NVIDIA 8600 GT

[Amathus]

I have an 8600GT ASUS Graphics card - has anyone had any exprience with this series - is it directly supported?

[Techstyle]

I have a 8600 GT and have not managed to get it working yet.  I get a blank screen during installation.

my Mbrd has on board video so I switched to that and it is fine.

[KARIM1]

I had similar problem with my 8800gts luckily the good guys on linuxmce irc helped me out, on reboot when u hear the bleping melody type thing press the shift buton and you should get the av setup screen (if you have 2 outputs you may need to togle between the 2 outputs to find which one linuxmce is using.
should sort ur problems

http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=5574.0                 < my case

good luck

[Amathus]

OK, tried that with the 8600GT  but still no go. I cannot even get to the set up screen - just a black screen and nothing happens. Is your 8800GTS an ASUS product? Does it support Alpha Blending?

Does anyone know which NVIDIA chipset works best with Alpha Blending - Bear in mind that all NVIDIA 6.xxxx series based graphics cards are  EOL so there remains 7.xxx, 8.xxx, 9.xxx - this is a mystery wrapped in an enigma - help wanted - please. Inserting a binary patch from the NVIDIA Linux driver WEB site was suggested but this will breakk the OS on a future upgarde and also I am told doing this results in not supporting  Alpha Blending - True or False ...

Also, which ASUS microATX or ATX mobos are supported out of the box - preferably with AM2+ support?

[justdeb]

I use an ASUS EN8400GS and i have the same problem and no matter how i try to set it up - i still get black screen. I can here the beeps - but no picture.

[KARIM1]

im 99% sure it will work this is what i did
conected pc screen thru vga conector
reboot the machine, few seconds ull hear a bleeping melody from the internal speaker
when u hear it press and hold shift until u hear 2 tones like a bleepBLEEP
than wait
it can take about a min before the screen comes up its a green screen , as i said if theres 2 outputs on the gfx card u may have to move the vga conector between the 2 to see which one is being used
again... good luck
ps took me about 15 instals to get it workin (mostly cause i did not no about the shift key thing)

ma beerwolf details:
bfg 8800gts oc2
asus p5bpremium
2 x 250 seagate baracuda
micro**ft usb infra red controler + remote
hauppage 150 mce capture card < the next thing i gota get working
4gb corsair 800 ram
42" lg lcd screen + 22" samsung lcd  (wish i could use dual screen   )
hacked starview cable box

[justdeb]

Hi All,

I found a solution that worked perfectly for me and might help you out. I read in a previous thread about people having issues along similar lines to what some of us are experiencing. Unfortunately i cannot find the link and hopefuly someone will find it again and post it on this thread. Anyhows - if you install a freah copy of kbuntu. Once that has finished go into the system settings, monitor and display, hardware. Once you get here select the administrator mode down the bottom of the screen and then select the hardware again and then choose the video card and click on configure. Leave the current select showing nv in the window - but down below it will show detected video cards. Click on the select button. Select the nvidia version and click ok. Click apply to change the settings. A message will say it has not been tested on this version - continue anyway and all will be good.

Then install linuxmce and all is good. It worked like a treat for me and i didn't get the clack screen.

Whilst it means a full reinstall and going through the exercise - it has saved me hours and hours of stuffing around trying to get it working any other way.

Hope this helps.

PS if anyone finds the link i am refering to please post it as the instructions are a little better.

[colinjones]

Before racing off and doing full reinstalls, it would be worthwhile checking KARIM1's and other's suggestions. It shouldn't be necessary to reinstall and configure from KDE to get this working. Check:

- Use 0710RC2 (the current release)
- If you are using a video card, ensure you disable any onboard video chipset, or at least set the card to be initialised first in BIOS
- Make sure you try both outputs if you have 2 on the card, and start each time with the display connected to the output as it will likely be probed during startup
- Use the 1-5 keys to select the correct output, and 6-0 keys the right resolution once you are sure you are in the AVWizard - and make sure that you wait at least 15 seconds from hitting the key before giving up on an output or resolution, it takes a while for it to cycle the X server and the screen to resync!
- Have a VGA display handy and connect it just so you can see what is going on if everything else is blank
- Use a remote terminal and connect, and read your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file for warnings and errors during startup, then reconfigure your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file appropriately.
- In particular ensure that the PCI bus IDs for your card are correctly selected (use lspci to confirm); that the nvidia driver is specified; confirm that modevalidation occurred and there are some valid modes in your mode pool that will work with your display and that one of them is being selected; and that the display is being detected and selected as the output
- Perhaps enable UseEDID
- Perhaps install the latest nvidia driver - 0710RC2 comes with 169.12 release at the beginning of the year, there is at least one newer version since then.

