ATI Issues and Settings Recommendations
By
ActionJakson,
Posted on: 2007-07-09 15:58 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
As far as I can tell, it's only the xp-32bit driver. I don't know why they don't make them all wide open and public.
Be well, people of CoH.
Wow, except for the spikes being driven into the arches of my feet that sounded good. 
But still I fear and still I dare not laugh at the madman!
One man's "meh" is another man's "zomg". - Leatherneck
Procrastination meter coming soon.
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As far as I can tell, it's only the xp-32bit driver. I don't know why they don't make them all wide open and public.
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Yeah, comparing the file names of the 7.11s I downloaded yesteraday, and doing some further reading seems to indicate that the vista mobility drivers are not released to the public, and you have to go through your OEM or use the mod tool. I've also found a method on Notebook Review that seems to indicate a way to use the regular drivers without resorting to the mod tool. I'll post the instructions if it works for me.
EDIT: The method I found on the NBR forums didn't seem to work for me, so I used Mobility Modder and sucessfully installed the 7.11's. No issues so far, aside from some weird graphic artifacts on the loading screen when the game launched. They went away after a few seconds though.
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BillZ, I'm stealing your layout for now. I did some brief testing and am likely sticking with the HG 3870 even though I see issues. The quality of the display is better in DX10 games and worthy of not only staying with it, but shifting my gaming platform over to AMD. I may have lost my mind, but after seeing LotRO with this card after seeing it on an 8800GT, it's hard to go back. There is a difference.
I MUST STRESS - THIS IS QUICK AND DIRTY TESTING. IT IS NOT THOROUGH BY MY STANDARDS - IF YOU'RE CONSIDERING MAKING A PURCHASE BASED ON THIS POST ALONE - DON'T. 
RADEON HD 3870 QUICK OVERVIEW OF ISSUES IN VISTA
FSAA
Having the game manage FSAA NO LONGER causes the world, but not your in game windows/menus to go black. It works a little wonky though. More testing is needed.
Ghosted Image when Overlooking Water
A ghosted image NO LONGER seems to appear over water if Water FX is set to High. That said, the in-game controls for this were also really wonky. At one point, I had it. Then I futzed with something and lost it. Regardless, I never saw a ghosted image.
Crytpic's HDR Implementation
NO CHANGE - Water FX set to High and/or Depth of Field are still incompatible with FSAA.
NOT TESTED - Bloom will NOT break FSAA if FSAA is managed in game rather than with the Catalyst Control Center. VERIFIED - Bloom and Depth of Field used together cause the screen to be washed out and bright.
NOT TESTED - SEEN ON NVIDIA CARDS AS WELL THOUGH - 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.
NOT TESTED - 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.
NO PROBLEMS SEEN (renderthread switch used) - 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.
I'm off to the computer store - My the Gods have mercy on my soul...
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Having the game manage FSAA NO LONGER causes the world, but not your in game windows/menus to go black. It works a little wonky though. More testing is needed.
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This wasn't a constant for everyone. What resolution were you running at?
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A ghosted image NO LONGER seems to appear over water if Water FX is set to High. That said, the in-game controls for this were also really wonky. At one point, I had it. Then I futzed with something and lost it. Regardless, I never saw a ghosted image.
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Also interesting. There was a note a whole back about the 38** having better functionality with post processing.
Good stuff, man. Please keep posting any info you find.
Be well, people of CoH.
Running 1680x1050. I'm looking back as to if I'm going to keep it or not. Unfortunately, today's not a good day for it. More to follow at some point.
Well, that didn't take long. Saw the ghosted imaging after I set AA in driver. I hate to say this, but I'm going back to Nvidia. I don't feel this is really worth further testing. The capabilities might be there, but no one seems to have really addressed much - wherever the blame is.
Best wishes ATI owners. I have to agree with BillZ. If you love CoX, there's nearly no reason to go ATI at this point when seemingly no one is working on fixing anything.
Best to all.
Okay, I'm having a problem I'm ready to blame on ATI, but it wasn't there when I was playing months back so I'm not sure. Specifically, the fire effects in Fire Blast and Fire Manipulation simply don't appear. The Fire Blast power leaves a trail but no actual fire, and Ring of Fire is just a Ring of Smoke. No in-game setting fixed this, unless I missed one somehow. This is on a Radeon 9800 Pro. Any ideas (preferably not "get a better card")?
Do you have Water FX on High?
Bloom or DoF enabled?
Suppress Player FX enabled?
How low is your particle count?
What is Particle Physics set for?
What version of the catalyst drivers are you using?
That's all I'm coming up with for now.
Be well, people of CoH.
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Do you have Water FX on High?
Bloom or DoF enabled?
Suppress Player FX enabled?
How low is your particle count?
What is Particle Physics set for?
What version of the catalyst drivers are you using?
That's all I'm coming up with for now.
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Water FX are off.
DoF is off, Bloom is off.
Suppress is disabled.
Particles are maxed at 50000.
Particle Physics are High.
I'm on the 7.11 drivers. It did this on 7.10 too before I upgraded.
I've tried tweaking all those settings but the problem seems to stay the same. Maybe I should try some old drivers?
You could try.
I know that I can see all fire FX because I have a /FA brute and ran a fire/dark corruptor for quite a while.
I also know that a lot of the fire FX were tweaked and have issues similar to the way water gets the ghost image if any of the post-proceesing garbage is going on.
