stevedroid Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 I'm re-playing Jedi Academy right now and my performance is being killed when I enable dynamic glow. I know this was a well known problem with ATI cards and that patch 1.01 was supposed to fix this. I remember that at the time when I was first playing the game, the patch did fix the problem, but now it's doesn't work anymore. I believe the fix was basically a specific hack that was enabled when the engine detected some version of ATI drivers. I'm guessing that the game is not enabling the hack because it's not detecting the drivers right since there's been quite a few Catalyst releases since the patch came out. Is there a way that I can see if the hack is enabled? Does anyone know how I can manually enable that fix or some other way to improve performance with the dynamic glow? I don't really want to turn it off because I quite like that effect, but it's literally dropping my framerate from 75fps to 30fps in some areas. I'm running a Radeon 9700 Pro with Cat 4.9 PS. I do not have AA or AF on at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurgan Posted September 28, 2004 Share Posted September 28, 2004 I have the ALL-in-Wonder 9600 with the latest drivers and I do get a major performance hit from using Dynamic Glow. But at least it actually DOES something this time. On my GeForce2 it just slowed down the system and nothing changed visually. ; p I guess I need a faster machine! My specs: 2 Ghz Athlon 2400XP+ 256 mb pc133 sdram Windows 2000 Professional (and the above mentioned video card which has 128 mb ddr vram) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crow_Nest Posted September 28, 2004 Share Posted September 28, 2004 It works fine on my Radeon 9600XT 256MB. I think Dynamic Glow only works if your video card supports DirectX 8.1 or higher. Well maybe you can try this command r_atihack 1 I tried it on my FX 5700 Ultra 128MB but all it did was disable DG and made white flashes. Btw, kurg. Did you try putting those AA to 16x? It hardly drops a frame with 16x enabled on my 9600XT. EDIT: stevedroid if Dynamic Glow kills performance, try getting the ATI Tray Tools from guru3d and overclock your card. I overclocked mine to 525/625. There were some improvement Another framerate killer is resolution and video sync. If you set ur res to 1024x768 with video sync off. You should see a performance boost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurgan Posted September 28, 2004 Share Posted September 28, 2004 Those sound like some good suggestions crow, I'll have to try those when I get time. Basically I'm running 1024x768 with video synch off already. I get good framerates until I turn on dynamic glow,then suddenly things go to crap. : ( I have DX 9.0c, and I'm fairly sure that this card supports 8.1 or higher... PS: I'm looking at Guru3d.com in their downloads section and it looks like they have a LOT of files... which ones should I get and from what sections? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crow_Nest Posted September 28, 2004 Share Posted September 28, 2004 The tools are here http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=733 Originally posted by Kurgan Those sound like some good suggestions crow, I'll have to try those when I get time. Basically I'm running 1024x768 with video synch off already. I get good framerates until I turn on dynamic glow,then suddenly things go to crap. : ( Which All-In-Wonder are you using the All-In-Wonder 9600, All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro or All-In-Wonder 9600XT? If you're using the AIW 9600XT which is at 525/650 you should get better performance than me. I tried setting my 9600XT to 525/650 but screws up colors in JA due to overheating. My 9600XT default speed is 500/500 (Um, yeah. Creative didnt follow ATI's 9600XT speeds). ATI's normal 9600XT is clocked to 500/600, and tried setting it to 500/600. Since then i've been getting VERY good performance with Dynamic Glow on and i could even maintain 40 - 50 over frames during large saber fights in SP and MP. Kurgan you should get around the same performance as mine, maybe its because your CPU is bottlenecking your 9600 i dont know. And for steve, he should be getting way better performance than the 2 of us, dont forget a 9700 has 8 pipes, while a 9600 only has 4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevedroid Posted September 28, 2004 Author Share Posted September 28, 2004 I don't like to overclock my card. In any case I don't think that's the best solution anyway. Dynamic glow in JA should be a pretty simple effect, assuming it's implemented the same way the glow in Tron 2.0 or Far Cry works. There's no way it should be causing a performance hit in excess of 40fps in some areas. Better to try to fix the underlying problem rather than attempt to compensate by overclocking. The question is whether the problem is in the engine code (and therefore inaccessible to us) or in the interface between the engine and the card (and therefore possibly fixable on our end). I tried turning on r_atihack, but it didn't do seem to do anything. I do remember that when the hack was actually working, right after the game started up, I saw this in the console: Dynamic Glow: ATI BAD DRIVER HACK enabled I did not see that when manually enabling r_atihack even if I set it in the config file. So I'm thinking it may be a combination of settings perhaps even a switch of shader files, or maybe it's something that the game has to enable itself for it to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crow_Nest Posted September 29, 2004 Share Posted September 29, 2004 How fast is your CPU? If its around Kurgan's standard (2 GHz or 'slightly' higher) then it could be the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurgan Posted September 29, 2004 Share Posted September 29, 2004 Originally posted by |GG|Crow_Nest The tools are here http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=733 Which All-In-Wonder are you using the All-In-Wonder 9600, All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro or All-In-Wonder 9600XT? If you're using the AIW 9600XT which is at 525/650 you should get better performance than me. I tried setting my 9600XT to 525/650 but screws up colors in JA due to overheating. My 9600XT default speed is 500/500 (Um, yeah. Creative didnt follow ATI's 9600XT speeds). ATI's normal 9600XT is clocked to 500/600, and tried setting it to 500/600. Since then i've been getting VERY good performance with Dynamic Glow on and i could even maintain 40 - 50 over frames during large saber fights in SP and MP. Kurgan you should get around the same performance as mine, maybe its because your CPU is bottlenecking your 9600 i dont know. And for steve, he should be getting way better performance than the 2 of us, dont forget a 9700 has 8 pipes, while a 9600 only has 4. It's just the All-In-Wonder 9600, no "Pro" or "XT." Incidentally, how