Oolite Bulletins

I’ve been thinking of trying ATI Tray Tools out as an alternative to the ATI CCC.

Does anybody out there have any knowledge or experience of it?

I use ATT all the time, because it enables triple buffering (a must when using vSync) both with OpenGL and Direct3D.

Ah good, you’ve had no problems with it, Zieman? I’ve seen a few dodgy reports, which is why I ask.
Also, are there any other major benefits?… the latest CCCs also allow triple buffering.

El Viejo wrote:

Ah good, you’ve had no problems with it, Zieman? I’ve seen a few dodgy reports, which is why I ask.

No problems here. Maybe that's because I don't try anything too fancy with it, by fancy I mean experimental and/or really taxing for the card. With previous version I got a couple of VPU recovery situations, 1.6.9.1472 seems to be stable.

El Viejo wrote:

Also, are there any other major benefits?…

I like the game profiles, very straightforward stuff.

El Viejo wrote:

the latest CCCs also allow triple buffering.

Do they? Have to look into it. I think that a barebones display driver + CCC install would be just fine, it's just that so far the Triple Buffering has been limited to OpenGL only (yeah, no probs with Oolite then ), for DirectX applications you need ATT or something similar. On the other hand, CCC allows you to preserve aspect ratio (I don't like oval car wheels etc.) and to use as much as possible of the area of your screen - ATT does not.

So, I'm running both in combination. So far so good, even if I'd prefer to have only one controller for my GPU & its drivers.

Zieman wrote:

it's just that so far the Triple Buffering has been limited to OpenGL only (yeah, no probs with Oolite then ), for DirectX applications you need ATT or something similar.

I think you're right there... it's only OpenGL. That's all I seem to think about nowadays... OpenGL (must be something to do with this game).

Thanks for the advice.

well, 10.2 didn't work either. game's still fine, RenderMonkey still doesn't wanna know :-/

Killer Wolf wrote:

RenderMonkey still doesn't wanna know :-/

Sorry to hear that KW.
I've no knowledge of RenderMonkey at all, so all I can suggest is a complete uninstall and clean re-install of RenderMonkey (if you haven't tried that already). Occasionly that works with some apps.

nah, tried a repair and an uninstall/reinstall. just doesn't wanna play for some reason. odd that an AMD product works better w/ an Intel chip and nvidia card than an AMD chip and AMD vid card :-/

Killer Wolf wrote:

odd that an AMD product works better w/ an Intel chip and nvidia card than an AMD chip and AMD vid card :-/

Yeah... go figure! There's a new driver update (10.3) due soon. Maybe that might help (I can almost see you shaking your head).

Cheers!

El Viejo wrote:

There's a new driver update (10.3) due soon. Maybe that might help (I can almost see you shaking your head).

Cheers!

That will be nice.. maybe I'll get proper stars and nebulae on my laptop again..

doubt i'll bother w/ 10.3, EV, can't be bothered w/ messing around time and again. as long as PShop works i'm happy, and the game itself is fine so although it's not a perfect sitch i can at least dump my ships in-game to see what they look like. it's a bit more messing about that just firing them into RM but what the Hell.

ATI have now released CCC (Catalyst Software Suite) 10.3, driver version 8.712-100302b-096975C-ATI

I’ve just installed it and had a decent test flight… all appears to be well so far, and all of Griff’s ships (which is my main interest) display perfectly. Whether there is any improvement in performance is hard to tell. Only a first impression that Oolite feels/looks a little sweeter… nothing tangible, no extra OpenGL extensions (my HD 3650 is quite old now though, and may have hit it’s limit).

Another long cruise in store for me tonight… oh well, someone’s got to do it, I suppose.

This may be of interest to you, Diziet:

This release of ATI Catalyst™ introduces support for the production version of Microsoft ® Windows® 7 and Windows Vista® for notebooks featuring the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 2000 Series, ATI Mobility Radeon ™ HD 3000 Series, and ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 Series, and planned support future ATI Mobility Radeon ™ products.

That's good news.. hopefully it won't be too long before 10.3 makes it to the legacy series. I'm looking forward to seeing if I get my stars and nebulae back. When I was testing the Windows 7RC on my notebook, and I modded the Win7 drivers, stars and nebulae worked fine, but under Vista, no go, so far.

El Viejo wrote:

This may be of interest to you, Diziet:

This release of ATI Catalyst™ introduces support for the production version of Microsoft ® Windows® 7 and Windows Vista® for notebooks featuring the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 2000 Series, ATI Mobility Radeon ™ HD 3000 Series, and ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 Series, and planned support future ATI Mobility Radeon ™ products.

I'll keep it in mind, though it sounds from that description as if they have no plans to back-port it to older Mobility Radeon products, such as my x2300.

<sigh> I’d been thinking that this thread was more or less done… but, having had a few days running 10.3, I think that this driver has a problem, and not just with Oolite. It runs the game perfectly… once it’s loaded, and that’s the trouble. I’ve had a spate of ‘black screen/VPU recover’ events when loading Oolite. Even when it does load, it takes too long and the display is often scrambled briefly… then it runs the game fine. <scratches head>

As I’d had a couple of ‘black screen/VPU recover’ events with 10.2, I’ve now rolled back to 10.1 and all seems well. Loads fast, no stutter and so far, no crashes. It’s possible that it’s my GPU getting old and hitting it’s limit, but KW has had a few ‘events’ on 10.2 I believe, and there are several reports of this problem on the web (mostly ordinary use and DirectX related stuff, so not just Oolite, as I say).

So that’s the state of play on my machine… if anyone else has had the same problem, it would be good to hear from you (or from anyone who has had no troubles with the new drivers).

I've not had probs w/ 10.2 so far, other than RM not working. to be fair, i've about finished my Diamondback so i haven't had the applications all open at once that i had when it started VPUing last time, so i'm not gonna say everything's fine!

gotta say tho, i'm not particularly impressed w/ Radeon. PShop is fine, but when you scroll the pic you sometimes get a little corruption in a sector of the display - nothing fatal, the sort of thing that goes when your scroll it off the screen etc. it's just annoying. i thought when i got the system that an AMD card on an AMD CPU would be the perfect match...looking like it's not, particularly...