I was w-r-o-n-g
But I hope you'll understand my mistake. I just finished 5 hours of Black Death testing to confirm:
1. Tessellation as expected, had no effect on anything
I discovered that I had not taken account of whether or not I had ATI Tray Tools running. So I when I changed the Tesselation setting from OFF to 64X - ATI Tray Tools was running.
2. So I started a long series of tests iterating Tessellation and Disabling ATI Tray Tools and Turning it back on. Here are the results:
8XAA in AP - Tessellation = 64X - ATITrayTools Running
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8787, 211340, 0, 96, 41.578 2 big pauses
8830, 211417, 7, 95, 41.766 2 stutters
8569, 211280, 0, 94, 40.558 pauses
8043, 211964, 0, 92, 37.945 8 stuttering periods
8578, 211848, 0, 91, 40.491 pauses
8XAA in AP - Tessellation = 64X - ATITrayTools Shutdown
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
9114, 212280, 17, 98, 42.934 Smooth
8994, 212468, 16, 96, 42.331 Smooth
9093, 212634, 17, 96, 42.764 Smooth
9000, 212428, 15, 97, 42.367 Smooth
9007, 212326, 17, 97, 42.421 Smooth
8xAA in AP - Tessellation = OFF - ATITrayTools Shutdown
9012, 212089, 16, 97, 42.492 Smooth
8905, 212175, 17, 93, 41.970 Smooth
8784, 208758, 17, 95, 42.077 boringly smooth
8822, 212061, 16, 93, 41.601 Smooth
8XAA in AP - Tessellation = OFF - ATITrayTool Running
8754, 212337, 0, 96, 41.227 2 large pauses
8892, 212400, 18, 97, 41.864 smooth!
8839, 211994, 14, 93, 41.695 smooth
8414, 212259, 0, 93, 39.640
8614, 212233, 0, 95, 40.587
8605, 212233, 0, 92, 40.545
8562, 212274, 0, 89, 40.335
8688, 212419, 9, 91, 40.900 some jerkyness
8768, 212443, 16, 95, 41.272 smooth
8571, 212186, 0, 95, 40.394
As you can see, ATITrayTools has an effect on the FPS of my system, but in a bit of a random manner. I have no idea why. I have never setup anything in my ATITrayTools except to run the Graph output for the various functions.
In case anyone's interested I conducted these tests in the following manner:
1. Start TrackIR, Thrustmaster Target software and Fraps to simulate real load.
2. Start CoD - select "The Black Death" track and after it loads select Play.
3. Let the first playback proceed until it's ended.
4. Restart "The Black Death" track
5. Start Fraps benchmark 5 seconds into track. This is the point where Bf-110 #3 transitions his tailwheel to cross the centerline of nearfield Bf-110 port propeller hub.
6. Observe each track and note pauses, stutters or micro stutters.
7. Stop benchmark after the Bf-110 dives. Track is 3 mins 40 secs long.
8. Repeat. Organize documentation and files.
Anyway, I feel a little silly about the Tesselation - kind of did when I posted it. But, hopefully I made up for it
I'm still running Cat 11-3, as I wanted to finsh this testing. I'll install 11-4 today and see what happens.
BTW my settings for these test, except where indicated are:
S!
Gunny