fast of a CPU do I need to use Dynamic Glow? My FPS is pretty low with Dynamic Glow (15 or single digits) and that's when I'm in a level ALONE or in SP. I've never dared to test it online with a bunch of people around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevedroid Posted September 29, 2004 Author Share Posted September 29, 2004 Originally posted by |GG|Crow_Nest How fast is your CPU? If its around Kurgan's standard (2 GHz or 'slightly' higher) then it could be the problem. I've got a AMD 2400+ which is standard clocked at 2.0Ghz It's possible that it may indeed be a CPU issue. I notice I got EXACTLY the same framerate running aat 800x600 as I did when running at 1024x768 (and I don't have Vsync on) However, based on my understanding of how Dynamic Glow works (at least in Tron 2.0 or Far Cry), it shouldn't be based on the CPU at all. The glow effect normally functions as a post-processing effect. Basically the game renders the scene normally, before the scene is sent to the screen buffer a "screenshot" of that image is taken. Everything but light sources are filtered out of the screenshot, then a pixel shader is used to apply a Photoshop type blur effect to that image. The result image is re-applied to the original before being passed to the screen buffer to actually be drawn on the screen. That whole process should occur on the video card. Furthermore, because it's image level processing, the time it takes should be directly proportional to the number of pixels being drawn. E.g. there's no way 800x600 should be performing exactly the same as 1024x768. So either they're doing Dynamic Glow in a completely different manner or it's something related to the performance of the frame buffer and refresh rate. I'll have to try changing my refresh rate and see if that does anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crow_Nest Posted September 30, 2004 Share Posted September 30, 2004 Your 2 GHz might be the problem. Cause your CPU is bottlenecking your video card. What do i mean by that? Bottleneck means when like your video card is too slow/fast for your CPU to handle, so it gives poor performance. Theres 2 things you could do: 1. Overclock your video card OR 2. Downclock your CPU to around 1.5 - or 1.6 GHz But if i were you, i would downclock the CPU. And answer to your question kurgan, any CPU speed that is or above the required CPU specs for JA can handle it. Btw, this is the first time i see someone on LF who has this kind of problem. Strange...... Originally posted by Kurgan It's just the All-In-Wonder 9600, no "Pro" or "XT." Oh i see. You should at least gotten the 9600 XT one, its more worth the money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevedroid Posted October 1, 2004 Author Share Posted October 1, 2004 No offense but that's like the most ill-informed advice I've ever read. DOWNclocking the CPU would most certainy NOT improve performance in a system where the video card is bottlenecked by the CPU. You seem to lack a basic understanding of what a bottleneck is. I do welcome you to prove me wrong with some concrete evidence though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crow_Nest Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 Well cause bottlenecking is kinda hard to explain. But i have a 1.6 GHz AMD Althon XP2000. Runs fine with dynamic glow. EDIT: Oh yeah i forgot, getting more RAM might help too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pooeypants Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Err, there is no way that downclocking the CPU will help, it is in NO way an alternative to overclocking the GPU. What bottleneck means is that your system has a component which is stopping another from fulfilling it's full potential. I've got an AMD 2600 with nForce mobo etc, if I slotted in a 6800 then I'd be bottlenecking that GPU because my CPU, FSB (mobo) isn't processing fast enough to keep up with the graphics card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crow_Nest Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 Well if its the CPU speed thats causing the problem then downclocking might help a little. I also heard that getting more RAM like 512MB or 1GB also works, but will cost you some cash. EDIT: I asked on the HL2F forums, here is the thread http://www.hlfallout.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8687&hl=bottlenecking Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevedroid Posted October 7, 2004 Author Share Posted October 7, 2004 Well if its the CPU speed thats causing the problem then downclocking might help a little. No dude you still don't get it. Ok how about an hypothetical allegory. Suppose I have two cars: 1. Ferrari 550 Maranello 2. Honda Civic - base model Now the Ferrari has a top speed just above 200mph (320kph). The Civic has a top speed around 130MPH (210kph). Now imagine that I connect the two cars together with an unbreakable chain. I'd never be able to drive the Ferrari faster than 130MPH because that's the top speed of the Civic. Lowering the top speed of the Ferrari certianly wouldn't make me go any faster, and lowering the speed of the Civic would make me go slower. Then only way to go faster is if I could increase the top speed of the Civic. That's what a bottleneck is. Your video card may be able to run the game at 80fps, but the game also depends on your CPU. if your CPU can only run the game at 40fps, the game will only ever render at 40fps, regardless of the fact that the video card has the ability to run it faster. So you see if a system is bottlenecked by a CPU, downclocking the CPU would only HURT your performance and whoever told you otherwise is an idiot. Understand? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crow_Nest Posted October 7, 2004 Share Posted October 7, 2004 So does that mean JA relys more on CPU power than graphics card? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevedroid Posted October 8, 2004 Author Share Posted October 8, 2004 So does that mean JA relys more on CPU power than graphics card?No I'd say it relies on both the CPU and video card about the same - as do many Quake 3 engine based games. Essnetially, your perfomance will ultimately be bound by whichever is the least powerful. E.g. If you've got a GeForce 2 and a 3.6Ghz processor, the game will not peform well because of the slow video card regardless of the fact that you've got a smoking processor. If you've got a Radeon 9800 XT and a 1.6Ghz processor the game's performance will be hampered by the slow processor regardless of the fact the video card is very fast. There are some games that rely much more on one than the other, but the Quake 3 engine is a pretty good 50/50 split. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pooeypants Posted October 10, 2004 Share Posted October 10, 2004 Very well explained there Steve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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