ATI Issues and Settings Recommendations
By
ActionJakson,
Posted on: 2007-07-09 15:58 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
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when I start COH it starts fine, but when the login screen comes up I get major flickering and distortion, I have tried safe mode, have done a driver sweep and downloaded the latest drivers I can find
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The new ati drivers are the problem. The last driver that works with CoX and windows7 (for me) are the 8.11's. Any driver after the 8.11's gives me seizure inducing flicker when the game loads.
The only problem is rolling the driver back, I tried the 9.1's last month and ended up having to do a system restore to get the 8.11's back.
The 8.11's are rock solid for me on windows7. I have only crashed twice in CoX since I installed the windows beta/8.11 drivers and in vista I used to crash several times each day.
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Newly installed HD4850 (1GB) and I'm getting no AA and crazy blooms...game is totally unplayable. Windows 7 beta (yeah, but my Nvidia 7850 was fine) 8.56.1.4 drivers, no CCC installed.
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WinVista 64 bit. ATI 4850 1GB
Overclocked AMD X2 CPU
ASUS AMD chipset board (latest and greatest AMD chipset and southbridge as of Dec 08)
Zero lockups. Zero crahses. no issues with graphic glitches. I haven't tried fisabling catalyst AI yet, but that usually causes funkadelic colors when you enable things you shouldn't.
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my update...disabling enhanced gfx in the game and letting CCC run the show makes the game run just fine. Only probably is enhanced water...which when set on anything besides 'off' makes the water hyper-reflective...like, into the air reflective. So I turned it off and I'm fine with that. That's life.
I just installed 9.2 on my iMac w/ ATi HD 2600 Pro (under Boot Camp) via Mobility Modder.
The game crashes on the loading screen. Should I revert to Apple's drivers, or is there another solution?
(I did not test to see if CoX worked with the default drivers)
-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
I've got the CCC 9.2 and have installed the vista64 hotfixes. I keep getting the BSOD after ~30min of play. Any ideas?
I just built this system a few weeks ago and have updated the bios. I'm running a saphire 4850, E7400, & Vista64. I ran Prime95 as a stability test and have seen no issuesd with it. Just the BSOD playing COH. 
This thread is not for tech help. Also, it's better to start your own thread instead of posting in somebody else's.
Satanicus, start your thread in the Mac Users forum.
.
.Driver Sweeper * CohHelper * HijackThis * TweakCoH * CPU-ID
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I noticed this thread while posting about a new machine I've ordered. I made the recommended changes listed in the OP and the game looks better and runs smoother than it ever has before. Almost makes me regret getting a new machine and I have a P4 w/X300.
I did have to turn down a few settings because the X300 only has 128mb, plus I used 80% world instead of 100%, 100% character instead of 200% and turning Shader down to Medium or Low (I forget).
Still, it is so much better than what I'm used to! I'm very happy. It'll be no problem waiting until my new box gets in when I hope to turn everything to the maximum.
I definitely agree that the 8.1 drivers are best. I periodically try to upgrade and always go back.
Thank you! This is my 1st ATI card,HD 3850 AGP...and I was PO'd that i couldnt seem to get FSAA to work at all.I was almost ready to send it back lol.
The settings given in this thread worked great! This card is smoking and looks great! I'm very happy with it..now.
Finally settled on the 8.12 with AGP hotfix..I couldnt find 8.1 with AGP fix,with 8.1 I had to turn all AGP writes off to keep from locking up.
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Hormesis 50 Rad/Rad Defender - Triumph
Rivit 32 Fire/Ice Tanker - Triumph
Gnat Man 15 Eng/Eng Blaster - Triumph
For anyone on the Windows 7 Beta, the new catalyst 9.3 drivers work very well with CoX. There are still the issues of FSAA and the Water effects. But the game is now very much playable.
just for reference in case it hasn't been posted yet, ati recently released catalyst 9.3
i'm using Vista 64-bit with dual radeon 4870s in crossfire mode, i originally had the catalyst 9.2 installed and was getting game crashes left and right.
since i updated to catalyst 9.3 yesterday the crashes have stopped altogether due to driver and graphics issues.
it does however still crash due to the amount of people apparently. i was on all night long with no issues, and when more and more people began logging into the MA i got a single crash ... went to a diff zone and everything was all good.
