ATI Issues and Settings Recommendations
By
ActionJakson,
Posted on: 2007-07-09 15:58 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Thank you so much for this thread! The enhancements window targeting has been driving me nuts, and I had no idea why it was doing that.
It absolutely sucks that game companies won't support at least the top major brands equally since their customers can be so affected such as we are with this, but I guess that's just the corporate world for you. 
It's ridiculous that my high-quality upgrades I spent so much money on this spring are making this game perform so poorly for me. It's really disappointing because we HAD to upgrade our computers to be able to play Vanguard at all - but the upgrades I made to play that seem to be what is making this crash constantly and lockup. 
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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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Thanks for this little tip, unfortunately for me it didn't help out my problem. Here is what I'm running.
Compaq nx9420
2 GB of RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 (256MB) - driver ver 8.31.100.32
I've uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers from HP's website. The AMD website doesn't have drivers for laptops.
My problem is this, everything is too bright (or conversely too dark in darker maps like the warehouse or sewers). It almost makes it impossible to play. The laptop is barely a month old. I am running Vista Business as far as the OS goes. I'm tired of pulling my hair out trying to fix this so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be extremely grateful. Or if it's just not going to work for me then fine, I'll move on. But I'm losing my mind in the mean time. Thanks for listening and I hope that someone can point me in the right direction.
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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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Thanks for this little tip, unfortunately for me it didn't help out my problem. Here is what I'm running.
Compaq nx9420
2 GB of RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 (256MB) - driver ver 8.31.100.32
I've uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers from HP's website. The AMD website doesn't have drivers for laptops.
My problem is this, everything is too bright (or conversely too dark in darker maps like the warehouse or sewers). It almost makes it impossible to play. The laptop is barely a month old. I am running Vista Business as far as the OS goes. I'm tired of pulling my hair out trying to fix this so if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be extremely grateful. Or if it's just not going to work for me then fine, I'll move on. But I'm losing my mind in the mean time. Thanks for listening and I hope that someone can point me in the right direction.
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You can use a program called Mobility Modder to modify the official ATI drivers so that you can install them on your laptop. I use it with my mobility x1400 with no problems. On the selection screen for the drivers, I just pick the regular Radeon x1600 or whatever, and download that. The instructions for using Mobility modder are pretty simple, here is what I wrote up for some other people.
Run the Catalyst driver installer. It will unpack all of the files to C:\ATI\SUPPORT\<version> After it unpacks the files, click Cancel. You don't want to do the install yet. Next, unzip the MobilityModder program somewhere. Doesn't matter where. It is all self contained. Run Mobilitydotnet.exe. Click Browse and go to c:\ati\Support\<version> and click OK. Then click Modify. Once it is done, close it and all other running programs.
Now all you need to do is navigate to C:\ATI\SUPPORT\<version>\DRIVER and run the setup.exe
Your card will now be supported and the install will go through properly. Reboot when asked to.
Now you need to tweak your settings. I will list what I have mine set to, but I really haven't done a lot of messing around with the settings yet, so they may not be optimum, but they work for me to never drop below 20FPS except in really big battles.
I use the advanced mode for the Catalyst Control Center. Here are the settings I use:
Expand the 3D branch and then click on All Settings.
SmoothVision: Antialiasing: Disabled
Smoothvision Anisotropic Filtering: Use Application Settings
Catalyst AI: Set all the way to the right (Advanced)
MipMap Detail Level: All the way to the left (High Performance)
Wait for Vertical Refresh: All the way to the left (Performance)
Adaptive Anti-aliasing: Disabled
Now click on More Settings.
Direct 3D Settings:
Enable Geometry Instancing : Enabled (it is on by default and grayed out for me)
Support DXT Texture Formats: Enabled
OpenGL Settings:
No check marks in either option
In-Game Video options:
Suppress Extra Player FX: Disabled
Suppress FX When Close: Disabled
Particle Physics Quality: Low
World Texture Quality: Medium
Character Texture Quality: High
World Detail: 100%
Character Detail: 100%
Max Particle Count: 100
Vertical Sync: Disabled
FSAA: Off
Shadows: Disabled
Use Geometry Buffers: Enabled
Anisotropic Filtering: Off
Shader Quality: Medium
Water Effects: None
Depth Of Field Effects: Disabled
Bloom Effects: None
You will want to play with the settings to see if you can get things running better. my card is a lower-end card, so my settings may be too low for your liking.
