**Need your input for the Radeon FAQ!!**

J

Jarrett

New member
I'll be doing a FAQ (or Q/A) in our Tech section once it is up-and-running...
I need all your guys help to compile a GIANT list of commonly encountered problems with your Radeon cards, there must be a solution for this problem or just something that has been known to generally work.
When you post your ideas, try not to be too specific about the problem (eg your exact system configuration under Win2K, overclocking shouldn't be included because it isn't "normal" we'll say, etc)...WHY?

Because not everyone has your exact system!
And you may be experiencing problems that only you have! =)

So i've heard things about the Via boards, KT133, AGP issues, Win2K minor problems, blank screen, deleting previous drivers fixes the problem, we need to clear up the Hyper-Z issue to, what Retail has the OEM doesn't, etc...

So could you please help me compile a FAQ (or Q/A) which we can use in our Tech section?! It also really helps as "you" the consumer posting issues/fixes you know of, because you have a first hand experience with the card.
 
I had problems with Direct3D games and apps. They wouldnt run for me. It froze once i started the game. So i went to DxDiag and disabled AGP under the display tab and it fixed everything. By the way I have a via MVP3 motherboard if that means anything
 
According to the response I have recieved it looks like I am the expert on FSAA.

Currently the issues that exist in d3d is the problem of graphic glitches and half the screen doesn't refresh correctly. There are two solutions to this 1: Simply disable Force FSAA in Driver panel (recommended by ATI). 2: switch to another resolution: All of my troubles have occurred at 1024x728 16/32 bit modes. If however I change the res lower, this graphical anomaly disappears. Don't bother trying to push the res up another notch since the game will be unplayable at FSAA 1240x1024. I tried this in Homeworld and was surprised that is ran without glitches and faster than 1024x768. LOL, the only problem is that when I played at the higher res FSAA was not active even though the driver was set to Force FSAA.

FSAA support in OpenGL is much worse than in d3d. The only game that I have been able to get running correctly with this option is UT and there are still graphical glitches. The glitches however, occur whether or not FSAA is enable. It has been acknowledged by ATI that the retail drivers (3044 I believe) currently have issues in OpenGL mode on some maps in UT. I assume that once this problem has been solved the FSAA will also work flawlessly.

The largest side note that I can make however, is that very few of the games out there benefit greatly from FSAA. While eye candy is nice in Q3 and UT I found that visual benefits are lost due to the style of play. I saw basically no increase at all in Porsche Unleased, instead simply use a higher res and let the Radeon flex its muscles a bit. The major exception to this is games like Homeworld, Falcon 4, Dark Reign 2, etc. The main place it become noticeable is during camera fly-bys where the jaggies go wild. Using FSAA in these case dramatically improves visual quality. This is just my two cents worth but only use FSAA in the few games I mentioned and use higher res's for the rest.

Lastly on to the HyperZ issue. I have performed a clean reinstall of Win98 to avoid old driver issues and I have found that messing in the reg provides NO benefit in fps in games or 3DMark. You can however decrease your performance if you disable HyperZ. After talking to ATI here is what I found:

First of all people need to understand logic a bit better. In the reg there is a string DisableHierarchicalZ and this is defaulted to "1". That means that this line is active and thus HierarchicalZ is DISABLED. According to ATI this will be used later in DirectX8 and games that use it. So basically you are going to have to wait. As for missing the other two lines: HyperZ and FastClearZ they are defaulted on if not specified in the reg. Thus the point of the story is don't mess with the reg it will only hurt performance. I have spent an extensive amount of time trying to hack the reg and in the end I recieved NO MYSTICAL SPEED INCREASES. Sorry guys, we are going to have to wait for better drivers to be rel'd before with see the Detonator3 effect of getting more performance for free. Hope it helps and I am free to answer any questions you guys have on my tinkering.

PIII-500E
Soyo 6BA-IV
256M ram
Radeon 64 DDR Retail
WD 17.8G 7200RPM
Sony CPD-100ES Monitor (15")
Win98
 
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