PeerlessGirl

That is likely why, running at that Res even with most everything enabled, you're not going to push a 470 SLI rig.

I'm honestly not seeing where you're getting this at all. It uses 3 of the four cores in my machine, and my 7800GT wouldn't be able to touch praetoria. Maybe if you're running 1280x768 or something, that might be true. I'm running 1920x1200 and it certainly uses most of the power of my single 470, and 3 of the 4 cores on my CPU, granted it only uses maybe 4-5GB of my 8GB of RAM, but I wouldn't expect it to. My SO is using SLI'd 470s and notices a massive FPS boost and outperforms me. Other than her PSU and case, we have the exact same rig, except she has a second 470 and I only have one. Oh..she has a different monitor and she only runs 1920x1080 as opposed to 1200, but otherwise our systems are identical, both running Win7 x64.

That's about what I get with a single 470. I tend to use HQ, and as I said SHQ actually gives less performance than UQ does. During events I scale down to HQ or further down if I get really low FPS. The 4xxx cards don't incur much of a hit running AA and AF, so it's worth using 8x or so. Beyond that I don't think CoH looks any better, and if you actually go to 32x, you'll grind your FPS nearly to a halt. I try to aim to keep my FPS above 30 at all times somewhere between 33 and 45. You do have to lower your world detail, especially in Praetoria, that costs a big hit. I run at 100 in Prae, 125% in CoV, and 125-150% in CoH, depending on what's going on, any higher in those areas and the FPS becomes unacceptably low. All in all it's nearly maxed out, and runs very well.

The "outline" effect is some sort of glitch that happens between AA and AO, it almost makes it look like CO-style "outlining" but it only happens on certain backgrounds and textures depending on where you're standing and things, it's not a consistant thing. Thankfully, my eyes have started to "tune it out".

I agree with this statement.

SLI is likely not working correctly then. Did you update your drivers, and check to make sure CoH is set to "Alternate Frame Render 2" in the Recommended Mode for CoH? I can tell you that my SLI works on my pair of GTS 250s, and my GF has dual 470s and she massively outperforms my single 470, so I know it *does* work on 470s.

I know for a fact this is untrue. There has been discussion and complaining since beta started, before that site went up, about how "the full slot was in the i18/GR Beta" and therefore, the full slot has to be here, when in actuality the only parts that were in and tested were exactly what is in and tested now, the only reason anyone knew about the other enhancements was a leak on test that lead to people being able to see the entire list.

It's also possible they may release the latter half between 19 and 20, which would still make it true that "the entire slot is in issue 19".

However, unless something changes from what we've heard (roumered release on the 16th or 30th of this month) it's unlikely there'd be time to put the other half in and test it unless they're literally planning to do it tomorrow.

There is no indication on the site the slot will be "FULLY UNLOCKABLE" in i19, all it says is "Alpha Slot--Unlocked in i19" which is a true statement, it IS unlocked in i19. More of an interpretation failure.

It either means "can't talk about" in the sense of: 1) something is being discussed or worked on that is private between the two companies.
2) We can't talk about it because we have no/idea if when that might happen. or 3) Something akin to what you're suggesting (which is such a thing *was* done, it was likely done back in the early days of CoH, and the agreement either applies to the engine, or the product, and therefore doesn't have an 'expiration date'. In that sense whatever code and/or optimizations that might've been done or given to them by NVIDIA are still NVIDIA'S right within the agreement. I'm sure it would've been done by Cryptic back in the day, but may well still be binding.

I would tend to think any of these or a combination of these are possible.

Though it does thankfully have other neat stuff in it too!

Right, because they'd need a signed NDA for that...I'm sure there's at LEAST one more slot...

