Using a firegl card as a gaming card?

[GotNoRice]

I know that they weren’t designed for gaming, and that they usually cost so much more that it’s usually a non-issue, but is there any technical reason these wouldn’t work well as gaming cards?

Let’s say for example that you had a choice between a 9700 Pro 128meg card and a FireGL X1 128meg card. Would there be any negatives to choosing the FireGL card even if you’re going to be doing mostly gaming?

[KingRoLo]

As strange as it may seem i dont think there are any technical differences between the 2 apart from the drivers so essentially i think you are just paying for the drivers

But seeing as these cards arent really aimed at specifically gamers ATI is free to market this card any way they like.

RoLo

[Danka666]

I'm telling you... you have a long battle to fight if you want your fire gl to work as good as a radeon for gaming

(beside... anybody knows a program called PowerStrip ? )

[Mindnumb]

Gaming.

Hmm ! I think this might be a little controversial, but here goes.

At current time I have a sapphire 9500 and a sapphire 9600 at home.

when running the unified firegl drivers on them , I se a increase of approximately 40 % on both cards in aquamark compared to radeon drivers.

This might be a little high numbers, as I used the standard drivers that came with the 9600 card. I did not check the driver revision.

If you are going to spend a lot on cash on hardware, get a standard high end radeon gaming card, and softmod it to firegl capabilities. Spend your money on a good dual opteron system instead. As far as I know, there is no diffrence between these cards in hardware exept the resistor/bios id that make the driwers understand what card it is dealing with.

check out rivatuner.

http://download.guru3d.com/softquadro/

And good luck.

[Shloppy]

Originally posted by Danka666
I'm telling you... you have a long battle to fight if you want your fire gl to work as good as a radeon for gaming

A FireGL X1 is comparable, or rather it is a 9700 and an X2 is a 9800. As already mentioned numerous times on forums and re-iterated above by Mindnumb, there are only superficial differences between GPU identical Radeon and FireGL product lines and the conclusion seems to be a clear case of ATI squeezing more cash from the public for the R300/R350 product line.

If anyone hasn't already had a read, I'd recommend a cup of coffee in hand and a perusal here.

With my X1-128, using modified 3.8 Catalysts, I experience great all round performance in the latest games.

However, most games work fairly well using the FireGL unified drivers, but these drivers are at a 3.4 Catalyst revision level and thus some game incompatibilities arise as they also would when running a Radeon card with the 3.4 driverset.

It's not going to happen I know, but wouldn't it be great if ATI just added support for the FireGL product line into the Catalyst drivers and included the FireGL's OpenGL optimisations into the Catalysts.

[GotNoRice]

The reason I posted this is because I got a killer deal on a FireGL X1 card. I went for it. Wish me luck; i'll post the results when I get the card.

[Mindnumb]

To Shloppy

Thats exactly what I think eventually is going to happend.

The discussion over game optimisation that is going on will sooner or later kind of apply to the proffesional cards and 3d-apps, and hopefully game and modelling standards will merge.

if noone bought proffesional workstation cards, the the 3d-apps makers would soon get an interest in having a saying in the gaming standards, and develop their apps for instructions included in those or get the standards to include the needed instructions.

Morale: dont by firegl or quadro cards, use softmod. This takes the money out of special deal between card makers and apps makers for optimisating for individuald cards and apps. It will eventually make the life easier for all parts.
The best example I can think of at the moment is the deal between solidworks and nvidia. solidworks and nvidia have made something they call "Realwiew" wich is realtime rendering of complex materials on the model as you work on it. ( looks absolutely amazing ) this is not supported by the firegl line, an no-one in their right mind would choose firegl if they are remotely interested in the looks of the model they work on. (solidworks is innitially a cad software, so this feature is really not needed to technical drawings, but its kind of groing in ower the domains of other 3d-modelling software)
I really do not like this kind of deals, as it disturbes the healthy competition between card makers.

Lets get rid of it.

[Shloppy]

Quite worrying for the FireGL product line when the 3.9 Catalyst drivers appear with more OpenGL 1.5 functions supported than the supposedly premiere FireGL cards.

Are newer unifed FireGL drivers ever to be released ? I was fuming that it took ATi so long to enable DirectX9 support in the driverset. I guess I'm fuming again as I feel the FireGL line has been put on the backburner concerning driver development.

