[apoch003]

Originally posted by jony265
apoch003: what size do you recomend the virtual memory to be?

Whoops!! Sorry I've been away (christmas and all). I missed this question.

this is a fix for UT2k3 only. But it's a system setting.
I've set my virtual ram for 2gigs equal (min and max) on my hdd, and the problems with ram shortages on UT quit. I.E.: stuttering, and crashing out to desktop with a ram buffer full error).
I do NOT recommend setting your virtual RAM to 2gb (it IS, after all, 2 gigs of hard disk space), but larger than the default 768megs (min size) fixed the problem for me.

[Mystik]

For me, I always set my swapfile size depending on the amount
of ram that I have. I make it all equal to 512mb, so as it stands
my swapfile is 256/256 (min/max) since I only have 256mb of
ram.

When I have/had 512mb of ram, I would still set it to a permanent
size, but something very small. Some games seem to not like
my system when I totally disable the swapfile -- it's wierd, but it
is because of that... i found that out after pulling out a few nose
hairs trying to figure out what was wrong with the damn games.

But then, i'm on Win98se. For nt/2k/xp systems, it might be
completely different.

And I don't do anything memory intesive, other than games..
like Video editing and the like..

[Pclabtech]

ATI problems AIW 9700 Pro

My headaches started when I did the following:

Uninstalled my Nvidia drivers (and left over matrox G400 drivers)

installed Standard VGA for Win 2000

Installed card while machine was off... restarted the computer.

Used supplied drivers from ATI: Catalyst 2.4

Everything worked fine except a few games I play, the computer kicked me to the desktop when I launched them... I then upgraded to 2.5 catalyst, which fixed the problem... but now I have a new problem

When I try to use 3rd party programs (Such as Ulead's Media Studio Pro 6.5, DVD workshop, or Pinnacle 8.0) to capture video, the computer reboots back to memory counting... (warm reboot)

I tried to upgrade to 3.0 catalyst. That was a mistake... now the video in / out / TV drivers are detected as "Unknown device" and it can't find the drivers for the devices. I had to revert back to 2.5 in order to use the video capture features...

and yes... the computer still warmboots when I try to capture video with programs that use the "ATI theater capture device"

[megatron]

Originally posted by Pclabtech
ATI problems AIW 9700 Pro

My headaches started when I did the following:

Uninstalled my Nvidia drivers (and left over matrox G400 drivers)

installed Standard VGA for Win 2000

Installed card while machine was off... restarted the computer.

Used supplied drivers from ATI: Catalyst 2.4

Everything worked fine except a few games I play, the computer kicked me to the desktop when I launched them... I then upgraded to 2.5 catalyst, which fixed the problem... but now I have a new problem

When I try to use 3rd party programs (Such as Ulead's Media Studio Pro 6.5, DVD workshop, or Pinnacle 8.0) to capture video, the computer reboots back to memory counting... (warm reboot)

I tried to upgrade to 3.0 catalyst. That was a mistake... now the video in / out / TV drivers are detected as "Unknown device" and it can't find the drivers for the devices. I had to revert back to 2.5 in order to use the video capture features...

and yes... the computer still warmboots when I try to capture video with programs that use the "ATI theater capture device"

I think the vivo drivers are a completely separate driver install. You can install the drivers alone, they are not part of the display driver or control panel. Look for a separate download on ati's site. I have need used the vivo function or capture even though having a 8500le and now 9700pro they both down have vivo functionality and have alot of funny looking adapter bits sitting in the box.

[osmosis]

I am happy to say so far, so good, on my Hecules 8500 128mb card. All my games run smooth and look great!

[AKXsoldier]

www.omegacorner.com posted updated omega drivers that do two things you requested. 1.) Disable Smartgart and 2.) fix most lockups. I had a week of problems with my 9700 pro then I got smart. I reinstalled XP tracking all updates through SP1 and the remaining updates creating restore points along the way. The culprit to my lockups was in fact Norton Antivirus. Most game sites advise you to kill all background tasks. I ended up using Enditall2 to kill all before playing games and Presto...No More Lockups with DX9 ...in fact it works equally well with Catalyst 3 or Omega Updates though Omega solves the smartgart problem.

[dragonfist22]

Two things that I want to bring up with the ATI drivers since 2.5

One is that they do not work well with NWN for the cards below 8500. I have a 7200 and I can't even load an area in the game without crashing my computer and corrupting my drive with 2.5+. There are quite a few others over at the NWN boards that have reported similar. 8500+ cards seem fine. But anything starting with a 7xxx seems to run into this.

Second, is the fact that none of the drivers seem to be able to handle multiple OpenGL windows. This affects the NWN Toolset and causes access violations when OpenGL windows are closed. While I know that NWN is only one game, it seems to me that the current OpenGL problems would harm ATI's efforts in the high end card arena. Can't imagine a 3D company putting up with those kinds of errors while running Soft image or 3DStudio.

