shadows that jump around

in alot of games that i play the shadows in the game pop-up and then disapear all the time as well as other things like decals start to disapear then appear. i have a gf 7950 gx2 in my pc and a amd dual core cpu. i dont know if its the hardware causing the problem or if its a driver i need to install. if its the driver can someone tell me where to get the best driver and which is the latest for my card.
Its so dam irritating, please help

Should be moved to our tech forum...

This may be result of many things. I would start with making sure that you have latest drivers. Then I would go on with eliminating overheating probability (open your case and put it somewhere with good air circulation and try if the problem dissapear).

Then you can go on with switching to another GPU (if you have access to any) thus seeing if your GPU is the problem and so on...

Then you can do the same with RAM sticks (if you have two, unplug one and then the other, if you have one, get one from your friend...)

To just find your graphics card driver, you can google the manufacturer and find the update site if there isn't an auto-update feature.

Get the latest driver from the nVidia site. Also make sure you have the latest version of AMD´s DualCore tools. Configure the CPU to use only one core with the game, to take one possible incompatibility out of the equation.

That sounds like something is not in sync. Since the 7950GX2 is effectively a card with on-board SLI, you should definitely get the latest reference driver straight from nVidia (www.nvidia.com) and not the driver of the manufacturer of your card (the manufacturer's driver is most of the time based on an older version of nVidia ref drivers). Then experiment with different SLI modes (AFR vs SFR etc). You might also want to get CoolBits . CoolBits will unlock even more (hidden) driver features. You should focus on any SLI options that you can find and see if anything makes your problem go away. If, however, the 7950GX2 doesn't even have or offer any SLI tweaks via the driver but if it is completely treated like a single card despite the two GPUs then please feel free to ignore everything I said and call me a dumbass .

Moriendor are you saying that nVidia is not the manufacturer of nVidia cards? I wasn't trying to dish out misinformation, and I wasn't sure about the description of the card given--not a tech wizard, obviously But I always assumed if you had an nVidia card, they would be the manufacturer. I'm lost!

NVidia and ATI manufacture the chips (called a GPU, like the CPU in your PC). They sell the chips and a recommended board layout to graphics card manufacturers. Most follow the so called "reference design". That´s why most boards using the same chip look very similar. They can choose to improve the layout though.

Gorath said:

NVidia and ATI manufacture the chips (called a GPU, like the CPU in your PC). They sell the chips and a recommended board layout to graphics card manufacturers. Most follow the so called "reference design". That´s why most boards using the same chip look very similar. They can choose to improve the layout though.

Click to expand...

Exactly . Asus, MSI, PNY, Gainward, whoever, just build cards based on nVidia's reference design (or slight deviations thereof). Those companies also issue drivers for their cards (most of the time official nVidia ForceWare with the card manufacturer's custom logo as the only "change" but some of the companies modify the driver as well). Those drivers are frequently outdated. That's why you should always just grab the latest official ForceWare from nVidia's site when getting a new gfx card. The only software worth installing out of the box is if the company included DVD software or games. The driver is not needed.

BTW, if one were to be totally accurate then even the statement that nVidia and ATI are producing the chips (GPUs) is wrong. They develop the designs and the tech, of course, but both companies don't have their own fabs for mass production so they hire -mostly Taiwan-based- semiconductor specialist firms (like TSMC) who produce the actual silicon. Same goes for the card manufacturers (Asus, MSI et al). Only very few of them have their own assembly lines. Most of the time the production of the cards is contract work that is outsourced to the Taiwanese semiconductor industry.
Same with mainboards and RAM by the way. Boards, graphics cards and RAM from all different sorts of companies very often come out of the same fab in Taiwan.

Well I knew that most of my pc had probably been made by talented orientals, but I had no idea how much! Globalization strikes again...thanks for enlightening me