First and foremost, the 6.9s are crap. Period. End of discussion. The 6.8s have given me the best performance out of the 6 series but ONLY if Bloom, Depth of Field, FSAA, and AF are all disabled in game, Water is on Low or Off, and FSAA and AF are enabled in the CCC.
You say that your best ATI system has:
2.16ghz core duo
1.5gb RAM
Radeon x1600, 256mb
Your proc should be surpassing my 3.0GHz-HT-P4 OCed to 3.2. Do you have the -renderthread 1 flag within your coh shortcut? If you don't, then you're only using half of your proc.
You have 1.5GB RAM where I have 2GB. Do you still have VM enabled on any drive or partition? I do not. But that shouldn't be affect FPS with you standing still in Atlas.
The X1600GT is the midgrade of the current generation. My X800XT is the higher end of the last generation.
Take a look at this Tom's Hardware VGA chart and you will see that the X1600Pro PCI-E card gets slaughtered by the X800XT AGP card with the X800XT doubling and sometimes tripling the performance of the X1600Pro. This is the main answer to your inquiry. Never buy a mid or low grade video card from EITHER manufacturer and expect great performance.
I do not use temporal AA or Adaptive AA
My current settings in the CCC:
FSAA: 4X
AF: 8X
Catalyst A.I.: Disabled
Mipmap: High Quality
Wait for Vert Refresh: Always On
Adaptive AA: Disabled
Geometry Instancing: Enabled
Support DXT Texture Formats: Enabled
Alternate Pixel Center: Disabled
Triple Buffering: Enabled
SmartGART: Everything Enabled
VPU Recover: Disabled
ATI Overdrive: Enabled
Settings in Game:
Suppress Player FX: Enabled
Ageia PhysX: N/A
Particle Physics: High
World Texture: Very High
Character Texture: Very High
World Detail: 75%
Character Detail: 200%
Max Particle Count: 50000
Vertical Sync: Disabled
FSAA: Off
Shadows: Enabled
Use Geometry Buffers: Enabled
Anisotropic Filtering: Off
Texture Crispness: Smooth
Shader Quality: High
Water Effects: Low
Depth of Field: Disabled
Bloom: Disabled
Sound Playback Mode: Performance
3D Sound: Enabled
At your location, on the train in Atlas, facing south looking over the horizon, I am sitting at 31FPS. If I do a 180 and face the wall, I jump to 60FPS. If I hop into the nearby tunnel to the NW and begin blasting, I float around 45-50FPS.
Although I can promise some improvement by rolling back to the 6.8s, you're still going to be forced to get past the bottleneck of the X1600.
I hope this helped some, Ebon.
One last edit:
It should be noted that, as I feared prior to I-7, the texture upgrades they added to the hero side hurt my performance badly while travelling through zones.
I wasn't then, and still am not pleased with this. The added quality of the textures does NOT equate to the performance loss and should have been rolled back. And then they should have used the same texturing in villains.
I have no doubt that the next system I build will be able to get me back to 50-60 FPS running around all zones, but not everyone can drop 1500 bucks on hardware because of a single game.
Be well, people of CoH.
Thanks for the reply Bill, interesting stuff!
I'm glad to hear that in my test location you only get 50% higher frame rates, I find that acceptable, especially if you're saying the 6.9 drivers bite. My question there is, where in the hell do you get older ATI drivers?? I can't find an obvious link on their site for older versions like nVidia has, and I need both the normal and mobility 6.8 drivers to test now -_- I'm also hoping the 6.8 removes this absurd 2 minute startup of smartgart when you log in...
You mention this -renderthread 1 flag, where did you get that info from? I have run CoH and CoV on multiple dual and quad core processor systems without adding any flags to the shortcut and it uses the extra processors just fine. On dual cores it still maxes out both procs in heavy areas, on the quad core it used 1 and 2 fully, and a decent portion of 3, but never needed to tap 4.
Cheers!
Ebon
Your systems aren't telling you the truth:
Visigoth's Post By default, hyperthreading/multithreading is now disabled. There was a period where it was the opposite, but then Cryptic nuked it. You must use -renderthread 1 to enable that functionality. I have no idea if even with the flag, quad-core is supported at all.
Once you get into ATI's and click on the Drivers and Software section, on the left nav, find the section for Drivers and Software/WindowsXP/Radeon/Previous Drivers and Software
Kind of a pain, but on the 3rd page of that section you'll find the 6.8s. As for the mobility versions, you might try omegadrivers.net or that other site that folks have mentioned that I can't remember...laptops2go or notebooks2go or something like that.
SmartGART takes about 15 to 30 seconds to bring up the ATI tray icon and bounce my pointer to the center of my screen on a cold boot after my desktop pops up. Pretty sure you can disable that in the CCC.
