ATI Issues and Settings Recommendations

Gaul, what video card and what operating system are you using? And that's with the 7.7s?

X1650 Series and i got suckered into vista (yeah, ive also had to have my pointers disappear on me)

Running the 7.7s? I thought someone said they fixed the pointer issue.

sorry, yes, the 7.7s

i was able to fix the pointer issue thanks to some help from another poster

Bill, thanks for the write up on this.

I have an ATI 850 Pro (256 MB) and I10 left me with graphics card lockups happening regularly. Sometimes VPU would reset the card, but if I didn't reboot, it would hang again as soon as I loaded back into a CoX zone.

Your comment about full screen possibly being a problem prompted me to try Windowed mode in the CoX graphics options. The problem now seems to have gone away, or at least hasn't happened in several hours of play.

I'm running XP SP2 with the latest ATI drivers from July 2007. ( Catalyst vers. 2007.0629.2229.3854, Driver vers. 8.391.0.0 )

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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

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I just bought a computer for my wife (FINALLY convinced her to play CoH !!!) and I'm getting the same effects. If I fiddle with the 3D slider it will go away but I have to do it everytime we log in on this computer.

Running Vista (ugh), Catalyst 7.7, Radeon X1300 (128mb), and using Billz recommendations (slightly turned down.) Not sure what is causing the issue.

well, with no adjustments on my part, this issue has seemed to clear itself up. i am no longer having the neon FX, but i have no idea what caused them to show up or how to make them go away.

****THIS JUST IN*****

so i guess whatever was making my gfx work properly again went on vacation or something...im back to having neon special FX and such...

oh well


sorry i cant assist forest

So glad I found this. My second monitor would blank out my primary coh so it was hard to see if my zoning completed when I had my cursor over the other monitor.

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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

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I just bought a computer for my wife (FINALLY convinced her to play CoH !!!) and I'm getting the same effects. If I fiddle with the 3D slider it will go away but I have to do it everytime we log in on this computer.

Running Vista (ugh), Catalyst 7.7, Radeon X1300 (128mb), and using Billz recommendations (slightly turned down.) Not sure what is causing the issue.

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I rolled back to the old Catalyst 7.6 drivers and so far everything looks great (way better than 7.7).

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I rolled back to the old Catalyst 7.6 drivers and so far everything looks great (way better than 7.7).

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So 7.7s no good for Vista. Thanks much!

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X1650 Series and i got suckered into vista (yeah, ive also had to have my pointers disappear on me)

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If your using vista you need to make sure the updater is uisng the following command to get your cursors back:
"C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -compatiblecursors 1

If your using vista on a dual core system(and you should) this is the command line for the updater:
"C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -compatiblecursors 1 -renderthread 1

I just installed Catylist 7.7 upgrading from 7.5, now I get the disappearing mouse ingame, I never needed to use -compatiblecursors before.

Just got a new comp, Dell E521 with Vista (lol), and bought me a X1550 since the integrated card couldn't run CoH.

I rolled back to 7.6, as an above poster suggested, turned my settings to the recommended ones on the OP, and still I have poor performance issues.

The image looks great, but the response time to everything (power activation as an example) is off by a couple of seconds and the gameplay is very choppy, all movement is extremely slow.

I have compatabile cursors and render thread running, and still have performance issues. Any suggestions?

Drop World Detail to 50%. Drop FSAA and AF to 2X each. Disable Water FX.

The 1550 is a midgrade of the last generation. It's not a gamer quality card, so it can't push gamer quality settings.

The problem you describe of powers not firing off when they should, as in, stating that the aren't recharged when the icon shows that they are, that's caused by network lag and probably won't be affected by lowering your settings.

Hey Billzbubba,

I'm running with a 3ghz (single core) Windows XP machine and I have a x800 pro with 256mb. Could you tell me what to change on your recommended settings (on page 1) to make my game run smoothly? I just ran a mission with an earth and fire controller and I could barely move in-game with your recommended settings so I'm betting I need to cut down a lot. I just don't know where. Any help from anyone would be appreciated! Thanks!

EDIT: Oh and I only have 1 gig of ram.

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EDIT: Oh and I only have 1 gig of ram.

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Double that. As soon as possible. You'll be happier on a few fronts. With only one GB of RAM, the game is being forced to use your swap file a lot. This kills performance.

As for settings, whenever you team with high particle count throwing teammates, the items that will beat down your FPS are:

Particle Count: Drop to 5000 or so when teaming
World Detail: Drop to 50%
Particle Physics: No higher than High

In the CCC, for your card and rig, I wouldn't go past 2X on FSAA and 4X on AF. If your eyes don't mind it to much, stay at 2X on AF as well.

What resolution are you running at? My 2nd rig is a P4-3Ghz-HT proc with 2GB of RAM and an X800XT. At 1280X1024 I can still tag 60FPS when solo without issue.
...

Well, at least I could last time I checked.

Radeon 1300 here. Just wanted to point out that I get the best results by installing the drivers but NOT INSTALLING THE ATI COMMAND CONSOLE, and I just let CoX control the settings. If I leave off water effects and distance viewing, I can use the FSAA setting in options with a noticeable result (x2 at 1600x1200, x4 for 1024x768), which have to be reset everytime you restart CoX. It will also make your comp run faster, because all of the crap the CCC runs on your memory is no longer there. Oh, and I make sure that the game resolution matched my desktop, so I control that from Windows.