I had few problems with 9.2 myself but 9.3 seems to have fixed alot of issues.
I run my pc with a 4870x2 and I'm asking for an advice about the settings I should keep to play, especially if I better use the CCC AA and Anisotropic filtering or use the ingame ones 
Thanks!
Not sure where to post this:
My desktop uses an ATI 92XX series card with the final driver release (its an old card) and is running XP. In game, everything works fine.
But when I use the MA on the test server, the start/stop animation box is viturally blank. There's only a tiny spot in the upper right hand corner -- and if you look REAL closely, you can see its the loaded toon.
Frankly, I thought the animation feature simply wasn't functioning yet. But then I ran a test mission using my laptop which is running Vista - and the start/stop animation box works perfectly.
Does anyone have a clue to what is causing this for my desktop? And if so, is there a fix or readjustment to my settings for this? (The desktop with XP has 4 megs of memory; the laptop has 2 megs.)
Thanks.
I contacted AMD/ATI (AMD owns ATI) to see if they have been communicating with PlayNC about changes made to issue 12-13 and the soon to be released issue 14 and they haven't responded yet. I would urge folks that own an ATI card like I do to go to their website (do a google search for ati drivers) and tell them to update or contact the vendor or CoH PlayNC Inc. or PlayNC norcal.
With enough voices they might actually fix their drivers since CoH seems to hate ATI cards at the moment.
They list just about every online or PC game at their support website except City of Heroes, so I'm guessing they have not updated their drivers at all nor have spoken with PlayNC norcal to find out what changes took effect after issue 12-13.
It just seems that there's little difference between catalyst 8.0 to 9.3. and these problems have not been addressed even after AMD bought ATI.
I can't feel my legs..!
9.3 drivers give me the atioglxx.dll error so when I roll back to an 8.8 the loading screen tells me my video card isn't supported although I've been using ATI Radeon 9800XT since 2004. The last time I updated my drivers were 12-27-07 with 7.12 catalyst. Any suggestions? We shouldn't have to roll back drivers to make it work.
Hmm, the new 9.4 drivers include this little tidbit in the patch notes:
"City of Villains: Display now redraws correctly after changing graphics settings"
It's not much, but possibly a start?
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Hmm, the new 9.4 drivers include this little tidbit in the patch notes:
"City of Villains: Display now redraws correctly after changing graphics settings"
It's not much, but possibly a start?
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ATI is pulling out all the stops now and limiting compatible video cards, the 9800xt series isn't one of them included with 9.4.
And when I try the 8.9 drivers this what COH gives me:
You card or driver doesn't support GL_ARB_multitexture
Nice huh. I never got issues like this with the 7.12 drivers but why should I downgrade?
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I had few problems with 9.2 myself but 9.3 seems to have fixed alot of issues.
I run my pc with a 4870x2 and I'm asking for an advice about the settings I should keep to play, especially if I better use the CCC AA and Anisotropic filtering or use the ingame ones
Thanks!
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Yea, the 9.3 made quite an improvement for me also, 9.2 was definately bugged or it didn't like my system, i couldnt get the game to run properly no matter what settings were changed.
Since i updated to 9.3 the game runs stable (for me) with the following setup and the CCC/In-Game settings i'm using:
Hardware:
Samsung Syncmaster 226BW (flat panel, DVI connection)
AMD Phenom X4 9950
MSI K9A2 Platinum
2x Sapphire Radeon HD4870 Toxic Edition (in crossfire)
4GB Supertalent DDR2
2x Western Digital Hard Drives (RAID 0 Array)
Software:
Vista 64 Ultimate Edition
Catalyst Control Center 9.3
CCC Settings:
under "Display Options":
Use manual detection only
Force TV detect: No
Force Component Video detect : No
Under "Digital Panel":
Attributes:
Enable GPU scaling: No
Maintain Aspect Ratio: Yes
Reduce DVI Frequency: No
Alternate DVI Operation Mode: No
Under "3D":
Standard Settings: Use application settings
Anti-Aliasing : use application settings
Smoothvision HD AF: use application settings
Catalyst AI: Enabled (standard)
Mipmap detail level: Quality
Wait for Vertical Refresh: On, unless application specifies
Adaptive AA: Enabled, Quality
OpenGL settings: Triple Buffering disabled
Any settings not listed are set to default in the CCC.