I think I still have a 9800 at home. Does anyone else out there run a 9800 and CAN see all fire FX?
Be well, people of CoH.
Since I11 release my text appears slowly when I type and my toon keeps running for a while after I have stopped pressing a movement key.
So I contact plaync support who asked for the obligitory dxdiag. I sent it and they said I need to update my graphics driver. I used their link that they sent me and followed the steps appropriately. After installing the new driver and rebooting my comp screen was just bars of lines cascading matrix style and had to boot in safe mode to remove the driver and start again. I found a driver on asus website that has put me back to square one. my card is a ati x1650. When I googled this problem I found that some guy in Croatia has the same problem but no solution was posted 
PLEASE HELP
Go to ATI and get the drivers from there.
Then follow Bill's Guide below to properly install them.
Then follow this ATI guide to tweak it.
August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012
Sounds like he's on a laptop. He'll need to run the modtool on the driver to install it, as listed in this thread.
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Y'all should start separate threads when ya got issues, btw... harder to know who's talking about what in here.
Doesn't specify Laptop, for example... unless yer talkin' about someone else Dysmal...
But I conceed it *could* be.
August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012
Thanks but I think I found the problem. As it turns out it's an asus graphics card with an ATI chip that asus hasn't updated since '06 and the "official" ATI driver update that plaync wants me to install simply doesn't work. Since my motherboard sockets don't support the newer graphics cards I'd like to say thank you I11 for showing me the beginning of the end of my play on CoX.
"You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?"
"Allow"
There's older cards than you think running this game. What card, EXACTLY, are you talking about?
You said a 1650. Is this a Mobility 1650? If so go to ati.amd.com/online/mobilecatalyst
It's a direct download to mobility drivers that don't have that idiotic validation. Sadly, it's ONLY XP-32 bit drivers. So if you're not running that, they won't work.
If it's not a mobility card, do a google search on the mobility modder mentioned above.
If you don't like those instructions, hit omegadrivers.net and get the Radeon drivers for your operating system. Grab the set based on the 7.10s. He tweaks them so that they'll install without issue wherever.
There's always an answer. All it takes is a little work to find it.
Be well, people of CoH.
Wow thank you very much for the optimism. Sadly it may be wasted on me. I have no idea what a mobilty modder is as I'm am not computer savy. BUT I am willing to try the things you mentioned just so you don't feel like you wasted your time typing them out.
btw I am not using a laptop. My specs are:
OS= XP home
3.2 Ghz P4 dualcore
1 GB ram
asus motherboard(not sure what model)
asus x1650 graphics card 256
I'm sure I tried the right driver from ATI so I'll try your option #2.
Just listen to these other happy asus customers.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=2...SLanguage=en-us
Oh sorry the card is an AGP not a mobility
I wanted to let you know here, I have an X850 PE AGP card in my system. I up dated to the Catalyst 7.11 drivers, using Bill's settings from this thread. I was getting some image spikes from wings, but nothing major. However, I went to play EVEOnline and my system would lock up. I tried LOTRO and it would crash, it couldn't get response from Direct3D. I ran a dxdiag test and it said my files were okay. But if I did a Direct3D test, it failed all of them. It couldn't even start them.
I went to ATI and opened a ticket, gave them all the information on the errors and others things I attempted. Then I used Driver Cleaner and completely removed the ATI drivers from my system and installed the Catalyst 7.8 drivers. Everything worked again. I updated my ticket at ATI, including the fact I wasn't very happy about this and I would be remembering it when it came time to upgrade my system. This is what they sent.
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our technical department and our driver developers are aware of this issue and the problem is going to be fixed with one of our future driver versions.
As these drivers become available they will be posted to our Drivers page.
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They know about the problem, but they couldn't be bothered to tell me how to fix it by reverting to the older drivers. 
Justice Blues, Tech/Tank, Inv/SS
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Fighting The Future Trilogy
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Ayup. This is yet another reason that I no longer advise buying ATI.
Be well, people of CoH.
It's really frustrating. I really like and want to like the card. With the 3870, LotRO did look better. Any idea if NCSoft or ATI is ever going to address the issues in CoX? Given that it's been what, 2+ years since they first appeared, I doubt it. It's just annoying.
The only conclusion you can come to is if you want a gaming rig, go Nvidia or go MAD.
Shego? I see a new sig in your future:
"...if you want a gaming rig, go Nvidia or go MAD. " - Sylvanus, December 6, 2007
Heck, I been sayin' that for years, Sylvanus
It's really frustrating to me too, as competition is always welcome, but in all the years of fighting computer problems, one of the two stalwart standouts I had was ATI related weirdness, solved by ridding the computer from ATI and putting in NVidia, usually. (The other being tons and tons of Norton/McAfee issues... and for years that was solved by switching to the other. Back and forth, every dang year. It was stupid. Tech support? Pfft. Internet? Pfft. (back then..) )
Bill's a saint for trying to keep the ATI flame alive here, but I dunno if it's ATI or Co*, but it's not the only combo I've seen weird on.
/not that NVidia is free from weird... but it's less so.
August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012
Done...
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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/
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Question about this link. Will this driver work for Vista? I've downloaded it, but I see that the current file name is:
7-11-mobile_xp32_dd_ccc_enu_54438.exe
Does the XP part mean this is an XP *only* driver?
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
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Villains
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Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
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