[Amathus]

Will try as suggested - BUT ... it appears to me that the ONLY NVIDIA chipset that works is the 6.xxx series - and even then you need to go back to a 6100 driver set - we proved this with a 6600 series. When I mean works, I am referring to Alpha Blending switched ON as well NO  Video degredation on playback in HD & SD modes.  I am fairly convinced that the issue lay in the NVIDIA drivers which means NVIDIA need to  get this nailed so we can stop hunting like scevengers for antiquated NVIDIA Graphics cards (6 series are all EOL Now), and hold our breath that any new / more recent cards such as the 8600  series will work WITH Alpha Blending.

If there is anyone who has 100% Video Quality in 1080p mode with Alpha Blending switched ON - I woukld REALLY love tio hear their story.

BTW, using the NVIDIA Linux driver blog is not an ideal solution - it breaks the OS and on a Live update you are screwed. Also, Alpha blending does NOT work with this blog from NVIDIA.

8600 GT works but with less than adequate Video playback and  when Alpha blending is switched on there is significant tearing and blurring in high motion sequences of a movie or Live TV.

I have a $120 set top box that successfully gives m Alpha Blending with great Video quality - how can Linux MCE be so fickle? Or is it???

I put it down to NVIDIA -  FYI Mr. NVIDIA (IF you are listening) ... There is more to life than Microsoft  Millions will turn to Linux in this arena - why hold back?

[colinjones]

.... seems strange to me that people like Totallymaxed of Convergent (a prefessional integrator and developer of LMCE) have tried a huge variety of different nVidia chipsets (6xxx, 7xxx at least) with a variety of different setups but have consistently reported that Alpha blending never works without at least a small amount of tearing and thus they have opted not to use that UI for their packages.

I myself have tried 7050PV and 7300GT chipset with many different permutations of drivers, xorg options, nvidia-settings options, refesh rates and resolutions. Even though the latter card is generally 4+ times faster than the former chipset, there is essentially no difference in the tearing I experience.

In recent tests I have run, I haven't noticed a change in performance between these chipsets. But I have noticed this "Z" shaped tearing pattern in Alpha mode. I cannot explain that, but either way it is not obviously a performance artifact - I can only assume there is an enduring bug in the driver, or the UI is using OpenGL in some incorrect way. The fact that it is clearly apparent even when there is no UI on screen, itself is strange - but then I don't know the internals on how the UI is coded.

Col.

[Amathus]

Seems there are conflicting experiences re the 8600GT / NVIDIA drivers - colinjones is on par with me and rodercot has it working.

Question to rodercot - by installing the NVIDIA Linux driver blog are you not then breaking the OS? So if any Live updates the system will be 'kaput'.

Also, I understand you have run it in 1080p with Alpha on without any any degredation in Video playback. This is weird 'coz with a similar config and the NVIDIA blog drivers the 8600GT gave worse results than the 6600GT running native 6100 drivers via a hack. 

We are using AMD quad core Phenom, 1066 RAM on ASUS Mobo M2NX - BTW ... We tried ASUS Mobo M2N-VM-HDMI but could not get the Seagate SATA Drives to be recognized other than generic IDE - any ideas on this issue would be highly appreciated. 

This NVIDIA thing has me stumped but will re-try as Dave / rodercot suggested.

Col - looks like we are in the same boat ... I spoke to a crowd who claimed to have this issue resolved as well.  Turns out they are using 6100 cards - and the MSI Live box - which runs 6100 chipsets anyhow ... surprise suprise.

[colinjones]

Would be very interested to know.... I don't see how it can be, but then again I can't explain the weird z shaped tearing either. Strange variations in timing for screens? Problems in how the vsync event is communicated? hpet? UseEvents? VBlank?

[SlipStreamElectronics]

****WORKING INSTALATION****

 

System One


Motherboard: Winfast 6100k8ma "nForce 4"
Cpu: AMD FX-55
Ram: Kingston Hyper-X DDR400 2X512mb
Gpu: MSI NX8600GTS Diamond Plus
Hdd: WD Raptor 36Gb
FULL ALPHA BLENDING

System Two

Motherboard: Asus P5N-MX "GeForce 7050 & nForce 610i"
Cpu: Core 2 Duo Processor E4700
Ram: Kingston Hyper-X DDR800 2x1024mb
Gpu: MSI NX8600GTS Diamond Plus
Hdd: WD Raptor 36Gb
FULL ALPHA BLENDING

I installed MCE probably 7 times trying to get different things to work and it turned out to be very simple, the post above about using 1-5 to switch input was the fix for this setup, this card uses both dvi and hdmi, started the installation on the dvi port and when done i moved it to my tv on hdmi.

THANKYOU COLINJONES!!!!