My In-Game settings as follows (note: I always run in full screen mode):
Screen/UI Resolution: 1680x1050
Refresh Rate: 60
Advanced Graphics Settings: Enabled (as follows)
Suppress extra FX: Disabled
Supress FX when close: Disabled
AGEIA: N/A
Particle Physics: High
World Texture Quality: Very High
Character Texture Quality: Very High
World Detail: 100%
Character Detail: 200%
Max Particle Count: 50000
Vertical Sync: Enabled
FSAA: Off
Shadows: enabled
use Geometry Buffers: Enabled
Anisotropic Filtering: 8x
Texture Crispness: Smooth
Shader Quality: High
Water Effects: Low Quality
Depth of Field Effects: Disabled
Bloom: Regular (have used all settings here without issue)
Bloom amount: 100%
Desaturation Effects: Enabled
Above are settings i've had no issues with at all, and should be fine. I've also run particle physics on "very High" and Depth of field/water effects with FSAA disabled and vice versa with no issues... hope this helps
*edit to note: Vista 64's Aero "eye candy", when enabled, can cause the game to seemingly "freeze" when doing certain things.
Example: using the Mission Architect... occasionally when clicking the mission "edit" button, or clicking "next" after editing a character costume in the Custom Enemy creator... makes a stationary screen image appear (like your character standing in front of the MA computer for example) and the game appears to be frozen (you can't do anything within the image) ... hitting the "windows" button on your keyboard pops up the start menu and immediately makes the stationary image disappear and shows the game or UI screen you should have been on before the image appeared.
Quick Fix: Simply changing your desktop "theme" to "windows classic" should eliminate this issue. you can do this by going to:
Start> Control Panel> Appearance and Personalization> and click "change the theme" under "personalization". Click the dropdown menu in the window that pops up and select "windows classic", then "OK"
I went ahead and downgraded back to 7-12. Too bad I have to use these old drivers but at least the game works now.
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Hmm, the new 9.4 drivers include this little tidbit in the patch notes:
"City of Villains: Display now redraws correctly after changing graphics settings"
It's not much, but possibly a start?
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that tidbit is also only listed under Windows 7, and has no bearing on XP or Vista. I wouldn't recommend updating to 9.4 solely for this.
I started testing 9.4shortly after i made the post above..
they seemingly just "tweaked" the CCC overclock utility for the 4000 series cards, making it specific to them. and the "screen freeze" bug when vista Aero is enabled seems to be gone.
other than that, it seems about equivalent to catalyst 9.3,
i don't care for the "improved" OC utility in 9.4, it doesn't seem to work as smoothly as previous versions, and it only OC'd the video RAM, didn't do the GPU at all.
<QR>
Okay so I updated my video drivers today for a diff. game. My past drivers were dated 9/8/2007, driver version 8.421.0.0 for my Radeon X800 XT card.
The drivers are now dated 2/25/2009, version: 8.591.0.0. I logged into CoH tonight and noticed this was what my screen looked like: click here to see
While I look to downgrade my drivers, any thoughts as to how to solve the issue (sorry if it's been mentioned before, but not sure what the issue would be/would be called.
Edit: I went ahead and downgraded myself. Went to omega drivers' site and now have the driver date of 12/4/2007, version 8.442.0.0
Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
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ok I have tried to fix my ati issues at the ATI/ AMD site and they are incapable of sound advice it seems. I actually saw where the moderator told someone they should have bought an Nvidia card.
Anyhow, here is my issue.
I have a KT-400 soyo dragon ultra MOBO
amd 2100+ proc
ATI x1650 pro AGP videocard 512 gddr2( new )
2 gig of ram
win XP pro
clean install of OS, updated to SP3
when I load the game, it hangs on the blue "loading" bar and then a white window pops up and tells me it cant proceed due to a ATIOLGXX.DLL issue....
I see that this problem has been around with ATI for awhile. I currently have the 9.3 drivers installed on my card. I also tried to turn off the ati background processes like ATI AI and things like that in start up but that didnt work.
COH says my card is supported and it seems to be an Open GL issue according to the driver they listed as the problem.
