Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

Anyone know if the low framerate I'm experiencing with my ATI Radeon is a confirmed problem, and if anyone (Ilwinter or ATI) are working on solving it?

My PC is a 2.5+Ghz AMD Barton, 1Gb RAM, ATI Radeon 9600XT running WinXP PRO. Newest ATI drivers (Catalyst 4.5, tried reference and Omega wo. much difference), DX9.0b.

It runs FarCry, Battlefield Vietnam and like on highest settings smoothly, so how come my DomII framerates show below 2 FPS on highest settings, and about 10-15FPS on medium? I'm not talking battle, I'm talking in Video setup where you see an empty landscape scroll by.

Btw. I'm a PC technician myself and I've tried the same stuff I usually tell the Users: reinstalled game, updated drivers, tried different color depths and resolutions, rebooted every time I move the mouse, but nothing has changed with the framerate.

Reading the forum it sounds like an issue with Radeon cards - but is anything being done about it?

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

Hm. I haven't got a solution, but I can offer a comparison.

2.6 GHz P4, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9600TX (NOT XT, about the power of a 9600Pro), Win2k, DX9.0b, Cat 4.5 (Omega drivers).

On 1280x960 with 2x AA and 4x AF I get 20FPS on normal, 12 on high, 8 on very high and 5 on too high.

I'm not sure what could cause this problem. A friend of mine had the same very low FPS as you, until he upgraded to newer Omega drivers. Since you already tried that... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, should be much like mine
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yea, not very impressive either - again about the same low rates as mine.

Btw., I forgot to mention: I run the game in Windowed mode (circa 1400x1200 window) on a 1600x1200 32bpp Windows resolution. I've tried full screen mode though: It's a little better but only by margins really (like maybe 10%).

Granted framerates means very little in a game like this, but a rig with those specs ought to give me smooth graphics in highest quality http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

What about you nVidia people? It seems like any old 486 with a GeForce I card will leave even a Radeon 9800PRO in the dust when it comes to Dom2? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ June 09, 2004, 15:48: Message edited by: Innocence ]

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

Hm. I could go and install Dom2 on my second PC, which has a GeForce. But I'm too lazy to actually try it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif


Btw. FPS don't change when going from Windowed to Fullscreen. (I usually play Windowed)


I must admit, I'm not really concerned. 20 FPS on the battlescreen. So what. It's not like we're playing some clickfest here. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif And I'm fast-forwarding through the battle most of the time anyway.

Now, under 10 fps on the higher settings, that is another story. I don't really see how merely increasing visibility range on the trees should cost so many FPS...

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What about you nVidia people? It seems like any old 486 with a GeForce I card will leave even a Radeon 9800PRO in the dust when it comes to Dom2? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">most likely http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . At 1280x960 with 2xAA I get 29 fps on normal, 18 on high, 13 on very high and 10 on too high and about 50 fps on low with a P3 933mhz and a GF2 GTS. Cleary not optimized hardware.

But I usually just stick to normal detail anyways since there is nary an improvement going much higher than that.

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

As I suspected http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Still, it's a little odd isn't it? I mean, all the hype aside the two card brands are nearly identical in performance, with a few pluses and minuses on each side, yet Dom2 has put a huge performance gap in between.

I wonder if Ilwinter knows about the problem, and if they do, have they reported the issue to ATI? The latest ATI driver alone lists fixes for two specific games, so why not for Dom2?

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

I have a Radeon 9800Pro and also get crappy framerates. As I understand it, the problem is that Dom2 uses the OpenGL graphics API, which ATI has lousy support for, but which nVidia has good support for. So nvida owners do fine with Dom2, while ATI owners flounder.

Until ATI improves its OpenGL support, we're not likely to see much improvement here.

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True, nVidia is better at OpenGL than ATI, but not at a factor as we're seeing here!
Tom's Hardware tests show a modest performance reduction, and I would accept something like -20% - but the current stall is ridicilous http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

Well, in a few days, I'll hopefully be able to test the X800 with Dom2. Clearly, Dominions is an important benchmark. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

Actually, I get bad frame rates with nVidia cards on Dom II, but not bad enough for me to particularly care, on the specific boxes where it comes up.

PvK

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

For comparison, I have:

Athlon 1.3GHz system,
512MB RAM,
ATI Radeon 7200 (very old)

I run in 800x600 window and get about 25-30FPS in Normal graphics mode. Fullscreen it is about the same.

So, no framerate problems here, although I have to say that UT2K4 framerate is not much worse than DOM2 but certainly is much nicer looking http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

But that is OK with me, I don't play DOM2 for the graphics. I mean I played tons of Stars!@# and that game had maybe the worst graphics of any game ever released since Zork.

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yea, sound more reasonable. And you're running on newest Catalyst 4.5 drivers as well?
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">LOL, true. Played Stars! for years myself. IIRC I stopped playing around 2000 since Supernova was "just around the corner" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

Actually the newest Catalyst drivers are 4.6 now - they just came out yesterday http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

But I am still using the 4.5. I use the Omega drivers from www.omegacorner.com which are the same rendering code as the ATI drivers, but includes a better control panel and some other minor improvements. I don't think there are Omega drivers for 4.6 yet.

I suppose I also ought to mention that I have Windows XP Pro with all the latest fixes/patches from Microsoft.

[ June 10, 2004, 15:22: Message edited by: Sheap ]

Re: Bad framerates on ATI cards?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hehe, how fast a driver gets outdated http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I recon nothing's different with the new 4.6 driver though? Ditto on the updates, I usually run MS Update