Ask ATI Agent Ruby
By
Adar_ICT,
Posted on: 2008-11-18 16:28 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Ask Agent Ruby: I missed both the contest and the related events in Pocket D ( I was in the middle of moving and didn't have internet access right away 
) Will you be doing anything again soon ?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ruby, why can't I quit AMD products?
They're like raspberry truffles.
[/ QUOTE ]
Reiraku, I'll probably get in trouble for this for telling you, but long ago we found a secret society of mole people who we keep happy by feeding them Oreo cookies and tissue paper, and in return they give us the secret recipe for a special colorless coating we put over every product we make, the contents of which produce an odorless odor, that when inhaled makes the person forever addicted to our products.*
* Ruby is a fictional character, and in no way do her views and comments reflect the views and comments of AMD. The mole people, if they exist at all, are certainly not under AMD's control, and if they do in fact produce an addictive, odorless liquid, it certainly is not necessarily the reason why people like AMD products. Also, the mole people's relationship with AMD (if said mole people even exist) is purely based on admiration and mutual respect, not Oreos and tissue paper.
[/ QUOTE ]
That is one of the funniest things I've read on these forums. It's great when people can have fun with/at their jobs.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I sure hope the problems can be fixed. It would be nice for ATI/AMD but it would be really great for this game. I shudder to think how many customers have been lost because they were crashing and getting weird graphic errors with a high end ATI/AMD card.
Now we need to wait and see. "No timeline" doesn't exactly fill me with excitement, but it's not a message of doom, either.
[/ QUOTE ]
In all fairness though, things do seem to have gotten a bit better with ATI compatibility over time. Before I switched to Nvidia, I remember the random crashes, missing textures and alt+tab bugs, but since I switched back to ATI recently, I don't have any of those nagging bugs anymore, just the lingering inability to mix FSAA with high water effects or depth of field.
[/ QUOTE ]
Agree's, the problems with ATI seem somewhat overblown and entrenched in the forum culture.
Certainly the mutually exclusive AA/AF and Bloom/DOF/Water problem still exists but for example I don't like the Bloom/DOF and water on low looks the same as water on high (except for some/all reflections iirc), so this 'problem' doesn't bother me at all.
And I don't remember a crashing problem except for 1 driver version a year ago or so, which was quickly sorted out on the boards here and everyone avoided that version.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I sure hope the problems can be fixed. It would be nice for ATI/AMD but it would be really great for this game. I shudder to think how many customers have been lost because they were crashing and getting weird graphic errors with a high end ATI/AMD card.
Now we need to wait and see. "No timeline" doesn't exactly fill me with excitement, but it's not a message of doom, either.
[/ QUOTE ]
In all fairness though, things do seem to have gotten a bit better with ATI compatibility over time. Before I switched to Nvidia, I remember the random crashes, missing textures and alt+tab bugs, but since I switched back to ATI recently, I don't have any of those nagging bugs anymore, just the lingering inability to mix FSAA with high water effects or depth of field.
[/ QUOTE ]
Agree's, the problems with ATI seem somewhat overblown and entrenched in the forum culture.
Certainly the mutually exclusive AA/AF and Bloom/DOF/Water problem still exists but for example I don't like the Bloom/DOF and water on low looks the same as water on high (except for some/all reflections iirc), so this 'problem' doesn't bother me at all.
And I don't remember a crashing problem except for 1 driver version a year ago or so, which was quickly sorted out on the boards here and everyone avoided that version.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think it's mostly just people who have higher standards, or a better eye that are terribly bothered by the problems. BillZ can tell the difference between using various settings, while I can not. 
The incompatibilities are mildly annoying to me, but what bothers me MORE about ATI cards, and even to some extent NVidia cards, is the fact that it DOES require you to make changes within the drivers in order to get the combination of appearance and performance that you want.
For me personally, it isn't a huge deal to go into the CCC and tweak my settings. For a lot of people though, doing that is very daunting. All those big words, antialiasing, anisotropic filtering, etc is not something a lot of people can even fathom. Then you run into cases where settings you change to improve CoX, have a negative effect on other games.
It IS a valid complaint though that these issues have been brought up over and over, with no response other than "we're aware of the issue". Working in a software development company myself, I understand how you have to make decisions on what is best to spend resources on. As much as we love this game, a 4+ year old game is unlikely to continue to get a lot of resources thrown at it to fix issues that really only impact a small percentage of people.