First off, yeah, ATI drives are pretty poorly written, I've never had one uninstall correctly, and upgrading drivers was always a mess. As far as the "corporate splash" AMD (before or shortly after the merge) was a corporate sponsor of serveral major CoH events (as Razer is now as well), and I think that's probably why the predomenance on the splash screens, and why CoH is "plugged in the drivers". Ultra Mode itself may have been written "from the ground up" with ATI support--I doubt that it was, quite honestly, and even if it was, Ultra Mode alone won't ensure the kind of support you're thinking of--but the game itself was not.

The reality of the situation is that the CoH engine from the ground up, back in the ancient days of yore was written with Nvidia support and/or coding optimizations/whatever they give to games and teams that are part of the NVIDIA "TWIMTBP" project, which CoH was. No matter what kind of semi-reverse retooling Ultra Mode may have had (I honestly don't believe it had any, it may have just improved support for ATI a little to a moderate amount, but it was always horrendous anyway). So yeah, because of that, SLI would be a lot easier to support in a game already written with NVIDIA optimizations when it was made.

The sad reality of that is, no matter how much ATI/AMD and PS/NC pander to each other and/or do corporate deals and promotions, that optomized code is still there, and even if disabilng it was possible, why do that? It wouldn't help ATI work any better and would hurt those running NVIDIA products.

When I got really into CoH (around the time CoV released) and I realized the card I had then (X800XT AGP 256MB) wasn't really good enough to drive CoH at the resolution I'd gone up to when I borrowed a friend's monitor when mine died (1280x720 4:3 to a 1680x1050 widescreen apple cinema display). I knew that whatever monitor I ended up buying, I was going to need a better graphics card. For the short term and to extend the life of that machine, I got a 7800GS because I knew and had realized NVIDIA worked much better with CoH. I was ALWAYS an ATI/AMD person, but the reality was the reality. Down the line I saved up and got a 24" Dell flat (1920x1200) which I still use, and boy, then it was time to build a new system and I used the top of the line at the time (8800 GTX 768MB). Fast forward a few years, and that older machine runs a pair of GTS 250 1GB cards in SLI (thanks to BFGs replacing my dying cards with better stuff twice--RIP BFG, one of the best in the biz). My new machine runs a GTX 470 1280MB.

Now, I'm not trying to sound like an NVIDIA sales pitch, but it wasn't until I gave up my preconceived notions of Nvidia and actually used one I realize how much easier their driver installs were (only a handfull of times...maybe 5-10 in the last 5 years) have I had to roll back and/or fully clean and fresh install a new driver because of some issue. The most recent being the upgrade from 260.89 to 260.96 (for some reason install kept 'failing' so I used the "clean driver before install" checkbox now included in the last 2 releases, and short of unplugging my network cable so Win 7 didn't go ballistic trying to correct my errors and installing drivers without asking me and not letting me stop, I didn't have to do anything special except a pair of reboots, and rebuilding my game profiles.

I do like ATI cards for a lot of things, especially home theatre, they've always done that well, I have always believed though, that they rushed out their DX11 product, and that the 400 series NV cards are much better handled in that regard.

Long story short: some games are better with one, some are better with the other, CoH just happens to really favor NVIDIA, which is honestly likely more a holdover/corporate decision from Cryptic back in the original design/sponsorship days than it is any reflection on NC and/or PS's current crop of people, because of that SLI was likely easier to impliment. I guess it's possible Crossfire might be supported sometime, but I wouldn't hold my breath. SLI is more finiky and problematic to get supported WELL in something (without a lot of NV customization and "help") but tends to IMO perform better when it is than Crossfire does. On the flip side, Crossfire is generally easier to get working in a partial sense, or just a quick boost, but tends not to be as stable in those situations.

Now...I'd like to see PhysX supported poperly on card with NVIDIA cards, but I'm not sure that, for the vast majority of users, it would help much, though lower-end machines and/or laptops might get decent benifits as opposed to using the CPU for CoH's (admittedly minimal) Physics.

A lot of us have this issue, I doubt a whole lot of us were invited by accident, they're probably just overwhelmed with something..