-= TANSTAAFL =-
Adar - Lvl 50 Emp/Elec/Psy Defender on Guardian (411 badges)
Itsy Bitsy Slicer - Lvl 50 Kat/Reg Scrapper on Guardian
Flying-Tiger - Lvl 32 Sonic/Energy Blaster on Guardian
Thanks so much for the suggestion, I will give it a try and let you know what happens. I appreciate the help!
I apreciate the suggestion on using Mobility Modder! It worked like a charm and I can now play on my new laptop. Thanks for all your help.
Thanks for writing out the Modder instructions, Adar_ICT.
Be well, people of CoH.
Well the patch today killed my in game FSAA so no more bloom effect for me.
Yeah, it's been a wild ride with ATI. when everyone was complaining about not being able to turn on FSA and bloom, I had no issues using older drivers on my 9800 pro. Then I upgraded drivers and that broke. then they upgraded CoH and my framerate at 1280x1024 was unplayable. Now I have a 2900XT, and I get the joy off oddly colored effects, depending on settings.
This, my friends is part and parcel for ATI, and Open GL. ATI has been a Direct X shop for a while. the good news is that they are opening their API up, so people running *nixes, or wanting abbreviated/modded drivers have an easier time of it.
I've been playing Neverwinter Nights 2 and Oblivion mostly, anyway. I host and maintain the server, as well as head the DM team for a persistent world, so being a hero is currently taking a backseat to be an all-mighty jerk.
I found a way to skip the verification download for Mobile Radeon Catalyst Drivers for those of us that use laptops.
The following link downloads the driver directly, I had a huge problem updating my driver I made the mistake of getting an Acer laptop, they do not update their drivers.
http://ati.amd.com/online/mobilecatalyst/
Bravo, Demon_Soldier! I gotta ask, how'd you come across that?
I just installed them on my Dell Inspiron 9400 without issue. Now I don't know if that's because I had used the Mobility Modder previously for the 7.8s or not, but later I'll completely wipe all references to ATI and try again.
Other folks with ATI mobile cards in your laptops, please give these a try.
Ok, yanked them, rebooted, deleted the c:\ati directory, ran this mobility installer again, chose a non-standard install directory, again, they isntalled without issue.
I wonder if this is new. I wonder if ATI finally got enough complaints from laptop users that they said fark ioff to the OEM vendors.
Doing some research.
Be well, people of CoH.
And it's from ATI! That's a great find Demon Soldier!
Agreed... but research is getting freaky. I'm finding refs to this link as far back as the 7.4s so far.
They will not work on any ATI Mobility card prior to the Mobility Radeon 9500.
Yea... this link needs more publicity.
Be well, people of CoH.
It was pure luck that I found this link, I didn't find it trough the amd website, they have no way of you getting to it unless you know the url. After hours of getting fed up being unable to update my driver google came to my rescue, and I found this Forum http://forum.notebookreview.com/show....php?p=2474675, and there it was the direct download link. No lame verification download just the driver.
I don't understand why they have to make it so difficult, oh well now we know where to get the update.
I think I can explain WHY they do this:
OEMs like Dell, Compaq, HP and the like.
Laptop ships with X card and Y driver. That's what was tested with everything else on the lappy, that's what the OEM supports.
If issues arise with that driver version, the OEM Product Group gathers the info and works with the card vendor on a new driver that fixes said issue. Then the OEM rewraps the driver in their installer, tests further, then releases it.
Now the card vendor comes out with another driver, adds some functionality, works great on almost all the laptops out there, but conflicts with some bit of bloatware that the system OEM slapped on there.
Customers load the new driver, complain to Dell, and Dell says, Too bad, so sad, not supported.