One thing NVidia has (ATI may have something similar though I have never seen it in CCC), is profiles for specific games. THAT is something I would like for ATI cards, so that I can tweak to my heart's content for CoX, and NOT have it mess with settings in my other games.
-= 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
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I sure hope the problems can be fixed. It would be nice for ATI/AMD but it would be really great for this game. I shudder to think how many customers have been lost because they were crashing and getting weird graphic errors with a high end ATI/AMD card.
Now we need to wait and see. "No timeline" doesn't exactly fill me with excitement, but it's not a message of doom, either.
[/ QUOTE ]
In all fairness though, things do seem to have gotten a bit better with ATI compatibility over time. Before I switched to Nvidia, I remember the random crashes, missing textures and alt+tab bugs, but since I switched back to ATI recently, I don't have any of those nagging bugs anymore, just the lingering inability to mix FSAA with high water effects or depth of field.
[/ QUOTE ]
Agree's, the problems with ATI seem somewhat overblown and entrenched in the forum culture.
Certainly the mutually exclusive AA/AF and Bloom/DOF/Water problem still exists but for example I don't like the Bloom/DOF and water on low looks the same as water on high (except for some/all reflections iirc), so this 'problem' doesn't bother me at all.
And I don't remember a crashing problem except for 1 driver version a year ago or so, which was quickly sorted out on the boards here and everyone avoided that version.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think it's mostly just people who have higher standards, or a better eye that are terribly bothered by the problems. BillZ can tell the difference between using various settings, while I can not. The incompatibilities are mildly annoying to me, but what bothers me MORE about ATI cards, and even to some extent NVidia cards, is the fact that it DOES require you to make changes within the drivers in order to get the combination of appearance and performance that you want.
For me personally, it isn't a huge deal to go into the CCC and tweak my settings. For a lot of people though, doing that is very daunting. All those big words, antialiasing, anisotropic filtering, etc is not something a lot of people can even fathom. Then you run into cases where settings you change to improve CoX, have a negative effect on other games.
It IS a valid complaint though that these issues have been brought up over and over, with no response other than "we're aware of the issue". Working in a software development company myself, I understand how you have to make decisions on what is best to spend resources on. As much as we love this game, a 4+ year old game is unlikely to continue to get a lot of resources thrown at it to fix issues that really only impact a small percentage of people.
One thing NVidia has (ATI may have something similar though I have never seen it in CCC), is profiles for specific games. THAT is something I would like for ATI cards, so that I can tweak to my heart's content for CoX, and NOT have it mess with settings in my other games.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hi Adar_ICT - in Catalyst you can, in fact, create your own profile with your preferred settings for CoX, that you can select before you play the game (and switch after finished playing. That of course isn't pre-selected optimizations, but it does put that selection in your hands vs. taking something "cooked".
We also recently launched that functionality with a separate gaming tool you may be interested in called Fusion. It is a utility which at the click of a button can shut down all non-essential background programs, freeing up system resources to improve gameplay. You can also customize it to build your own profile and choose exactly what you want disabled for a leaner footprint. Fusion is also hooked into Catalyst as well as our overclocking utlility, OverDrive. Fusion is in BETA stage right now, but can be downloaded for folks to try out - only one stipulation: becasue of all the system-level optimizations built in this can only work on an AMD platform (AMD CPU + ATI graphics).
[ QUOTE ]
Ask Agent Ruby: I missed both the contest and the related events in Pocket D ( I was in the middle of moving and didn't have internet access right away ) Will you be doing anything again soon ?
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, I certainly hope so! We've gotten some great feedback and participation, so as long as the community and the great folks at NCSoft want things like this happening, we'd love to try it again. 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I sure hope the problems can be fixed. It would be nice for ATI/AMD but it would be really great for this game. I shudder to think how many customers have been lost because they were crashing and getting weird graphic errors with a high end ATI/AMD card.
Now we need to wait and see. "No timeline" doesn't exactly fill me with excitement, but it's not a message of doom, either.
