ATI Issues and Settings Recommendations
By
ActionJakson,
Posted on: 2007-07-09 15:58 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Bill is the patron saint, or demon, of all ATI users.
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
BillZ:
This stuff work for Intel Mac's running WinXP as a dual-boot? The 20" iMac's are running ATI cards...
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
ATI drivers under XP are ATI drivers under XP. You should experience everything on a WIntel Mac under bootcamp XP that a normal WIntel box without bootcamp would.
I'd be shocked if there were any differences at all.
Be well, people of CoH.
That's correct, works on a Mac as well 
Great thread BillZ!!
I want to toss in some info about:
[ QUOTE ]
The Contact and Character Information Windows
As of Issue 8, opening the contact screen causes a drastic reduction in FPS and a jittering effect as the contacts are being loaded. Once completed, however, FPS returns to normal. This issue is universal for ATI and Nvidia users.
[/ QUOTE ]
i belive the scanner part of the contacts menu is the cause of the drop in fps, it apears to load a neat little, almost unnoticable gfx.
i don't play villan side often enough to really try it out, but if memory serves me correctly, then i belive the same goes there for the newspaper part of the contact screen.
just my 2 inf. if anybody else can notice it, then thats something small the devs could look in to cleaning up. but im not a programer, so i wont say that again. 
AG,
I'm pretty sure that the cause of the massive stuttering while the contact list loads the first time is specifically related to the contact images. They aren't static as one would expect. Remember the bug where your contacts would occasionally have auras?
Static pictures wouldn't have that problem.
Be well, people of CoH.
should I bother updating to the newer drivers. I am always cautious about this when I am already getting decent performance.
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
That's a good question.
In general, my answer is always yes. The 7.6s did give me a slight performance boost from prior revisions, but every now and then a driver writers will put one out that just plain sucks. Either by causing issues, or by decreasing performance.
Every month, ATI.. err, AMD puts out a new driver. usually the Catalyst version number corresponds to year/month, but sometimes they'll throw in two in a month and mess that up.
7.6 = 2007/June
So every month, I will load up the latest version and see what's what, always going through the steps I outline above to purge the old ones.
Unless something hops out at me as broken, I'll stay with the latest.
Be well, people of CoH.
Thanks I tried the new drivers with your settings and they seem to be helping.
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
well now I cant alt tab anymore to switch screens and I am locking up a lot with a garbled screen and when I try to roll back to the old drivers windows gets stuck... crap
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
What drivers did you have installed prior to upgrading?
I've NEVER been able to alt-tab without issues beyond one or two shifts. I gave up.
But it's obvious that it is one of my settings that is killing it completely.
So what all did you change in the CCC when you got the new drivers loaded?
More info:
[ QUOTE ]
when I try to roll back to the old drivers
[/ QUOTE ]
If you tried to use XP's driver rollback, I'm not surprised that things are now frelled. When AMD took over ATI, they did a complete overhaul of the CCC which, I'm assuming, meant a rewrite of the drivers. At least the sections tying into the CCC.
So rolling back to pre-current CCCed drivers means that everything is fragged as the two won't be communicating with each other properly.
The only way to roll back would be to follow the steps outlined in the OP.
I'm currently alt-tabbing without issue, but I had to completely disable FSAA and AF, and remove the -renderthread 1 flag from my coh/v shortcut's target line.
Obviously, I can't play like this. I lose performance from having the game run on only one core, and playing any game without FSAA makes me twitch.
Be well, people of CoH.
Im gonna try a few things. I whould have written down exactly what I changed in CCC but Im gonna give it a whirl.
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
Egads that's a lot of things to worry about, no? Great work as always.
Alternate suggestion to all that fiddling: buy an nvidia card 
I'd a like to touch on that a moment.
For anyone that is considering buying a new video card, if CoH/V is your main game, I advise going with Nvidia.
There are two reasons for this:
Compatibility: Yes, using my settings you can get this game to perform well with some very pretty eye candy. But if you deviate, things fall apart. Hell, even WITH (and because of them as well) my settings, task switching is hosed.
