GeForce FX5200 + 6.14.11.6921 driver = no joy

[malthaussen]

Recently my graphics started acting a bit strange, so I decided to upgrade my video driver.  That appears to have been a bad decision.

System stats:  

  Pentium 4 3.0 ghz; 1 gig ram
  Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 with the latest 6.14.11.6921 driver (dated 5 Dec 2007)
  Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS (not that it matters for this thread)
  Running under Windows XP Home SP2
  Sims installed:  TS2, Uni, NL, and less than 1 gig in the downloads folder.

With the old driver I was using (5.3.0.5), the graphics worked just fine, even with all the options set to the highest rating, including fade and distance.  The only thing I had to minimize was edge smoothing, or else the performance would degrade rapidly.  I reckon I'll be rolling back to that driver pretty soon.

With the new driver, I get the "blue screen of hesitation," which has been described elsewhere.  Blue screen pops up, hourglass flips, then screen goes back to more-or-less normal.  And that is not the only problem.

Initially, the graphics seemed crisper in some things, but textures for landscaping and background trees were amorphous blobs.  Complete loss of detail.  Then, as I started moving the screen around, the "blue screen" issue started.  After several repeats of that, suddenly all the textures were fine again... but performance had degraded massively.  It took several seconds to move the screen view just a little from side to side, animations were jerky, and in general it seemed like I was massively overloading the graphics card (which is what causes the "blue screen" to begin with, they tell me).  

So I'd recommend that users with the old FX5200 NOT upgrade the driver.  It's just too painful for words.

  -- Mal