Self Shadowing frame rates

[Vinkman]

I can run with literally everything maxxed out and don't ever notice it dropping off of the refresh rate.  I ended up turning the self shadowing off however, it just ended up being too distracting to me.  I found I was watching shadows play through my cockpit and not watching the bad guys too frequently.  When I run shadows I run them at the 4k level and haven't noticed any framerate difference at all from having them on or off.  I've got a Phenom2 quad core 3.2 with 4 gigs of ram and the MSI factory overclocked 5850, nothing in the game has handed it a problem yet.  I figure I've got about 2 more years before it's upgrade time again. 

I played around with my ATI card setting last night and found that I can run Object datail maxed, Ground detail set to 3 miles, with everything turned on including self shadows at 4096 (smooth shadow set to off) and get a pretty steady 59f/s in furball over an airfield. I followed the tips on the AH boards for Catalyst ATI settings, namely...
Turned off application settings,
set AA at 2x with a box filter (x2),
Turned Open GL tripple buffering off.

Also important to note, I followed Skuzzy tips about shutting down the various usless (to running AH) processes. That may have also been a factor as I did that first and played with the card second.



Looks great. Loved the way the canopy frames move around the IP and over the wing when maveuvering in the sun.  The strange part is that the smooth shadow option for the self shadows tends to blur and smear the shadows so much that the detail from each image being shadowed is almost completely lost. The shadows seemed clearer and more defined with smoothing turn off. I assume the smoothing was supposed to take the saw tooth out of the edge effects but it doesn't wok nearly as well as AA does on the object polys. The shadows look much better with it off and with a increased resolution, which was less of a frame hit than smoothing was.

I'll play around siome more today and see if I can eek more out.

[Vinkman]

Follow up:

I also leard that my new card from ATI has a very low out of the box clock speed setting. It turns out that the GPU setting was 157Ghz with a memory clock speed of 300Ghz. Under the ATI Overdrive Menu the clock speeds are adjustable. There is a self tester that runs a test that maxes out the GPU and checks for Tempratures to see if your installation runs cool enough to overclock the processor. Ran the test several times and it settled on new settings of 750Ghz GPU and 1000Ghz for Mem.

After that I turned up the resolution in the graphics setting of the game to 2048 [from1024], turned up self shadows to 8192, but left 'smooth shadows' off, upped the Anti-aliassing in Vd Card settings to 'wide tent'.

Running steady 60fps. It really looks beautiful. Love the shadows....really, really cool.  

[Krusty]

You get a card out of the box that slow and overclock on the order of 150-300% and you're going to fry the card. Period.

I wouldn't trust a "self test" especially on lower end cards. It's not smart enough to be comprehensive for all cards, it's only intended for the higher end cards that can actually take overclocking.

[Vinkman]

You get a card out of the box that slow and overclock on the order of 150-300% and you're going to fry the card. Period.

I wouldn't trust a "self test" especially on lower end cards. It's not smart enough to be comprehensive for all cards, it's only intended for the higher end cards that can actually take overclocking.

Card is an ATI 5970. After two ours of playing the temp was a cool 71 deg C. It specifies the higher clock speeds in the data sheets, but the original settings were very low comparitively. the 750/1000 speeds are 3/4 of what is possible. Not sure why they were set so low. I will continue to investigate with perhaps a post or Call to ATI. 

[Vinkman]

It also turns out that the "current Setting [157, 300] were the not the factory Max Default which was 300, 400. So the 'overclocked' setting is double the default.

[katanaso]

Vinkman,

If you poke around various overclocking sites, you can get that card working at core and memory clock speeds with little effort, if you desire to do so.

The 5970 is a beast of a card though for AH2 purposes though. 


mir

[Tigger29]

I use ATI Tray Tools instead of the Catalyst stuff... seems to reduce a lot of overhead.

I've learned that on my 5830 90+% of the 'micro stuttering' I experience once in awhile while flying low to the ground was cured by turning OFF Local Water Reflections.  However I can leave everything else on max including AA, sliders, 4k smooth shadows, and building shadows (but not other planes' shadows) and maintain 59-60FPS 99.9% of the time.

