AMD HD 7970 and AA settings for FS9

[geoffco 0]

Hi folks,

 

Until recently I had an Nvidia GTX 580 card running dual monitors through a TripleHead2Go, but when I moved from Windows XP x64 to Windows 7 x64 I could not get them working at all well. My panels constantly flickered and the texture loading rate was incredibly slow, even after endless tweaking ang driver testing. I don't know whether it was the NV card or the TH2G that was causing the problems, but anyway I got fed up and bought an AMD HD 7970 card instead. As an additional advantage I can now use EyeFinity for my screens rather than the TH2G so that reduces the clutter a bit as well...

 

I am using the beta 12.11 drivers because I was seeing problems in windows with the 12.10 (freezing with a black and grey striped screen) - actually those drivers were quite good in FS9. The alternative of the 12.3 drivers gave less good performance.

 

So, as a long time Nvidia user, I am not sure about the best settings for the AMD card... I assume the settings in FS should be the same - ie. AA off and mips to default (4) or higher.

 

On the CCC control panel, I have the following:

 

Anti-Aliasing:

Override application settings

Level: 8X

Samples: 24X

Filter: Edge-detect

 

Anisotropic Filtering:

Override application settings

Per-pixel samples: 16X

(In FS I have set trilinear)

 

Morphological Filtering:

Disabled (This makes everything blurry if I use it)

 

Tesselation:

AMD optimized (guess this has no effect in FS)

 

Texture Filtering Quality:

High Quality

 

Surface Format Optimization:

Enabled (guess this has no effect in FS)

 

Wait for Vertical Refresh:

Always on

 

Anti-Aliasing Mode:

Adaptive Multi-sample AA

 

OpenGL Settings:

Triple Buffering: Enabled

 

Is this how I sould be setting it up or has someone got some good tips as to which settings are good with these newer drivers?

 

By experimentation with AA vs performance, I see the following issues depending on what I use:

 

Multi-sample AA -> Good performance but poor quality (can use full settings)

 

Adaptive Multi-sample AA -> Reasonable FPS performance (I can use the 8X setting ok) but there is a problem with seeing glowing edges around transparent parts of, for example, autogen trees - this is not related to the mip setting if FS9.cfg, I have checked. Also, there is a fair amount of shimmering.

 

Super-sample AA -> Poor FPS performance (even 4X is quite slow) but the problem with tree textures is gone. However, there is a new issue which is that any 'line' textures - like roadways on the airport tarmac - are really badly 'cut up' and not anti-aliased bery well. There is also a lot of shimmer.

 

Ideally I would want something in between the adaptive MS and the SS AA, but I guess there is no such mode... I think for now I will live with glowing trees but any tips would be appreciated!

 

Cheers,

Geoff

[geoffco 0]

So, there is nobody active on the forum here with an AMD card who is prepared to share their settings...? Interesting, but I don't believe there are no AMD users here. This thread is not a complaint or frustrated winge, I am simply asking for other users experiences and settings...

 

PS. For the sceptics, I know that NVidia is better for FS but they do not seem to be able to release a card that can run single card to multi-screenlike EyeFinity. I would need a second card (no space and also too costly) and a third screen (no space for that either, considering my current two are 28"). My NV card and TripleHead2Go simply did not work properly in FS - I spent about a week trying everything I could think of but the combination is simply not playing nice with the rest of my setup. If I thought a NV card could work on my system, I would buy it right now (ok, perhaps next month at this rate of throwing money at FS!)

 

Geoff

[Dan F 6]

Geoff,

 

Good luck. Getting help with ATI cards is tough. I've fought that battle and lost.

 

Dan

[geoffco 0]

Fair enough. I have most of my issues fixed now anyway so I will post the answers here myself once I finish my testing of the other settings...

 

Geoff

[juvat 0]

Geoff,

Your pc is eons ahead of mine; but I'll post here my info/settings.Maybe it will be helpful in some way.

jimb

 

WinXp Pro Sp3 x86

Dx9c 4.09.0000.0904

Desktop set to 1024x768x32

Monitor set to 60 hertz

 

HD5850 Cat 12.4

Driver Packaging Version 8.861-110524a-121085C-Asus

2D Driver Version 6.14.10.7200

Direct3D Version 6.14.10.0841

OpenGL Version 6.14.10.10834

Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2012.0405.2154.37503

 

3D Options

**********

Anti_Alias: Level 8x

Filter: Edge-detect

Samples: 24x

 

Anti_Alias Mode: Super-sample AA

 

Anisotropic Filtering: 16x

 

Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality

 

Display Options

***************

3D Refresh Rate Override: Same as desktop

 

From the Catalyst icon in the Desktop Tray:

Wait for vertical refresh: Always On

[geoffco 0]

Thanks for the info: Those settings give excellent image quality on my system but cannot supply a reasonable framerate with my two screen setup. Also, the FPS is really poor in heavy cloud.

 

So far, I am settling towards using 8x (24x with edge) AA but in adaptive multisample. This gives good quality apart from the edges of trees and that can be solved with mipbias=5. There is now some shimmering but I think I'll live with that (trees and taxiways shimmered on my old NVidia card as well).

 

Geoff

[flybyme 0]

Hello,

 

so wich are the best settings to use in CCC with this VGA?

;o)

I use fs9....

[Humpty 751]

FS9 will zoom on this card. It is FSX you have to worried about. The problem with ATI cards is the Clouds.