Performance: The 8800GTX is the best card on the market for gamers right now. The performance between the 2900XT, the 8800GTS and the X1950XTX are so close they can be written off as negligible. This means that ATI has NOTHING on the market that can compete with Nvidia's current flagship card. Will this change when ATI releases the 2950XTX? To be honest, I doubt it.
Will future driver rewrites rid we CoH/V players with ATI card of all the incompatibilities? I have no idea. But after 3 years of no changes, I see little reason for hope.
Perhaps the pendulum will swing back ATI's way with the release of Nvidia's 9*** series and ATI's 3*** series. Perhaps not. Perhaps AMD's taint will doom ATI to the place of eternal second place.
Be well, people of CoH.
Only a few problems with NVidia still though.
1) Some (FatherXmas in particular) still experience the task switching issues that plague the ATI's, although not as badly (I could not reproduce this but if Father says it, I believe it).
2) Still some texture issues. In Grandville they are REALLY obvious, many walls turn to a deep, textureless black. Also, the testure issue extends to the PDP Signs above the police stations (only certain ones, Perigrine has a black badge on the sign and so does Kings Row, while Talos does not....other I don't remember)
3) Odd little issue that won't let CoX see that the most current (1**.**) drivers are indeed the most current.
4) The Vista cursor dealie. (don't remember if that was universal...and as of last look, it may have been fixed...think Moired was talking about it....ug, darn my bad memory....the ones in my head that is 
)
5) Other Vista issues like things in Black and White (again, not sure if that was universal)
I think that's it.
Just wanted to mention.
Is there any way to disable fog?
What fog? Do you mean Depth of Field? That's within the advance graphics settings in game as per the OP.
If you mean the "fog of war" that leaves your map black until you fly over an area, then no.
If you mean the fog in Dark Astoria, the answer is also no.
Be well, people of CoH.
any suggestions yet on the 7.7 drivers?
my graphics card is asus radeon HD2900, i changed the settings to high. however my comp crashed whenever i click on Bloom Effects: None,
Changed what settings to high? The graphics slider? If so, that should never be used with any ATI card.
But then you state that when you click Bloom, it crashes. So you must be using the advanced settings.
What drivers are you using? The 7.7s? Are all your other settings exactly as I have them in the OP?
Be well, people of CoH.
when i was using 7.7 i get glitches n cov warning i m using older drivers so i rolled back to the drivers that came with the graphics card.
i change the settings in the op, everythings identical except for boom, i cldnt do anything to it.
You can ignore the warning of older drivers. That's a problem on Cryptic's side of things. Nvidia users have the same problem.
I'd be curious of a good driver wipe and reload of the 7.7s leaves you with the same lockup when clicking on Bloom.
Be well, people of CoH.
i have the settings you posted at the start. what im getting now is mostly effecting the power effects and things like ambient fires in the zones.
the colors are way off and really neon looking.
Neon Fires
Red Mist the red mist is the effect from simply having sprint turned on
Base Portal
Honestly? I have to say I like all those effects better then the "correct" ones, lol. I truely due...then again, I also liked the Funkadelic colors that used to plague Bases as a bug.
Next Cryptic offering (after MUO) should be 'City Of Disco' 
KNOWN ISSUES
FSAA
Having the game manage FSAA causes the world, but not your in game windows/menus to go black. The lower your resolution, the less likely the blackness will occur. I've had it occur at 2X FSAA at 1280X1024.
Ghosted Image when Overlooking Water
A ghosted image will ALWAYS appear over water if Water FX is set to High. Low Water FX by itself will not cause the ghosted image, but will if used with Bloom or Depth of Field. If Water is off, Bloom and Depth of Field together or by themselves will not cause the ghosted image.
Crytpic's HDR Implementation
Water FX set to High and/or Depth of Field are still incompatible with FSAA.
Bloom will NOT break FSAA if FSAA is managed in game rather than with the Catalyst Control Center. Of course, if you have the game managing your FSAA the world may go black on you.
