Aces High never fails to amaze me

[streakeagle]

I just bought a Radeon 8500 128MB and slapped it in my old CUV4X that normally runs a Voodoo 5500 AGP to try it out until the TUV4X it is intended for arrives. Driver installation was anything but smooth. I now fully believe the legends about ATI drivers. Even after reinstalling DirectX8.1, the only game that would run was Aces High. All others crashed as soon as any 3D graphics were attempted. Even the DirectX diagnostic program crashed if 3D was attempted. Yet AH ran flawlessly!

I learned a lot from this whole experience. First and foremost, what I had already learned from my first graphics card, a Diamond Viper II, that Aces High has the best coding of any game I have. The Viper II had an S3 chip and lost driver support before it ever fully supported DirectX7. All my DX7 games showed flaws, which eventually led to me getting the Voodoo. But AH ran flawlessly on the Viper II.

I learned that the relatively new 128 MB Radeon 8500 (not LE) only runs a few FPS faster (72 vs 65) than the somewhat older 64 MB Voodoo at 1024x768x32 and the image quality is much lower at x8 antialiasing than the Voodoo at x2. The Radeon only showed its strength when I went to 1600x1200x32 and its FPS actually improved from about 72 to 80. The Voodoo couldn't even run at that resolution in 32-bit color.

After having the Radeon crash all day long, my love of the Voodoo has increased even more. It has a few minor compatibility problems with some later DX8.1 games, but otherwise has the most stable drivers I have ever seen in a modern 3d graphics card. If only 3dfx were still making graphics cards so I could have both the speed and image quality. I hope the Radeon won't have any issues when it gets installed on a clean hard drive.

Aces High... the DirectX game that still plays great even when the DirectX 3d video driver is all screwed up!

[Skuzzy]

2 things streak.

1)  If you have not gotten the updated drivers from ATI's WEB site, you probably have a crapola driver.  The updated drivers are very stable and run everything very well.

2)  Removing Voodoo drivers does require,...er,..some voodoo.  .  Sorry, I couldn't resist.  If you do not ensure those are cleaned out, you will forever have problems.  (Usually the good ole DDHELP error will rear its head without fail).


Personally, I prefer the 6071 drivers for the 8500.  

The original drivers for the 8500 were an abomination, but the current set are really very good.

[Pongo]

Your experiance with ATI is not typical.

[vif]

StreakEagle,

Your not using your ATI to its full potential !

First of all, I'm guessing the only reason why your FPS increased only by a few more frames is because its locked to the moniter vertical refresh rate, which is typically between 75 and 85 herz !
Thats why you had aproximately the same FPS levels at lower resolutions as well as the highest resolutions (1600x1200x32).

Second, the reason your ATI may be crashing is either you do not have the latest ATI drivers (try the "catalyst" drivers, they work fine for me with aces high)  or, you did not uninstall the previous drivers properly.

Personally, I do a complete OS reinstall when i switch video cards, just to make sure there are no hidden remanents of previous card drivers in the registry and ini files of windows.
You can tell I don't take vid card switching too lightly...
If you still want to keep the current OS on your system, I'd recomend you use a good registry cleaning program like "regcleaner"  to find and delete all the 3dfx registry entries.

Last but not least,  a few words about the ATI Radeon 8500 128MB:
It has the same clock and RAMDAC speed and almost the same performance of the GE-Force 4 ti4200 card.
The "ti" series cards are only slightly faster in "DIRECT-X" api's (which is what AH, & WW2OL are written for), but when it comes to "OPEN-GL"  ATI's radeon leaves its contemporary geforce cards in the dust !

I play IL-2 Shturmovik  on Open-GL  at 1600x1200x32 with all bells and whistels turned all the way up and get over 100 FPS with monitor refresh rate unlocked...

In summary, don't dispair, read well into the vid card installation and driver issues, ATI is a very good card , and imho the best "bang for the buck" when it comes to games.

[lord dolf vader]

i have the radion 64m ddr vivo ( early version ddr radion ) have had it about a year and not one problem in any game . but i use the latest drivers ect.

[poopster]

Switching drivers check here.

http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/forte/maps_and_manuals.html

Involved but leaves chance out of the equation

[streakeagle]

1st, I had the very latest drivers

2nd, every ATI product I have ever installed has required finesse to get the drivers to work if it worked at all. I have also diligently read the message boards and conversed with other ATI owners. ATI has a terrible history of SNAFU drivers and it hasn't improved much I have high hopes for the 9700 though... it is the first card I have seen that actually has surpassed the Voodoo 5500 image quality based on the screenshots I have seen.

3rd, I know how to set the advanced settings and can assure you the framerate wasn't locked to the refresh rate

4th, I have had extensive experience experimenting with Voodoo drivers and know precisely how to remove them

5th, I am running Windows 98 SE with a CUV4X (VIA chipset), which seems to have a lot of hardware conflicts causing bluescreens (particularly Creative Soundblaster products)

My brother just got a Radeon 8500 DVI and put it on his XP machine using the same VIA chipset and didn't have any lockups or directx problems, but this combination is not scoring as well on 3dmarks as it should.

When my TUV4X comes in, I will be starting with a blank hard drive and sticking with Win98SE to maintain compatibility with all of my games. If the Radeon still causes problems at that point... it is going back to the store, and I will eventually go to XP and a Radeon 9700. Though I may experiment with a GF4 in the interim just for comparison.

[fullback]

I just installed a new 8500 when I upgraded mobo, cpu, DDR RAM etc. I'm running 98SE and everything runs fine. I run at 1280x768 32 and get 100-130fps (I know, I know...  an insignificant measurement since my refresh is set to 85...) after tweaking settings.

But, I made sure I had the latest BIOS flashed to my mobo and the latest ATI drivers. Turned out that I needed the BIOS update for the 8500.

[streakeagle]

Sorry if I sounded too pissed off last post, I meant to thank everyone for their comments.

Of course the real topic was how impressed I was with AHs coding which worked flawlessly even with DirectX 50% disabled rather than expecting people to solve my little hardware conflict.

But ATI really irks me with their drivers...

I tried one last trick with the CUV4X:

I had installed an ATI TV Wonder for a school project a while back. It had given me just as much trouble until I gave up on the latest drivers and went with the obsolete CD that came with it

So, I removed the TV Wonder, removed the Voodoo, and reinstalled the Radeon 8500.

Now... the ATI runs as it should.

I am still not too amazed by the fps at 1024x768... but it runs even faster at 1600x1200 and turning up the quality to max (antialiasing etc.) and even turning on ground clutter doesn't knock but a couple of fps off!!!!!

I had another computer with the Voodoo for a side by side image quality test, and the Voodoo at normal settings (1024x768x32 @ x2 antialiasing) looked as good as the Radeon all tricked up... but that is acceptable to me since I didn't really use the Voodoo at x4 (which stomps the ATI ).