Much needed new dll's

[Blackdog_kt]

I've had nVidia cards for a long time (used to play IL2 with a Gforce 4MX before upgrading to a 6600GT), but on my new i7 rig bought last spring i went for a 4870. It was a deffective one and it gave up the ghost during the Xmas holiday season, so i bought a 4890 and waiting for the refund (i had a 3 year warranty).

The way i see it, i feel like Ati cards are generally faster on a processing level and with more video RAM, but they might suffer from drivers/support issues. On the other hand, i've been reading some things on Fermi and without being an expert it seems like it will be a very expensive card for not so much of a gain. For me this is important, because i never buy top of the line cards. I wait until they go from best to second best before i buy them, because that means i get to pay around 200 euros instead of 350 if i simply wait a few months.

[Qpassa]

Fermi eat too Watts,600W at fully charge,and this is not an option :I

[gprr]

Originally Posted by Qpassa

Fermi eat too Watts,600W at fully charge,and this is not an option :I

Belive its 300W max per 480 card...

Hi all and thanks for some heads up and down I think
Also waiting for ATI works on the driver but looks like their main focus is on artifects issue / not prformance problems(wish I'm wrong)
End of December 2009 I bought new I7 920 based rig, with 5850 card.Option given to me to replace the card within 6 months and use it's shop market value at that time for other chosen card.
So still have time to "correct" my buy
I do like my 5850 and its image quality and the original plan was to buy second one later when needed but these slowdowns when atacking busy airbase in vanila or moded game is real pain in my eye.
Runing I7 920 at 3.74gh improves things but the problem remains big,Hope ATI do their work and maybe I'll change to 5870 and one more later

Cheers
gprr

[Flanker35M]

S!

The driver issue affects performance as well as the artifacts, so waiting for the update eagerly. ATI has no problems running IL-2 now either if you count out the blocky texts etc. I can run it at 1920x1200 32-bit OGL at Perfect with 24fps min 296fps max and 97fps avg on Black Death track..so hardly poor performance there And I run on a "lesser" rig than your i7 920, an AMD 965 BE..

[gprr]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

The driver issue affects performance as well as the artifacts, so waiting for the update eagerly. ATI has no problems running IL-2 now either if you count out the blocky texts etc. I can run it at 1920x1200 32-bit OGL at Perfect with 24fps min 296fps max and 97fps avg on Black Death track..so hardly poor performance there And I run on a "lesser" rig than your i7 920, an AMD 965 BE..

Hi Flanker

Just benched it again on 409m vanila and got: Min-31 Max-238 Avg-96.793
With Water=2,Effects=1,AA=12,AF=Aplication control,TripleBuffer=on,1920*1200.
Thats said ,this card price is 2 times NV 250gts but its Min fps is about equal and even less, also no slowdowns like my 5850
Folowed your posts here,ubi and AMD forums and do hope ATI drows something good out of their hat

gprr

[Qpassa]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

The driver issue affects performance as well as the artifacts, so waiting for the update eagerly. ATI has no problems running IL-2 now either if you count out the blocky texts etc. I can run it at 1920x1200 32-bit OGL at Perfect with 24fps min 296fps max and 97fps avg on Black Death track..so hardly poor performance there And I run on a "lesser" rig than your i7 920, an AMD 965 BE..

So it works fine with 5870?

[Flanker35M]

S!

Yes, IL2 works with ATI. But for now before the driver update you have to use some "workarounds" to get rid of the "blue hue" and "blocky text" which are the most striking errors when using ATI.

Blue hue workaround is very easy to solve, just open conf.ini and set UseVertexArrays=0 or in IL-2 setup disable Use Vertex arrays and you are done. No more blue hue.

Blocky text has 2 workarounds. First one is to use either Catalyst 9.10 drivers OR drop the atioglxx.dll from the 9.10 package to IL-2 root. Then you have no blocky text. Second workaround is to launch game, play a track and wait for the blocky text to clear. After that it does not appear again.

So the most annoying bug is this blocky text as you can not join games in Multiplayer via HL or similar as the game loads graphics BEFORE the GUI and it is the graphics that cause the blocky text. So basically if not using the dll file in IL2 folder you have to start game, play a track and then join server via IP from IL2 Multiplayer.

Third and least desireable option to clear blocky text without using workaround files etc. is to set HardwareShaders=0 thus disabling Perfect mode in OpenGL and use Excellent instead. Or use DirectX mode that looks..pale and no-one uses it anyway

So ATI does work with IL-2 with some problems with it. Performance is good though. So the driver update will hopefully solve these annoying bugs.