So to avoid it, the OEMs get into agreements with the card vendors to not let folks install non OEM-branded drivers.
So the first question is: What the heck gives them the right to lstop me from installing updated drivers that fix issues I have NOW? I don't give a flip about their support. I worked for their support back in the day. I know it sucks. 
And two: Why isn't it the same for desktops?
Be well, people of CoH.
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And two: Why isn't it the same for desktops?
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A couple guesses?
1) What is the ratio of desktop users to laptop users?
2) Would be impossible to impliment at this late date? Desktop's have been around long before laptops.....and this has been going on since laptops originated?
In other words, interesting question but I'm not nearly smart enough to answer it.....but I BET it was all marketing's idea.....ALL bad ideas are marketing's ideas. 
Ok i have a problem and im hoping someone here can help me out, i will list my pc spec / settings below.
Currently i have 0 issues while on hero side, while im on the villan side it runs just as fine in the outside world. but during mission maps its either lagging or screen tearing or something. im not really sure its almost just like the graphics jerk and delay for a sec while im running around in a mission, but its a constant thing with every step of the character, even just turning around in circles makes it happen.
i always run in windowed mode because not being able to tab out drives me absolutely crazy and i refuse to keep logging in and out of the game if i need to check my hero builder or wanna look something up on the net etc. ive heard that my card has issues with windowed mode but i wondered if anyone had a work around for it yet. in full screen mode i get 0 problem anywhere game works perfect and i can even up the setting, just no tabbing out .
the other problem is that i run a win2k rig with a ati card and amd no longer supports win2k drivers from what i can tell. their last driver was release like feb of 2006 or something for win2k.
here are my pc specs and game settings.
PC:
OS: Win2k SP4
Mboard: Abit NF7-S
Proccessor: AMD Athlon XP 2300GHz
Ram: 2500 MB (2.5G)
Graphics card: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro AGP 128MB
Display: 1280 x 1024 (32bit) (75Hz)
Sound: SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio [9000]
In Game:
Screen/UI Resolution: Windowed
3D Resolution Scaling: 1280x1024
Refresh Rate: N/A
Advanced Graphic Settings: Enabled
Particle Physics Quality: Medium
World Texture Quality: Medium
Character Texture Quality: Very High
World Detail: 80%
Character Detail: 100%
Max Particle Count: 25050
Vertical Sync: Disabled
FSAA: Off
Shadows: Enabled
Use Geometry Buffers: Enabled
Anisotropic Filtering: Disabled
Texture Crispness: Smooth
Shader Quality: High
Water Effects: Off
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: 2X (Temporal Disabled)
Anisotropic Filtering: 2X
Catalyst A.I.: Disabled
Mimmap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait for Vertical Refresh: Always On
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: Disabled
API Specific:
Direct3D:
Enable geometry instancing: Yes
Support DXT texture formats: Yes
Alternate pixel center: No
OpenGL:
Triple Buffering: Yes
Force 24-bit Z-buffer depth: No
If i run full screen i can up some of these settings but like i said want to play in windowed mode or at least be able to tab out. and so far short of upgrading to XP or Vista or getting a new vid card (which is more costly then i care for atm) i think im boned. any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi,
Have you attempted to install the 7.9 Catalyst for XP under Win2K? Last I heard they worked. Just make sure that you have .net framework 2.0 and it's updates installed before you try, and make sure that your old drivers are purged completely.
If you do get an immediate failure please come back and state so in this thread so that I'll know to stop telling people to try.
As for the tearing and freaking out in some Villain side missions, there's a known issue with Grandville and the 9(2)00 series, but that's not what you have. That said, in game see if disabling Geometry Buffers makes any difference at all. Same as above, please report back here.
Be well, people of CoH.
From what ive found having geometry buffers on made the game run better. and the tearing issue wasnt in grandville it was in any villan mission, even simple office building ones, but much worse in cave ones.
I didnt know if I could install the XP version of the drivers but I'll try that now and get back to you.
