No full performance with Ati Radeon 9+++ cards ?

[stonecrow]

ok, so i've been tweaking my settings and trying suggestions from this thread, and i've run into a wierd problem.

i'm running a 9600, which has the 4 listings under change graphic device settings like above posters.

decided to try switching it to different things, see if i noticed an improvement.
well, it was on d3d, so i checked framerate in a crowd (10-15ish) and then logged, set it to hardware t&l, logged back in and it went up to 20-35ish.

great right?

well i log back in later, and my framerate is back down to normal (10-15) and after checking everything, i find out it hasn't saved my selection of the hardware t&l.

so i re-select, hit save, log in. play, log out. log in next time, same problem. after testing, i can save all i want, but nothing convinces the client that i really do want it to use T&L every time. it always reverts to d3d

any suggestions?

[stonecrow]

update:

i figured it out. you can't change settings until you log in with your account name. then click the button, bottom right that looks like vid card and change it there, not before, and it saves just fine.

[MediaNox]

Just wanted to say I found this post awesome. It really helped. I use a Radeon 9550 and had been using the 5.2 drivers until then, but now with the creating of a rad link I can use the newest drivers. Its great, thanks.

[Reaper017]

kan i get a bit of help? My ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Motherboard isnt working out, tell me, if i install a graphix card with 256 RAM will it take down my comp's original 708RAM?

[Octopuss]

hlep! verbal gnak!

I usually work out in a gym, if it will help you boost computer performance I don't know... maybe have your graphix card do a bit of bench-press...

[Questra]

Well this post looks great and has helped tons of people, however it didn't do the trick in my case. I was using a 9800 SE All in Wonder, and after a couple years i noticed black segments on the screen that disppeared when i refreshed the screen, and other graphical anomolies, with KotOR 2 as well as AO. so it was a hardware issue.

Sent the PC for repairs and they put in a 9600 XT All in Wonder. KotOR 2 and Quake 4 run quite well, i have an Athlon 64 3200 and a gig of ram, but AO was giving me ATI's VPU errors, or just crashing the system (manual power-off required). I updated to Catalyst 6.7 just to see and now i don't get VPUs, it just plain crashes, usually within minutes of doing anything. also, if it doesn't crash right away, i get a very weird mesh of distortion in the AO window, like a mesh of blurring fuzziness that makes it impossible to read text and hard to make anything out visually. it's just in the AO window at first, i'm able to copy and paste AO text and read it fine in notepad, but when i close AO the distortion then appears on the desktop.

I've tried turning off Fastwrite on the BIOS and within ATI's software, and setting AGP speed down to 4x, i've also tried using a radlink to launch AO with the settings Masta described... when i look in task managed i see the usual AO .exe running, not client.Radlink in there (should i be seeing the usual AO .exe or the .Radlink file?)

I've also tried it out with the graphics set as low as possible, and i've tried all 4 graphics card options, the 2 with d3d HAL and the 2 other ones. same crashing though.

at the moment i'm using dialup, which is the only difference besides the graphics card from when AO used to work fine. i had broadband then.

device manager doesn't report any faults, and it's a brand new 9600, so i doubt it's a faulty gfx card. i think the only way it could be hardware is if the motherboard is failing and that's why my 9800 SE crapped out in the first place. but if it was hardware, why would i only get errors like this with AO, which demands less from the GPU than the other games i play?

if anyone has any theories or has experienced something like that, please post here and your knowledge and help will be very much appreciated =)

[Questra]

Update for anyone with a radeon 9600 XT who might experience similar problems to me (see my previous post):

I have:

set AGP speed to 4, disbale Fastwrite in the BIOS and catalyst software

set AGP voltage manually to 1.6v in the system BIOS as advised by ATI

set AO to run via T&L instead of d3d

used Radlinker to change the settings for my entire PC, Hierarchical Z disabled, Z buffer depth 16;24;8 bit stencil

i've got AO on lowest graphics settings

AO seemed better after i set AGP voltage to 1.6v and used Radlinker to change my gfx settings, but it was still causing blank screen system crashes every 10-45mins without exception

when i also ran AO via hardware T&L it seemed to improve frame rate and i played for a couple hours without crashing, but today, i only played for 20mins and there was a strange hall of mirrors type tunnel effect on the screen and visual distortion and i got a VPU error

the 2 things i haven't tried yet:

using Omega drivers

NGO ATI 6.6 drivers

seeing as how a 9600 XT should be more than enough to handle a crappy old game like AO, i don't know whether to spend hours downloading those via dialup, or to just use this very good excuse to stop playing such a diseased graphics engine

[Octopuss]

I previously had Radeon 9700 and never ever did I have any problems as those described here. I soon am switching cards again to some low ATI (not needing any huge performance for AO) - so, which ones should I avoid?