Bloom and Depth of Field used together cause the screen to be washed out and bright.
The Contact and Character Information Windows
As of Issue 8, opening the contact screen causes a drastic reduction in FPS and a jittering effect as the contacts are being loaded. Once completed, however, FPS returns to normal. This issue is universal for ATI and Nvidia users.
For ATI users with AGP cards, you will probably experience an application lockup when opening the Contacts screen if you do not have Fast Writes enabled.
Enhancement Screens and X1*** series cards
If you have an X1*** series card, (may be present with the 2*** series cards as well, but this has not been verified by this author) either on the normal enhancement screen, or when putting enhancements into slots during a respec, the cursor becomes erratic when placed on the enhancement icons. In order to grab enhancements, you must have the cursor above and left of where it should be.
Grandville and 92** series cards
Having Geometry Buffers enabled within the game while using a 92** series card causes graphical anomolies in Grandville and often an inability to even zone there.
Task Switching, alt-tabbing, use of windows key while playing
It's broken. Use of -renderthread 1 flag to enable multithreading often breaks it. Having the Catalyst Control Center manage FSAA and/or AF may be part of the issue. Running Full Screen may be the problem. You'll have to play around with those three to find out what fixes it for you.
If I missed any, which I no doubt have, please remind me of them by PMing me.
RECOMMENDED SETTINGS as of the Cat 7.6s
In Game:
Resolution AND 3D Resolution Scaling: Same as Desktop
Refresh Rate: Same as Desktop
Advanced Graphic Settings: Enabled
Particle Physics Quality: High (Very High if you have PhysX pci card)
World Texture Quality: Very High (Lower if your card has less than 256MB vram)
Character Texture Quality: Very High
World Detail: 100% (Large performance hitter, lower to raise framerate)
Character Detail: 200%
Max Particle Count: 25050 (Large performance hitter, lower to raise framerate)
Vertical Sync: Disabled
FSAA: Off
Shadows: Enabled (Disable for slight performance boost)
Use Geometry Buffers: Enabled (Disable if you have a 92** series card)
Anisotropic Filtering: Disabled
Texture Crispness: Smooth
Shader Quality: High (Lower for older cards, game looks bad on anything but High to me)
Water Effects: Low (Or off for better performance)
Depth of Field Effects: Disabled
Bloom Effects: None
In Catalyst Control Center:
Under Display Options:
3d Refresh Rate Override: Same as Desktop
Under 3D settings:
Anti-Aliasing: 4X (Temporal Disabled) (2X for better performance)
Anisotropic Filtering: 4X (2X for better performance)
Catalyst A.I.: Disabled (I've seen no benefit in leaving this enabled)
Mimmap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait for Vertical Refresh: Always On (Disabling this will yield better performance, but will causes screen tearing. YMMV.)
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: Disabled
API Specific:
Direct3D:
Enable geometry instancing: Yes
Support DXT texture formats: Yes
Alternate pixel center: No
OpenGL:
Triple Buffering: Yes (If you disabled Vertical Refresh, do NOT enable this)
Force 24-bit Z-buffer depth: No
Uninstalling/Reinstalling Drivers
(Thanks to Wolf_Shadow for the reminder)
Here are the steps I currently use when uninstalling old driver packages and installing new ones.
Go to Add/Remove Programs
Choose ATI Software Uninstaller
Click Remove
Click Yes to removing all ATI software
Allow the system to restart
Cancel XP's attempt to automatically install the display adapter, probably twice
Disable your antivirus program
Uninstall any 3rd party ATI driver packages still listed in Add/Remove Programs
Use Driver Cleaner (if you have it) to clear out ATI, ATI WDM, ATI Uninstaller, ATI CCC
Install the latest Catalyst package
If you have an OEM laptop that will not let you install the real driver package, you can get tweaked drivers from omegadrivers.net or laptopvideo2go.com
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer honestly and correctly.
Be well, people of CoH.