Be well, people of CoH.
hmmm.... having read that post, I had to reply to it and ask him to back that up. You can read my reply, but simply, if he's saying that taskmanager and everest are showing fake loads on the additional CPUs, I need some proof to back that up, because that's not what we're seeing.
Thanks for the help with ATI's site.. oy. Now Visigoth also mentioned they recommend 6.7 or earlier due to some issues, but you're saying 6.8 run fine? Any feeling on how they compare outside of 6.9 being crap?
The smartgart message I get can't be dismissed, is always on top, and lasts for a full 2 minutes. It says it needs to evaluate optimal settings or something before the control center can be used. Seems like a lousy design to me, and being a fresh install it seems unlikely to be unexpected behavior, but if you have any info I'd appreciate it. It only happens with the mobility version of the driver though, which I still don't get why there needs to be a different version for a laptop, but I digress.
Cheers,
Ebon
Several items:
I assume Visigoth is following company policy on the recommendation of the 6.6s. Folks are supposed to be able to use the regular graphics slider in game without getting issues. (As in, NOT turning on advanced options.) The 6.7s introduced painful framerate hits when used in conjunction with Crytpic's (post-process, pixel buffer, front buffer: pick one, nobody has set me straight on what the correct term should be) effects. Those being Bloom, Depth of Field and High Water. Low water, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, does not utilize the pixel buffer, and thus does not break FSAA or cause huge FPS issues.
Of course, not all of those effects have the text that they won't work with FSAA, and the description in game for FSAA doesn't tell you that it won't work with those effects. It also doesn't tell you that using in game FSAA is problematic at high resolutions.
Or was it the 6.7s introduced the strange ghosting with Cryptic's HDR effects and the 6.8s introduced the FPS hit of doom? That sounds right. Either way, 6.6s if you use those effects. 6.8s if you don't.
Ok, the SmartGART message, the ONLY time you should EVER see that is after a clean install of the drivers. Once it's done once, you should NOT being seeing it again.
If you are, your driver install is out of whack.
The only reason that there is a differnet package for mobility and go cards is due to the OEM agreements that ATI and Nvidia have with Dell, HP and their ilk.
It's so OEMs can try to keep the average user from being able to get better performance through driver upgrades, and instead, forces them to buy another laptop. It's sick, it's immoral, it's american business at its finest.
See my reply to your reply in the 6.8 thread.
Be well, people of CoH.
Running with 6.8 until the last patch a few days ago. Now getting a square double image almost as if it was an x-ray of what is beyond. I went to 6.9 and back to 6.5. still nothing. It only occurs in CoX. Have you seen this?
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Do you have Bloom, Depth of Field or High Water enabled? Turn them all off. Problem persisting?
Be well, people of CoH.
Switching to this thread for a 6.10 discussion. 6.10s are better than the 6.8s?
And I'm getting conflicting answers on FSAA and AF. Definately off in game, enabled in control center, right?
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Switching to this thread for a 6.10 discussion. 6.10s are better than the 6.8s?
And I'm getting conflicting answers on FSAA and AF. Definately off in game, enabled in control center, right?
[/ QUOTE ]
6.10s are better than 6.8s, yes.
The conflicting reports are coming from what folks need to do.
I stand behind having the CCC manage FSAA and AF. FSAA in game breaks for me by causing the world, not the GUI, to turn black at 4X.
However, having FSAA enabled in the CCC seems to be one of the causes of the alt-tab issue. (Although not the only cause by far.)
Be well, people of CoH.
Many thanks, Bill, for being the defacto ATI guru. 
Thanks to a Black Friday special, I've fallen into the ATI camp with a 512 MB Radeon X1600 Pro (I'd bought a GeForce 7300GT on Wed. night, but exchanged it because of the sale).
I joined the party just as the 6.11 drivers were released. What's the word on that set?
Moggie's big forum-brother.
"I'm a tech. I tell it how it is. I'm incapable of the sunshine blowing necessary in their field." - BillZBubba
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Do you have Bloom, Depth of Field or High Water enabled? Turn them all off. Problem persisting?
[/ QUOTE ]
Probably old news, but I have to disable the water options in every OpenGL game I play with my ATI card. That includes older games such as the first Neverwinter Nights. Not really a helpful post, but it does repesent the fact that the water at least is an ATI compatibility issue with OpenGL. It's not limited to CoH/V. If I have problems in any other game that has become the first thing I look for. It's that one feature the majority of the time that messes me up.
KK,
The 6.11s are working fine for me at this time.
Nymie,
I'm playing NWN2 right now, and apparently EVERYONE is having issues with their water effects. I never noticed a problem in NWN1, but it's been a while since I've run it.