[1Boner]

Follow up:

I also leard that my new card from ATI has a very low out of the box clock speed setting. It turns out that the GPU setting was 157Ghz with a memory clock speed of 300Ghz. Under the ATI Overdrive Menu the clock speeds are adjustable. There is a self tester that runs a test that maxes out the GPU and checks for Tempratures to see if your installation runs cool enough to overclock the processor. Ran the test several times and it settled on new settings of 750Ghz GPU and 1000Ghz for Mem.

After that I turned up the resolution in the graphics setting of the game to 2048 [from1024], turned up self shadows to 8192, but left 'smooth shadows' off, upped the Anti-aliassing in Vd Card settings to 'wide tent'.

Running steady 60fps. It really looks beautiful. Love the shadows....really, really cool.  

I noticed that "wide tent" setting--what is it as compared to "box"??

[Krusty]

Ahhh... the 5970... that looks like a nice card. I drool over it on newegg.

Your low speeds threw me off. However, I think what you're seeing is throttled frequencies so that the card runs idle much much cooler than when in games. That's why it's showing such slow speeds. In a game it clocks up to full power. It's not a problem with the card, as much as it is a feature.

At least, from what I've read.

Do you run FRAPs and anything else like that? How does FRAPs record from films with that card and full details? My dream rig would have that card and I'd (in my wildest dreams lol) use it to make some decent quality AH videos.

[Vinkman]

Ahhh... the 5970... that looks like a nice card. I drool over it on newegg.

Your low speeds threw me off. However, I think what you're seeing is throttled frequencies so that the card runs idle much much cooler than when in games. That's why it's showing such slow speeds. In a game it clocks up to full power. It's not a problem with the card, as much as it is a feature.

At least, from what I've read.

Do you run FRAPs and anything else like that? How does FRAPs record from films with that card and full details? My dream rig would have that card and I'd (in my wildest dreams lol) use it to make some decent quality AH videos.

You right about the low rates being displayed when in d-2 mode looking at the CCC [gui].  Learned that today too. I don't use fraps or make movies. So I can't tell you how well it works for that. I'm going to hook up a second monitor so I watch real time GPU and power chip temps while game is running. Also like to see what the fan speed on the card is doing.

[katanaso]

You right about the low rates being displayed when in d-2 mode looking at the CCC [gui].  Learned that today too. I don't use fraps or make movies. So I can't tell you how well it works for that. I'm going to hook up a second monitor so I watch real time GPU and power chip temps while game is running. Also like to see what the fan speed on the card is doing.

Take notice of any microstutters when you do this.

One of the issues that plagued me for a long time on two variants of ATI cards was micro-stutterring, both when using two 4870's in Crossfire, and my current 5850.

What I found was that any monitoring of the fan and/or temperature was causing a microstutter every time the software polled the card.  It was frustrating.

Once I found some information about this, I turned off the portions of the software that I used for monitoring the GPU and the microstutters went away.  I was using MSI's Afterburner as well as OpenHardware for monitoring things.

I still use MSI's Afterburner to Overclock my 5850, but I disabled all of the monitoring features.


mir

[Vinkman]

Take notice of any microstutters when you do this.

One of the issues that plagued me for a long time on two variants of ATI cards was micro-stutterring, both when using two 4870's in Crossfire, and my current 5850.

What I found was that any monitoring of the fan and/or temperature was causing a microstutter every time the software polled the card.  It was frustrating.

Once I found some information about this, I turned off the portions of the software that I used for monitoring the GPU and the microstutters went away.  I was using MSI's Afterburner as well as OpenHardware for monitoring things.

I still use MSI's Afterburner to Overclock my 5850, but I disabled all of the monitoring features.


mir

Thanks Mir. I haven't had that issue so far. I did try today to hook up a second monitor so I could play AH on 1, and have the desk top on the other. Was a disaster. Had to abandon after a few hours.

[FLS]

Vinkman I recommend you set fan speed to manual and 100% when playing games. You can turn it down to 30% for normal use or put it back to auto. You'll see a big difference in temps.

[katanaso]

Vinkman I recommend you set fan speed to manual and 100% when playing games. You can turn it down to 30% for normal use or put it back to auto. You'll see a big difference in temps.

100% may be quite loud though, depending on the brand of card.  I have mine run up to 70% and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner.  100% is like a high pitched scream. 

It's not bad when wearing headphones, but what an annoying sound without them.

That said, going with manual fan speeds or a customized fan curve will drop the temperatues a lot.

[FLS]

It sounds like a jet at 100% but that's better than 160 F.