NVidia OpenGL issue - Help found!

I see some of you here have NVidia OpenGL problems similar to mine, as do some folks at the NVidia forum, and that neither place seems to have found any definitive resolution to it.

I recently bought an NOS (new old stock) Asus GeForce 7600GS AGP 256MB video card and a NOS BFG GeForce 7300GT AGP 512MB video card for use in two different computers to do Sketchup 7 and Kerkythea 2.0 rendering. Both cards have given me absolute FITS as to the correct exporting of SKU textures - many arrive in my Kerkythea window

"broken" or twisted; others don't export at all. The "victims" are all photos NOT matched but applied as a texture. All of them in the model in question ALWAYS worked great on my GeForce FX5200 256MB video card. I replaced it only because it seemed it was slowing down, colors were going funky, and the fan was beginning to growl despite a drop of 3-in-1 sewing machine oil down the shaft.

I did my homework before purchasing these new cards; I know they're supposed to have OpenGL 2.1. Yet SKU reports my OpenGL version is 1.1 on both cards. The NVidia driver for both of these cards is the latest available - v 181.22.

Last night, I rolled back my driver to v 175.19 (what ran my FX5200) and NOW I'm able to get SKU to export all my textures and materials correctly. I do, however, have a problem with it running a bit choppy where it was very smooth before these new cards. One machine is a Dimension 4600i P4 2.8 GHZ w/2.5 gigs PC3200 dual channel ram; the other is an Abit NF7 AMD 64-bit 2.2GHz w/2 gigs PC3200 dual channel ram.

I emailed this problem to BFG last night because there is nowhere on the NVidia site to contact any such thing as an NVidia tech support grunt. Today, BFG emailed me that they will "escalate" this issue to NVidia.

IF I get notice of a fix, I will certainly post it here. Meantime, we should check the NVidia site occasionally from here on out to see if they post a new driver that fixes this problem.

Okay, I figured it out for myself.

Open the Nvidia Control Panel

Find where you can "Manage 3D Settings"

Click the Program Settings tab –

Click ADD

Browse to sketchup.exe to add it here.

With sketchup.exe highlighted, move down to the

“Specify settings for sketchup” window

Wherever you have the option for “hardware acceleration”, select that.

If you know what you're doing, you can adjust plenty more settings in

here. Otherwise, you should probably leave all the others at their

default.

Click APPLY and close the Nvidia Control Panel.

_______________

Open Sketchup.

Click Window in the top menu bar

Select Preferences

Click on OpenGL

Click to put a checkmark in the “Use Hardware Acceleration” box.

Click “Details”.

The next window should now report—

Vendor Nvidia Corporation

Renderer (your Nvidia card model)

GL (the version number) (anything above a GeForce

MX400 card should report OpenGL 2.0 or higher)

GLU Version (# by Microsoft)

Pixel Format (long string of numbers)

Lacycole,

I'm using the default settings that nVidia set up expressly for SketchUp, in their "Partner Certified Drivers" program. They've only done this for a couple of their drivers, but if these settings are available in your nVidia control panel, you should have satisfactory results as well.

I listed the settings in this discussion, from last year...

http://groups.google.com/group/sketchupissues/browse_thread/thread/bba07f59e6d70aba

...should you want to experiment with any of your other nVidia settings.

Regards,

Taff

______________________________

SketchUp Pro / Version 6.4.112

Windows XP Pro / SP3

DELL Precision M90 / 2 GB RAM

nVidia Quadro FX 1500M / 256 MB

nVidia driver: Forceware 169.96

Dude!,

I just wanna say THANK YOU, THANK YOU THANK YOU! For some reason, I haven't looked at any of those nVidia settings since I first got the card I had forgotten all about them. Now Sketchup works like a charm. I am very grateful to you.

Sincerely,

Eddie

babygenius55,

Great news! To keep folks from having to jump to the above-quoted thread, here's the nVidia control panel settings again: