Right on! It worked! I've done that whole setup before to no avail, but this time, it worked! huzzah!!
btw on the topic of water textures: It's likely something besides your video card. I have my water textures set to very high (I like my water, and it makes my hubby jealous) and it doesn't effect my FPS feel.
On another note (hopefully unrelated) I get system lockups regularly from alt-tabbing. Any idea on if this is fixable?
[ QUOTE ]
btw on the topic of water textures: It's likely something besides your video card. I have my water textures set to very high (I like my water, and it makes my hubby jealous) and it doesn't effect my FPS feel.
[/ QUOTE ]
How do you have anti-aliasing set? You should be suffering all types of hell with Water set to very High and FSAA turned on at all either in the driver or the game. This issue is purely related to ATI's drivers and Cryptic's HDR coding.
On that note, I did get verification that Water set to Low is NOT going through the P-Buffer, so that's why Low Water doesn't break FSAA.
Be well, people of CoH.
Augh! To answer your question, I have my setting set to what you described in your first post.
Now I have some other problems.
In my base, bump map colors are appearing on some wall/floor textures, making my base appear very bright and neon. I was turning various settings on and off again to try to see if it was an in-game setting that had done this and when I turned Bloom on/off again, the walls of my base disappeared. With bloom on or off, every time I faced NE the walls and some floors in my base then disappeared. I have yet to reenter my base since restarting the game. I've confirmed with an nVidia possessing SG mate that the bright neon is not supposed to be there and with an ATI using SG mate (also using your described settings) that the Neon is present on his machine. Though another ATI using SG mate (my hubby, not using your described settings, and likely hasn't updated his drivers since the beginning of the year when I reminded him to) does not see the neon.
Alt-tabbing, while nolonger crashing, is still impossible; I get a strange pixelated and crashed looking image of the game blinking and flashing when I have any window in front of the game. The window is not visible except in small flashybits when I hover over a button or hot key. Above described ati user (the hubby with old card/drivers) does not have any problem with alt-tabbing except some delay before loading the windows.
Highly frustrating...
Again, if you turn on Bloom, Depth of Field or Water to High while you have Anti-Aliasing enabled in the driver OR in the game, bizarre issues will occur. That's why I show all three of those items as Disabled. If you want to use any of those three settings, you MUST completely disable Anti-Aliasing.
As for the alt-tabbing, as mentioned earlier in the thread, you can either run CoH in windowed mode as Q_Arkhan stated, or you can make absolutely sure your desktop and game resolutions are identical and the same for refresh rates.
Be well, people of CoH.
Ahah! Refresh rates! That was prolly it. But I have yet ANOTHER problem!
After reinstalling the video drivers earlier (yay it works) I don't have any audio 
Edit: okay, now it's that bug.. nvm. I have audio, it jsut doesn't work sometimes in game. Thanks!
Hey, I have a Radeon 9500 pro and ever since I started playing again which was about a month ago I've noticed the strangest sort of lag. It happens when I move, like it'll keep moving me forward after I stop or queue up a bunch of movements and stuff and keep playing it out so sometimes I can get so backed up on this that I keep jumping around or moving in circles in the middle of a fight and get killed. Is this the sort of problem that this is supposed to fix? I think my FPS is normal because everyone else and everything else moves around me just fine and I see it all and my graphics are still great. I'm gonna try your stuff and see if it fixes it though because I would love to be able to play normally again. I can't play my scrapper at all with these problems.
[ QUOTE ]
How do you have anti-aliasing set? You should be suffering all types of hell with Water set to very High and FSAA turned on at all either in the driver or the game. This issue is purely related to ATI's drivers and Cryptic's HDR coding.
[/ QUOTE ]
By the way, FSAA set to anything turns my game black except for the UI and player names. Not a complaint, just an FYI.
On the note of alt-tabbing, after fixing my refresh rate I've learned that I can compfortably and reliably alt-tab at any time that I'm in a loading screen. (ie stationary image. not refreshing anything) The window I'm alt-tabbed to (like http://paragonwiki.com for badge hunting or contact choosing) is perfectly stable and I can browse it all I like, alt-tabbing back to the game when I'm ready.
