ATI sun glare issues

[Sledgehammer427]

now, i know for a fact that ATI cards have no sun glare, and people have gone into extensive detail over this, but i cannot find it, so can somebody please let me know if there are any fixes?

[DrBeast]

This post (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=794176&postcount=3344) might help. A word of warning, however: you might suffer an FPS hit, depending on your machine's specs. I know I can't use it on my old rig, cause it plummets my FPS from low 20s to low 10s.

[mikehcl]

now, i know for a fact that ATI cards have no sun glare, and people have gone into extensive detail over this, but i cannot find it, so can somebody please let me know if there are any fixes?

Hi, ati it does not have fixed this problem with the new catalyst 8.3???

[DrBeast]

As far as I know, no ATi drivers will fix that problem. Then again, I haven't checked for new drivers for a while. I'm quite happy with the Omega 7.12 drivers I'm using, and the new ATi I'll be getting this week (hopefully!) does show sun glare (a HD3650, in case you wonder) :yep:

[Sledgehammer427]

im running ATI X1650, if i remember correctly

[kapitan_zur_see]

Great, it seems it works. I got the sun glare too. However, it seems this feature mess up with the reflections ingame. I got some artifacts following my sub path etc.
You earn something, you lose one lol
I suspect forcing z test on old ati card is messing up with something used to generate the reflections. Would make sense why they never corrected it in a patch.

Could someone confirm he has this issue too?? i'm using an x800 pro.
Not that big of FPS dropped though, if any.

[gimpy117]

what do ya think, 2600xt (512mb supercolck) can it handle it??

[kapitan_zur_see]

what do ya think, 2600xt (512mb supercolck) can it handle it??
Oh my god... another disguised "look at my great specs" post again... lol you just can't avoid them in a thread dealing with gfx cards i suppose... :rotfl:

If you had read carefully my last post (and i'm sure you had *sick* lol). I told people i had few FPS drop down so far, if any with a x800 pro 256mb. So why are you asking if a 2600xt 512 mb OVERclocked would suffer some, or won't run it???? :doh:

It's like someone saying, "i got an old ford car, i might reach this place in about 2 hours". And you asking, "i got a Ferrari (well, a 2600 wouldn't really be one but just so you get the idea), do you think i might too, driving at full speed??, i'm not sure i will as quick as you"

lol that's just an irrelevant question :p eheh
And just why you don't try for yourself in the first place???? why asking first?? are you honestly fringhtened your gfx card is going to explode or something?!? :roll: turn into an alien maybe?

[gimpy117]

what do ya think, 2600xt (512mb supercolck) can it handle it??
Oh my god... another disguised "look at my great specs" post again... lol you just can't avoid them in a thread dealing with gfx cards i suppose... :rotfl:

If you had read carefully my last post (and i'm sure you had *sick* lol). I told people i had few FPS drop down so far, if any with a x800 pro 256mb. So why are you asking if a 2600xt 512 mb OVERclocked would suffer some, or won't run it???? :doh:

It's like someone saying, "i got an old ford car, i might reach this place in about 2 hours". And you asking, "i got a Ferrari (well, a 2600 wouldn't really be one but just so you get the idea), do you think i might too, driving at full speed??, i'm not sure i will as quick as you"

lol that's just an irrelevant question :p eheh
And just why you don't try for yourself in the first place???? why asking first?? are you honestly fringhtened it's going to explode or something?!? :roll:

no that's not a really good card...lol i cant even AA without my frames goibng in the pooper....

[DrBeast]

A list of pros and cons that I found using that application, here (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=794989&postcount=3360). Mostly cons, as you can see :p
Specs (how many times have I written those!):

Intel P4 Northwood @2.4GHz, o/ced to 2.6GHz
1280MB DDR RAM
Dying four-year-old MSI motherboard
ATi X1650Pro 256MB DDR3 w. Omega 7.12 drivers
Computer case with numerous dents from kicking it in frustration.

[kapitan_zur_see]

no that's not a really good card...lol i cant even AA without my frames goibng in the pooper....

Really?? pretty strange. Is the x800 not that old after all lol?!? she was an outstanding card but back then. It's been "many" years since it was released... Anyway, on surface with sub only and the sea, i get around 16-21 FPS with AAx2. What do you get using this? underwater is a bit slower as the impurities ar also antialiased though it's of no real use, hence degradating FPS to an around 12-16.
What catalyst version are you using? are you using Pacific environment or ROW? cause if so, i might have a small tweak for you.

As for GPUperf, dunno, i didn't lost lots of FPS, at least with just the sub and the sea, but clearly it messes up the reflections.
I believe we have to keep in mind it's more of a debugging tool than anything. That's why it messes things/drops fPS etc. Clearly for testing purposes. Now if they could like find a way to force that z test on proper drivers, maybe would solved the problem.

[gimpy117]

yeah....with no AA may card gets nearly 60fps on the surface with everythign on...but OH NO!!! turn on AA and it KILLS IT! I'm told it can't AA very well....and man is that right...

[swdw]

what do ya think, 2600xt (512mb supercolck) can it handle it??