[/ QUOTE ]
In all fairness though, things do seem to have gotten a bit better with ATI compatibility over time. Before I switched to Nvidia, I remember the random crashes, missing textures and alt+tab bugs, but since I switched back to ATI recently, I don't have any of those nagging bugs anymore, just the lingering inability to mix FSAA with high water effects or depth of field.
[/ QUOTE ]
Okay, before I go any further, the fact that you have Randy from Trailer Park Boys as your avatar made me laugh out loud!
Thanks - agreed, some things have been improved over time, but we still have work to do!
[ QUOTE ]
Hi Adar_ICT - in Catalyst you can, in fact, create your own profile with your preferred settings for CoX, that you can select before you play the game (and switch after finished playing. That of course isn't pre-selected optimizations, but it does put that selection in your hands vs. taking something "cooked".
We also recently launched that functionality with a separate gaming tool you may be interested in called Fusion. It is a utility which at the click of a button can shut down all non-essential background programs, freeing up system resources to improve gameplay. You can also customize it to build your own profile and choose exactly what you want disabled for a leaner footprint. Fusion is also hooked into Catalyst as well as our overclocking utlility, OverDrive. Fusion is in BETA stage right now, but can be downloaded for folks to try out - only one stipulation: becasue of all the system-level optimizations built in this can only work on an AMD platform (AMD CPU + ATI graphics).
[/ QUOTE ]
Hmm... Guess I will have to look at my CCC, as I don't remember anything for using profiles for various games. If that exists, then I am just unobservant, and will now be quietly happy that i can do what I wanted to do.
When you say Fusion only works with AMD CPU and ATI graphics, does it actually do a check for that and prevent you from using the program if you have an Intel CPU with ATI graphics? I understand that there will be optimizations that only work with AMD CPUs, but if I can still use the utility to tweak JUST the graphics portion, and background apps, that would be a cool utility. In any case, I have downloaded it and will give it a shot tonight probably. I am, unfortunately, at work right now so I can't just test it myself yet.
Thank you for taking the time to answer questions here.
-= 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
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hi Adar_ICT - in Catalyst you can, in fact, create your own profile with your preferred settings for CoX, that you can select before you play the game (and switch after finished playing. That of course isn't pre-selected optimizations, but it does put that selection in your hands vs. taking something "cooked".
We also recently launched that functionality with a separate gaming tool you may be interested in called Fusion. It is a utility which at the click of a button can shut down all non-essential background programs, freeing up system resources to improve gameplay. You can also customize it to build your own profile and choose exactly what you want disabled for a leaner footprint. Fusion is also hooked into Catalyst as well as our overclocking utlility, OverDrive. Fusion is in BETA stage right now, but can be downloaded for folks to try out - only one stipulation: becasue of all the system-level optimizations built in this can only work on an AMD platform (AMD CPU + ATI graphics).
[/ QUOTE ]
Hmm... Guess I will have to look at my CCC, as I don't remember anything for using profiles for various games. If that exists, then I am just unobservant, and will now be quietly happy that i can do what I wanted to do.
When you say Fusion only works with AMD CPU and ATI graphics, does it actually do a check for that and prevent you from using the program if you have an Intel CPU with ATI graphics? I understand that there will be optimizations that only work with AMD CPUs, but if I can still use the utility to tweak JUST the graphics portion, and background apps, that would be a cool utility. In any case, I have downloaded it and will give it a shot tonight probably. I am, unfortunately, at work right now so I can't just test it myself yet.
Thank you for taking the time to answer questions here.
[/ QUOTE ]
Just to clarify on the CCC profiles question, there are not pre-selected game profiles. When you open CCC on top one of the options is "Profiles", so you could create a profile (for example) called "City of Heroes", go in and select what settings you want, and then enable that profile whenever you play CoH, and then have other profiles for other games or apps (if you so desire).
As for Fusion, it will not work if you don't have an AMD platform - the main reason is that it's not something we test outside our own platform - it also becomes a benefit for someone who would select an AMD platform.
First of all welcome ruby, although I'm still sad my little Fae, that even healed you on Freedom didn't make to the collage :angryface:
on to the question.
Ask Agent Ruby: Are you single? :P:P
"When you gotta do something wrong, you gotta do it right." - Fighter, 8-bit theatre.
Ask Agent Ruby:
I currently use Ubuntu 8.10 (and run the game via Cedega). Is there a low end card that you recomend for us linux hippies?
