ATI Settigns and tools...

[Guest wayupthere]

Hi Geoff,For now, use the ones on the ATI site, but keep an eye on this site [a href=http://www.omegadrivers.net/]Omega[/a], they are working on the Vista drivers. (You are running Vista right, cant remember what you told me last time)For tweaking/Ocing you could use: [a href=http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/Tweaking/ATITool/]ATITool Vista 0.26[/a] use version 0.26, its not listing Vista, but does work OK, or should do so atleast.or [a href=http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Video-Tweak/ATITool.shtml]ATITool Vista 0.27 Beta[/a] Version 0.27Beta which is also Vista compliant, but that version seems to let people down, so its worth a try but nothing guaranteed yet.BTW, "dumb questions" don't exist, only dumb people afraid to ask of things they don't know about ;)Regards,Davis T.

[geoffco 0]

Thanks for the info Davis. I'm running XP Pro actually but I see there are versions of the ATI Tool for me too.Cheers,Geoff

[Guest wayupthere]

Hey Geoff,Alright ....yeah for XP there are plenty. Just some advice, use the artifact checker that comes with it to check your overclock after you've set your desired settings, its a very useful addition to that program.Regards,Davis T.

[geoffco 0]

OK. The card is here (ATI Sapphire 3850HD AGP for new readers), it fitted and its "working". Funny how this is pretty much always the case with new hardware, it never quite works first time without any issues!The card works fine, it delivers nicer quality images in FS than the previous nVidia (but perhaps this is just the ATI world looking a wee bit different).I have had to use Catalyst Control Centre for everything so far as the ATI Tray Tools does not yet support this card - I even managed to get a BSOD with it! Now the problem, if I boot FS9 as soon as the PC starts, I get NO ANITALIASING!! I can get some with the in-game AA but it's not as good If I task-switch and then open CCC and change any random setting and click ok (and I can change the settign back to etc) and then directly switch back to FS9, all the settings are applied.However, (and there's always one of those) if I then either do something in one of the FS9 menus or switch to the the windows desktop and back again the settings are lost again! Even with CCC running in the background!!Any ideas on what is going on (better still, how to sort it)?? I can only use the drivers supplied on the CD with the card which claim to be 8.4 (????) and the ones on the ATI site do not recognise the device and so do not install anything useful. I assume that tha AGP hotfix is included since this is an AGP card... The issue described is not a result of overclocking the card, it did it before!!Thanks,Geoff

[Guest wayupthere]

Hey Geoff,Hmm ok.. just did some reading, and I see more AGP owners cant use it, I guess you best wait, the card is still very new.Hmmm your about your issue, the 8.4 thats on your CD are known to cause all sorts of issues, some even say they are "broken".Goto ATIs download center, and download 8.1.. they should work for AGP for XP too those to date have been according to my own experience (PCIe) been giving the best stable performance sofar. I just cant use crossfire yet, but that not something you have to worry about.Also, when installing (and you did NOT reinstall your OS) then remove ALL traces from your old nvidia card, a normal uninstall will still leave certain traces, that can cause problems with your ATI catalysts.You can use either drivercleaner or driversweeper to do just that.[a href=http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1655]Driversweeper[/a][a href=http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=745]Driver Cleaner Pro[/a]Give that a go and report back.Regards,

[geoffco 0]

Ok, thanks for the tips but I think I've already covered these points...Yesterday before swapping cards I removed the nVidia drivers (and nHancer) etc in XP, then booted in safe mode and ran driver sweeper. After confiring that the files I know to be nv display stuff* were gone, I shut down and did the hardware change. *The chipset is also nVidia so there were still some of their files there in the Sys32 folder...My first attempt to install drivers was the 8.1 and hotfix from the ATI site but they didn't support the card. I also tried the new 8.2 with the same result so I had to use the CD. I checked the Sapphire site and they don@t offer any drivers and also in their forums there are a few threads suggesting that it will not be supported until the end of the month.For FS9, I rebuilt the FS9.cfg to detect the card etc and then went through and applied all my previous settings. leaving the display.device part alone.Basically I think I'm just going to have to wait for new drivers etc to be released - from looking around some other forums it looks like I've got one of the first ones so I guess this is to be expected :) Cheers,Geoff

[Guest wayupthere]

Hmm wow, never thought the AGPs would have those issues, seems im really out of the AGP loop...Im out of ideas, besides you just waiting, their must be other users here that use an AGP3850.. hopefully they can help you further along.Regards,

[Guest baksteen33]

Hi Geoff, Perhaps try Cat 8.2 which was put up a couple of days ago? FWIW, over here 8.1 meant excellent IQ for X38x0 series, but no (OS) hibernation mode. 8.2 has a slightly less good IQ so far, better perf and hibernation works. Think we'll need to wait for 8.3 for more improvements. In full screen, the only thing which doesn't work here, are the FSX menus. Kind regards Jaap