I must admit that my ire toward Cryptic's HDR implementation has softened somewhat since loading NWN2. At least I CAN enable FSAA in the driver and have it work with CoH/V. So far, I haven't found what to disable to allow FSAA functionality in NWN2. Driving me nuts, actually. Finished it anyway, of course.
Be well, people of CoH.
just wondering if 6.11 drivers help grandville any? or is it beond help? 
The only thing that helped me in Grandville was upgrading from Rig 2 to Rig 1 as per the link in my sig.
1300 bucks got me to where I don't dip below 30FPS. Running around the walls, I cruise in the 50s. Standing in front of the GV tower, I sit in the low 40s.
Be well, people of CoH.
hmm, i have a 9200 will that work for me?
The 92** series is no longer supported by ATI and hasn't been since (I believe) the Catalyst 6.5s.
You can probably still play, but it's time to upgrade.
Be well, people of CoH.
According to the release notes 9500 is the lowest they support now
6.11 Release notes
well thats just wonderful... sigh, thanks for the info.
now i have to either A) replace my 3year old+ pc or B)upgrade it. as a colledge student... ill have to wait i gess.
My problems pre 6.11 was the game crashing when I would alt-tab or hit the windows key to get to the desktop in game. Didnt seem to like that at all.
Now, I can get out there, with only a couple of crashes here and there, but I still dont like it.
Oh yeah, I run a x800 xl all in wonder
I've been running CoX on a Radeon 9000 Pro 128MB card, and until i8, it has run great (except for Grandville, which seems to give most people trouble). Now it seems the new graphics for several powersets overload my card and my fps takes a dump.
It's been a great run, and this card has been very good to me over the last 4 years. However, I see a GeForce 6800GT or 7600GT in my future.
If you're talking specifically about certain PBAoE powers like quicksand and orbiting death, they're killing everyone. I get a 40-50% performance hit turning on orbiting death with my warshade.
Be well, people of CoH.
When I ran the X1600 Pro, I could go from 60fps to 30 merely by turning on Integration.
Moggie's big forum-brother.
"I'm a tech. I tell it how it is. I'm incapable of the sunshine blowing necessary in their field." - BillZBubba
Heya Billz, this guide you put out is great and has helped even with my Nvidia 7800Gtx card. I'm looking to see if anyone has started an Nvidia Guide? If anyone can point me in the direction it would be great or if need be I can noob one together.
Ok Bill, I'm in the midst of doing some extensive benchmarking between a slew of systems with my coworker because we don't believe the frame rates that a lot of people are reporting. In our experience they simply can not be true. But I'll save that for the final evaluation.
In working with the systems with ATI cards, I first ran them the same as I run systems with nVidia cards. Obviously that went poorly because some game effects, specifically water (I hate bloom and DoF), make ATI gag. Ok, so I turn off water, test again, now the frame rates are up slightly and I can actually get AA to work. I go though your settings in detail, and though the CCC settings seem to double the frame rates (no idea which one is magic, but something in there doubles it!), the tweaks in game couldn't yield more than 3fps from my settings. In the end, I still can't get to 30fps with your settings. This left me with a few questions.
1. Under 3d settings, there is no such option as SmartShader. I assume this was in the 6.5 you discuss in this thread, and was removed in the 6.9 I'm using?
2. Under AA, you make no mention of Temporal AA. I haven't tested it myself.
3. Under AF, you make no mention of high quality AF. Again, no personal testing.
Are these all changes in the driver with the newer version? Have you made any changes to your settings with 6.9?
Under the in game settings, particle physics, you simply say enabled, but the options are low, med, high. What are you using?
Why do you turn off shadows? that got me a mere 1fps gain at a loss of visual reality.
Ok, so, my best test system with an ATI card is:
2.16ghz core duo
1.5gb RAM
Radeon x1600, 256mb
My test location for all comparisons is Atlas Park, on the south end of the train platform, facing south looking even at the horizon. With this system and your settings, I get 24fps. Going up to 100% world detail and turning on shadows I get 21fps. I'd love to know what you and others with these settings get in this location, because the frame rates only get worse with lower end systems, and all my testing is being done at 1024x768 (with the exception of the above system being 1280x768), so I imagine I'd see a hefty drop going to your resolution.
I have also seen evidence that the newer the driver version, the lower the frame rates. In going from 6.4 to 6.9 on one system, I saw about a 20% drop in frame rates with no other setting changes in CCC or CoH, and on another going from a very old 6.14 to 6.9 I saw a 50% reduction in fps. I'm curious if others have seen a similar radical drop in performance over time.
Oh, one odd footnote regarding Catalyst A.I. in my testing. Disabling it gave a 50% increase to frame rates if AA was off altogether, but a 75% decrease if in game AA was on. I didn't test CCC AA however, but this initial finding was interesting.
Cheers,
Ebon