Well first off lol at me for having a G15 keyboard with a USB connection that doesnt load until after windows has already started making it impossible to f8 to safe mode. so I had to hunt down my old keyboard. =|
Anyway I uninstalled all the old ATI stuff and used Driver Cleaner to make sure everything was gone then tried installing the XP version of CCC 7.9 which didnt work, so I tried just the display driver which also didnt work. This was the error I got when trying to install.
Setup did not find a driver compatible with your current hardware or operating system. setup will now exit.
So I had to reinstall the 6.2 win2k version again.
I really dunno what I can do at this point. The settings I had the game running at were already lower then what I would like to have. About all I can do is drop everything to the absolute lowest settings possible and play that way without any problems maybe but I think I would rather just get a blank piece of paper and play tic tac toe by myself because it would be about as visually pleasing. =x
Unless I can find some non official driver to use the only options I see available are to buy a newer video card and possibly have the same problem of not being able to use the latest drivers. Or upgrade to WinXP which probably would require reformatting and losing all my stuff on my pc and having to go thru the process of getting everything back which is way too much work. Not to mention neither of those choices are probably very cheap to begin with. =\
Either way thank you for the help BillZ and if you have any ideas about what I could do next I'm all ears.
Oh and I did make sure I had the lastest .NET framework and windows updates etc before trying.
Well that sucks. But thank you for coming back in and telling us.
I wouldn't advise getting a new video card. Nvidia's drivers for Win2K were stopped quite a while back as well.
So here's my only real advice:
Windows XP OEM 139 bucks
As loathe as I am to state it, once the video card manufacturers stop writing drivers for your OS, there's not a whole lot we can do.
The other option is, of course, buy a new rig, but I don't know how much you feel like dropping to play CoH/V.
Be well, people of CoH.
Is there any reason why the powers that be have not decided to do anything to help us ATI users. I just don't really understand why they only support nividia im seriously contemplating buying a cheap sub 100 buck nvidia card just so i can play
It's not that they don't support ATI users.
For the most part.
The problem is that ATI has long been known to have craptacular drivers for OpenGL graphics, which is what CoH/V uses. Nvidia cards are better for OpenGL games, ATI cards are better for Direct3D games. (At least, this was the case until the Nvidia 8800GTX came out. It stomps everything at everything.)
That said, yes, there are some LONG standing issues that the Cryptic devs COULD fix, but I was told that doing so would cause a performance hit for everyone, and that's something which we could debate as necessary until the cows come home.
As it stands, ATI users can play this game and get the same performance levels as comparable Nvidia users IF they understand what graphics options they must avoid.
Are there things that the devs could do to relieve SOME of the pain? Yes, and here are a few:
Reset -renderthread 1 to be the default setting for the game.
Supposedly the forum population is minuscule compared to the game's population as a whole. These means that the VAST majority of players with hyperthreaded and dual core processors are not getting the full use of their systems. Only those that have manually added that shortcut flag do.
Remove Bloom, Depth of Field and Water FX from the graphics slider.
These effects don't play well with ATI cards and should only be available to those that use the advanced graphics options instead of the slider.
While there, add popups and edit the ones present to each of the offending settings so that they are factual.
And lastly,
Get NCSoft to lean on ATI to get the farking fsaa/pixel buffer issue resolved
Be well, people of CoH.
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Reset -renderthread 1 to be the default setting for the game.
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This was due to the alt-tab issue, right? Is that even still around now?
Forum mod: less obtrusive signatures
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Reset -renderthread 1 to be the default setting for the game.
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This was due to the alt-tab issue, right? Is that even still around now?
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Yup, but ATI users can have alt-tab issues with or without it on. And FatherXmas has task switching issues, and he uses an Nvidia card.
So if everyone has the possibility of the issue occurring anyway, we might as well all have better performance in the first place.
Be well, people of CoH.
I have 7.8 and a x1950 pro (agp).
I've been able to turn on FSAA 4x in game and turn on low water effects with bloom but no DOF (but who wants your perosna to need glasses).
I've had no issues in villians with these settings yet but millage does very with the video bugs.