help with 3d settings?

[Udi Hrant]

I'm new to SH4 but a veteran Uboat commander with SH3 back in the day.

After installing SH4 with latest patch and Uboat missions I get terrible looking graphics and jerky frame rates. I'm hoping (and praying) that it's my settings and not the game or my system at fault. if someone could give me advice especialy on their 3D settings I would appreciate it.

I really want to sneak into some Japanese harbors and don't want to just give up on SH4.

Thanks.

Pentium 4 - 3Ghz gateway
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Graphics
Name RADEON 9800 PRO
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4E48&SUBSYS_00021002&REV_00\4&1A9 9067F&0&0008
Adapter Type RADEON 9800 PRO AGP (0x4E48), ATI Technologies Inc. compatible
Adapter Description RADEON 9800 PRO
Adapter RAM 128.00 MB (134,217,728 bytes)
Installed Drivers ati2dvag.dll

DirectX 9.0C
Sound
Name Creative SB Audigy LS

[DeepIron]

Like to help ya 'bro but I can't read your black on dark gray text...:hmm:

[DavyJonesFootlocker]

Ha ha! Whatta a crazy Swabbie! I was planning to use a UV light to read his post. Just what we need another Swabbie with colour coordination problems.:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

[Udi Hrant]

I'm new to SH4 but a veteran Uboat commander with SH3 back in the day.

After installing SH4 with latest patch and Uboat missions I get terrible looking graphics and jerky frame rates. I'm hoping (and praying) that it's my settings and not the game or my system at fault. if someone could give me advice especialy on their 3D settings I would appreciate it.

I really want to sneak into some Japanese harbors and don't want to just give up on SH4.

Thanks.

Pentium 4 - 3Ghz gateway
OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Total Physical Memory 1,024.00 MB
Graphics
Name RADEON 9800 PRO
PNP Device ID PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4E48&SUBSYS_00021002&REV_00\4&1A9 9067F&0&0008
Adapter Type RADEON 9800 PRO AGP (0x4E48), ATI Technologies Inc. compatible
Adapter Description RADEON 9800 PRO
Adapter RAM 128.00 MB (134,217,728 bytes)
Installed Drivers ati2dvag.dll

DirectX 9.0C
Sound
Name Creative SB Audigy LS

[Soundman]

Another gig of ram would go along way. You really need at least 2 gigs to run. Once done you could probably run the graphics sliders all the way up without a problem.

[DeepIron]

Ok, a few questions to see what we can do...
What screen resolution are you playing at?
What are the settings your using in the games OPTIONS -> Graphics menu?

I'm assuming you have the "latest and greatest" video drivers from ATI installed?
Do also have the ATI control panel installed so you can tweak your card settings?

I use an nVidia 7600GS 256M card so while I can't guarantee results, some of the settings can be used for both cards.

[Fincuan]

In addition to ram I'd say Radeon 9800 Pro and P4 3.0 ghz are your problem. They're both in the "low end" for SH4. By doing all the tips and tricks you might get a somewhat playable experience, but don't expect to be able to max all the sliders or use AA or AF.

[Udi Hrant]

I DO have the ATI control panel installed and in fact set the Antiallaising to '2' since my sub looked crappy without it. I'll go home and check but I set the resolution pretty damn low to try and get rid of the choppy screen lag.

When I first loaded it up with NO tweeks and before I loaded Uboat missions - the graphics just looked more primative then SH3 - in particular the deck of my sub looked broken up where there was a fine steel mesh and the water spitting out of the sides of my sub looked like a game from the 80's - same with other ship wakes.

Will appreciate any setting suggestions or system tweeks. (I had always though that a gig of ram would handle anything but I understand that time flies and technology keeps on selling me new things!)

Thanks guys.

[DeepIron]

Here are the settings I use as configured by the nVidia control panel that have made the most difference in my frame rates. Please note, I also have Kriller2's Pacific Enviroment 2 mod installed which really helps with some of the cheesy particle effects your seeing...

Anistropic filtering - 2x
Antialiasing - Tranparancy - Supersampling
Force Bitmaps - Bilinear
Triple Buffering - On

As far as the in-game graphics options, the best thing I can suggest is to experiment with them until you can strike a balance. I'm getting acceptable frame rates (40-45 fps) with my 7600GS 256M card, XP SP2, 1G RAM and AMD 3000+ CPU at 2.01Ghz so I KNOW you should do better with your setup!

[M. Sarsfield]

DeepIron, that's an interesting setup. Per hcwolf9's recommendation I have Force Mipmaps off and I think Triple Buffering is off, too. I'll have to try those settings and see what gives. I recently reinstalled the game as well as the graphics drivers (two 7600 GT cards) and got rid of nHancer. Tonight will be the first time that I try 1.5 as a fresh install.

[DeepIron]

Originally Posted by M. Sarsfield

DeepIron, that's an interesting setup. Per hcwolf9's recommendation I have Force Mipmaps off and I think Triple Buffering is off, too. I'll have to try those settings and see what gives. I recently reinstalled the game as well as the graphics drivers (two 7600 GT cards) and got rid of nHancer. Tonight will be the first time that I try 1.5 as a fresh install.