[gprr]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

Yes, IL2 works with ATI. But for now before the driver update you have to use some "workarounds" to get rid of the "blue hue" and "blocky text" which are the most striking errors when using ATI.

Blue hue workaround is very easy to solve, just open conf.ini and set UseVertexArrays=0 or in IL-2 setup disable Use Vertex arrays and you are done. No more blue hue.

Blocky text has 2 workarounds. First one is to use either Catalyst 9.10 drivers OR drop the atioglxx.dll from the 9.10 package to IL-2 root. Then you have no blocky text. Second workaround is to launch game, play a track and wait for the blocky text to clear. After that it does not appear again.

So the most annoying bug is this blocky text as you can not join games in Multiplayer via HL or similar as the game loads graphics BEFORE the GUI and it is the graphics that cause the blocky text. So basically if not using the dll file in IL2 folder you have to start game, play a track and then join server via IP from IL2 Multiplayer.

Third and least desireable option to clear blocky text without using workaround files etc. is to set HardwareShaders=0 thus disabling Perfect mode in OpenGL and use Excellent instead. Or use DirectX mode that looks..pale and no-one uses it anyway

So ATI does work with IL-2 with some problems with it. Performance is good though. So the driver update will hopefully solve these annoying bugs.

Hi Flanker

1.5850 is really good but relatively to NV cards it "suffers" in this game.
2.Searchin before and after buying I came to know all ATI tweaks and learn my conf.ini and CCC by heart

Cheers
gprr

[WhiteSnake]

Il2-1946 looks better on my ATI Notebook (HD4570) than it does on my SLI rig.

Luckly i dont have any of the blocky text isues etc. on it, and also failed to reproduce the isue on a friends rig with a HD5870 wen i ran it from my external harddrive to test it (only edited My Conf.ini from 1366x768 to 1920x1080 resolution and changed his CCC setings*)

But a lot of other people do have these isues and didnt report them by using the Catalyst Feedback form: http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D27E29B0E3

Now a couple of us from UBI.forums got a lot of people to report the problem that way and the head of the ATI Catalyst Crew said they where gonna look into the isue so hopefully it will be solved for 10.4.

Anyway these where the setings used together with the 9.12 OpenGL Hotfix drivers, These probably will not fix the blocky text isue if you get that but might be worth a try.

*Best Quality Settings for ATI Radeon HD3000 series and later Only:

[Render_OpenGL]
TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=3
TexCompress=0
TexFlags.UseDither=1
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=0
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=0
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=0
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=0
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=0
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=0
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=1

TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=0
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0

HardwareShaders=1

Shadows=2
Specular=2
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3

Sky=2
Forest=3
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2
LandGeom=3
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1

VideoSetupId=17
Water=2
Effects=2
ForceShaders1x=0

PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.0625
PolygonOffsetUnits=-1.0


Recomended CCC Settings:

Anti Aliasing on Highest settings (edge detect 12x).
Anisotropic Filtering at Aplication Controled.
Catalist A.I. Disabled
Detaillevel Mipmap at Max Quality
Vertical Refreshing (Vsync) at Off/Aplication Controled.
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing Enabled (has a big impact on FPS so i usualy recomend to Disable it).
OpenGL Triple Buffering Enabled.

Note:
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=0 and TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=0 are 2 Settings that have to be Disabled ("0") for ATI Radeon HD cards!
Just like TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=0, TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0, and TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0 wich are nVidia only settings.
Water=2 is the Highest setting for ATI, but that looks atleast as good as Water=3 for nVidia cards if not better.


@gprr: Fermi GTX-480 is 600 Watts, 42 amps, 12 volts for a single card.

[AKA_Tenn]

I use an ATI 5850 and i got no big problems running IL2 on perfect mode in openGL... i did have to swap out the .dll and change a bunch of settings in the conf.ini... I'll edit this post with the conf.ini changes i made when i get home

the only issue i have is with the mods... if i don't use the default or modded light clouds then my clouds are pretty much completely invisible from just outside them, and still grey u out when u go in them... so needless to say... i use the modded light clouds.

and catalyst settings don't effect weather the game looks proper or not... but if ur computer is shitty... like ur using a pentium 4 processor with 1 GB of crappy value ram, but thought getting a bad ass videocard would compensate for it... then u will get bad framerates