New Omega Drivers, Animated water no perf hit

[MOSQ]

Yesterday I updated to the latest Omega ATI drivers. (They just came out 12-3).

They work great, and the biggest improvement is I can run animated water in AHII with nil frame rate effect. I have all graphic detail and range settings at max.

[Sandog]

Agreed-Tested it last night and no framerate hit.
Animated water is looking a lot better-still not quiet right. think I will still leave it off for now.

[bustr]

I installed them last night.

My desktop FP is 120Hz. My game FP is 120max - 59min. But with and interesting issue. I set aniostropic filtering to 16x max from application aware. Now I occasionally get FP spikes up to 220-260. But most of the time it holds 120-59.

Will those spikes cause me any game issues?

[MOSQ]

Ansiotropic filtering is useless in AHII. That comes from Skuzzy. It causes nothing but problems, particularly in the text box and icon fonts.

You must not have V-Sync on or you wouldn't get those frame rates. There have been reports of rubber bullets if you shoot without V-Sync on.

What it comes down to is frame rates faster than your monitor's refresh rate are meaningless.

My monitor's refresh rate is 85HZ, but I run AHII with the 60 fps max box checked. Personally I can't see any difference once the frame rate gets over 35.

From all the posts I've seen, including several from Skuzzy, it is highly reccommended you have V-Sync ON.

[214thCavalier]

Well in the past i would have agreed with Skuzzy re the fonts etc with AF on Radeons.
However i started using AF with my radeons probably a year ago and the quality is now MUCH better with it on.
Text buffer and Icon text is pin sharp, a long time ago it used to be horrible but not anymore for me.
And that applies to my old 9800 Pro and my new X800.

[bustr]

My desktop is 1024x768@120Hz with no problems. By the way my card is an ATI 9700 Pro 128.

My game before I installed the new Omega drives, FP was 59-120 depending on the environment and location in the game. What is another name for VSync, the Radlinker panel from Omega does not have Vsync designated. It uses nomiclature like "Ansiotropic filtering". The selctions are "Application Aware" or you can set it to a factor like 4x or 16x for always on.

[bustr]

MOSQ,

Sorry found my answer. Ignor my last post. But thank you for your observation. I changed the wrong setting in the Radlinker application for my ATI card. I should have gone to the web site for the app and RTFM'd.

[Rooster]

Cavalier I have a question for you if you dont mind.
Going from a 9800pro to X800(flavor?) did you honestly see a boost in quality/performance that would warrant a reccomendation to go for it now, or wait for the 850 or later cards?

[Shane]

i've tried about 3 times, with d/l's from 3 diff sites... i keep keeping an engine initialization failure: rpc server could nto be located.... then it goes on to state install was successful, but my system doesn't seem to recognize the new drivers....  even did a totla uninstall and reinstall, same message...

shrug... must be something on omega's end with that rpc server.

[Octavius]

Sweet.   At higher altitudes the frame rate drops a bunch.  Certainly an improvement though  It's definitely flyable.

[Kev367th]

Rooster - Dunno bout a x800, but I went from a 9800PRO to a 6800GT and it is vastly superior in quality and sharpness and speed.
Was thinking of an x800, 3 things put me off it -
1) Same cost as 6800GT
2) 6800GT has 4 extra pipes. x800 has 12, GT6800 has 16.
3) The one I got (BFG) is already overclocked by the manufacturer and has a lifetime guarentee.

Caveat - the x800 can have the extra 4 pipes unlocked to make it equal to the 6800GT but in doing so you invalidate your warranty. Once the pipes have been unlocked (BIOS flash) they can't be closed again.

Unless you are planning to unlock the pipes and overclock the x800, the 6800GT is a better deal.

[Crispy]

Shane, The RPC error you are getting is a problem with your machine.  You need to go to "services" and make sure the 2 RPC services are started plus there are 1 or 2 more that need to be going but i for the life of me can't remember wich ones.  I had the same problem but got it fixed.

Crispy

[214thCavalier]

Rooster.

Re 9800 pro to X800 in AH.

Unfortunately i cannot do a direct comparison, but i will say if you are only playing AH dont bother.

My upgrade was changing from a P4 at 3.2g with a 9800 pro to an AMD A64 3500 with an X800 pro (modded to 16 pipes and X800xt speeds.)

From changing to the A64 3500 and keeping the 9800 pro in AH fps gained about 12 fps, tested while sitting in plane on runway at large field.

When i put the X800 in there was no noticeable gain. I am not alone many others have reported the same that basically for AH you need cpu power more than video power.
Assuming you have a decent vid card which the 9800 is the main gain was the extra memory to load textures into etc.

However for other games the X800 is a major fps boost ie IL2 series.

Kev the X800 pipes can be closed again if you wish.

[Kev367th]

214thCav - When I was looking at the x800 all the threads said flashing back to the original BIOS only restores the clockspeeds but leaves the pipes open. I for one was not willing to go flashing a brand new x800, thats why I opted for the BFG 6800GT.
Plus if I want to go playing with overclocking further than the already overclocked settings from BFG, these will go up to 6800 Ultra speeds.

The gist was unless you are willing to play with BIOS flashes and overclocking, a 6800GT made by BFG is a better investment given that the cost is identical to a x800.

I have noticed a big difference with my 6800GT than my 9800PRO.
Getting double the frame rates even with AA and AF on. Textures look crisper and the game plays more smoothly.
Maybe as has been suggested elsewhere AH2 seems to favour nVidia based cards for some reason.
Of course this could be because ATI drivers have enhancements for specific games and AH2 is obviously not on the list. Yes I know nVidia does the same so it leads to one conclusion.
On games where game specific enhancements are not available nVidia tends to do better, at least in AH2s case anyway.

[Shane]

Originally posted by Crispy
Shane, The RPC error you are getting is a problem with your machine.  You need to go to "services" and make sure the 2 RPC services are started plus there are 1 or 2 more that need to be going but i for the life of me can't remember wich ones.  I had the same problem but got it fixed.

Crispy

i did that to no effect initially, but just now i went thru the services and re-enabled so much junk i dunno which the necessary ones were that allowed it to finally install.   thx.

now to go back and re-disable all that junk...