Yeah, give it a shot and see what you think M.S... I tried nHancer as well and discarded it 'cause, well, I didn't care for it too much and the nVidia control panel seems to work just fine. I created a game profile from scratch just for tweaking sh4... I'm running ForceWare 169.21...
[EDIT]Just upgraded to 174.82... stay tuned for more...

I found this guide to be really, really helpful too: http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_1.html

Good luck and let me know how you get on with your tests!

[M. Sarsfield]

DeepIron,

After playing with the nVidia settings, the best frame rate that I can get in 1.5 vanilla is about 39 fps, if I let the view forward on the bridge "settle out" for a few seconds - i.e. don't move the view. My resolution is set at 1440x900 and I let the application control the AA and AF settings in the control panel. In game, I have everything turned on in the graphics menu, excpet for PPF and v-Sync. Most sliders are mid-range.

I figured out that SLI mode was causing the frame rate to be around 25 fps on the bridge. Turning it off gave me a 15 fps boost. This is unfortunate, since I bought the second card hoping that it would improve the game's performance. I'm guessing that SHIV doesn't like SLI very much - at least not the EVGA 7600 GT duo. I've tried just about every SLI option in the interface with no difference in performance.

I'm going to upgrade to the latest nVidia driver and see if anything else improves. I'm impressed that you're getting 40 -45 fps. I assume that this is in external view. My internal view peaks in the 70's, if I look up at the ceiling, and around the 50's, if I look around the room.

---------------------
UPDATE:

I downloaded the latest nVidia Beta driver and I was immediately impressed with the improvements that they made to the control panel. I like the fact that they have recommended settings based on your hardware setup - I made a few changes, though. Without SLI mode in 1.5 vanilla I was getting about 41 to 42 fps on the bridge - looking forward for all tests. I switched to SLI mode and dropped to 33, but after some more tweaking got it back up to 40 fps. I then installed RSRDC, it's patch, and PE2 without any other mods or PE options. I noticed a small boost in fps, so I tweaked nVidia a little more for quality and still managed about 39 - 40 fps.

The newest nVidia driver seems to like SLI mode a lot better than the previous versions, but the other features are an even bigger bonus. I highly recommend downloading it, even if your using a single video card. Two thumbs up to the nVidia dev team.

I should also mention that I removed nTuner from my system. I think that it was causing some performance issues after I installed a second video card.

[Soundman]

I'm running a P4 3.2 Gz - 2 gigs ram - Nvidia 8600gt and it runs with everything maxed out with no prob. Average around 30 to 35 FPS in 3d screen. 60 in nav map. Television or Film (I have forgotten which) runs at 30 FPS. The human brain can't really process any faster than around 25 or so. Most of us can't see a studder effect until the rate drops below around 20. Therefore anything higher than 30 is pretty much a waste. Good for bragging rights though!

[DeepIron]

My resolution is set at 1440x900

Ah, I noticed I didn't mention it before... I use the 1024 settings... Higher than that and I get headaches... Astigmatism all my life...

BTW, what is your monitor refresh rate? Windows will automaticaly try and set 60Hz... I have dual 21" Westinghouse units and run at 70Hz... makes a big difference...

I found I gain a fps or two using the 174.xx driver as well. As for the SLI issues, I'm not sure the 76xx series is really that SLI compliant... I think one needs to get to the 88xx series to see a real difference.

Did you check out the tweak guide link? Something to check in your BIOS is the AGP apeture size and AGP speed. Mine are 128M and 8x respectively.

Right, my 40-45fps is external.

Currently I'm looking at the shader code support in SH4 and seeing if I can optimize that pipeline a bit. I'm not real sure the shader code is as good as it can be but with any luck, I might be able to squeeze out a few more fps...

I'm glad to hear your having success!

[M. Sarsfield]

I did read through some of the tweak link information. It was a lot to digest.

I will double check the settings in BIOS, but I'm pretty sure that I set the memory size to 256MB. My cards are PCI-e 16x, btw.

You're probably right that the 7600 doesn't see much improvement in SLI mode, but nVidia does seem to be making strides in driver performance. It sounds like it's as much of a software issue as it is a hardware issue.

When I installed the beta driver, it automatically set up my windows refresh rate at 59 Hz, instead of 60 Hz (the only two choices that I'm given for my 19" wide screen monitor at 1400 x 900). I'm sure that I'd get a performance boost at 1024x768. When I reinstalled the game, it had that as the default resolution and I noticed that the background movies were moving very quickly. I debated leaving it at default or trying something between default and 1440x900, but you get some distorted shapes with a wide screen monitor at oddball settings.

One nice new feature of the beta driver is that you can tell the main CPU how many frames to pre-render before it sends them to the GPU(s). I was playing with the settings and I did see the fps make some improvements.

Let us know what improvements you make with the shaders. They would probably have to be incorporated into the environmental mods.