I intend to get a 9700 Pro when I can spare the cash. But in the meantime I would like to be able to use the card that I have. And it seems that the new drivers need to be fixed as regards the 7000 series.

[Mr.Floppy]

have you tried the new Omega Driverset??
if not => do so. you'll find it easily on the mainpage...
it works REALLY better/more stable, esp. the OGL part.

but the problems the 3.0catalyst has with OGL are really strange.
they just should have left it the way it was, if they "spared" all their sources on the DX-part...

[dragonfist22]

Yes, I did. Also resulted in a full crash of my system on the load of an area in NWN. But since Omega's drivers uses the 2.5 OpenGL parts, it didn't surprize me.

[Mr.Floppy]

didnt encounter any probs with Omegas set.
but i dont play NWN, cuz it's boring
like the most RPGs... do this, do that... but do it just as you were told, or ur f**kedup

i want my Fallout 3...*quweek*

[dragonfist22]

I like the tools to make your own worlds. I am currently working on a large Persistent World with some 500+ areas.

[Asuka]

Originally posted by Mr.Floppy
didnt encounter any probs with Omegas set.
but i dont play NWN, cuz it's boring
like the most RPGs... do this, do that... but do it just as you were told, or ur f**kedup

Geez, the entire game is totally f*cked up
I curse the day I spent a whopping $45 for this festering piece of $hit!

[RIV@NVX]

The Darkstone RPG game screenshot that shows font which is bad. Reproduced with ANY Catalyst, on two Radeon 8500LE cards.



And, before anyone asks - yes, it is bad JPG quality, but game looks the same as screenshot (like a bad JPG)

[jonis]

After reading all threads/posts and answers related to, in my case radeon 9700 pro, and the DirectX 9.0 / Cat 3.0. I just wanted to post my own thoughts w/ this sad, sad experience.

System was running fine w/ DirectX 8.1b and Cat 2.5, then I decided to upgrade to DX9 to be able to run those sweet demos from ATi. After installing both DX9 and Cat3.0, I tried all of the demos and they looked and ran awesome... An avid Counter-Strike player as I am, I directly noticed something fishy in the mouse-movements in CS OpenGL mode so I decided to try DirectX. Same 'stuttering' sense, although netgraph reported stable 99fps (vsync enabled). Something felt wrong, trouble-seeking began. I tried everything, from Dungeon Siege where I noticed a decrease in FPS but otherwise still playable, UT2k3 (latest build) where I noticed the same weird stuttering in mouse movements as in CS OpenGL/DirectX. Then I tried another favourite, Battlefield 1942. This is where I realised something was really messed up w/ either DX9 or Cat3.0. The stuttering was unbearable, and as soon as some of the bots (teammates) said something, game even froze.

Hating such crap as this, I immediately tried to resolve it by first 'setting hardware acceleration down one notch' (seems like a common test here). This however didn't help at all! Seems like it has for many of you though.

I then saw that new Omega driverkit where one of the fixes listed was even 100% like what I was experiencing! Stuttering that is. I uninstalled (although not in registry/inf files) the Cat 3.0 and installed the new Omega kit. Same crap again, although now for the first time I REALLY started to see what that OpenGL problem was all about! Game almost froze when bomb went off! W/ Cat 2.5 it NEVER moved beyond 99fps... Hell, not even w/ my old Geforce2 did it go below.

Since this is my first experience w/ an ATi card (been using Nvidia and 3Dfx cards before) I had no real experience w/ Catalyst drivers. That uninstall guide by Genius was really a big help! (thx!)

After this successful uninstall, I reinstalled Cat2.5 and now everything is much better. OpenGL is flawless again, and UT2k3 is also much better in DX mode. Although BF1942 is still stuttering like hell. Guess the remaining problems are just due to the fact that I still have DX9 installed and using Cat2.5 w/ it.

Guess I'll stick w/ this setup for the time being. The last weeks have been nothing but pain trying to get my box back in shape, just hope that ATi will get a 100% similarily to 2.5 working driverkit up soon and that this weird remaining stuttering issue w/ BF1942 that I'm still experiencing solved as well... Although, who it is that will solve it remains a mystery. Since its garanteed to be related to DirectX 9, it could be for either M$, ATi or DiCE (creator of BF1942) to fix. The latter I think is the most probable, BF1942 not fully supporting DX9 yet.

Sorry for making such a long post, this has as you prolly understand been a very unpleasant experience. Big thx for reading all of it.

I would say this is probably in the top5 of most hated performance issues I've had so far. Rad9700Pro sure haven't been the flawless experience I hoped when I payed that $340 w/ a happy face...

