Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Aces High Bug Reports => Topic started by: Bullethead on December 13, 2003, 03:25:55 PM
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P4 1.7GHz, 512MB, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro, WinME, DX9.0
If you look back in the various frame rate threads since the AH2 beta process started, you'll find my numbers for 1991. When that 1st came out, I had a GeForce3 and 256MB Ram. Then I updated my system to the above and LOST about 10 fps across the board. But it was still very playable as I could get 40-50 fps with decent detail settings.
Now here we are in 1996 and I have only about 1/2 the frame rate I had in 1991. This makes AH2 unplayable no matter what I do. If I have the sliders all the way to the right, I can still get about 50fps, but tactically vital game objects such as field objects, town buildings, and ships, are completely invisible beyond about 2500 yards. OTOH, if I turn the sliders up so I can see these objects at useful distances, my frame rate becomes unplayably low even when it's just me and the drones offline.
Early in the beta process, I recall an optimization for Nvidia cards. I guess that did the trick because GeForce users have great frame rates. But us Radeon users have seen frame rates go steadily down since the beginning. What's up with that? And is there any hope that there'll be a "Radeon optimization" someday?
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Face the facts, ATI sux as bad as Intel.
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Originally posted by zmeg
Face the facts, ATI sux as bad as Intel.
LOL thats why they have the top rated board right now huh.
9800xt.
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If the performance lived up to the rating i'd get one myself.
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It does in other games which is why some are asking the question here.
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The Radeon 9800 Pro out performs the GeForce4Ti4600
I replaced...including Aces High and any Benchmarks
I've tested with.
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well my dads cpu has almost 1 gig of memory and has a intel pos 64mb video card and it gets about 0 fps.
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Ya'll have some ****ty luck. I'm runnin a 1.8 CPU, with a Radeon 9600, and a gig of ram.. I get 54 FPS in AH2.
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I think you guys need Nick Burns, The Company's Computer Guy.
@ 1600x1200 res 3/4 to left slider I get this
(http://home.comcast.net/~jim_ferreira/wsb/media/141146/site1040.gif)
If I go 1024x768 3/4 to left slider I get this
(http://home.comcast.net/~jim_ferreira/wsb/media/141146/site1044.gif)
I don't understand why people are getting such bad performance.
BTW my GeForce Ti 4400 is OC'd to 4600 specs thats it
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I'm running 1600x1200 res with 4x FAA and all settings in AH2 turned up.
And I get 60-75FPS I am limited becuase I have V-synch enabled and my monitor is only good for 77mhz at 1600x1200
I am happy with the results.
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The Radeon cards don't currently seem to be perfoming up to par in AH2, but I'm fairly certain there's a fixable software (driver/AH) reason for it.
I know I've definately lost some performance from 1.994 to 1.995 with my Radeon 9800 (Cat 3.7s).
I remember HT mentioning something about lower than expected performance on Radeon cards, so I'm sure he's aware of the problem.
I'm hoping the 3.10 drivers scheduled to be released later this week might help also. (I've heard the 3.9s don't stutter as much in AH, but I know from experience the 3.9s have problems in some games. There's a hotfix for the 3.9 drivers, basically an early version of the 3.10s to fix these issues.)
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Thanks Bloom, I've got my fingers crossed that the 3.10 drivers will improve performance in AH2 among others games and that, like you mentioned, HT is aware of the problem with the Radeon cards and is working on it.
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Quote:
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Originally posted by zmeg
Face the facts, ATI sux as bad as Intel.
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starting to think that myself.
Quote:
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Origionally posted by mrblack
LOL thats why they have the top rated board right now huh.
9800xt.
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While that may be true this month, ATI and NVidia swap the top spot like madonna swaps lovers.
The Big Question Is, WHO has been the most reliable over time and seems to continue to be so.
I haven't been convinced to trade in my GeForce4 Ti 4400 for either company yet to be honest.
Not totally sure but to me at least it seems both the new ATI and NVidia based cards aren't all that great as opposed to earlier upgrades.
Course what do i know I can't even land a 4 kill sortie :D
JustJim1
<< Dragon Hawks >>
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Here's where things really stand(yuor milage may vary)
(http://www.onpoi.net/ah/pics/users/ah_154_1071596370.jpg)
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Hey Zmeg,
Where the 9800 XT?
bit unfair to leave it out in these benchs.
Acetnt
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I can find just as many benchmarks with the 9800 outperforing the 5900.
The reality is that both cards are fairly even.....at the moment.But with DirectX 9 optimised games being released in the coming year,the 5900 will fall behind.
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The xt is a bit fster and newer drivers are available for both cards. Which card is best for you depends on what games you play. Prices are also very close, xt is a bit higher, For AH2 I beleve the 5900 will always be faster, but that remains to be seen.