Has anyone else had this problem- I have citizens to rescue!
will uninstalling those 9.3 and using say 8.5 drivers work?
Im at my wits end here.....
Ok so what are the suggested settings for a ATI card in Win 7 environment?
System:
Windows Vista Ultimate (build 7100)
Radeon X1950 Series (Adaptor Verson Installed: 8.56.1.13)
Mobo: DFI Corp,LTD LP NF4 Series 1.0
Processor: 1.80 gigahertz AMD Dual Core Opteron
Just installed Win 7 and installed CoX. Loading screen pops up, but the app crashes shortly thereafter. No error messages other than "this program needs to close". I've tried installing different versions of CCC, doesn't make a difference. As far as I can tell, the display driver for vid card is installed correctly.
Any thoughts on this?
Added to question above ^
---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.7---
DxDiag gathered at June 1, 2009 16:13 (-04:00)
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, Build 7100) (7100.winmain_win7rc.090421-1700)
System Manufacturer: NVIDIA
System Model: AWRDACPI
BIOS: )Phoenix - Award WorkstationBIOS v6.00PG
Central Processor: Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 165 (2 CPUs), ~1.8GHz
Memory: 2048MB
.Net Memory Report: 1240MB out of 2046MB available
Page File: 3078MB (1014MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST380021A ATA Device) 60188MB out of 76308MB (78%) free
D Drive: (WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0 ATA Device) 186697MB out of 238472MB (78%) free
E Drive: (WDC WD3200KS-00PFB0 ATA Device) 130978MB out of 131071MB (99%) free
F Drive: (WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0 ATA Device) 231589MB out of 238472MB (97%) free
H Drive: (WD 5000AAKS Externa USB Device) 104449MB out of 476821MB (21%) free
G Drive: (LITE-ON DVDRW SHW-160P6S ATA Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7100.0000 (32-bit version)
Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.
Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: Radeon X1950 Series (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM)
Manufacturer / Chip: ATI Technologies Inc. /
Video Memory: 1275 MB
Driver Version: 8.56.1.13
Driver Date: 01/01/0001 12:00:00 AM
Driver Language: English
Sound Device Description: Speakers (Realtek AC'97 Audio)
Driver File: RTKVAC.SYS
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.6303
Driver Date: 03/10/2009 1:46:34 PM
Sound Device Description: Realtek Digital Output (Realtek AC'97 Audio)
Driver File: RTKVAC.SYS
Driver Version: 6.00.0001.6303
Driver Date: 03/10/2009 1:46:34 PM
WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: DFI Corp,LTD
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: LP NF4 Series
Motherboard Version: 1.0
BIOS Manufacturer: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
BIOS Name: )Phoenix - Award WorkstationBIOS v6.00PG
BIOS Version: Nvidia - 42302e31
BIOS Release: 20060406000000.000000+000
Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1024x768
3D Resolution: 1024x768 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes
Physics Quality: Medium
Maximum Particles: 5000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No
Anti-aliasing: None
Anisotropic Filtering: None
Texture LOD Bias: Crisp
Water Effects: High Quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: Low (with world bumpmaps)
World Texture Level: Medium
Character Texture Level: High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 0.510
Entity Detail Level: 0.510
Shadows Enabled: Yes
Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: No
Suppression of Extra Player FX Enabled: Yes
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes
Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.600
Show Advanced Graphics Options: No
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.600
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 698967 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 18.20090422.5T
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files\City of Heroes
Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found
Start with the settings in the first post in the thread.
That should give you a good base setup to begin working with and enable you to play for a decent amount of time.
Then, slowly begin tweaking the settings up, keeping in mind the settings that MUST be left alone such as leaving Water Effects either OFF or LOW, BLOOM set to OFF, etc.
Once you get the basics set, the fiddling of trying to make it look better is a personal choice, as some people prefer settings that drive others nuts.
Be sure to leave BLOOM set to OFF and WATER Effects set to OFF or LOW.