I currently use an ATI x1300 that i got with my dell. I do use MS Vista as well and the Raedon x1300 very vista unfriendly (especially with the driver that dell shipped). Not playing bleeding edge games, but I would like to turn the bling up under COMPIZ and AERO to 11 :-)
Thanks and regards
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I sure hope the problems can be fixed. It would be nice for ATI/AMD but it would be really great for this game. I shudder to think how many customers have been lost because they were crashing and getting weird graphic errors with a high end ATI/AMD card.
Now we need to wait and see. "No timeline" doesn't exactly fill me with excitement, but it's not a message of doom, either.
[/ QUOTE ]
In all fairness though, things do seem to have gotten a bit better with ATI compatibility over time. Before I switched to Nvidia, I remember the random crashes, missing textures and alt+tab bugs, but since I switched back to ATI recently, I don't have any of those nagging bugs anymore, just the lingering inability to mix FSAA with high water effects or depth of field.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yep. It was because of those lingering problems that I returned a 4870 card and got a 260 instead.
Sir Zane (Lvl 50, Inv/SS/Nrg Tank);Atomic Jake (Lvl 50, Kin/Rad/Elec Defender)
Nikolai (Lvl 50, DM/EA/GW Brute);Raging Stallion (Lvl 50 MA/SR/Weap Scrapper)
Archmage Tristam (Lvl 50 Ill/Son/Psi Controller)
--------------------------------------------------------------
-g=C800:5
[ QUOTE ]
First of all welcome ruby, although I'm still sad my little Fae, that even healed you on Freedom didn't make to the collage :angryface:
[/ QUOTE ]
Wait - the collage(s) was/were posted? How did I miss this?
Thank you, Champion.
I know you've probably been ask this but heck, why not at least try, right? No harm no foul.
Q p1- Any extra graphics cards?
Q p2- Assuming the above is a yes, how can I EARN one?
I have BOTH a villain and a hero. If you need something heroic, I can do. The other side, sure, too. 
lol
-Sin Stalker
Need help making your own CoH comics or read other's comics at cohcomicindex.com
www.jkcomics.com for Justice-Knights comics series and more!
Storylines:
Introductions, Obey,
[ QUOTE ]
First of all welcome ruby, although I'm still sad my little Fae, that even healed you on Freedom didn't make to the collage :angryface:
on to the question.
Ask Agent Ruby: Are you single? :P:P
[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ask Agent Ruby:
I currently use Ubuntu 8.10 (and run the game via Cedega). Is there a low end card that you recomend for us linux hippies?
I currently use an ATI x1300 that i got with my dell. I do use MS Vista as well and the Raedon x1300 very vista unfriendly (especially with the driver that dell shipped). Not playing bleeding edge games, but I would like to turn the bling up under COMPIZ and AERO to 11 :-)
Thanks and regards
[/ QUOTE ]
Why not just make 10 louder? 
Aaaaaanyway, as far as a low end card recommendation, check out the ATI Radeon HD 4550, which is pretty decent for gaming and affordable to boot. There's a good review here.
As far as your Dell goes, it never hurts to update your driver to make sure you're getting the latest and greatest - two options on that front, check the Dell support site for official driver updates (as they will have a customized version of Catalyst) or download the generic Catalyst Vista driver from GAME.AMD.COM - only drawback here is that you could lose some customized features for your Dell system, and it may affect your warranty/support (if it still exists), so definitely do a System Restore save before you install it (if you do).
[ QUOTE ]
I know you've probably been ask this but heck, why not at least try, right? No harm no foul.
Q p1- Any extra graphics cards?
Q p2- Assuming the above is a yes, how can I EARN one?
I have BOTH a villain and a hero. If you need something heroic, I can do. The other side, sure, too. lol
-Sin Stalker
[/ QUOTE ]
1) sorry, we gave them all away!
2) see answer to question 1
But, as I said in a previous post, we're hoping at some point to do something like this again, so stay tuned...
Question: Any chance we'll see you on any PUG's?
If its broke, don't fix it... I like the chaos!
