Much needed new dll's

[Feuerfalke]

Catalyst AI features advanced texture filtering and image enhancements. It has nothing to do with running a game in crossfire-mode or not.

Switching the ID with ATT does not "enable" features. It just changes the way DX communicates them with the graphics card. As such some features might look different, maybe even "better", but it's usually slower and it decreases rendering-speed, as some features are rendered in emulation-mode. On older games, of course, this emulation won't have much of an impact with modern graphics cards.


To the ATI vs nVidia fanwar: Both have their pros and cons. It may not be satisfying, but it is as simple as that. Some games work better with card x, some with card y. And this not necessarily only changes from ATI to nVidia, but also between driver versions, chipsets and of course with the combination of hardware you use with the cards. I used both, ATI and nVidia and I have made many good and bad experiences with either.

[nearmiss]

This won't help if you already have an ATI card

Going back and forth between nVidia and ATI was pretty well the thing we all had to do in the past. The last ATI card I used successfully was the 9800 PRO for AGP. It was probably the best ATI card I ever used.

ATI got bought out by AMD, but I think they must have fired the driver devs that were with ATI.

I pay very close attention to postings about video cards, because you can almost buy a new computer for the price of one card.

Now I am with nVidia and I am very pleased with performance. WHen I build a new system I will spend several days or possibly weeks reading everything I can on upgrading my video card/s.

Having wait on someone to devise a fix or dlls for your video card is bad.

I didn't write this to knock any card mfgr, etc. It's just a tip to be very wary about your Video card purchases. If you know all this, good. There are some that will read this that don't know.

There are third party VC drivers floating around. I have used Omega drivers many times, but right now nVidia drivers are working for me. That may not be the case, if I upgrade my system.

[Flanker35M]

S!

I tend to disagree a bit here as there are many posts that if Catalyst AI is on Standard there is only one GPU seen in XFire setups, with Advanced they both are there, some say AFR mode or similar. Also XFire users say that perfromance is less with Cat AI on Std rather than Adv. So it might have a relation to XFire anyway.


As of the feature faking the ID. These fakes were tested on new titles and enabled some new shadows and smoke without a performance loss. Take a look at Rage3D forums for example EA games titles are mentioned there among others. I did ask how to do it and it had no effect in IL-2 as I run in OGL except slow down. So true these fakes can cause performance loss, but it is said also that these smokes in question over Rage3D are fully compatible with ATI, not a nVidia exclusive gimmick.

This war between brands is just so stupid. But what can one do? Nothing actually. I run with ATI and happy with it. I have used nVidia as well up to 280GTX, was happy with it too. So not a fanboi here As nearmiss said, study what suits you best and get it. Brand can be whatever

As of DLL's..there are some older ones that had ATI optimizations so I dare to claim that tweaking the DLL files would have an effect on the game, but biggest impact is with the drivers AND dll's combined. Will wait and see what these ATI guys come up with regarding the driver issues with IL-2, they are working on it.

[Qpassa]

I agree with you,if ATI doesnt fix the issues I will buy a Nvidia 285GTX ( not a ATI 5850-5870)

[Flanker35M]

S!

Qpassa..why 285GTX when SoW will be DirectX 11? If you want a nVidia card, then wait for Fermi being released this spring. Should be fast and support DirectX 11 like ATI. Bashing ATI for having problems because of IL-2..well..no comment And waiting for the driver release from ATI that should fix the problems we have at the moment.

[Blackdog_kt]

I've had nVidia cards for a long time (used to play IL2 with a Gforce 4MX before upgrading to a 6600GT), but on my new i7 rig bought last spring i went for a 4870. It was a deffective one and it gave up the ghost during the Xmas holiday season, so i bought a 4890 and waiting for the refund (i had a 3 year warranty).

The way i see it, i feel like Ati cards are generally faster on a processing level and with more video RAM, but they might suffer from drivers/support issues. On the other hand, i've been reading some things on Fermi and without being an expert it seems like it will be a very expensive card for not so much of a gain. For me this is important, because i never buy top of the line cards. I wait until they go from best to second best before i buy them, because that means i get to pay around 200 euros instead of 350 if i simply wait a few months.

[Qpassa]

Fermi eat too Watts,600W at fully charge,and this is not an option :I

[WhiteSnake]

Il2-1946 looks better on my ATI Notebook (HD4570) than it does on my SLI rig.

Luckly i dont have any of the blocky text isues etc. on it, and also failed to reproduce the isue on a friends rig with a HD5870 wen i ran it from my external harddrive to test it (only edited My Conf.ini from 1366x768 to 1920x1080 resolution and changed his CCC setings*)

But a lot of other people do have these isues and didnt report them by using the Catalyst Feedback form: http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D27E29B0E3

Now a couple of us from UBI.forums got a lot of people to report the problem that way and the head of the ATI Catalyst Crew said they where gonna look into the isue so hopefully it will be solved for 10.4.

Anyway these where the setings used together with the 9.12 OpenGL Hotfix drivers, These probably will not fix the blocky text isue if you get that but might be worth a try.

*Best Quality Settings for ATI Radeon HD3000 series and later Only:

[Render_OpenGL]
TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=3
TexCompress=0
TexFlags.UseDither=1
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=0
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=0
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=0
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=0
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=0
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=0
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=1

TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=0
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0

HardwareShaders=1

Shadows=2
Specular=2
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3

Sky=2
Forest=3
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2
LandGeom=3
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1

VideoSetupId=17
Water=2
Effects=2
ForceShaders1x=0

PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.0625
PolygonOffsetUnits=-1.0


Recomended CCC Settings:

Anti Aliasing on Highest settings (edge detect 12x).
Anisotropic Filtering at Aplication Controled.
Catalist A.I. Disabled
Detaillevel Mipmap at Max Quality
Vertical Refreshing (Vsync) at Off/Aplication Controled.
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Enabled (has a big impact on FPS so i usualy recomend to Disable it).
OpenGL Triple Buffering Enabled.

Note:
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=0 and TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=0 are 2 Settings that have to be Disabled ("0") for ATI Radeon HD cards!
Just like TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=0, TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0, and TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0 wich are nVidia only settings.
Water=2 is the Highest setting for ATI, but that looks atleast as good as Water=3 for nVidia cards if not better.


@gprr: Fermi GTX-480 is 600 Watts, 42 amps, 12 volts for a single card.

[gprr]

Originally Posted by WhiteSnake

Il2-1946 looks better on my ATI Notebook (HD4570) than it does on my SLI rig.
Water=2
@gprr: Fermi GTX-480 is 600 Watts, 42 amps, 12 volts for a single card.

HI
Effects=2 Is not reccomended by Oleg or modders,it is 100% trouble maker,use 1 or 0.

NV leaked power supply reccomendation for Fermi based system-total system power onsumptiom is indeed 600W,nothing stormy about that,the card itself may draw up to 300W max,5970-294W, 5870-188W, 5850-151W.
If you buy ATI 5970,you are reccomended to use 750W P/S.

gprr

[AKA_Tenn]

I use an ATI 5850 and i got no big problems running IL2 on perfect mode in openGL... i did have to swap out the .dll and change a bunch of settings in the conf.ini... I'll edit this post with the conf.ini changes i made when i get home

the only issue i have is with the mods... if i don't use the default or modded light clouds then my clouds are pretty much completely invisible from just outside them, and still grey u out when u go in them... so needless to say... i use the modded light clouds.

and catalyst settings don't effect weather the game looks proper or not... but if ur computer is shitty... like ur using a pentium 4 processor with 1 GB of crappy value ram, but thought getting a bad ass videocard would compensate for it... then u will get bad framerates