I haven't tried this but I have a couple ideas to try also. There's an in-game option that will hold the game image still when you alt-tab out of it, I think this might fix it. (/stopinactivedisplay maybe with a 1/0 toggle?) If not, then I can just enter my enhancements screen since that's a stable image too. I haven't tried these two options yet. But they're ideas 
[ QUOTE ]
Hey, I have a Radeon 9500 pro and ever since I started playing again which was about a month ago I've noticed the strangest sort of lag. It happens when I move, like it'll keep moving me forward after I stop or queue up a bunch of movements and stuff and keep playing it out so sometimes I can get so backed up on this that I keep jumping around or moving in circles in the middle of a fight and get killed. Is this the sort of problem that this is supposed to fix? I think my FPS is normal because everyone else and everything else moves around me just fine and I see it all and my graphics are still great. I'm gonna try your stuff and see if it fixes it though because I would love to be able to play normally again. I can't play my scrapper at all with these problems.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's just lag and the new automove stuff.
Its a pain.
Is there any way to fix it? I also have a HORRIBLE chat lag. The thing is that I noticed it occurs on my PC when on my grandma's PC which I installed CoH on when I was visiting her for a week didn't have the lag issues at all but the graphics were on lower settings. I don't know, all I know is it's a major pain in the butt.
Okay! The latest on my quest to alt+tab!!
/stopinactivedisplay 1
It works, except that then I crash just as frequently as I used to.
Enhancements screen
Holy crap!! It works! So with inactivedisplay on (0) I can go into my enhancement screen, open a window, full screen it, then go back to game, exit my enhancements screen, and alt-tab to the window, restore it to windowed size and watch the game and have my nice happy visible screen. Convoluted but better than forcibly rebooting every time I alt-tab..
Thanks a million for your guide BillZBubba!!!!
For the first time I am able to keep my sound effects ON during a battle with a FULL team of 8 characters!!! I would use to have to turn it off to avoid a slideshow for anything more than 6 players.I have an 9600 gt ATI vid card. The only problem I have (at least I think it may be a problem) is that I have locked up 2 times in 2 gameplay sessions in a row since making the "fast writes: off" fix. The first time I was checking a bio of another character and the second I was accessing my enhancements screen. I could do nothing but forcibly reboot my computer..which bites. This has never happened to me in my 5 months of CoX gameplay, now it has happened on 2 seperate occassions on 2 consecutive days..Im getting a little worried.. Any thoughts?
There's a link about the contacts/info screen pauses/lockups here.
It may be coincidental only between these lockups and fast writes. It may very well be the cause, as I've had two under the same circumstances.
This is highly disturbing:
Leave fast writes on, take a pretty hefty performance hit, turn fast writes off, get random hardlocks when bringing up contacts and player info.
I am not pleased with this possibility in the least.
For anyone readin this that have also turned off fast writes:
Have YOU noticed a return in lockups when bringing up contacts and/or character info?
Please post yay or nay, as I need to collect this data.
Be well, people of CoH.
turning off fast writes has definitley increaded the time it takes to open the contacts, i'll get about a 4 second lockup before the screen actually opened. thats a 4 second average, with the longest actually being around 10 seconds. craziness.
[ QUOTE ]
turning off fast writes has definitley increaded the time it takes to open the contacts, i'll get about a 4 second lockup before the screen actually opened. thats a 4 second average, with the longest actually being around 10 seconds. craziness.
[/ QUOTE ]
Damn. What about overall gameplay for you, Grimmstone? Did you notice a performance increase with fast writes off beyond contacts, store and info screens?
Be well, people of CoH.
