Video Card Hell. Please help. Hardware acceleration is messed up.

Hey everyone,

Straight to the problem: I messed something up with my video card and now there is a huge CPU power draw when I switch window screen sets in an audio application that has many windows open at once (project windows, audio mixer, plugin effects). I used to be able to flip back an forth within milliseconds and now the system takes a full 1 or 2 seconds to switch and load screensets and GUIs. I personally think I turned off directdraw/direct3d acceleration somehow, but I don't know how I did that, or if that makes sense.

When I have Riva's hardware monitoring on while running this applications it reads 1.0 for "Hardware Acceleration" and "Hardware Acceleration \ OGL" and 0.0 for "Hardware acceleration \ DD", "Hardware acceleration \D3D8", "Hardware acceleration \D3D9". Isn't there something wrong with that?

Here's a bit of the back story:
I have a computer designed for pro audio and used for music recording. Low DPC latencies are a must in order to allow a constantly adequate PCI bus bandwidth for the audio or else I get clicks/pops/dropouts in the playback and recording. Not good for a studio. My PNY 9400GT with every possible driver was taxing the PCI bus at regular 3 second intervals whenever I had an OpenGL-based plugin open (for those of you not familiar with digital audio, the opening of plugins - audio processors like reverbs, echos, equalizers - is a big part of the core application, in this case, Cubase 4). I found that by uninstalling or disabing the video card drivers, the audio interruptions went away, but then I was left with unusable video refresh rates. Someone pointed me in the direction of RivaTuner.

Long story short, I messed something up big time. In an effort to lower the demands of the video card on the PCI bus, I was changing settings that I thought would increase performance and decrease quality (since a powerful 3d rendering engine is not at all required for recording music). In the process of doing so I did landed myself in the position i explained in the first paragraph.

 

Thanks for the reply. Any ideas as to why I'm experiencing the issues?

 

I thought he just explained it? Look in the Hardware monitor after turning on Event history graph and see what's running as Alex explained.

 

Well, as I watch the graph of the Hardware Monitor, it shows that the "Hardware acceleration \ OGL" turns on ("1.0") When I open Cubase 4, and turns off ("0.0") when I close it. Hardware acceleration for DD, D3D8, and D3D9 stay 0.0 whether Cubase 4 is running or not. Is that what you meant for me to check?

My video card issue is not exclusive to Cubase 4... it just happens to be the the applications that makes the symptoms most obvious. The slow response, especially when closing windows, is affecting the whole winXP os.

Edit: I think i may have found something:
In the RivaTuner-> "Main" tab under Driver settings I have 9 Files listed for Forceware 182.08:
- nv4_disp.dll Display driver
- nv4_mini.sys Display driver miniport
- nvoglnt.dll OpenGL installable client driver
- nvcpl.dll Display properties extension
- nview.dll Display management hook library
- nvshell.dll Shell Namespace extension library
- nvwdmcpl Deisplay manager control panel applet
- nvsvc32.exe Driver helper service
- nvapi.dll NVAPI library

But there is no description of a WDDM Direct3D Driver as I have seen in some other user's lists. Shouldn't there be one?

 

Start the hardware monitor>setup. Under Data Sources look for Event history and put a checkmark to the left of it. That will now show up as a graph in the hardware monitoring screen. Once a 3D API or preudo-3D program runs, the Event history will show wants running.


WDDM Direct3D.....

I'm in Vista right now not XP. I do see this in Vista but it may be only used in Vista. Not sure unless I reboot to XP.

Edit: In XP now and there is no WDDM Direct3D.