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Where the ATI cards shine is in there FAA thats where they leave nvidia in the dust.
Turn all the eye candy on then see what happends LOL.
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sad thing is the 5900 is nolonger the topend card for nvidia.
doesnt change the fact I cant afford anything on that list.
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Just FYI: Those benchmark numbers are all worthless.
Doom3 is not released and those numbers are based on some old Alpha of Doom3, which is not relevant, and NVidia disables tri-linear filtering when running UT2003 to improve its scores.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
Just FYI: Those benchmark numbers are all worthless.
Doom3 is not released and those numbers are based on some old Alpha of Doom3, which is not relevant, and NVidia disables tri-linear filtering when running UT2003 to improve its scores.
Yeah what he said LOL:D
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The Cat 3.10s are scheduled to be released tommorow. (Wednesday) They look to be primarily a bugfix release.
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The 3.10s are out. I haven't tried them yet, but will this evening.
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Man I would love to know how you guys are gettin such frame rates...do you have all the "eyecandy" turned on on your cards such as anisotropic filtering and anti aliasing?
I am running 2.0 Ghz machine, 256 megs ram, ATI Radeon 9800XT with 256 megs ram on it.
Frame rates are stinky at best...choppy and rates from teens to 40 or so.....mostly choppy and in the low end. I have the eyecandy turned up on my card and overclocked it. Also have the screen set at 1600x1200 and the next one down...NO MEASURABLE DIFF.
Any suggestions????
TG12:confused:
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Since I had to uninstall my ATI drivers anyway, I figured I run a test:
There's most definately something not right with the Radeon 9500 and up cards in AH2. My GeForce 4 Ti 4200 (put it back in for a test - 41.09 drivers) delivers over 2x the framerate of my Radeon 9800 (standard 128 MB, NOT SE or Pro/XT) in 1.997 at 1280x1024 32bpp (no FSAA or Aniso).
The new Cat 3.10s do not seem to be any better than the 3.7s for AH2. I haven't yet tried them in anything other than AH2, so I don't know if OpenGl is still broken, as I found with the 3.9s.
A couple things I've noticed, between the nVidia and Radeon cards, in AH2 1.997 is that on the Radeon cards there is a very noticible stutter that occurs at a very regular interval (offline at least) of about 1 second. This started with 1.995 for me.
1.995 and up are nearly unplayable with all the detail sliders in AH2 to the max (25 fps on the runway, dropping as low as 17 fps in flight - 1280x1024 32bpp). At about 80% the framerate is acceptable at about 39 - 45 fps. The triangle count drops from well over 20000 to about 12000. Strangely enough, turning on 4x FSAA has no significant impact on framerate, 2x has none at all. (On the GeForce 4 TI 4200 you couldn't turn on 4x FSAA and get even 25 fps in AH 2, and there was a very large performance hit enabling it.) This would lead me to assume that this isn't a memory bandwidth/fillrate issue with the Radeon card, but rather something else. It might be a driver issue, or it might be something to do with AH2, it's really impossible to tell for sure. Considering that in every other game I have the Radeon 9800 is significantly faster than the GeForce 4 Ti 4200 I think it might be something to do with AH2. AH1 runs at my monitor's refresh rate (85Hz - 85 fps) with 4x FSAA turned on at 1280x1024 32bpp under nearly all circumstances. The first beta version ran MUCH faster on the Radeon card and performance has been dropping slightly in future releases. (I got 75 - 85 fps down low with 4x FSAA on in 1.9901 for example.) 1.995 was the big hit though.
I sure hope HT can track this one down. :)
Detailed hardware specs:
Athlon XP 2400+ @ 2.13 GHz (2600+ effectively)
Asus A7N266-C bios 1.05 b2, newest nVidia chipset drivers
Radeon 9800 128MB standard, cat 3.10 (was using 3.7 previously)
4x AGP rate, Fastwrites enabled (made no real difference either way)
Direct X 9.0b
512 MB DDR
120 GB WD SE HDD
nVidia Soundstorm audio (ob)
Windows 2000 SP4 + all critical updates
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That's very odd. In AH my FPS are pegged at 120 it never drops except for a click to 119 then back to 120.(my refresh rate is 120)
In AH2 I'm in the 70's all the time, drops to the 50's on occasion.
Both of these are with all the eyecandy turned up and vid card settings on max quality.
Spec's
P4 3.0
Gigabyte K8NXP
1 GB OCZ DDR400
ATI 9800XT
Raptor 10k SATA in RAID 0
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I have an FX 5600 256 DDR
AH2 only shows 130.4 M of video mem yet AH1 shows the full 256+.
Off course it does not show its using it all either........ it just seems strange.
FPS's seem to vary widely with settings both within AH2 video settings ranges and within NVidea control panel settings ranges.
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Just trying to gather more information. What AGP Aperature size are all you running at?