BillZ and others have explained throughout the thread the problems these two settings alone cause. There is a reason I keep stressing them.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Ok so now I'm able to actually load the game (after a reinstall), but the graphics are a little off .. I've adjusted the graphic settings as best I could (resolution, character models, etc), but I can tell something isn't installed properly. The whites are extremely bright, half of the graphic settings are unavailable (bloom for example)... could this be a mobo driver issue? vid card? From the specs above, does it look like there is anything missing or not fully updated? Should I reinstall the vid card driver?
when I start COH it starts fine, but when the login screen comes up I get major flickering and distortion, I have tried safe mode, have done a driver sweep and downloaded the latest drivers I can find,
here are the results from coh helper
---System information gathered by CoH Helper version 0.1.1.7---
DxDiag gathered at February 27, 2009 09:49 (-05:00)
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7000) (7000.winmain_win7beta.081212-1400)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: BIOS Date: 12/05/08 Ver: 08.00.14
Central Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 940 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 8190MB
.Net Memory Report: 6644MB out of 8190MB available
Page File: 14908MB (1771MB currently in use)
C Drive: (ST3320620AS ATA Device) 209709MB out of 305234MB (68%) free
D Drive: (WDC WD10EADS-00L5B1 ATA Device) 611565MB out of 747414MB (81%) free
G Drive: (SanDisk Cruzer USB Device) zero-size drive
E Drive: (ATAPI DVD C DH52C2S ATA Device) zero-size drive
F Drive: (HP DVD Writer 1040r ATA Device) zero-size drive
Windows directory location: C:\Windows
DirectX: DirectX 11
DirectX Diag version: 6.01.7000.0000 (64-bit version)
Display Notes: No problems found.
Sound Notes: No problems found.
No problems found.
No problems found.
No problems found.
Input Notes: No problems found.
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
Manufacturer / Chip: ATI Technologies Inc. / ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x9440)
Video Memory: 3827 MB
Driver Version: 8.15.0010.0163
Driver Date: 12/10/2008 3:42:14 AM
Driver Language: English
Sound Device Description: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7000.0000
Driver Date: 12/12/2008 10:26:12 PM
Sound Device Description: Digital Output Device (HDMI) (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7000.0000
Driver Date: 12/12/2008 10:26:12 PM
Sound Device Description: Digital Output Device (SPDIF) (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7000.0000
Driver Date: 12/12/2008 10:26:12 PM
Sound Device Description: Digital Output Device (SPDIF) (High Definition Audio Device)
Driver File: HdAudio.sys
Driver Version: 6.01.7000.0000
Driver Date: 12/12/2008 10:26:12 PM
WMI Information
Motherboard Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Motherboard Model: (empty)
Motherboard Product: M3A78-T
Motherboard Version: Rev 1.xx
BIOS Manufacturer: American Megatrends Inc.
BIOS Name: BIOS Date: 12/05/08 Ver: 08.00.14
BIOS Version: 120508 - 20081205
BIOS Release: 20081205000000.000000+000
Registry Information for Current User
Resolution: 1024x768
3D Resolution: 1024x768 (Not using renderscale)
Full Screen: Yes
Maximized: No
Screen Position: 0, 0
Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Vertical Sync Enabled: Yes
Physics Quality: Medium
Maximum Particles: 50000
Max Particle Fill? 10.000
Physics Card Enabled: No
Anti-aliasing: None
Anisotropic Filtering: 4x
Texture LOD Bias: Smooth
Water Effects: High Quality
Bloom: 1.000 (turned on)
Depth of Field Enabled: Yes
Desaturation Effects (Sepia) Enabled: Yes
Shader Detail: Low (with world bumpmaps)
World Texture Level: Very High
Character Texture Level: Very High
World Detail Level (Vis_Scale): 1.000
Entity Detail Level: 1.000
Shadows Enabled: Yes
Gamma Correction: 1.000
Geometry Buffers (VBOs) Enabled: Yes
Suppression of Extra Player FX Enabled: No
Suppression of FX When Camera Close Enabled: No
Close Suppression Range: 3.000
Show Advertisements: Yes
Audio Mode: Performance
3D Audio: No
FX Sound Volume: 1.000
Music Sound Volume: 0.600
Show Advanced Graphics Options: No
Overall Graphics Quality: 0.600
Reverse Mouse Buttons: No
Save Login Username: Yes
Transfer Rate: 555126 bytes/second
Current Game Version: 18.20081210.10T4
Installation Directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\City of Heroes
Mod files in the Data directory
No modifications found
Please help