[geoffco 0]

Hmm, tried the 8.2 already - the problem is that the card is not detected as a supported model. I know there is a way to tweak the ini file of the installer to get around this for some of the older ATI AGP cards but to do it you need to know the "hardware code" for the card which in this case I do not... In the current situation, the only problem* I'm seeing is that if I switch out of FS9 to do something with ActiveSky or FSACARS etc etc I then have to open the Catalyst CC and disable the AA, then switch back to FS9 and out again, reanable AA and switch back to FS... Annoying but the quality thereafter is great :)* I also cannot run any Futuremark programs with this card, they just don't load! It's not a problem but an interesting issue (drivers again I don't doubt)!Assuming the folk over at the Sapphire forum know what they're talking about, the next version of the drivers should contain support for my card and are due to be released within a couple of weeks - I'll wait and see!Geoff

[geoffco 0]

Ahaa! I found a fix for the dropped AA in FS9... I found some drivers through the ATI forums which were actually for the PowerColor version of this card which was released a while earlier than the Sapphire. I only replaced the core driver components so I'm still using the same Catalyst CC etc and everything looks to be exactly the same EXCEPT, I can now switch out of FS9 and not drop the AA settings :)Still looking forward to decent driver support since a few other things are still not 100%... but this is progress!GeoffPS. Davis, congratulations on the Moderator status!

[Guest baksteen33]

Hi Geoff, glad you got it working despite no 100%. :-) Something which just shot through my mind regarding AGP and winXP, is, there are different standards for AGP (v.3 and v.3.5) with XP-SP2. MS, AFAIK, didn't license v.3.5 to mainboard manufacturers. If you install the AGP drivers supplied by the OEM, winXP-SP2/AGP v.3.5 reverts back to v.3. I only remember I never installed AGP drivers supplied by OEMs post XP-SP2 and continued to use MS AGP v.3.5. So, just FWIW... Kind regards Jaap

[geoffco 0]

Hi Jaap,Now that is indeed true with the AGP 3.0 vs 3.5 and I looked into it a while ago with the previous card. What I found from various sources on the net was that in my case, with an AMD 64 processor, I would not be able to use AGP 3.5 anyway and that it was only useful for an Intel machine... If this is wrong, I'd be interested to know if AGP 3.5 would show me any differences and if so, how I get it.Cheers,Geoff

[Guest baksteen33]

Hi Geoff, AFAIK, only by re-installing windows... :-( I not sure about Intel, but Nvidia, Via and others didn't have the v.3.5 license. AIM, it was just a little distinction which flashed through my mind. Frankly, I couldn't tell which is better. I only remember I never installed AGP drivers since XP-SP2. AGP systems (incl Intels) always worked well like that. Perhaps something to keep in mind once you re-install the OS? Maybe you have imaging software and can compare once you do so? FWIW and if you haven't already done so, with FS9, you can probably lower your AGP-Aperture (bios) to 128MB or so. With FSX, you *should* lower it to around that value. ;-) Have fun! Jaap

[geoffco 0]

Interesting... Well, as my last card was running with AGP 3.0 I suppose I can live without 3.5! I do have imaging software and for this reason have not reinstalled the OS or FS9 for quite some time! I've modified too much and forgotten how to do much of it... I'll start all over from scratch only if I go to FSX which might be in about a year on a better system.The point about the AGP Aperture, that's not something I've heard before - in fact, quite the reverse: I always thought (from reading about this a long time back) that for FS9 it was good to have that setting as the same as your graphics card memory... By the way, this machine is unlikely ever to run FSX so is this change any use in FS9? Geoff

[Guest baksteen33]

Hi Geoff, And then all of this talk will be over. :-) PCI-e just maps into your RAM and you don't have control. With AGP, the Aperture regulates how much of your system RAM will be used for AGP. FS9 barely uses 200MB VGA RAM so everything you give back to the core processes can help. The same amount or 50% of the VGA is likely from times when max 32 to 64MB were common. Maybe you now understand why I said *could* for FS9 and *should* for FSX? FSX wants all the system RAM it can get and if you already have a 512MB GPU... Can be done with AGP, not with PCI-e. On a, say, 2GB and a 512MB/PCI-e system, 25% of your system memory would be reserved, leaving ca 1.5GB for OS and FS. This in return can be fairly little for the one with the 'X' including the OS. You'll certainly enjoy FSX in a years time. :-) Just make sure you boot with enough memory once you do. ;-) 2GB with a loads of MBs on a (PCI-e) GPU is not ideal for FSX. I wish you heaps of fun until then! :-) Kind regards Jaap