/Jonathan

[jonis]

Forgot to post my specs, guess it might be interesting for some.

P4 2.533GHz 533MHz
512DDR 333
Hercules 3D Prophet 9700 Pro
ASUS P4S8X (fw v1.004)
Creative SB Audigy Platinum
Single drive: WDC 120GB SE (8MB buffer)
M$ intellimouse Explorer 3.0
WinXP SP-1 (SP-1 preinstalled)

[Mystik]

Originally posted by RIV@NVX
The Darkstone RPG game screenshot that shows font which is bad. Reproduced with ANY Catalyst, on two Radeon 8500LE cards.

(image removed)

And, before anyone asks - yes, it is bad JPG quality, but game looks the same as screenshot (like a bad JPG)

Have you tried that "Alternate Pixel Center" in the control panel?
I've heard that it's fixed a lot of text related problems in games..
Though, i've never experienced it (i think i first read about it when
NOLF first came out, but I never played it)..

[RIV@NVX]

Originally posted by Mystik
Have you tried that "Alternate Pixel Center" in the control panel?
I've heard that it's fixed a lot of text related problems in games..
Though, i've never experienced it (i think i first read about it when
NOLF first came out, but I never played it)..

Will try (but strange fact is that DarkStone works good with anything except my current graphics card).
And it is only game that has that kind of problems.

Update:
Works! Thanks!

[Mystik]

The only bad thing I can think of is if that you might have to turn
it off.. some games that do work properly without it on might
start to look corrupted with it on..

[dragonfist22]

I have noticed that with some drivers, I get this corruption of the fonts after using the game for some time but restarting the game gets rid of it But more recently this hasn't been an issue. There have been other issues but that one is gone.

[kronologic]

Didn't reckon problems like that before...

btw - I still have stutters now and then - omega-driver set didn't fix it for me somehow went back to my gf4ti4600 in order to be able to play at least 10 minutes without getting eye-cancer because of the stutter-issue...

best regards,



kron.

[jonis]

Kron, I see what you mean.

I'm even considering going back to a Geforce2... That card is solid stutterfree and smooth as silk atleast up to 1024x768.

W/ the 9700 pro I sometimes get crazy stutters even in 640x480 w/ sound off.

[evergreen]

I noticed some stuttering last night for the first time in Age of Mythology--major battles happening with many units. I did have the Omega drivers running, but I did the clean uninstall and put the Cat 3.0 drivers back on and only got a few minutes of playing time in--no major battles yet. I also turned some of my settings back to Quality. I'll have to update later, but I didn't have any real problems with the ATI drivers before. I was playing with a modded BIOS for my ECS K7s5a motherboard and screwing around with my memory timings when my real problems occured. Oh, and before that I did have to apply some post XP SP1 patches to fix a reboot problem in games I had, which I believe was related to XP & my flat panel monitor. Anyway I run everything at 1280x1024 16 bit color and all seemed well until the few stutters that I had last night.

Athlon XP 1800+
512 MB PC2100
ATI Radeon 8500 DVI to my flat panel

[kronologic]

Yes jonis,


that's exactly hitting the point. And further on I'm just tired of switching drivers just to be able to turn 2x aa on? Hell yeah I paid 440EUR for a videocard that's just not working right out of the box. Installing this driver - installing that OS - deinstalling DX9 - installing DX9 - Experimenting with sound-acceleration...

I think they should have written something on the box like "give us the money and have fun with all the work finding the hints to the bugs we made for ya".

Sorry, but that's just my oppinion.


Greets,


Kronos

[evergreen]

Well I played some more Age of Mythology after doing a clean unistall and reinstalling ATI Cat. 3.0 drivers; I had one long stutter. So, after exiting the game I went into my settings and slid them back to performance from quality; upon clicking "Ok" to exit, my PC rebooted--typically it might flash the screen to make the changes and bring me to the desktop. Then I went into a minor reboot frenzy while checking my display settings, so I went to bed. I think I'll put Omega's modded drivers back on and see what happens next.

Athlon XP 1800+
512MB PC2100
ATI Radeon - DVI to flat panel monitor
1280x1024 16 bit
Windows XP SP1 w/a few post SP1 patches

By the way, my stuff ran great with Windows 98. My problems didn't occur until I moved to XP...

[Mr.Floppy]

rofl... wish u luck for this

[evergreen]

For those who have no problems, can you post your system configurations? ie. processor, video card, memory, motherboard, resolution, operating system, and any applications or games that you're running.

Also, anyone out there using flat panel monitors and XP? If so, are you experiencing any problems.

[Zardon]

im not going into specifics guys but there will be a new official driver set from ati shortly.

[UberLord]

Updated drivers released. Post any new feedback in this thread