The 2600 shows the glare with no hacks / workarounds. All ATi HD series cards do so. It's the older series that need a workaround.

[kapitan_zur_see]

yeah....with no AA may card gets nearly 60fps on the surface with everythign on...but OH NO!!! turn on AA and it KILLS IT! I'm told it can't AA very well....and man is that right...

wow, that's strange!
I mean,ok, AA is pretty hungry in terms of processing power. But it's suprising how much it kills FPS on your card!!
Clearly i lose something like only 2 or 3 FPS using AAx2. 3 to 4 with a max of sometimes 5 using AAx4 on SH4.
Is it specific to that series of your card??? have you done some searching on this with google?

[DrBeast]

yeah....with no AA may card gets nearly 60fps on the surface with everythign on...but OH NO!!! turn on AA and it KILLS IT! I'm told it can't AA very well....and man is that right...
wow, that's strange!
I mean,ok, AA is pretty hungry in terms of processing power. But it's suprising how much it kills FPS on your card!!
Clearly i lose something like only 2 or 3 FPS using AAx2. 3 to 4 with a max of sometimes 5 using AAx4 on SH4.
Is it specific to that series of your card??? have you done some searching on this with google?

I think it's because of the limited bandwidth of that series of cards. If memory serves, it's only 64-bit. So, since it has to pass along the rendering information twice (on 2xAA), the limited bandwidth effectively becomes the bottleneck.

[gimpy117]

wow wish i would have known that before i bought it....

heck, it kills geomerty and the like
lights ok
but is crap for AA....
oh well

I thinking about Crossfire some time soon, could a but a card better at AA and have that AA while my other one sticks to other stuff like lighting (kinnda like a 60/40 picture with the 40% Running the AA)? or should i buy another one for $130?

[swdw]

Gimpy, when you go to the CCC, try changing your mipmap level and take anistropic filtering to 2x.
AF is a bigger framerate killer than AA, and a High AF coupled with AA will really kill your framerate.

Start at an AA of 4x and AF of 2x with Mipmap detail set in the middle. Turn off Adaptive AA, Catalyst AI, and Temporal AA. Try turning them on one at a time and check your framerates. ATi claims better framerates with temporal AA on, but I haven't seen any difference. All of the other settings eat up your GPU overhead, so try them one at a time.

You may find you'll leave all the special settings off and get what you want with just the basic AA, AF, and mipmap settings.

[gimpy117]

alright i think it's set at 4x
I'm away from there at the moment but I'll do it next week...

i thought the A.I helped the frames???
and Adaptive AA was supposed to help as well....
You know more than me though lol....
must be some kind of mishap when you enable them all fully or somthing

[swdw]

Nope, temporal anti ailiasing is supposed to improve performance, Adaptive antialiasing or (AAA) gives bettter image quality, but at a perfomance hit.

Catalyst A.I. according to ATi, increases performance with "Certain" games and applications. On others it does nothing for you. This has to be tried on a case by case basis.

That's why I suggest turning all the special stuff off first, setting anti-aliasing to 4x, anistropic filtering to 2x and mipmap detail to medium. Get a base line frame rate here.

Then turn on the special features one at a time. If you get an increase keep it. If you take a hit, turn it off. Once you have the special settings turned on that help with frame rates for your particular setup, then go back and play with AA, AF, and mipmap levels.

Fine tuning for balanced performance can take a little while. But once you've gone through this you never have to wonder how to get the best balance of performance and image quality because you know you're already there.

[kapitan_zur_see]

Oh by the way, that GPU Perfstudio, i can't make it to work again...
Don't know what i've done exactly last time for sure. CTD right after intro video all the times

[DrBeast]

Oh by the way, that GPU Perfstudio, i can't make it to work again...
Don't know what i've done exactly last time for sure. CTD right after intro video all the times

Rename the intro videos. Add .bak, for example, after the .wmv extension. This way the game will skip them and you won't get any CTDs (that's how I got it to work).

[gimpy117]

hey guys!! git it to work....

did what you said and instead of 49-50 i get 35-45 or so
It still gets killed underwater...is there a fix for this

[kapitan_zur_see]

hey guys!! git it to work....

did what you said and instead of 49-50 i get 35-45 or so
It still gets killed underwater...is there a fix for this
This is a common issue for lower rigs like ours while using ROW/Pacific environment. I got the same and found out it was due to impurities and light shafts textures having been reworked using a res of 512x512 instead of stock 256x256. The many repeats of this textures kills the framerates, especially with AA on.
I resized them to 256x256 in a small optimization mod.

Try this mate and please tell me if it works better:
http://www.4shared.com/file/40193171/38cd5ed3/ROW_Optimized_for_lower_rigs.html

Install on top of ROW/PE using JSGME

[gimpy117]

hmmm yeah i was wondering bout that....
it had to be somthing underwater but i would have never guessed the ligh shafts ( I would of pinned it on the impurities)

but, im on stock.... not the eniroment, but i'll try it and see if it hurts my frames, and if not, hell I'll defenately keep it...