Argh! ATI!

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 12:17 pm

Kaks wrote:
Transparent planets might happen as a result of resizing the game window.

It's a potential side effect of using SDL_SetVideoMode in the code. It's also happening on my nvidia, but it should be corrected in trunk fairly soon...

Interesting - it's entirely new to me, but now it happens regularly. I need to resize once - and ever did, as I prefer to run Oolite in a window. That makes catalyst not to use my card's second GPU for the game, but the card doesn't use the GPU anyway, thus it's no drop in speed.

Now someone complained in the AMD forum that he got a fps decrease of almost 25% with the new drivers. The moderator of the catalyst forum commented:
>>Does it really matter what the benchmark score is as long as the game performance is the same? <<

Screet

Post by **Kaks** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 4:17 pm

Screet wrote:
>>Does it really matter what the benchmark score is as long as the game performance is the same? <<

I like it! "They're not oranges, they're apples! Well, as long as they're still oranges, you've got nothing to complain about!" Orwell would have been proud!

Baza · Post by **Baza** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 4:24 pm

Yes can confirm that resizing window does give me back the planets etc as intended.

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Sat Feb 21, 2009 4:25 pm

Kaks wrote:
I like it! "They're not oranges, they're apples! Well, as long as they're still oranges, you've got nothing to complain about!" Orwell would have been proud!

Another one:

Code: Select all

Moderator: "Doesnt occur on my 4870X2 in Vista X64"
User: "So the question is whats different between your system and
mine that causes me to experience the issue, while you are not."
Moderator: "*shrug* I have an engineering sample 4870X2 which is
different to retail in a few ways, could be anything really."

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview. ... erthread=y

Now I understand why their tech staff is incapable of reproducing the users errors - they do have better hardware production for their own people!

Screet

Zero Day · Post by **Zero Day** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:21 pm

I use an opengl wrapper with good results.
The one i use was made to make nvidia demo "dawn" running an ati hardware.
Works like a charm for me, just make a backup of your opengl32.dll file in Windows/system32 folder and replace the file.

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 5:39 pm

Zero Day wrote:
I use an opengl wrapper with good results.
The one i use was made to make nvidia demo "dawn" running an ati hardware.
Works like a charm for me, just make a backup of your opengl32.dll file in Windows/system32 folder and replace the file.

That sounds nice! Can you provide me (and others) with the link to that wrapper?

Screet

Zero Day · Post by **Zero Day** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 6:52 pm

I can't get it to work anymore - unfortunately.
Also the opengl32.dd is always overwritten with my
current setup - have to place the dll in the games folder.
Will do my very best makking it work again.
If i succeed I'll post again.
Sorry again for raising - maybe - false hope...

Zero Day · Post by **Zero Day** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 7:24 pm

Here's new hope:

found another wrapper thats working - at least atm.

It's calles GLdirect from Scitech - it's former payware but you can get it now for free on many download sites. The company has releases a free registration key as it seems.

The software has a GUI where you can make configuration and switch on and off the wrapped gldriver.

I have to use the non-shader driver and have some strange effect on the edge of screen but it works!

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 7:27 pm

Zero Day wrote:
I can't get it to work anymore - unfortunately.
Also the opengl32.dd is always overwritten with my
current setup - have to place the dll in the games folder.
Will do my very best makking it work again.
If i succeed I'll post again.
Sorry again for raising - maybe - false hope...

No problem, and I'd be happy to have a workaround. Anyway, welcome to the board! I didn't notice you were new here in my initial reply!

I'm still waiting for answers - ATI has yet to respond at all and Asus stated that any claims about missing OpenGL acceleration were "baseless" yet they did not provide any solution upon how to activate it.

Therefore, I sent an email to nVidia germany, asking if they could name any tech-savvy lawyers or would like to check this case, as they lost customers because of advertised propertiers of their competitors cards which are missing. Seems there are some US people now seeking lawyers, too, in order to sue ATI because of this.

Still, the best way would be if they'd just solve the problem. I did offer them again to run diagnostics software on my computer in order to track down the problem - but I never got a reply to such offers.