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If your asking about that setting in bios skuzzy mine is at 128.
If it's the one in the vid cards settings then its agp x8
Fast writes off
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AGP 4x
AGP Aperature size 256
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9800 pro
AGP x 8
AGP aperture in bios 128mb
In Bios i always set system bios cacheable and video ram cacheable OFF.
I also use graphic cards fast writes on, as it has no adverse effects for me although i know it does for others.
No frame rate probs regarding stutters etc in AH2
Justjim just for info i originally did get stutters especially low even in AH1 and i was using a KR7a motherboard, i got so annoyed i did thr big upgrade to P4 and new MB and changed to XP.
No more problem.
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never really had the stutters until beta 7 i'm sure its just something that will be worked out eventually seeing as it wasnt there before.
thanks for the info though, i'm sure it won't be long before I do the latest and greatest for this week upgrade again :D
JustJim1
<< Dragon Hawks >>
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Originally posted by guttboy
Man I would love to know how you guys are gettin such frame rates...do you have all the "eyecandy" turned on on your cards such as anisotropic filtering and anti aliasing?
I am running 2.0 Ghz machine, 256 megs ram, ATI Radeon 9800XT with 256 megs ram on it.
Also have the screen set at 1600x1200 and the next one down...NO MEASURABLE DIFF.
Any suggestions????
TG12:confused:
At this time, resolution seems to make ZERO diference in framerate. It seems VERY CPU bound or something.
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AGP 4x
Aperture size 128
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Skuzzy, I ran a few tests to see if I could find something useful for you. Here's something I found - on my system the "triangle count" reported by AH2 seems to be the ONLY factor significant to framerate.
Here's what I did: Spawned a P51 on the runway at the default field (NE runway and looking straight ahead). Engine running but at idle. By adjusting the video sliders I was able to take a few different measurements at different triangle count levels.
I ran the test at 1280x1024 with 4x fsaa enabled 32bpp color. I will rerun the tests at other resolutions, but I do know going to back 2x fsaa has negligable framerate impact.
5000 triangles = 45 fps
7000 triangles = 39 fps
9000 triangles = 35 fps
12000 triangles = 28 fps
15000 triangles = 26 fps
20000 triangles = 24 fps
Now I turned off mip mapping for terrain and object, bump mapping, horizon, and transistions, and shift f3 mode for terrain. (They were all enabled before.) Rerunning the tests at the same triangle levels I found the results to be the same. Turning off all these features had no direct effect (it did slightly lower the triangle count, which of course increased framerate, but pulling the sliders up a bit to get the triangle count to the same level produced the same framerate).
Is it possible that system memory is somehow being used accidentally and that is causing the performance hit? I'm lead to assume this may be the case, because turning on FSAA isn't affecting the framerate significantly. I would assume if the problem was fillrate there would be a very large performance hit in doing so.
(AGP apt is 128 MB on my system BTW.)
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Ok, something really interesting here. I just did a bunch of extra tests. I found that resolution and FSAA have very little to do with the framerate I'm seeing.
Another thing I noticed is that the total and active TexMemory in JustJims screenshot is MUCH lower than in any test I could run. Is this the case with all nVidia cards???
Check out this screen shot, with 3 shots taken from a P51 spanned on the default runway. (1280x1024 16bpp no fsaa, 1280x1024 32 bpp 6x FSAA, and 1024x768 32 bpp no FSAA) Notice that the framerate is almost the same in all 3. In fact the only real difference is the used video memory.
(http://www.efn.org/~jdb/test.jpg)
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Another thing, but this may be normal:
Everytime I spawn a different vehicle the texture memory count goes up (and doesn't ever go down). For example, after spawning a P51d, spit14, fw190, me109, then m3 the active tex memory was up to 104 MB. From JustJim's screenshots, it looks like his active texture memory is was 16 or 17.5 MB, but even after spawning only a single P51, mine was 59.5 MB. It looks like we both have 128 MB video cards.
Interestingly though, the framerate was still the same as before, even after spawning all those different vehicles though. 35 fps when the triangle count was around 9000. It's also worth noting that if the triangle count was 9000, even while in flight, the fps was 35. Again, it seems that nothing but triangle count matters.
I hope all this helps you Skuzzy.
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Skuzzy,
like we talked on the phone....the Dell guys have my bios set at 64mb....the other setting is 256. I tried putting the 256 mb size on it and noticed a little bit of frame rate increase but not much....will run some tests here today to see what i come up with.
Just for my own education "exactly" what do the sliders in AH2 do? Thanks.
TG12:)
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Top slider adjust the size/range at which entire objects drop out.
Bottom slider adjust the size at which individual polies drop out.
HiTech
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Thanks HITECH!
Some of us JABO freaks need to know which is which so that we can maximize the distance at which we see TGTS. Thanks a bunch.