Ask Agent Ruby:
I have an Acer laptop that i play coh/cov on. The graphics card/processor/ram exceed minimum requirements for city of heroes. I am running an ati xpress1100, I have yet to find a driver that runs coh/cov smoothly...currently am getting a lot of stuttering, lag, & all around poor performance, in fact the latest driver pack deleted my avatar, i basically run around invisible. Any chance there will be a stable driver on my product for this game?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I know you've probably been ask this but heck, why not at least try, right? No harm no foul.
Q p1- Any extra graphics cards?
Q p2- Assuming the above is a yes, how can I EARN one?
I have BOTH a villain and a hero. If you need something heroic, I can do. The other side, sure, too. lol
-Sin Stalker
[/ QUOTE ]
1) sorry, we gave them all away!
2) see answer to question 1
But, as I said in a previous post, we're hoping at some point to do something like this again, so stay tuned...
[/ QUOTE ]
Cool. Who would I have to save/rescue/bribe/kidnap/assassinate/slaughter/blackmail/torture/frame/negotiate/corrupt/seduce/beat/etc to put myself high on those lists? (Many more evil things a villain could do than a hero good.)
Anyways, not expecting to ACTUALLY get anywhere with this. Just trying to be cute and dreaming of a new card.
Great job on tha contest, it was very fun and interesting.
-Sin
Need help making your own CoH comics or read other's comics at cohcomicindex.com
www.jkcomics.com for Justice-Knights comics series and more!
Storylines:
Introductions, Obey,
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ask Agent Ruby: (Thats so RP, but to the question) I just Bought the new ATI HD4870 X2 and I was wondering where i can find some great wall papers that actually fit a 2560x1600 Resolution? Hopefully something cool, I remember getting wall papers and a screensaver on my old graphics card but not on this one..... I was sad
[/ QUOTE ]
That's a tough one - we have wallpaper on our site, but nothing close to that resolution. That would be a very tough one to find options on...
[/ QUOTE ]
For high-resolution wallpapers, you might want to put search terms like "Dual monitor wallpaper" into Google; I can find sites like 2560x1600 Wallpapers and The Ultimate List of 2560x1600 Wallpapers. Also, 1920x1200 wallpapers have the same aspect ratio as 2560x1600, so they won't distort when stretched to fit your screen.
If you like astronomical images and are willing to do some editing work on your own, you can look for the high-resolution images taken from various telescopes. A good source for images is the Astronomy Picture of the Day site; the large images behind the daily picture (such as this image of the Trumpler 16 open star cluster in the Carina Nebula, as well as other images linked in the descriptions of each day's image, are often higher resolution than even your display -- the Trumpler 16 image, for example, is 1788x4000. Putting 'nebula' into the search engine at Google Images, then restricting returns to 'Extra Large' images, will net you images like this 6000x6000 image of the Orion Nebula or this 4877x3815 image of the Pleiades Cluster, or the Eagle Nebula, showing the "Pillars of Creation" popularized by images from the Hubble Space Telescope.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Ask Agent Ruby:
One of the things that many players will want to ask you about is the difficulties with in the past is using some of the higher-end effects, such as High water effects, FSAA Depth of Field, and other settings with ATI graphics cards in general. Do these settings still cause problems with City of Heroes/ Villains? If so, are they being addressed?
Thanks for stopping by our forums!
[/ QUOTE ]
Great question - there are some things still being tackled, but being a CoH player myself, I can tell you that there have been a lot of improvements over time. A few things to point out:
First, AMD releases a new CATALYST driver every month with performance and feature improvements, so it's always a good idea to keep your drivers up to date
[/ QUOTE ]
Now that ATI has signed an agreement with nVidia regarding its PhysX physics engine, will ATI be making PhysX an integrated part of the Catalyst drivers, or will it be a separate software product?
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
[ QUOTE ]
I sure hope the problems can be fixed. It would be nice for ATI/AMD but it would be really great for this game. I shudder to think how many customers have been lost because they were crashing and getting weird graphic errors with a high end ATI/AMD card.
Now we need to wait and see. "No timeline" doesn't exactly fill me with excitement, but it's not a message of doom, either.
[/ QUOTE ]
In all fairness though, things do seem to have gotten a bit better with ATI compatibility over time. Before I switched to Nvidia, I remember the random crashes, missing textures and alt+tab bugs, but since I switched back to ATI recently, I don't have any of those nagging bugs anymore, just the lingering inability to mix FSAA with high water effects or depth of field.