Screet

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 7:50 pm

Zero Day wrote:
found another wrapper thats working - at least atm.

It's calles GLdirect from Scitech - it's former payware but you can get it now

Strange. I only got complete graphics corruption. Someone recently did post an image of what I did get. All ships are a unicolor blob. Same applies for all text regions.

I tried multiple settings, but those did only affect the initialization speed, without effecting the graphics corruption.

It doesn't have any shader support, it seems.

I am curious why you did achieve better results - maybe it's incompatible with DX10.1 hardware?

Screet, who had to hit "submit" for over 20 times again - what's up with the board?

Zero Day · Post by **Zero Day** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 8:16 pm

don't give up!

I had the same effect till i switches to "Scitech Gl direct opengl non-shader driver" in the main screen of the wrapper software
- default one is the shader one that doesn't work here too.
I'm on ati 4670 with catalyst 8.10 - don`t know about the actual catalyst is working with the wrapper. My OS is Windows XP
did you reboot after installation?

I'll have a look now for a HUD mod that covers the strange looking edges of the main screen.

The Spaceport also has some graphic corruption here , but rest is fine. Nebula is there and looks nice - saw it for the first time.

ps
on the about tab software version 5.0 (Jul 20 2004) is displayed,
do you use that version as well?

if all fails and you have a pciex slot left on your mobo - go get a cheap nvidia 8400gs and plug in Monitor for playing oolite, it runs this game here well and you can use it as a physx decoder card for other games supporting it - together with your ati as main render hardware. Yes, it really works...

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 8:35 pm

Zero Day wrote:
I had the same effect till i switches to "Scitech Gl direct opengl non-shader driver" in the main screen of the wrapper software
- default one is the shader one that doesn't work here too.

on the about tab software version 5.0 (Jul 20 2004) is displayed,
do you use that version as well?

Tried that. Result: The particles shown did not go away from screen. Most were hanging at the edges, but the whole screen got filled with more and more particles that were not cleaned up. Would not allow to fight.

The nebulae problem was solved instantly.

My test was the assassins mission at Geteve - it was sped up by roughly 10 times, although the GPU and CPU went to idle state again. Still no good framerate, but much better than the 1fps (and lower) than before.

However, after roughly a minute the game just stopped responding.

I was rebooting, and the good point is, that the wrapper uninstalls without any problem

The wrapper driver I tested is: gldirect-5.0.2-full.exe

Screet

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 8:46 pm

Having literally just done it myself, I'd recommend joining your local Freecycle group mailing list and asking if anyone has got a spare graphics card that they can give you.

It won't be the latest, but if you're lucky and someone is generous it won't cost you anything either. I've just updated my old WinXP desktop and my "new" (but very old hardware-wise) Ubuntu desktop both with 128MB NVidia cards for nothing. Gone up from a 64MB Nvidia and a mobo built-in Nvidia chipset respectively, and both now chugging along nicely with them (yes, I've now got two PCs out of 5 that can run shaders

, and t'other three are laptops anyway).

Cmd. Cheyd · Post by **Cmd. Cheyd** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 9:00 pm

I'm got a new-in-box Nvidia 6600.... It's AGP though... Not sure what you need...

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Mon Feb 23, 2009 9:08 pm

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:
I'm got a new-in-box Nvidia 6600.... It's AGP though... Not sure what you need...

Need? ATI releasing a driver that fixes these issues or a complete payback of my money so I can switch to nVidia. Really.

I cannot install another card in this machine anyway, as it's only got a single PCI-E 2.0 slot.

Running the game for a short test on my old machine, single core with AGP8x and an X800XTPE (yes, I've got one of the "vapor ware" cards!) didn't appear any slower, but I haven't tried the Geteve test yet. It's my development machine anyway, thus I'm a bit unwilling to use it for gaming. Might test that later today, though. Don't expect more speed, but where the Fur Rendering test just crashes with the 4870x2, it runs nicely on the X800XTPE. Would not be astonished to find out that there's no speed difference at all between those two cards when running Oolite. Hmmm. I have to test it, now that I'm thinking about this. I really want to know for sure.

Screet