07/28/03 seems an age ago ...

[GotNoRice]

Well so I got the card, and it was surprisingly easy to install the Cat 3.9's on it. All I had to do was modify those two INF files and the drivers installed fine. The control panel installed fine also, without modification.

Seems to run everything great, overclocked it to 378/344 which seems to be about the max of regular 9700 pro cards also.

[sthayashi]

What a great thread. I'm debating whether to get an X1-128 myself. My reasoning is this: I have a dual monitor setup at home, and I want to move to a dual LCD setup. Unfortunately, that severely limits my options in terms of video cards. I have to consider either one of Matrox's offerings and sacrifice 3D, or go with an ATI workstation card, and sacrifice my wallet. By one of my other concerns was whether or not a workstation card could handle games.

Glad to see that it can. GotNoRice, can you tell me what modifications you had to do to the INF?

Thanks.

[tm2]

You could go with nVidia.. lots of manufactures make dual-DVI GeForce cards.

[sthayashi]

Originally posted by tm2
You could go with nVidia.. lots of manufactures make dual-DVI GeForce cards.

Yeah, I thought about that one. Truthfully, I haven't been very impressed with the GeForce FX offering. Even if I make the gross assumption that ATI and nVidia are equal, the size and noise of a typical FX board would have me choose ATI almost everytime.

On top of that, I'm planning on going whole hog with LCD screens. 1600x1200. Extremetech did an article on DVI compliance. In general, ATI faired better than nVidia in this area, though both had their failure cases.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1367918,00.asp

Oh yeah, I also read up on how to edit the INF files. Stupid, sthayashi, RTFF.

[GotNoRice]

Originally posted by sthayashi
GotNoRice, can you tell me what modifications you had to do to the INF?

Thanks.

Open the C2_11774.inf and the CX_11774.inf files in the 2KXP_INF folder, look for where it says "[ATI.Mfg]" and replace all the card entries under there with the following:

"RADEON 9700 PRO" = ati2mtag_R300, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4E47&SUBSYS_01721002
"RADEON 9700 PRO - Secondary" = ati2mtag_R300, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4E67&SUBSYS_01731002

Or to make things that much easier, you can just pull the files from me that are already edited. These are from the Cat 3.9 drivers. Those two files were literally all I changed and everything installed just fine.

http://gotnorice.dynu.com/ATI/

I should say that I installed the drivers via device manager, not sure if the regular install would work, but I never use it anyway.

[Shloppy]

Have a look at this post

Mindnumb

I really do hope that this happens sooner than later. It would be great for FireGL's to be supported in drivers as ATI's driver development push is certainly biased to the Catalyst drivers.

[Danka666]

Right.

So , taking that only the modification in these two file of the Catalyst, will let my FireGl 8800 install with them, how do I overclock it then?

If I use Rage3D Tweak, i've discovered that just adding the chipset 0548 in the list of supported chipsets in the .. in one INI file ( i don't remeber now precisely wich one it was.. setup or install) I let the Tweak install on this card. Although it doesn't seem to keep the overclock or to .. applying it.

It's ok if I test the card with.. let's say 3d Mark 2001 ?

What kind of result/number i'm expecting back? 7000 ?
Which configuration do I have to choose to run a proper test? AA , Resolution, etc etc ?

And what if i replace in the Catalyst all the entries for the 054C (Radeon 8500) with the 0548 (Fire Gl 8800 ) ?
Will it install the Catalyst AND recognize the Fire Gl as a 8500 ?
(i mean.. leaving all the PCI DEVICE ID line the same, except from that number)

Can i then SoftMod the 8500 into a 9100 ? I should, shouldn't I ?

Ghghgh I'm so close to be mentally ill guys

(but i truly belive that all the above it's possible and "doable")

[Shloppy]

Merely altering the .inf files will not allow your card to function as the Radeon equivalent. Modifying .inf and .ini files on their own will seem to result in the appearance of being successfully installed - but alas, it isn't.

As already mentioned before, there are internal checks within the DLL's of the drivers themselves. This is why Rivatuner is needed to patch file ati2mtag.sy_ to force support.

[Danka666]

Shloopy,
You are naughty!

You always detroy my dreams!

[Shloppy]

Sorry Danka666

[GotNoRice]

Originally posted by Shloppy
Merely altering the .inf files will not allow your card to function as the Radeon equivalent. Modifying .inf and .ini files on their own will seem to result in the appearance of being successfully installed - but alas, it isn't.

