I can't use any 71+ driver with my BFG 6800GT!

[Numan]

-Windows XP (dual booting XP64 atm but that is it's own monster for another time)
- DFI Lanparty nf3 250GB
- 1 gig DDR400 Ram
- Antec case with 350 PSU
- SB Audigy 2

I currently have nforce 5.10 drivers alongside 61.77 vid drivers - the only set I can use that works for me. What happens is when I use, say 71.89, my games (WoW and Guild Wars are currently installed) will start to freeze up after a minute for a couple of seconds, and then repeat this every 10 seconds or so.

I have done some searching on this and ran into a bunch of 6800U threads how people turned off fast writes or matched their 2D/3D speeds to fix everything, but that doesn't seem to be the case for me oddly.

 

[BoboKatt]

I don't get freezes actually with my BFG 6800GT but I get messed up graphics at times and also problems if I ALT Tab out of games like EQ or WOW. I had to switch back to the same drivers you use. Have yet to upgrade to newer drivers so not sure what gives on that. I have the fast writes on... so far no isses or no diff... refresh rates do nothing so I kinda gave up.

 

[Numan]

Hrm that was a late post. An interesting point is that since I'm dual booting with XP64, and that the XP64 driver is based off 71.89, the same problems are showing. Something happened in the transition to 60->70 drivers that makes it unstable. The only thing I know of was the addition of SLI. All I can say with normal XP yesterday, I tried turning fast writes off, sidebanding, increasing the vid mem to 512 (off a thread here on AnandTech none the less), grabbing Rivatuner to set the D3D Blit settings to on, using the "Compatible with" checkbox in Rivatuner...no dice. Everything still freezes up and repeats doing so every ten seconds. I'm running out of ideas other then the Nvidia 6800GT is not compatible with the nforce 3 chipset, something you figured it would be. I'm half tempted to go grab a Via board although I'm a cheap bastard and would rather not pay $100+tax just yet.