After AMD's rewrite of the CCC, it has a smaller footprint. I have heard of some CCC users getting CPU spikes but haven't been able to reproduce them.

As for not loading the CCC at all and letting the game manage settings, my two issues would be:

Can't enable triple buffering for vertical sync, which I must run
And game managed FSAA always hit my performance, when I could get it to work without blacking out the world, far more than CCC managed FSAA.

But cool that you've got your ATI card working for you the way you like it. That's all that actually matters.

Just FYI, I loaded the latest from ATI and was able to get in-game options FSAA to x4 without a black screen, at 1600x1200 and 85 refresh rate. The last version (I just removed them) of the drivers allowed x2, but higher on lower resolutions (x4 with 1024x768 120rr). This is with all other graphics options turned on to full except for distance viewing and water effects and no bloom (I dont like bloom *shrug*).

I'll have to look at the CC again but with previous version even with 2g of memory I was noticing performance issues that varied by the game I happened to be running.

I have had excellent luck with the 7.8 drivers on the 2900Xt. Haven't had time to test on my oler daughter's 9800 pro in Vista, but younger daughter has my same hardware in XP (I use Vista/XP dual boot), and it's FAST and flawless on hers. There was a point in the driver revisions a while back, where I could use FSAA, and HQ water without issue on the 9800 pro. That time is long since gone.

So far, I can keep a rock solid image by using:
1280x1024, 2X wide tent multi sample AA

8X anisotropic filtering with crisp textures

No water texturing (still looks good, though)

Bloom set to whatever I like.

I turned off Depth of field, due to not liking appearance right now.

I leave texture and mipmap quality on highest, because I have gobs of memory bandwidth, and lower quality compresses textures, causing a small hit in GPU speed.

I tend to run particles on medium, because I don't really care about particle physics.

It is a habit of mine to disable shadows. At one point CoH had REAL bad shadows code. I just don't trust it.

I am staying at 7- to 85 frames per second, with most of the vid card settings locked in driver and set same in game.

I recommend TweakCoH to anyone wanting to set things up BEFORE entering game. It also has some good settings for cards like the 128MB 9800 Pro my daughter uses. Turn down max particle fill to about 200%. Big help.

Currently running Vsynch ON, with triple buffering. ATI cards historically have the memory bandwidth available to run this setup. It allows for very smooth appearance, at a reduced framerate. It is most effective when your frame rate drops below monitor refresh. High end cards toss extra frames anyway, so it just helps prevent the "tearing effect" on those. On the 9800 pro, I ended up using no FSAA, but 4X anisotropy with crisp textures. I love the way crisp looks.

Current system:
Board: Asus M2n32-SLI deluxe WiFi
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (Windsor) 1MB L2 per core
Video: ATI HD2900XT 512MB (Sapphire, the REAL ATI)
Mem: 4X1GB Crucial Ballistix memory (4-4-4-12) PC6400
Sound: SB Audigy retail (NOT great in Vista)
Hard drives: Basic WD SATA 40 GB, and a WD250 GB ATA133
OS: WinXP SP2 and Vista Ultimate (32) Dual boot
Monitors: (2) Hitachi Superscan Elite 751 (Old, and beautiful!)

Those persons with X1950XT cards can likely runsame settings, if on an LCD. Default synch on LCD is 60Hz. Iv'e never noticed 75hz actually work. Locked at 60, you guys should be fine, and that is a NICE card for it's current price.

Just wondering if people have tried the 7.8's and what the general consensus is on em? Better, worse?

yay thx for the help!

billz i need some help here are the specs for my pc

AMD Atholon 64 Processor
3700+
2.20 GHz
960 MB of Ram
ATI Radeon xpress 200

i have followed your settings for cata 7.6 and i still have bad results my brothers laptop tuns the game better on the same settings and his laptop has less ram and older processor and an older graphics components i cant seem to figure out why my pc is running the game so horrible i tried messing with the setting and still the results are less then the laptop which by my understanding should not be happening i need help fixing this problem

Maf,

You'll probably need to start with this:

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Laptop Video Card or Frame Rate Issues

Some laptop video cards (ATI Mobility, Intel 91x Chipsets) are having known issues with frame rates and other visual degradations to gameplay.

This TEMPORARY addition to your COH shortcut will force the game to render in a simpler rendering path, and should clear up some of the more serious performance issues until a more permanent solution is found.

Modify your City of Heroes shortcut (by right-clicking and choosing Properties) to include "-useTexEnvCombine"] (without the quotes) at the end of the 'Target:' line, so it should look something like this:

"C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -useTexEnvCombine

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That will force the game into a simpler rendering technique and should help some.

The Xpress 200 is not a gaming quality card. It's barely an Outlook quality card. New or not.

With the settings I have laid out in the OP, here's what I'd change:

In the CCC: Disable FSAA, AF, Triple Buffering and Vertical Sync.

In game: Disable Water, Bloom, Depth of Field, FSAA, AF.

Test to see whether disabling Geometry Buffers makes any difference.

Apologies for not being able to give you more help than that.

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Just wondering if people have tried the 7.8's and what the general consensus is on em? Better, worse?

[/ QUOTE ]Wondering the same, after the 7.7 hicup (missing mouse) I reverted back to 7.5. I am download it on my other PC right now which still runs Windows XP.