Ah ok yea I have a PCI-E X850XT so that makes sense now, phew atleast I know I wasnt going crazy and just missing the option somewhere thanks Bill
[ QUOTE ]
Ah ok yea I have a PCI-E X850XT so that makes sense now, phew atleast I know I wasnt going crazy and just missing the option somewhere thanks Bill
[/ QUOTE ]
Cool, Shortman, so tell me:
Do you have a pause, currently, the first time you open contacts after logging in a character?
Be well, people of CoH.
Yea I do, Its been doing it for awhile dont notice it anymore... Why? (I know I just sent this same PM, lol)
Because it tells me the following:
The pause is a global issue. Happens with ATI users just as it happens with Nvidia users, regardless of the architecture of the video card, as it occurs with both AGP and PCI-X cards.
It appears that fast writes being off for AGP cards exacerbates this issue, by causing the pause to be longer, and on occasion, causing the coh/v client to crash.
Yet disabling fast writes on AGP cards increases overall performance, so we must all make a nasty decision.
Personally, I'll choose the performance bump with the risk of the occassional lockup.
That, and getting this info gives me more ammo to go after the devs about it.
I'm also wondering if the whole thing is related to the multiple face issues that Squeeze posted about here.
Be well, people of CoH.
Just adding on, I noticed an increase along the lines of 30 FPS with these changes, however I had my first lockup when viewing info today. Like said above, a hard choice.
Edit: Also got a crash while alt+tabing while running windowed. Changing it back, my need of music and communication with non CoX-ers is too important. Bah.
Just an FYI, something in your settings causes the alttab crash. I reset back to default, set my Anti Aliasing and Anthroscopic filtering and left the rest as is on my X700 and all is fine, and slightly better than 6.2... (well I also upped my overclocking a bit to 475/575 over the stock 400/500 and my previous 450/520)
-ASYLUM- (nsfw)
St. Lucifer: lvl 50 D3 Defender
Satanicus: lvl 38 E2 Blaster
Diabolus The Dark: lvl 36 SS/DA Brute
Old Man Death: lvl 33 TH/DM Mastermind
Misses Claus: lvl 33 Ice Controller
Bill I have to say you are a genius when it comes to knowing about your video card. I always read up when you help people with their video card problems. Last night I spent most of the evening following both of your guidelines. I was thinking about changing my video card to Nvidia (but still can't let go of being an ATI fan 
), and I must say with the new settings CoV plays so much better and more fluid with my Radeon 9600 Pro.
The only problem I still have is the 2 - 3 second delay when opening up my contact list whether its in CoH or CoV.
But once again thx for this excellent guide!
Thanks for the kind words, BlaqueStar.
About alt-tabbing: I wish I knew what was going on here, as I'm able to alt-tab without issue. Normally I never do so, but since folks have brought this to my attention, I've been doing it more and more trying to find the solution. Sadly, since I can't get it to break, I can't figure out a fix.
The delay when bringing up contacts: Since folks with Nvidia cards also experience this, I'm left to believe that it's a client issue that only Cryptic can fix. I still get it as well.
If anyone does find a solution to these items, please share.
Be well, people of CoH.
I'll go through each setting one by one that isnt default sometime in the near future and try to figure out exactly what it is...
As of right now it's not the AA or the AF, so that's good 
-ASYLUM- (nsfw)
St. Lucifer: lvl 50 D3 Defender
Satanicus: lvl 38 E2 Blaster
Diabolus The Dark: lvl 36 SS/DA Brute
Old Man Death: lvl 33 TH/DM Mastermind
Misses Claus: lvl 33 Ice Controller
Tried the settings, with fast writes off- was locking up at least once every game session.
With fast writes on-would pause sometimes, but no locks.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Run in a window and don't worry about ALT-TAB
[/ QUOTE ]
I don't have any problems if I don't worry about alt-tabbing. What would be the point in running in windowed mode otherwise?
[/ QUOTE ]
I run everything in a Window if possible.
I like to be able to see the clock
Clicking out of a windowed game rarely causes the problems that Alt-Tab causes
COH uses OpenGL and as such, you can dynamically resize your window to ANY size, at any aspect ratio, on the fly, which is pretty cool.