Display & Other Problems

archaeolept · #1 September 1st, 2004, 04:20 PM

for refresh rate in XP that is purely microsoft "intentional stupidity". you need a 3rd party refresh rate fix. I use refresh force, but there are others.

as to radeon performance w/ Dom II, well, it is pretty funny

I don't know what the explanation is. I would expect some strange thing in the engine that Dominions used. For a long time nVidia was so dominant, a lot of devs only bothered using nvidia cards to develop on. This was, of course, actively encouraged by nvidia reps, who also pushed their own nvidia-specific OGL extensions. Its possible that this happened during the creation of the original graphics engine upon which Dom II is based .

Johan K · #2 September 1st, 2004, 06:40 PM

Dominions II was not developed with any special graphics card in mind and does not use any non-standard OpenGL commands. So I would blame ATI for not producing decent OpenGL drivers. But I guess they don't care much whether Dominions runs well or not

.

archaeolept · #3 September 1st, 2004, 06:52 PM

oh sorry johan. I had heard that the basic graphics engine used in Dom II was taken over from somewhere else, and so thought that the original engine (if such there is) might have used those extensions.

while its true ATI hasn't put out the best OGL drivers, its almost comical how poorly the radeons do w/ dominions.

luckily, not being able to run high quality doesn't seem to have affected it's allure

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Target.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Target.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Target.gif[/img]

deccan · #4 September 1st, 2004, 07:05 PM

Quote:

archaeolept said:
while its true ATI hasn't put out the best OGL drivers, its almost comical how poorly the radeons do w/ dominions.

I've heard people complain about how Dom2 performs poorly on Radeon machines, but I have a laptop with a Radeon Mobility 9600 and it runs very well with fairly high graphics settings. I've ran Omega drivers since first buying the machine though. Just thought I'd point that out.

Arryn · #5 September 1st, 2004, 07:19 PM

A few months ago I upgraded from a GF4 4400 to an ASUS Radeon 9600XT and I've seen a very nice performance improvement in every game I play -- except Dom 2. Probably because the only OpenGL game I play is Dom. And cruising the ATI website will quickly show that ATI hasn't given a damn about OpenGL performance -- until the frenzied outcries of Doom 3 players well nigh forced them to do something. (Likely for fear of finally losing the PR battle against nVidia.) Thus the beta 4.9 Catalyst drivers, which ostensibly fix Doom 3's OpenGL performance. As a general rule, I don't install beta drivers, so someone else will have to say whether the 4.9 drivers improve anything, or not. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Hammer.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/WinLogo.gif[/img] [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon13.gif[/img]

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon45.gif[/img]

reverend · #6 September 1st, 2004, 10:27 PM

Btw. Omega website is back up. They're based on 4.8 catalysts, so most likely no improvement yet.

Yes, ATI is slower under OpenGL. But still. I don't get why a GeForce from Last generation or earlier gets FPS in the 60 range, while an X800Pro gets less than 15 on the same setting...

Let's just wait for "proper" 4.9 drivers...

Arryn · #7 September 1st, 2004, 10:47 PM

Quote:

reverend said:
Btw. Omega website is back up.

Not for me. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Envy.gif[/img] I still cannot get a response from that site. Do you know of any alternate site that has up-to-date Omega drivers? All the alt sites I've found have files no newer than based upon 4.5.

reverend · #8 September 2nd, 2004, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Johan K said:
Dominions II was not developed with any special graphics card in mind and does not use any non-standard OpenGL commands. So I would blame ATI for not producing decent OpenGL drivers. But I guess they don't care much whether Dominions runs well or not

.

Given the nature of Dom2, it isn't a high priority for most players either. But I wouldn't place ALL the blame on ATI. Sure, their OpenGL sucks. Nevertheless, I get better FPS on other OpenGL games like Il2 Sturmovik and Doom 3. (and I'm speaking full details at max. res here). So there definately are ways to produce a decent OpenGL result even on ATI cards. But then, those games had a larger budget than Dom2 I guess.

Don't take this as a criticism, no one plays Dom2 for the flashy graphics and stunning action. Although the battles are very entertaining to watch.

Edi · #9 September 2nd, 2004, 05:04 AM

Quote:

archaeolept said:
for refresh rate in XP that is purely microsoft "intentional stupidity". you need a 3rd party refresh rate fix. I use refresh force, but there are others.

Are these 3rd party refresh rate fixes graphics card independent, and where can I get them?

Edi

archaeolept · #10 September 2nd, 2004, 01:22 PM

http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf/ for refresh force.

there are others. some drivers even include options to force the refresh rates; as well some general multi-purpose apps like Rivatuner also do.

basically, in order to "protect the customer's monitor", microsoft forces all direct3D games to run at 75hz, which isn't so bad at least. However, due to the obviously extremely dangerous nature of the competing OpenGL API, microsoft forces OGL games to run at 60hz...

yup. why is no one surprised?