[Khalem]

I had very little problems with my 9800 Pro until it died
9600 seems to have more problems than any other with AO, but since we are talking of AO, ymmw

[Octopuss]

What of the "lowbie" radeons should I buy then?

[verwooks]

I have tried this before, but got some problems of some sort. dont remember why.
Will try again when i come home from work

but meanwhile im curios on what drivers the different people have installed here? And what kind of card as well? how about making a poll for this?
Also include those who didn't get any performance gain (if they did it correctly) and so on.

[Malosar]

So far i've run a 9800 and an X1600 with very few issues. I haven't had to run any fixes and haven't really had driver issues either. I did have major issues with crashes and reboots awhile ago however it turned out to be heat related.

[igoros]

I have a 9600XT and use Omega Driver 2.5.97a (Catalyst 4.12). I can't use a more uptodate driver without any problem.

[Octopuss]

hm, seems like the newer versions are screwed :/
what ATI from the lowbie line would you recommend then?

[Questra]

my 9800 SE wasn't so bad, but ther were occasional crashed due undoubtedly to graphics, and dual logging was extremely difficult and crashing was inevitable despite the system and RAM being up to scratch

9600 XT was the worst, but there are reports, like that one aove my post, that using omega drivers can work

i'm using a geForce 6200 GS now and despite it being an inferior card to a 9600 XT and 9800 SE i can dual log almost indefinately (some affect on FPS but workable)

wish i could afford a high end ATI card so i could crank up the gfx

[Lusitano]

I tried everything from board and graphic drivers, all teh settings explained ehre, smartgart and radlink etc etc.. and AO is still choppy as hell, the only thing that actually works is playing with sound off so i guess its trouble with creative soundcard, but how can i fix it? -.-

[Borsky]

maybe someone can help me with my ATI quandries.
first of all, i have an ati radeon 9200 (old, i know)
i updated my drivers recently to the ngo optimized drivers, but after a short time of playing the game, every time i minimized or alt-tabbed my gfx would go buggy and my comp would crash. i figured it might be because the newer drivers were not compatible with my old card, so i tried the omega drivers, this time making sure i got the correct ones. this did not work, and the same thing happened. i turned on HAL, jsut to see if messing with the settings would work, and it seemed to work for a bit longer but ultimately i crashed upon alt-tabbing.
now i'm really not sure what to do.
i'm either thinking roll back to my original (and ancient) drivers, or try the latest catalyst ones.

by the way, i also tried the radlink program, and it didn't seem to help the problem either.

please help, this is really frustrating =/

[Honorbound]

I won't be overly constructive with this, but alas, this is how things are...
If you tried everything you could (different drivers, different settings, different rendering mode, tweaks, etc.) and nothing improved your situation, then there's only two things left as an ATi user: take it or leave it (forget about playing AO, that is).
Playing in windowed mode should, however, remedy the Alt-tabbing problems(which seem to be related to the general Z-order issues), at a cost of some (20-30%) performance loss.

[Borsky]

I won't be overly constructive with this, but alas, this is how things are...
If you tried everything you could (different drivers, different settings, different rendering mode, tweaks, etc.) and nothing improved your situation, then there's only two things left as an ATi user: take it or leave it (forget about playing AO, that is).
Playing in windowed mode should, however, remedy the Alt-tabbing problems(which seem to be related to the general Z-order issues), at a cost of some (20-30%) performance loss.

yep, i play in windowed mode, but this still happens.
but i plan on getting a new setup soon, and along with that, no more ATI crap

[Exodius]

Found a solution that worked for these problems a long time ago when when i played last, worked for those that tryed so ive dug out the post


http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...ght=ati+driver