Ati Radeon 9800 Pro Problems
MMatherne
Join Date: 2004-05-12 Member: 28637Members
Join Date: 2004-05-12 Member: 28637Members
in Tech Support
I've been playing NS for a while, but I'm new to the forums. I was just curious if anyone else is having problems with their ATI Radeon Pro 9800 video card? I just bought and installed it, in hopes that I could run NS at a decent 60 FPS. I had heard of people running at around 99.9 and stuff like that and I figured buying a $250 video card to get that kind of gameage wouldn't be too much to ask for... Apparently I was wrong. I upgraded from a Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 420 64 MB card which I could squeeze out 45 FPS without it lagging so much, I was kicked from servers. Well, I just played with my ATI card, and raised my max FPS to 60. Then I was kicked for lagging. It's not a steady lag, but a spiky lag and it's on good servers, so I can't figure what's wrong. Even in UT2004, I tried to play a single player tournament with all of the graphics low and with more than 4 opponents in a match, it starts lagging. I just don't get it. I also went out and upgraded my 256 RAM to 512, but same results... My PC specs:
Dell Dimension 4500
Pentium 4 1.79 Ghz
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB
512 MB SD DDRRAM
Windows XP
I'm starting to get frustrated, so any help at all would greatly appreciated. Thanks fellas.
Dell Dimension 4500
Pentium 4 1.79 Ghz
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB
512 MB SD DDRRAM
Windows XP
I'm starting to get frustrated, so any help at all would greatly appreciated. Thanks fellas.
Comments
do one of these things
a) turn off vertical sync
or
b) download something like reforce and lock your refresh rate. Whatever your refresh rate is locked at is your max fps when vertical sync is on. So you might not be able to get 100 depending on your monitor. Personally I'd rather play with 85fps(85hz) and vertical sync on than 100fps and vertical sync off
try formating.
Right Click desktop->Settings->Advanced for your Vid Card Properties
Under the Performance tab: Its at full
3D tab: I use custom stuff for opengl and Direct3D Both are the same
In the custom setting section on it
AA is on Application Preference
AF is also on that.
Texture Preference is at high quality
Minimap Detail Level is at high quality
VSync: Always Off
TrueForm:Always off
Under the SMARTGART tab: AGP Speed 8x
Fast Write is on
Thats all I did for my video card and I get a constant 99 FPS unless in heavy gigantic marine bases where it drops down to 40-60. Also running Catalyst 4.3 Drivers for Windows 98. Hopefully it helps cause yeah it sucks running low FPS on a good card.
New graphics cards actually work worse in half-life(yes even nvidia it appears) than old ones(this is quake 1 in disguise with a little quake 2 kludge we are talking about).
Bot match is allmost allways processor bound so having a low end processor and a high end card is not going to be a good combo here. HL is processor intesive so the same goes here. You should be able to crank the AA, AF and resolution and not notice a thing though.
And build your own box next time. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Edit: ignore yoda. I could get 70-100 fps with a radeon 9500 and an athlon thunderbird 1.2ghz. Your chip is not your bottleneck.
I've had no problems with NS though. I've heard about incompatability with ATi cards and HL. Do you play other HL mods? If so, is it just NS?
Do you have updated drivers? You could also try some Third-Party drivers. Some people swear by them.
<a href='http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=review&dId=324' target='_blank'>http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=review&dId=324</a>
Some of the spikes that you are experiencing may be due to unnecessary processes running in the background.
SD RAM...wow.
Your video card kicks ****, trust me, but everything else sucks.
Remember, for computers, they are as good as their weakest part. And you have a really crappy processor. 1.79, is that a Willamette speed? Or those early Northwoods?
I upgraded from a GeForce FX 5200 to a 9800 Pro and LOST performance. I had a 1.2ghz Athlon thunderbird. Upgraded to a Athlon XP 2800+, new mobo with 8X AGP and it was far better(As in I actully got the 99 fps everyone talked about).
Under the OpenGL 'compatability' button (not tab), click the 'triple buffering enabled' radio button. This essentially decouples the video card from the refresh rate, if that's proving to be an incompatability. It'll also MASSIVELY cut down on 'stutters' as the video card no longer has to wait for the rest of the machine, so long as it has data to crunch. Possibly one of the best 'smoothness' performance boosts.
WinXP LOCKS OpenGL applications to ~60hz refresh in many cases. It's an OS bug. Turn VSync to 'Always On'. This could help, especially with triple-buffering turned on.
Set 'ati_npatch 0' AND 'ati_subdiv 0' in Half-Life. Even if the drivers have TruForm forced off, Half-Life can occasionally not see it and still be doing the precalcs.
Fast Writes are definitely something to turn off in the SmartGART tab. AGP 2x+ shows almost no benefit from having it on, and they're a stability problem from time to time, regardless of the type of card you're using.
Make sure you've started Half-Life with the -32bpp command line option. In older versions (unsure about Steam) even with the video card set to 32-bit color, HL would only pass 16-bit color information. Just a visual upgrade, but one that many miss. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Upgrade to the latest Catalysts. The newest (as of this writing) are 4.4, but the 4.5s (with support for the X800 series, and temporal AA) should be out before too much longer. Some have complained about lower framerates with the newest, but I've not seen any difference, <i>after applying the above tweaks</i>.