As already mentioned before, there are internal checks within the DLL's of the drivers themselves. This is why Rivatuner is needed to patch file ati2mtag.sy_ to force support.

I don't understand...

I edited those Two INF files
In Device manager, I updated the drivers and installed the drivers it found for the "9700 Pro"
I Installed the Control Panel
All the games work great

I've never even heard of riva tuner before.

[Shloppy]

I suppose it's down to gaming preference really. But if you play any OpenGL coded titles then they simply wont work with that install method. For example, using your two pre-altered .inf files results in this:




If however it's Direct3D all the way for gaming then these simple .inf file changes will work fine in any Direct3D title.

As mentioned elsewhere, modifying the Calalyst 3.x drivers "correctly" results in full OpenGL/Direct3D/SmartGART support, installed through ATI's native driver installation package error and hassle free.

And GotNoRice, congrats on joining the FireGL club

[GotNoRice]

All the quake3 based games work fine, and those use OpenGL. Are you sure whatever the problem was just isn't a problem anymore with the cat 3.9's?

Maybe it's using something left over from when I had my 8500 installed?

[Shloppy]

It has always been necessary to alter more than just .inf files to get full functionality for X1/X2 based FireGL's running on the Catalyst drivers.

I suppose there is a possibility that some files have been left over from your 8500 when they shouldn't have. But it seems unlikely.

Your two .inf files were tested after I removed my drivers/control panel then ran driver cleaner, so no I don't think it's anything to do with the 3.9's either.

I guess the only way to validate things and convice you is for you to remove the drivers completely and eradicate any leftover ATI files then use your manual device manager driver update then test OpenGL titles.

[GotNoRice]

In 3dmark03 I got ~4000 at stock speeds and about ~4200 overclocked to 378/344.

Is this about normal for 9700 Pro cards? I'm not particularly fond of 3dmark as a benchmark, but it should be able to tell me for sure if it is in fact operating at 9700 Pro levels or not.

The other specs in my system:
Dual Xeons overclocked to 3Ghz each w/ FSB of 720
1024 PC3200 running Dual channel, 360Mhz.
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.

I don’t think my system is being held back by anything else. It just worries me that I hear of people getting higher scores than I am when their just using a 9500 or a 9600.

[Shloppy]

Try benching with AquaMark 2003. 3DMark is really a joke now.

I score 30k. I'm held back by my dinosaur like CPU and DDR speeds. But I have no complaints with the latest games

[komal]

I've modified the drivers, modded my 9500 pro to an X1, I've run wolfet no problem, that error is more of an installation error. I got that once, when I installed a new opengl.dll in my system folder.

[Kjugen]

Hi guys, my first thread here...

I have tried to use Catalyst 3.8 and 3.9 with my GLX1 and always fail to get GL going.

My normal procedure is to first change INI and INF files - that works like a charm, then it's the ATI ati2mtag.sy_ patching, from rivatuner it appears to work (C 3.8) and C3.9 gives a warning about certification. I think everything is all right there.

Before installation i make sure my GLX1 drivers are gone and then run Driver Cleaner 2.

Then during installation i run the setup from driver directory - that result gives me a clean install with 9700 cards under caregory Unknown (GLX1 also installs under Unknown) in device manager, but it fails to get GL going.

If i try to manually update drivers from device manager - the secondry card initiates OK and when i proceed with primary it sure looks allright during installation but i get a yellow bang in device manager an an error code 10 (device cannot start). I tried to do this in different sequences but allways end up with this code 10.

Please help me out!

[Shloppy]

Originally posted by komal
I've modified the drivers, modded my 9500 pro to an X1, I've run wolfet no problem, that error is more of an installation error. I got that once, when I installed a new opengl.dll in my system folder.

It's not an installation error. The entire OpenGL subsystem is non-existant. OpenGL doesn't just not work in ET, it doesn't work anywhere full stop.

I run RtCW and ET without error here as well using my own modified Catalyst's. Currently using my X1-128 as a 9700 with the 3.9s.

[Shloppy]

Originally posted by Kjugen
Hi guys, my first thread here...

I have tried to use Catalyst 3.8 and 3.9 with my GLX1 and always fail to get GL going....

... Please help me out!

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