDR3, or DDR2) creates all kinds of problems with this video card. I would just like to know why. I know this video card is old and pointless, but it could be a good learning tool if this problem ever shows again with another video card!

Thank you!

Sakkura · October 28, 2017

Maybe the driver is so old it gets tripped up by 64-bit (or 40-some odd bits in Windows) memory addressing or something.

beetlespin79 · October 28, 2017

I was thinking about running Windows XP or Windows 7 x32 to see if there was any difference. The fact that Nvidia still carries 64 bit driver support for these cards is amazing in itself. Funny thing is, I also have 2 6600 GTs and one FX-5500 and they both run perfect on 16GB, 8GB, and 4GB of system ram. I have often wondered, as you suggested, if it could be related to the memory and the 6800 ultra's actual chip, not the card, as the problem exist beyond just one manufacture. thank you for the response!