Correction! I just zipped by the ATi website to double-check, and Catalyst 4.5 is out! Download and apply. <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> Unfortunately, Temporal AA didn't receive its backport just yet. :b
Lets start by getting the terms straight. Lag in a MP game is commonly defined as <b>unusually high packetloss or latency</b>. Let me explain that in terms even I understand :
Any current Half-Life server is a centralized unit which communicates with all clients that wish to connect to it - a stable connection is a requirement for good gameplay. The "ping" as we call it, is a measure of the time it takes a packet to travel back and forth (at least, in the classic definition - the exact number that gets displayed has been muddledd with several times, some latency values included and some exluded). So its the delay with which any of your actions will actually happen on the server - this delay is invisible to you by technical trickery, like allowing you to move without check and just updating the server on this movement, or drawing hitdecals, gunfire and animations purely on the client.
So now you understand that the communication between servers and clients isn't even close to instant, unless they're running on the same machine. That effect is called the latency - when latency increases, this is most easily detected by your ping. In a perfect world, this means all your actions will still be transmitted - they'll just arrive later. Stacking up more delays, and providing you with more minor anomalies in gameplay (like being hit around corners).
In a not so ideal world, our little friend mr "packetloss" is a part of this. As the name implys, he's sort of a postal worker with alzheimers - things get lost on the way. Even to a local server, your packets (the information about what you're doing ingame) is usually routed through 5-20 different locations. Sometimes things go wrong, sometimes hardware along the line just sucks, is overloaded, breaks down or god knows what - so not every packet arrives. Theres ofcourse alot of redundancy here, so each packet is sent several times - so it might in the end still arrive under bad conditions, just with a certain delay. Hence you'll experience a higher latency, as mentioned before.
Hence, packetloss can cause higher latency without totally severing the connection. This is the most common cause of a 'spiking' ping - usually a bad ISP, bad luck or nasty programms running on your computer are the cause. If they're so severe you're getting kicked out of games (I'm assuming you're dropping, not just kicked by console), I'd start by checking for any malicious programms (although its unlikely with these symptoms). Try housecall.trendmicro.com for that.
After you've done that, you'll want to check your network settings. Natural-Selection uses a fair amount of bandwidth for ye olde HL standards, and doesn't function too well on default rates like 3500. Assuming you have Cable or DSL, set your rate to 6000 - 15000 (6000 being the safest bet). Optionally you can adjust update and cmdrates, but that is not so vital as to warrant another topic - if anything, it will increase spikyness on bad connections. If you haven't ever set rates before, hit your tilde key (`) ingame, and enter "rate 6000". Enter cl_updaterate 25 and cl_cmdrate 40 too, just to be sure.
If for <b>some unknown reason</b>, you're still assuming your "lag" is hardware related (in which case its commonly called "stuttering" or "bad FPS", or if you must "hardware lag"), enter this experimental setting in console :
fps_max 20
If the effect you now get while playing NS is a fairly exact replicate of what you experience in those so-called lagspikes, then yes, your computer is the problem. If this stuttering seems fairly new to you, then you can be sure your problem is not inside your machine - its on the route to the outside world.
Another way to test this would be to see if you have similiar issues with singeplayer games. Obviously, a singelplayer game is excempt from network lag - only hardware can impede performance there. Just play HL singleplayer, or a botmatch of UT2k4. If it really turns out to be your computer, just make sure :
- you're not running any active anti-virus programms (especially ones with automatic check-ups, memory resident ones or anything with so-called constant protection. A software firewall is technically fine, but for the sake of testing theres no harm in removing it. No h4x0rs will be coming.)
- you're not running automated scandisk programs, defragmenters or any scheduled tasks
- you have no spyware installedd (use the programms at www.lavasoftusa.com and www.safer-networking.org to check for any )
- you have no viruses, trojans or worms (housecall.trendmicro.com, and the cleaning tools available on their site )
- you're not running any other games or tasks in the background
Erk, well thats all I can think of in a pinch <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
No you don't. Half-Life is capped at about 100 FPS. If you're using developer mode, that shows what you WOULD get, not what you are getting. You're still capped at 100 FPS. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
That tweak guide is a pile of worthlessness. It links to/copies alot of the blackviper "tweak" guide where he recommends you turn off a bunch of services that:
1. are essential to windows working correctly and stably and,
2. eat 0% of the cpu and 0% of system ram when idle
If you don't believe me, I dare you to go check every service he recommends be "disabled", look 'em all up in the MSKB. Find out what they do. Then check your processes list and see how many resources they're using up. That is a terrible, worthless guide.
God, there's so much bad tech info on the 'net. There's some guy running a flightsim site that wrote a big editorial about LOL ATHLON 64 IS BAD FOR FLIGHTSIMS a while ago. And talked about how OMG THE INTAKES ON THE ALIENWARE CASES ARE LIKE THE COWLINGS ON OLD FIGHTER PLANES.
God. Half the people in this thread are fixated on the chip which is really not the problem. Go the forums at www.arstechnica.com and get your technical advice there. It's of a far higher quality.
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I didn't actually know UT2K4 had singleplayer, don't expect a guy with a few beers to take in new and shocking information. Now I know what that button I've been avoiding does, I guess. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
It was highly confusing though because he used the term "kicked" - I'd assume if his hardware screwed up, he'd crash to desktop or have to reboot, not just get kicked from a game.
Props of the mad variety for you, sir.