If there are specific tests you would like people to run please let me know so I can help you all out!
Regards,
TG12:)
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Bloom, when you use AA, the video card is going to use up memory much faster as it needs to have additional samples, to be able to do the AA. We have no control over this. Just FYI.
The 9800Pro is going to run AA without much effect at all on frame rate. It is the nature of the card.
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Just another question for everyone.....
Just what does each of these boxes do?
1.Bump Mapping
2.Transitions
3.Horizon....saw this as taking out the horizon it seems
4.disable palletized textures
5.terrain mipmapping
6.object mipmapping
In addition how does each of these affect perfomance when checked or unchecked?
Thanks....running some tests this afternoon.
:aok
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
Just trying to gather more information. What AGP Aperature size are all you running at?
AGP 4x, which comes from having an older mobo I guess. I have no idea what the aperature size is, nor how to find that number.
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Originally posted by Skuzzy
Just trying to gather more information. What AGP Aperature size are all you running at?
Quick question Skuzzy,
I am going to assume your running a AGP 8x mobo w/128 mb ATI
1: what Arpeture is yours set at for a 128 mb card or 256 mb card whichever you have.
2: (this goes for anyone running 8x agp) try running at 4x or 6x and see what difference it has.
Reason i'm bringing this up is I have read (cant remember where) that 8x agp isnt all its cracked up to be just yet, (this may have changed by now) but i'm still curious just the same.
My Tech has always set my Arpeture to twice what my vid memory is, He has always done this and I have never had any video problems since AGP was introduced in 1997.
Well so much for a quick question :)
Just a Thought,
JustJim1
<< Dragon Hawks >>
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Hey Jim!
From a former MassHo!e to another hello......
Ok for us guys that purchased "off the shelf " systems.....the agp settings on the Dell Dimension 4400 series will not let you change the bios at all....it is VERY un-tweaker friendly.
On my board the AGP settings are found under the video stuff and is 4x. The aperature size has 2 choices 64mb and 256 mb...THATS it.....running on the 256mb now to see what is up.
I really wish I knew more about puters before I went and got this rig....will be making one myself in the future....my frustrations are....supposedly i have the top o the line card the ATI Radeon 9800 XT with 256 mb on it.
Why am I running less than stellar rates in AH2....my thoughts are that the game is not designed to run with this card. Seen several posts on some guys getting insane rates....BTW im happy with anything consistent over 30's....
Dale, Skuzzy and pals...know you are working the issues hard. Let us know whatever we can do to help and Ill be more than happy to do so.
Regards...and great work on AH2...although I am not getting PRIMO stuff on it...it is a beta and I know that...keep up the great work......:aok
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former Massho!e lol
I'm not understanding why Dell set your Arpeture to 64 when you have a 256mb Vid Card (****ing Hackers), I also don't know why I get such good frame rates myself but I can tell you this, when I start turning things up my frames do go way down to the 50's sometimes.
So my card does show it's age when the Bells and Whistles come into play.
Only thing i can suggest is try 1024x768 res turn the quality sliders down a bit and back off the AA and AF a little until this all gets worked out.
Also I don't know what you may have running in the background that seems to effect gameplay alot from what I have read on this board.
Only thing running on my computer when I turn on AH is Explorer,Systray and Swtray(sidewinder software)
I'm sure when all is said and done with AH2 you guys with the latest and greatest vid cards will prevail.
Personally i'm waiting for the next advancement of Video Cards to come out as i'm not to impressed with ATI 9800 series or NVidia's newest at the moment.
My upgrade from GeForce 3 to the GeForce 4 Ti4400 seemed to be a bigger advancement then G4 to now.
But what the hell do I know I have a Great Tech that does most of my work.
PCI Express Technology is looking pretty interesting in the near distant future
Catch Ya On The FlipFlop, :aok <~~~ Dweeb Salute lol
JustJim1
<< Dragon Hawks >>
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Ok this is my video8.cfg file from the settings folder, at 1600 res in cockpit NE runway default field i get 48fps.
Just for giggles set your LOD and Objsize to 0.3 and see what you get.
104710,VideoVersion
1600,Width
1200,Height
32,ColorDebth
1,DeviceCnt
DVDVDVDVDVDVDVDVRADEON 9800 PRO
0,MaxFPS
1,MipMapEnabled
1,DisablePalettizedTextures
0,PixelShaders
0,VertexShaders
0,MaxTexSize
31,OptionFlags
0.3,LOD
0.3,ObjSize
0.96,Gamma
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I do realize FSAA (especially supersampling AA) is going to use up a lot more memory by rendering at a higher resolution and then downsampling. (Even though that's not how the Radeons do it.)
I posted the info because I thought it was interesting that I had the same framerate at 1024x768 when the triangle count was the same versus 1280x1024 with 6x FSAA enabled.